There Was a Supposedly a 1963 Movie Called ‘The Omicron Variant’ About a Pandemic But It’s Actually Untrue


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Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. Especially when that truth contains a little fiction. 

As you know, the Omicron variant has become the latest pandemic party pooper after it was discovered late last month.

Countries around the world have reimposed border restrictions on most of the affected countries, hoping to keep the new strain at bay.

But as we’ve seen with other coronavirus strains, this is an impossible task.

We could have stopped it before it started spreading so rapidly, but unfortunately, no one saw it coming.

Or did they?

Netizens Claim There’s an 1963 Movie Called The Omicron Variant About a Pandemic 

Our story starts with a movie poster that went viral on social media.

The movie, purportedly made in 1963, was called “The Omicron Variant”, with the tagline: “The day the Earth was turned into a cemetery!”

Have a look:

Image: Facebook

In the poster, a frightened couple stares into the clouds, as a giant hand with an ant protruding from its centre reaches out from the abyss, presumably ready to grab them. It’s unclear what exactly the threat is, but the hand and ant are clearly not there to make friends.

The movie poster was shared all over social media, triggering a host of “I can’t believe this” and “You can’t make this up” comments.

Except that you can make this up.

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It’s Fake

Upon seeing the poster, netizens made sure to do their research on movies released during that time before they believed it.

Just kidding. 

Many of them were duped into thinking it was real, with some calling it “chilling” and “terrifying”.

Others who were a little more skeptical did some digging and discovered that there was no movie called The Omicron Variant, because of course there wasn’t.


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While there was a 1963 film called Omicron, it was about an “alien who takes over the body of an Earthman in order to learn about the planet so his race can take it over.”

As of yet, no aliens have been involved in the COVID-19 pandemic (that we know of), so this clearly has no relation to our current predicament.

The poster itself seems to have been lifted from a 1974 film called Phase IV:

Image: IMDb

As you can see, this poster has the same tagline and same actors, and even the same grotesque hand with that monstrous ant, but in even more detail.

It seems that someone out there edited the poster to give people around the world a nice little scare.


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Or it could have been a rather late but brilliant marketing campaign for both movies.

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Featured Image: Fakesbook (Facebook, we mean)