A vintage television image from the famous American talk show The Jerry Springer Show has recently gone viral, claiming to show a giant baby that weighed a massive 70 pounds (around 32 kilograms). Clickbait posts across social media claim that the boy is now all grown up, inviting the audience to sit down before seeing his shocking transformation today. While this news has sparked the curiosity of millions of users, the truth behind the photo is entirely different.

In reality, the image does not show an actual overweight infant, but is instead a famous satirical sequence from a 2002 episode. During that era, Jerry Springer’s show frequently utilized actors, sketches, and highly exaggerated storylines to entertain the public. The individual seen wearing a diaper and acting like a baby is actually an adult man with dwarfism who was playing a comedic role for the show.

This specific footage and image have been used for years across the internet as a meme, but various fake news websites have refreshed it to create sensational headlines. By manipulating the context, these pages lure users into ad-heavy articles under the guise of revealing what the “baby” looks like today, completely omitting the fact that the person in the photo was already an adult when the show was recorded.

Media experts warn that cases like this demonstrate how easily television nostalgia from the ’90s and 2000s can be weaponized in the social media era. Before clicking on stories that seem too bizarre to be true, it is always important to verify the source, as behind a “viral baby” headline often lies nothing more than an old television stunt.