Did a California aquarium collapse, killing 50 people, as was claimed in a viral Instagram reel? No, that's not true: A disaster of that magnitude and novelty would have been a worldwide news story and there is no record of such an event in news publications in or out of California. The Instagram account that posted the video consists of a stream of made-up disaster videos: tsunamis, earthquakes, and military plane crashes, plus another made-up aquarium collapse, but in Germany.
The story appeared in an August 4, 2025 Instagram reel (archived here) published on the cricket_di_diwani account with 14 traffic-seeking hashtags. On-screen captions read:
California Aquarium Collapse 50 People Died
Here's what the post looked like on Instagram at the time this fact check was written:
(Source: Screenshot by Lead Stories of post at www.instagram.com/cricket_di_diwani.)
That Instagram account amounts to a catalogue of perfectly lit and focused and framed videos of disasters, as though camera crews were ready each time:
(Source: Screenshot by Lead Stories of post at www.instagram.com/cricket_di_diwani.)
Such videos bear the characteristics of generative artificial intelligence video, described by AI observers such as the blog "From Narrow to General AI": hypnotically smooth editing and improbably perfect footage in difficult settings, from tunnels to disaster scenes.
The disasters described on the cricket_di_diwani Instagram account never happened. For instance, "Tsunami in California...Thousands People Died" never happened. As Lead Stories reported in debunking other fake videos about the July 2025 tsunami generated by an earthquake off Russia, the waves that struck California were described as "modest" and there were no deaths attributed to them.
Lead Stories searched Google News' index of thousands of news websites and found no reports (archived here) of California aquarium collapse of any magnitude, let alone one that killed 50 people. Similarly, the Yahoo! News index of partner news sites and news services showed zero fact-based reports of a fatal California aquarium collapse (archived here).
