Video of students who drank laxative-laced lemonade is fiction, not real life

Video of students who supposedly drank laxative-laced lemonade is circulating social media. One post claims the school prank was done in retaliation for bullying. But this stinks of misinformation.

A Nov. 24 Facebook post showed a split-screen video: on the left, a distressed teacher walked past multiple students in a school hallway suffering from severe gastrointestinal issues; on the right, a man reacted to the chaotic scene.

"This is what happens when someone at school that’s getting bullied gets tired of being bullied," the man said in response to the video. "They put horse laxatives inside the lemonade in the cafeteria and got ‘em all."

The Facebook post’s caption read, "That moment when you get tired of being bullied."

(Facebook screengrab)

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

That’s because this video is from the true crime satire show "American Vandal."

The show’s two seasons depict mockumentary-style investigations into school pranks. In the second season, released in 2018, students at a fictitious private high school get sick after the cafeteria’s lemonade is contaminated with laxatives.

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Parts of the video shared in the Facebook post can be seen in the Netflix trailer for the second season of "American Vandal."

This isn’t the first time the video has been miscaptioned. Snopes checked this claim in 2018 and Lead Stories saw posts like this in 2019.

The footage may be resurfacing now because of news about two lemonade-related lawsuits against Panera Bread. Families of two people who died say Panera’s highly caffeinated Charged Lemonade played a role. Panera has added warnings to the product but said in a statement that it believes the deaths are not connected to the lemonade.

We rate the claim that a video shared on Facebook shows the aftermath of a school prank in which students drank lemonade containing "horse laxatives" False.