In recent years, a relatively recent photograph of the American actor in front of an aquarium with two cute turtles has been circulating on social networks. Stallone reportedly took them in after starring together in the 1976 film Rocky. We checked if this is true.
This is the text that accompanied this cute photo in the Russian-language page that generated many reposts: publications on Facebook in 2019: “Sylvester Stallone has everything at homee The turtles from the movie "Rocky" still live. Remember how his character buys them at a pet store while caring for the girl who works there? The Turtles went through a divorce and several moves with the actor. They are older than all of Stallone's children - they are 45 years old, and they are in great shape."
In the same year, news about the fate of the star turtles spread across a number of Ukrainian and Russian entertainment sites (Lifter, Nastroy, "TV guide", Gazeta.ua). At the same time, the last two reported that the actor not only took the turtles on the set of “Rocky”, but stole them. In 2021, the news triumphantly returned to Facebook - more than 78,000 reposts for one August week in English, having responded and in the Russian-language segment of the social network. Moreover, this information can be found on the film’s page on a reputable website IMDb, as well as on the popular resource People.
Indeed, in the legendary film “Rocky,” which made Sylvester Stallone famous 45 years ago, you can see two red-eared turtles, which in Russian translation are called Cuff and Cufflink. They live in the apartment of the protagonist.
At the same time, red-eared turtles in captivity live about 45–50 years, so theoretically they could survive to this day.
Moreover, on May 5, 2018, Sylvester Stallone actually posted the subject in question on his Instagram. photograph with the caption: “On the set of “Creed 2” (the eighth film about Rocky Balboa. - Ed.) with my buddies from the first “Rocky”, Cuff and Cufflink, who are now about 44 years old.”
It’s just not clear from the caption whether Stallone lives with these turtles or just met them on the new set. However, the probable answer to this question came much earlier than the appearance of the next film about the boxer. Back in 2006, the Philadelphia Inquirer called local resident Joseph Marks. In 1976, he was the owner of J&M Tropical Fish, which played the role of a pet store in the film - the place of work of the girl Adrian, from whom Rocky Balboa bought the turtles. After filming, the 5-year-old animals found a permanent home at J&M. In 2005, Marks had to close the establishment, and soon he accidentally saw Stallone on the street and reminded him of himself and the turtles. The actor recognized the man, after which he temporarily borrowed the twins for filming in his film “Rocky Balboa” (2006) - the sixth in the popular series. Joseph still has a receipt for this, confirming that these are original turtles. In 2016, ex-J&M finally demolished, however turtles like reported Marx, 71, told the same Philadelphia Inquirer a year later, was still living with him. And in 2018, as we already know, they played in the new film of the Stallone franchise.
However, already in August 2021, from the comments to the viral post about turtles on the website Reddit it turned out, that completely different turtles took part in the 2018 filming, not the original Cuffs with Cufflinks. New actors (or actresses) provided Briar Bush Nature Center in Abington, Pennsylvania. Animal curator Katie Fisk confirmed the new information and showed photographs of them. She complained that scenes with Rocky's new red-eared friends were not included in the final version of Creed 2. The Popsugar resource published this information back in 2019, but for some reason it was not widely used. Moreover, in 2021 it was also ignored by the fact-checking resource Snopes. But the fate of Joseph Marks’s original pets is currently unknown, although they may well be alive – Katie Fisk assured that this species can live up to 75 years.
However, we can say with a high degree of certainty that at least until 2017, the turtles from the first Rocky film lived not with Sylvester Stallone, but with the owner of the establishment, who played the role of a pet store.
Most likely not true
Read on topic:
- Rocky's Turtles Go the Distance
- Owner of razed Kensington pet store recalls when Rocky came calling
- Did Stallone ‘Keep’ the Turtles from ‘Rocky’?
If you find a spelling or grammatical error, please let us know by highlighting the error text and clicking Ctrl+Enter.
