A popular culture icon for the past six decades, the 88 year-old entrepreneur and adult magazine editor has been a part of a number of jokes in the many decades that have seen him in the spotlight - the later of which has been a Hugh Hefner dead hoax!

A lot has been said about Hefner over the years, particularly about his wild partying well into old age and his continuous taste for women decades younger than him, including current wife Crystal Harris, 60 years her junior; now, the latest news about the pop icon is the Hugh Hefner dead hoax.

For a while, it has become a popular Internet fad to kill of different famous people, including recently "Home Alone" former child actor Macaulay Culkin - once the rumor spreads on the Internet, it's tough to see who's really alive and who's passed away, and that's exactly what happened during the Hugh Hefner dead hoax.

According to Hollywood Life, a rumor had been going on all over the web saying that the Playboy creator had passed away at age 88 at his home, as he'd been said to have died of natural causes following a long life.

It seems that the Hugh Hefner dead hoax first started out when website NBCToday.co first announced it, and many confused the website with the actual "The Today Show" by NBC, which ultimately made many people worry about the state of health of the man who created the concept of the Playboy bunnies.

Now, funnily enough, it seems like the site was solely created to claim the death of the Playboy editor and public face - when users type the address in their web browsers, they are taken straight to this fake story.

In any case, the Hugh Hefner dead hoax was just that - the senior resident of the notorious Playboy Mansion is alive and well, even announcing on Twitter that they would be watching "American Sniper" in the Mansion that night, according to The Inquisitr!