The picture is obviously firebug'd or edited with something else, TMZ and foxnews do not have an article saying he is alive.
From the looks of things this is almost definitely not a joke, and I'm quite saddened by him dying since I've always loved his character.
r.i.p. random hero
and before anyone asks who that robot is, it's actually from an episode of the donkey kong cartoon, where dk ends up accidentally switching bodies with it, and there's a banger song in that episode that you may have heard before in a thread