Perhaps more to the point: why would you bet that Olivia Newton-John will die this year? The death pool itself may be traced back much further even than modern ideas of celebrity. One of the leading lights of the celebrity death pool industry is The DeathList, an annual forecast of noteworthy terminations that has been running now for more than 30 years. So influential has this trope become, apparently, that one of the more popular online celebrity death pools actually stipulates in its rules that any player who “kills or otherwise contributes to the death of any celebrity” is disqualified. But The Dead Pool did touch on an aspect of the celebrity death pool that is fundamental to its attraction, even if Dirty Harry needn’t be called in to thwart the racket.

Source: National Post January 09, 2019 13:52 UTC