A college student named Sunil Tripathi had gone missing a month prior to the bombings. After the bombings took place, the FBI released photos of the suspects they believed were involved. A Redditor pointed out that the suspects looked like Sunil, who had been missing for a while. The mods were overwhelmed by the volume of speculative posts, and the media was hungry for information, so as Sunil's name spread over social media, the media started running with it, too.

Sunil was later found dead - he had nothing to do with the bombings and had been missing because he committed suicide. Sunil's family was needlessly harassed during a traumatic time in their lives as a direct result of witch hunting.

A few hours after the suspect photos were released by the FBI: Sean Collier was an MIT police officer who was responding to a disturbance outside MIT's Stata Center. He was shot to death by the real bombers, who were trying to further arm themselves by trying to steal his sidearm (they were unsuccessful due to the holster's retention system). But none of that had to do with Reddit or Sunil's misidentification.