A video is being shared on social media claiming it shows visuals of the transformation of a man who purportedly rescued his girlfriend from a burning building. Initially, the footage displays a half-burnt man, with stone-like skin, followed by visuals of a handsome person. The post claims that the visuals represent the same individual, portraying it as a before-and-after sequence of the man rescuing his girlfriend from a fire. The post further alleges that, despite risking his life for the rescue, the man was later abandoned by his girlfriend due to dissatisfaction with his skin colour and tone. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Before-and-after visuals of a man who sustained burns and lost his skin layers while rescuing his girlfriend from a burning building.
Fact: The video shows the visuals of two different individuals. The man (without burn injuries) seen in the video is Huo FanFan from Shanghai, China. Through a Facebook post, Huo FanFan clarified that his photo was misused and shared with a false narrative on social media. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
On reverse image search of the screenshots of the video, we could not find any reliable sources related to the individuals seen in the video. A few users in the comment section stated that the narrative of the video was fake and shared the Instagram handle of the person without burn injuries seen in the video.
The Instagram handle these users shared was of Huo FanFan. Huo FanFan is an employee at the Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport (SHA) in Shanghai, China. Huo FanFan shared the photo seen in the video on 02 September 2021. A few latest pictures posted by Huo FanFan on his Instagram handle can be seen here, here, and here. In these pictures, Huo FanFan was seen with his usual skin tone and colour, and without any burn injuries.
Huo FanFan through a Facebook post clarified that his photo was misused and shared with a false narrative on social media. Huo FanFan shared a viral TikTok post alleging that the user had misused his photo to create a fake video. The viral video was created by a TikTok handle named “gilbert_ed1tz”.
On searching for the details of the person with alleged burn injuries seen in the video, we found an extended version of this individual’s video on a TikTok handle. This TikTok user shared the image of another man and claimed it as before-and-after visuals of the man before sustaining burns. This user had shared multiple videos of physically disabled individuals on his TikTok handle. We could not find any further details of this person. But from all the above evidence, it can be concluded that the video shared in the post shows the visuals of two different individuals.
To sum it up, visuals of two different individuals were falsely portrayed as before-and-after images of a man who rescued his girlfriend from a burning building.
