Why Celebrity Deaths (Seem to) Happen in Threes

For many, the news of the death of legendary wrestling personality Hulk Hogan on Thursday, July 24 confirmed a long-held superstition: celebrity deaths occur in threes. Hogan’s shocking demise from an apparent coronary event came within days of the drowning death of The Cosby Show actor Malcolm-Jamal Warner on July 20 and the passing of heavy metal icon Ozzy Osbourne on July 22.

The so-called “three deaths” or “death comes in threes” theory isn’t reserved for Hollywood icons or media personalities. Anytime a community loses three of its own within a relatively short period of time, someone will attribute it to this phenomenon. Nevermind that someone dies in the United States every 11 seconds; when three people who have some sort of connection — celebrities, politicians, young people, car accident victims, etc. — die, our brains will, often subconsciously, link those deaths together into a pattern.

Reason for the rhyme

But why three deaths? Why don’t we group these occurrences into pairs, or groups of four? There are plenty of superstitions, cultural beliefs, and common tropes that include the number three. There’s the Holy Trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the saying “third time’s the charm,” and even the patterns of threes in fairy tales (three bears, three wishes, three blind mice … you get the point).

According to experts, our ability to group these particular deaths into tragic trios while ignoring the other thousands of people who will die within the same time frame is called confirmation bias. Defined as the “tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one’s existing beliefs or theories,” confirmation bias, in this context, happens, perhaps, because we’ve heard that deaths come in threes over, and over, and over.

Is this proof?

Or maybe — just maybe — there’s a kernel of truth to the theory. As evidence, we present the following groups of celebrity deaths that occurred in close proximity and were attributed to the three-death rule … and it’s actually a pretty long list:

Malcolm-Jamal Warner, Ozzy Osbourne, and Hulk Hogan (July 20-24, 2025)
Jimmy Buffett, Smashmouth lead singer Steve Harwell, and 70s singer Gary Wright (September 1-4, 2023)
Glee actress Naya Rivera, actress Kelly Preston, and Regis Philbin (July 8-25, 2020)
Anthony Bourdain, Kate Spade, and The Goldbergs actor Jackson Odell (June 5-8, 2018)
Alan Thicke, Carrie Fisher, and George Michael (December 13-27, 2016)
Everybody Loves Raymond actress Doris Roberts, wrestler Chyna, and Prince (April 17-21, 2016)
Lilly Pulitzer, Margaret Thatcher, and Annette Funicello (April 7-8, 2013)
The Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek, All in the Family star Jean Stapleton, and James Gandolfini (May 20 – June 27, 2013)
Ed McMahon, Michael Jackson, and Farrah Fawcett (June 23- 25, 2009)
Spencer Tracy, Jayne Mansfield, and Vivien Leigh (June 10 – July 8, 1967)
Lipton Tea founder Sir Thomas Lipton, New Jersey Senator Dwight Morrow, Thomas Edison (October 2-18, 1931)

We threw in that last example to show that although this version of the rule of three seems to have been occurring more often over the last 12 years or so, the phenomenon has made news since the earliest days of Hollywood. It’s just that in most cases, our generations wouldn’t recognize some of the names of the actors, producers, politicians, and musicians who died within days, weeks, or a month of two other famous-at-the-time folks. Consider the deaths of Cliff Arquette, Walter Brennan, and Jacqueline Susann in 1974; Dick Powell, Jack Carson, and Charles Laughton in 1963; Guy Kibbee, Eddie Arnold, and Louis Calhern in 1956; or Frank Morgan, Richard Dix, and Sam Wood in 1949.

So … is the phenomenon of celebrities dying three at a time due to a trick of the mind like confirmation bias? Is it simply an old wives’ tale or superstition? We’ll let you decide.

Addendum

The death of Grammy-winning jazz musician Chuck Mangione last week may seem to throw a wrench into the death-comes-in-threes theory when added to the passings of Warner, Osbourne, and Hogan – unless it’s the beginning of another set of three celebrity deaths … which we hope it is not.