Does a real image show a man in midair after being thrown from the Goliath roller coaster at Six Flags Over Georgia in October 2026? No, that's not true: Lead Stories found that the image came from a 2025 AI-generated reel depicting fabricated theme park collapses. The reel was posted in a Reddit community for the "Professional use of full motion video generative A.I. assistants" more than a year before the incident. An online tool also concluded that the image taken from the reel was AI-generated.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) by the @fdjhgi38 account on TikTok uploaded on Oct. 13, 2026. It read:
SIX FLAGS OVER GEORGIA GOLIATH ROLLER COASTER #sixflags #goliathrollercoaster #breakingnews #sixflagsovergeorgia
This is what a screenshot of the video in the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @fdjhgi38 on TikTok.)
The video is embedded below:
@fdjhgi38
Image search
A Google reverse image search (archived here) of the screenshot showing the man in midair led Lead Stories to a Reddit post (archived here) published by u/ZashManson on Aug. 7, 2025. The post appeared on r/aivideo (archived here), a community that describes itself as "The place for AI generated videos on reddit." The community's disclaimer states, "videos are NOT REAL! they are COMPUTER GENERATED." The description for the page reads:
Welcome to r/aivideo! 🍿🥤🤯 A community focused on the PROFESSIONAL USE OF FULL MOTION VIDEO GENERATIVE A.I. ASSISTANTS such as SEEDANCE, MINIMAX, KLING, VEO, and other similar AI VIDEO tools capable of generating TEXT TO VIDEO, IMAGE TO VIDEO, VIDEO TO VIDEO, AI VFX, AI SFX, TEXT TO SPEECH, AI MUSIC, AI VIDEOGAMES, AI VIDEO AGENTS. WELCOME TO THE FUTURE! ⚠️
The original video that includes the scene of the man is embedded below. It appears about 32 seconds into the clip:
Theme Park Collapse 🎢💥😱
by u/ZashManson in aivideo
This is what a screenshot of the video in the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by u/ZashManson on Reddit.)
Image analysis
Lead Stories ran the image from the video through the Hive Moderation AI-Generated Content Detection tool (archived here), which concluded that it was 97.4% "Likely to be AI-Generated Image":
(Image source: Hive Moderation.)
Another AI indicator is that the person in the video appears to have four legs, but no head or arms.
Background
On Oct. 12, 2026, Jihad Ibn Kariem died after being ejected from Goliath, a roller coaster at Six Flags Over Georgia outside Atlanta. Witnesses reported that he appeared to hover above the moving coaster car before falling and striking other park visitors, The Associated Press reported (archived here).
Authorities were investigating the circumstances of the fatal incident, including how Kariem was ejected and whether there were problems with his restraints. Six Flags temporarily closed nine similar roller coasters across North America while the investigation was underway.
