Are images showing Tupac Shakur in a hospital room in the last days of his life real? No, that's not true: Shakur's lawyer, who was present at the Las Vegas hospital where the hip-hop icon was treated for fatal gunshot wounds, examined the four images and concluded "these are not real." Attorney David Kenner noted that Shakur was always on life support, which is missing in two of the images. His chest was severely swollen, which is not seen in the images. And contrary to one of the images, Snoop Dogg was never there.
The photos appeared in a post (archived here) published by the @culturejpg X account on December 21, 2025, under the caption:
Some alleged rare pictures of Tupac at a hospital
This is what the four images from the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of X.com)
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of X.com)
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of X.com)
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of X.com)
Shakur, who was signed by Death Row Records, was 25 years old at the top of the hip hop world when he was shot four times on a Las Vegas street on September 7, 1996. He held onto life in a Las Vegas hospital for six days before his mother made the decision to have doctors stop medical treatment for her son. He died on September 13, 1996.
Shakur's upper body shows no signs of swelling in any of the images. Two of the fake images appear to show rapper Snoop Dogg, who was also signed to Death Row Records, at Shakur's bedside. Two images bearing date stamps of September 9 and 11, 1996, show no life support tubes attached to Shakur.
Kenner, who was Death Row's legal counsel and Shakur's personal lawyer, was at the hospital during Shakur's final days. Lead Stories asked to review the images. He shared his observations in a phone call on December 23, 2025.
First of all, I don't think Snoop was ever there. One of these pictures has Snoop in it. And Tupac was, his whole chest cavity was swollen five times the size because the bullets went through his lungs and the lungs expanded. I would say these are not real. There was never a time that he wasn't plugged into massive tubes, keeping him on life support initially. I would say these are not real.
Lead Stories was unable to determine how these photos were created, but extensive searches of social media and with Google found no examples of them online before mid-December 2025.
