re: Conspiracy theories that never come to fruition.

Something about Richard Gere and a hamster in his arse.

The rumor's spread was aided by an anonymous prankster who, not long after the film Pretty Woman led to a tremendous increase in Gere's popularity, flooded fax machines in Hollywood with a phony "press release" purportedly issued by the Association for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, claiming that Gere had "abused" a gerbil. But, as a reporter from the National Enquirer found when he attempted to track down the gerbil story, there were no facts to be had.

Fun fact - The rumor also created the term "gerbilectomy"