The Weekly World News is a tabloid formerly published in a newspaper format reporting mostly fictional "news" stories in the United States from 1979 to 2007. The paper was renowned for its outlandish cover stories often based on supernatural or paranormal themes and an approach to news that verged on the satirical. Its characteristic black-and-white covers have become pop-culture images widely used in the arts. It ceased print publication in August 2007. The company has a library of 110,000+ articles and 300+ original characters.

In 2009, the Weekly World News was relaunched as an online and social media publication. In July 2021, the Weekly World News announced the formation of Weekly World News Studios, to develop and produce entertainment projects based on its brand and characters.

Generoso Pope Jr. launched the Weekly World News in 1979 to continue using the black-and-white press that sister tabloid The National Enquirer had been printed on before it switched to color printing. The WWN was published in Lantana, Florida, until it moved to Boca Raton in the late 1990s. It was unique as a tabloid because it was printed entirely in black and white. Eddie Clontz was its long-time editor, a 10th-grade dropout from North Carolina, and a former copy editor at small newspapers. In the 2000s, the circulation of WWN peaked at 1.2 million per issue. WWN went on to thrive online from 2009 to 2015 and was relaunched in 2019 by senior editor Greg D'Alessandro, along with investor David Collins.

The editor-in-chief from 2009 to 2018 was Neil McGinness. The editor-in-chief since August 2019 has been D'Alessandro.

The WWN traditionally claimed that it always printed the truth, but many stories appeared to have comedic intent – more so as time went by. As recalled by Joe Berger, a former White House correspondent who served as a WWN editor from 1981 to 2001, "About 80 percent of the stories were clipped from newspapers. We had three or four clippers who were surrounded by mountains of newspapers. We spent the day looking at newspapers throughout the world, clipping weird stories. About 50 percent were about people narrowly escaping death; someone falling off a cliff, or hanging off a tree branch for four days until they were rescued." The introduction to Batboy Lives! states that one person would read the tabloid for real news, whereas another would read it for the humor. The tabloid's main rival Sun carried a fine print disclaimer, whereas the WWN never publicly contradicted the accuracy of its own stories until 2004, when it began stating that "the reader should suspend disbelief for the sake of enjoyment." In the 2000s, Sun moved more toward articles on health and miracle cures, leaving WWN alone in its niche of supernatural news stories, such as sightings of Elvis Presley and the Loch Ness monster.

Thus, for a significant percentage of its content, the WWN ran strange-but-true stories, such as "DEVOUT CHRISTIAN ATTACKED – AND HE'S THE ONE FINED!" referring to British street evangelist Harry Hammond. Other verifiable stories included those of a giant mutant hog monster attacking Georgia and the arrest of a Tallahassee, Florida, man whose pants were on fire at the time. It reported on the discovery of an infant dragon preserved in formaldehyde proving the existence of dragons, although this was later proven to be a hoax. It also quoted Vatican exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth on Pope John Paul II's battles with Satan and ran a story on the trademark dispute between O, The Oprah Magazine and a German erotic periodical also named O. Whether partially fictional or wholly true, the writing style remained as fact-based as possible. As writer Bob Lind recalled for Mental Floss, "We wrote these things straight, for people who wanted to believe these things. We wrote it like a news story. We wrote a lede with a dash in it, filled it in, and then had a money quote."

In February 1989, WWN published real, graphic photos on its front page of the post-autopsied body of executed serial killer Ted Bundy. Managing editor Eddie Clontz defended his decision to run the photos, claiming that he hoped that such images would deter other murderers. Angry and surprised officials in Florida vowed to catch the person responsible, eventually arresting a low-level employee of the Alachua County, Florida Medical Examiner's office and charging him with taking the photographs and selling them to the WWN.

As other supermarket tabloids switched to celebrity gossip, the Weekly World News remained devoted to its original content, refusing to fact-check its way out of a sensational story, or, as Iain Calder, WWN co-founder and Enquirer editor-in-chief from 1973 to 1997, told Mental Floss: "We'd say Elvis was still alive and run a picture of what Elvis would have looked like at that time. We'd get dozens of phone calls. If someone calls and says, 'I saw Elvis,' you didn't try to disprove the headline." Derrik Lang, a stringer for the paper, said that "everything in my stories was fake – you know, depending on how you define fake." Common WWN stories involved alien abductions, the Loch Ness monster, Bigfoot, time travel, predictions of an oncoming depression or apocalypse, and other newly found lost prophecies or religious relics. There were also characters who, in later years, became stock fixtures in WWN news stories, most famously Bat Boy, a half-bat half-boy discovered in West Virginia caverns, and P'lod, an extraterrestrial who became involved in Earth politics and had an affair with Hillary Clinton.