Brace yourselves, this is going to be a very serious article.
...NOT!
Gotcha there!
The ability to successfully pull off a legitimately funny prank on somebody is a true art, and the talent that goes into it should definitely be more appreciated. After all, who doesn’t have at least one hilarious story about a time they or someone they knew got taken for an epic ride by a troll or prankster?
So get ready to laugh at these 42 stories about some hilarious and legendary pranks people have managed to pull off.
42. That Must Have Sucked for Your Brother
I told my younger brother that he was insane for wasting all the air in the bags of his chips and that I couldn't believe he opened the bag so fast, wasting all the air.
From this point on, for about 3 to 4 years, he would open the corner of the bag and suck the air out of the bag before opening it.
This was from ages 8 through 12 by the way.
41. Wardrobe Malfunction
I worked in a retail clothing store with a guy, and we often did small stupid pranks to each other. Xmas rolls around and he buys a pair of men's gloves for his dad. I wrote a note on them saying "Mom, Dad, I'm gay, Jeff." He lived in another province and went home for Xmas. When he got back he was pissed but appreciated the quality of the prank. I guess his parents’ faces when his dad opened the gloves was priceless. Merry Xmas!!
40. How Have You Never Decided to Change Your Lock?
Whеn I was in high school, I got a kеy cut to my friend’s car. Every nоw and then, I break in and do stuff like rearrange hіs CDs or put more garbage in, and one tіme, I even cleaned it. Random harmless thіngs. We stopped hanging out after hіgh school but I still carried the prank оn for 3 years. Just told him the оther day and he laughed his butt off.
39. That Was Probably the Weirdest Day of His Life
This reminds me of one of the best pranks I've ever read about:
Guy has a very rare, left hand drive version of a British convertible, customized paint job and trim. Friends get their hands on a right hand drive version of the same car, makes it look identical.
One night the guy comes home, parks the car and while he's being distracted by the wife and TV, his friends move everything to their mirrored location in the other car.
Next morning guy grabs his keys and gets into his car only to find that the wheel is on the other side of the car.
For a full day everyone who knows the guy insists that they don't know what he's talking about, because as far as they know or remember, it's always been a right hand drive car.
Next night they switch the cars back again.
38. Raising the Bar
My brother and I were in the middle of an intense Rickroll war...
Lame right?
That's why I stepped it up a notch.
My brother was looking for a car and I knew exactly what he wanted. So I put a post on Craigslist with a reasonable description, a picture of a decent looking example, and put a price that was reasonable and believable. The kicker was that the phone number was to a Rickroll hotline. Two days later he texted me "you win".
37. At Least No One Will Get in Trouble for Forgetting It...
Last year, I managed to convince my friend I didn't know when my birthday was.
We were talking and she was like "When's your birthday?" I told her that my mom never told me, and she just gave me double the Christmas gifts to make up for it, and that I didn't care. She legit believed me until one of my friends who wasn't in on the joke told her. I still like to make fun of her for it every now and then.
36. A New Image
I took a close up picture of my friend’s face while he was asleep, waited three months, and made a fake Facebook using his name and added all his friends saying the other account had been hacked. He was not amused.
35. A Blast from the Past
One year for April Fools’ Day, my wife got me good. I got a letter in the mail from an attorney’s office telling me that a girl I knew in high school was suing me for child support. I didn't remember having sex with her, but I did a lot of partying back in the day, so it was entirely possible that I had and just didn't remember. So now I'm freaking out, thinking I have a child I didn't know about. I call my parents, they're freaking out. They tell my grandparents (you see where this is going). I contacted an attorney for myself, started planning out if I was going to file for custody, making arrangements to fly home to try and meet my child. Finally, after my wife realizes it’s getting out of hand, she confesses and we both laugh our heads off. Ya know, after I stood there in disbelief for about five minutes.
I was shocked because I couldn't figure out how she had pulled it off. We didn't go to high school together and the girl I supposedly knocked up wasn't someone that anyone would have really known I was friends with. Not to mention that all the court documents looked 100% legit. Turns out she went through my yearbook and found the name of a girl who had signed it, so she knew we would have been acquaintances. Then, she had her dad’s attorney friend type up all the legal documents and have them notarized and signed at the courthouse. So yeah, she pretty much kicked my butt for April Fools’, and I've spent the last 15 years plotting my revenge.
34. Child’s Play
I can do a pretty good impression of a crying baby. A friend and I decided to prank our female housemate. I ran outside and knocked on the street door, my buddy answered, and “the baby” began screaming its lungs out. “Oh my God, someone's left a baby on the doorstep!” yelled my buddy. She came flying downstairs in shock, at which point we all wet ourselves laughing.
33. Try and Gobble This One Up
Put a wild turkey in a math teacher's small office. It was bristling with turkey rage and rampaged when the door was opened. I can still remember the screams.
32. I’m Hearing Strange Voices
I pranked my mom.
One day I figured out that our phone had a feature that let you talk into your phone and they could hear it in the base. So I waited till it was late and my mom was watching TV. I then made my voice deeper and called her name. It got very quiet so I used the scariest voice I could and called her name again. Next thing I know my mom bolts out of the room in her nightgown and runs out the front door. It was hysterical until I realized she left her four kids behind in the supposedly invaded house. Apparently, my mom ain't too reliable in a crisis like that…
31. We All Scream for Mayonnaise
Removed the ice cream from an ice cream sandwich, replaced it with mayonnaise and gave it to my brother. It was fantastic.
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30. You Win the Contest
In high school I was at the mall with my friend and he had just made his latest entry into our "who can be the biggest jerk" contest the day before.
I was hungry for revenge.
We walk into some super preppy clothing store and he can't shut up about how hot the female clerk was. He walked away to look at clothes and I immediately knew what I had to do.
Without a second thought I walk up to the girl and explain how I was taking my slow cousin shopping for clothes and that he wouldn't take my help. I explained that he was really shy and she would be doing him a huge service if she helped him pick clothes for his new job at the local Walmart.
She spent 45 minutes helping him, rubbed his arm, held up clothes for him and told him "how cute they would be on him." She was basically his girlfriend for nearly an hour while he was too stunned to do more than give me a thumbs up from across the room. Dude thought he was in.
Five minutes after we leave he works up the balls to go back and ask her number and I break it to him that she thinks he's a mentally disabled Walmart greeter. He nearly cried.
29. Sometimes the Answers We Seek Are Closer Than We Think
I covered the light detector on an optical mouse with a little post-it note and I wrote on it “this is why your mouse isn't working”. Took the guy 10 minutes and one reboot before he figured it out.
28. Something is Weighing You Down, Man
About five years ago I went on a hike with my brother and some friends. We were hiking for a bit, and I saw my brother's backpack was open slightly, so I popped a decent sized rock in it. Over the next three hours, I put about 20 pounds of rocks in his unzipped backpack and he never noticed. By the time we got back, he was dead tired and had no idea why. I was cracking up but he was still oblivious. He didn't find out until he emptied his backpack a week later.
27. That’s What Roommates Are For
My roommate and I snuck into our other roommate's bedroom while he was sleeping. I stood over the sleeper with a dark blue blanket over my head while my other roommate crouched at the foot of his bed and started shaking the bed frame. After about 30 seconds of that, the guy sat bolt upright in bed, took one look at me, and jumped backward into the corner of his room.
He then screamed, "WHAAAATTTT? WHHAAAAATTTT? [leans forward] ....hel...hello?" When he said that we both lost it and started rolling around on the floor laughing. He sat there confused for a second before turning on the light and realizing it was us. I'd hate to think what would happen if someone woke me up that way.
26. Have You Lost Your Marbles?
My wife's high school class pulled a stunt on graduation day: each of them had a marble at the start of the ceremony, and when they went to shake hands with the dignitaries, they would deposit their marble into one particular dignitary's hand. By the end of the ceremony, he had seventy some-odd marbles in his jacket pocket.
25. Grin and Bear It
When I lived in NYC, I called a friend and it went to voicemail. I don't know where it came from, but I said "Hey! Hope you're ok. Just saw the news. Bear attack!! In Queens!! Stay safe!"
I hung up. Then proceeded to call all of our mutual friends. "If he asks you about a bear attack just go along with it"
A few months later I finally caught up with him. "Did they ever catch that bear?!"
He says "No!!" and then turns to the group he is with and explains there was a bear attack in broad daylight, etc. I start laughing and confess I made it up. Apparently, he was telling everybody and was trying to convince people it actually happened.
24. Unintended Consequences
I called my drunk friend pretending to be a girl he liked, whispering so that he wouldn't catch on, giving some excuse—he's not the sharpest. Spoke all manner of filth and encouraged him to visit her. I realize this sounds weird and creepy, but I know them both well and knew that nothing dodgy would happen. He texts me telling me how he excited he was to be getting laid, I was in stitches. A couple of hours later I'm getting worried, he definitely went to her place, he was so keen. Anyway, I call him the next morning, he's in her bed, they actually did it! He'd got laid because of my prank. That’s what you call results.
23. Self-Inflicted Silliness
I once wrapped a rubber band around the sprayer thing attached to the kitchen sink. I ended up forgetting about it and turned on the faucet. Had to give my past self credit for pranking myself.
22. Well That Backfired
I painted my friend's car to look like the General Lee while he was overseas.
It turned out ok, so I guess that means I failed as a prankster.
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21. This One Could Have Ballooned Into Something Much Worse
After watching Stephen King's It at a youngish age with my sister, I hid under her bed with a balloon, and when she walked in I stuck the balloon out from the bed. She screamed, cried and had a breakdown in the bathroom. Kind of ironic considering the film. Best prank I've ever done.
20. Don’t Mess With Nan
I've always been rather cruel to my Nan when it comes to pranks. If it wasn't the time I convinced her to put her clocks three hours forward, or the many, many times of jumping out from behind doors, or the time I had her playing pin the tail on the washing machine, my particular favorite is the one from last Christmas.
Nan loves The Lion King. She's obsessed with it. So when the stage show came to a city near where we lived, I jumped at the chance and got tickets for her. Of course, handing over tickets in an envelope is all well and good, but when you're me, well, you have to be a little more elaborate.
The envelope was carefully rolled up, and placed into a small velvet bag. This was then placed into a small box, which was beautifully wrapped in Christmas paper. This then went into an old shoe box, and was packed around with bubble wrap to prevent any rattling. And so this went up in about four different graduations of size, each packed out, and beautifully wrapped, until the final size of the whole package was about the size of a box you'd get a microwave out of.
When I handed the Russian doll-like Christmas package over, her eyes grew wide with excitement when she saw the size. And then turned to mild confusion when she saw the next box. And the next, and the next, until she got to the envelope. Now thoroughly bemused, and not to mention somewhat annoyed, she opened the envelope to find her tickets. Seeing a face go from annoyed confusion to joyous wonder is quite simply one of the best things I have ever seen, and to this day, the best prank I've ever pulled.
19. Mutually Assured Disorientation
In college, my roommates and I were friends with the girls across the hall. We did have a prank war, and this was our nuke. One night, we printed out a picture of the girl from The Exorcist and taped it to the outside of their window. We went back to our room and waited. We heard the scream through 3 sets of steel doors and our music. 5 seconds later, there was a knock at the door, and one of the girls crying at us that we were all huge jerks.
18. Sending Them Off Running
When I worked at a camp, a friend and I snuck through the woods in the middle of the night with rubber masks to scare a bunch of girls. They were in a building which had big windows but their lights were on so they couldn't really see out.
We positioned ourselves outside the windows (beyond the light) and counted down before running at them. From their perspective, they saw two scary-faced figures emerge from the darkness and hit the windows simultaneously.
Of course, they screamed their heads off and we bolted. When we stopped running, we could still hear the screams. We ended up going back to fess up and to tell them to shut the hell up because we were afraid we were going to get caught.
Later that night, we were woken up and told one of the girls ended up in the infirmary due to hyperventilation or something like that. We never did get into trouble.
17. Rewriting History
When my brother was three and I was five, our family went to the zoo. My dad took a picture of him in front of a hut in one of the exhibits.
Years later I found the picture while going through a few boxes. I used it to convince my brother that he was adopted, and that this was his home before the adoption.
He cried for days. Called my parents liars. The whole nine yards.
16. The Art of Confusion
Put a pickle in the back tank of my sister's toilet and unhooked the flush chain.
Why? Exactly.
My brother in law found it and was REALLY confused.
15. Winning the Long Game
Back in elementary school my counselor and I took one of his more mundane looking Pogs and taped it over the state seal of one of the many fancy-schmancy certificates in the school's conference room.
Fast forward to my college years and when I pay everyone a visit. The Pog is still there, same certificate and everything. Either it became a fixture or they never noticed, I'm okay with either of those outcomes.
14. Money Is No Object
I made a 10-euro bill with a trollface on it and after failing to use it as intended, I put it in a plastic jar. A few weeks later, I was excited to find 10 euros. I fell for it four times total.
In other words, I trolled myself with fake money.
13. Gotcha!
I phoned a fast food restaurant.
Me: “Do you do take away?”
Restaurant worker: “Yes.”
Me: “What's 7 minus 4?”
Please hold the applause.
12. He Had Some Beef With You
One time I put beef stock cubes in the shower head before my flatmate got in the shower. He wasn't super happy about that one.
11. Whyyyyy?
I watched my target go insane at their desk. While they went to eat, I took a screenshot of their desktop. Of course, hiding their taskbar and moving their icons wasn't enough. I inverted their mouse and set new keybinds to their keyboard.
I noticed on the front of their tower they had a mini Ian wireless card that looked like a wireless mouse adapter, so I switched it with another and went back to my desk. They returned, sat down, and reached for their mouse. I knew what was about to unfold. They noticed right away that the mouse was off, followed by a "what the..?" Trying to fix the mouse, they went to the taskbar. Clicking anxiously, it never opened, so they did a hard shutdown of the computer.
Once they got back in, they figured out that the time was the same as before and knew that something was off. They successfully figured out my plan and got to the mouse settings. But I wouldn't go down so easily. Right when they were about to click the "apply" button, I flicked my wireless mouse. This is when the night went from good to great. Twenty minutes in, my flustered target began to crack. They tried again and again to click that apply button, but I wouldn't let them. Finally, devoured by frustration, my target gave in and screamed, "WHY WOULD SOMEONE DO THIS?! WHY ME?". I just giggled to myself. They left work early.
10. False Advertising
I'm not proud of it, but I once convinced a girl to watch The Green Mile under the guise that it was the same kind of story as It's a Wonderful Life, depressing at first, but the payoff at the end is really happy. She hates sad movies of any kind because, well, tears. Many tears were shed throughout watching that movie. The boxes of Kleenex never stood a chance.
9. Beaching
My freshman year of college one of my new buddies in the dorm was feeling a bit homesick. He let me know in confidence since he missed out on a couple of social events. Anyway, this was right before Thanksgiving break and he was heading home a couple of days early to spend the holiday. Perfect time to strike.
I gathered up a couple other friends and told them that we needed to make his single room into a beach. Plan was relatively simple: disassemble the dorm bed and get it out of there, lay down heavy duty plastic tarp on the floor, and acquire a LOT of sand. Had to make second and third trips to get more because the sand wasn't enough. Once we had two to three inches of sand covering the floor, I got a kiddie pool, a beach ball, and beach decorations from the party store. Put the decorations up, filled the pool and waited.
I made sure to keep in contact with him the day he was supposed to come back to get a good idea of when he'd get back on campus. Just as he arrived and opened the door, the first thing he saw was one of our friends in a bikini in the kiddie pool, three shirtless guys in shorts bouncing around a beach ball and wearing neon plastic wayfarers … and of course what seemed like half a metric ton of sand. His face was priceless! We all laughed our heads off for a good half an hour or so.
He kept the sand for a few days if I recall correctly and then we all helped him clean it up before the RA found out. Good times!
8. A Call of Divine Importance
My dad used to work at a religious elementary school. A few years ago, I took his cell phone and changed my name in his contacts to "God," and then would start calling him at random times during the day. He got really freaked out and didn't think to look at the phone number—but he did call the cops to ask if they'd heard of other people getting calls from God. The cops just laughed at him. He was pissed when I told him it was me, but oooohhhh man, was it worth the scolding I got!
What Does it Mean to Serve God?
7. Poor Mom!
My roommate freshman year in college was a good guy but he used to piss me off occasionally. He had left a bit of weed in his drawer so after Columbus Day weekend I got back to campus before him and decided to mess with him. I switched doors with our hall mates so that when my roommate got back he wouldn't be able to punch in the passcode to open the door. I then wrote up a fake letter from the Dean on campus letterhead my buddy had managed to find saying that campus police had raided the room and found his weed and that he was facing expulsion. We left my buddy's phone number to call to set up a disciplinary hearing.
No one expected that his first call would be to his mom, in tears, to tell her what happened. I still feel badly about that but we got him pretty good!
6. The Candy Man Can
Told my very picky candy loving friend that I had a bar of really nice Swedish chocolate and he didn't even hesitate to thoroughly chew up a big piece of unsweetened baker’s chocolate. Also used unsweetened gelatin with clam juice and food coloring to make "jello". Anyone else would not have cared, but to this guy it was a big deal.
5. It’ll Take 1,000 Years to Ever Match This One
For most of 1999, my dad bought into all the hype about the Y2K bug and believed that all of the computers were going to shut down, and it was going to be mass chaos, doom and gloom, etc. So he went a little nuts hoarding food and supplies, and at one point was considering a bomb shelter. Naturally, 16-year-old me was pissed off that he would not let me celebrate New Year’s with my friends, because the whole family had to stay home to be safe for Y2K.
To get back at him, my brother, sister, and I planned to man all of the light switches and TV so that we could simultaneously turn everything off at the end of Dick Clark's midnight countdown. It totally worked. He just sat there in his chair in total darkness with this unbelievable panicked look on his face. We could barely contain ourselves, so the lights came back on pretty fast. My mom thought it was hysterical, and my dad actually admitted that he was wrong all along about Y2K and that we had gotten him pretty good.
4. Blinded by a Song
This one may more be annoyance than prank but it was worth a lot of laughs.
Via Facebook my sister mentioned how the other day it seemed like the song “Blinded by the Light” kept popping up on the radio. How it was really odd. I left a comment saying that the only way to counter it is to sing it loudly and get it out of your head. She called me a dork and waved it off.
I then proceeded to text her boyfriend and friends, telling them that if they talk to her that day, they should casually mention the song or refer to it somehow. Innocently.
What I didn’t see coming was that her boyfriend would then call his buddy at work, who works with her, and had him get their entire office do the same thing.
So she talked to her boyfriend, he mentioned how he was driving and was almost blinded by the light.
She talked to one of her friends, and she starts to randomly sing “Blinded by the Light.”
Her boss, who loves to bake, offered her yellow sugar cookies, she decided to call them "blinded by the light."
Her dad calls her up, wanting to know what that movie was called, the credits have the song "Blinded by the Light" playing.
Different friend emails her a link to a funny cat video. The background music? “Blinded by the Light.”
When I finally told her how it happened, she was mostly just impressed at how pretty much everyone she knew managed to get in on it.
3. Accidental Overnight Sensation
I told my younger brother that if he continually drank water he would be able to pee continuously. He, of course, believed me and started guzzling water. That same morning he also decided to call into the local radio station (to try and win a prize or something) and eventually got through.
Because of all the water he had been drinking, he suddenly had to pee. Not realizing that the radio hosts would be able to hear him he went to the bathroom to relieve himself. As soon as his stream started the hosts asked what room he was in, to which he responded "the bathroom" and they started laughing because they could clearly hear him peeing. The station played that clip on their promo for weeks.
2. The Power of Suggestion
The best prank that I've ever pulled was one that I did nothing for.
So, a coworker of mine is a little anal retentive about his workstation.
One day, I'm standing at his desk, trying to think of something to slightly move to try to unnerve him some. He walks in before I get to do anything.
Coworker: "What did you do to my desk?"
It was then that the true evil in me came out.
Me: "Nooooooooothiiiiiiiiiing....."
Coworker: "What did you do?"
Me: "I didn't do anythiiiiiiiiing"
Coworker: "Really, what did you do to my desk???!!"
Me: With a sincere tone, this time "Nothing. I didn't do anything."
That was actually true; I had done nothing to his desk. I was just standing there looking at it when he walked in.
This went back and forth for about 25-30 minutes or so, each one of my responses sincerer than the last.
It was driving him insane...
He lost at least 30 minutes of work trying to figure out what I had done, despite my telling him that I hadn't done anything.
We still reminisce on it, although him not so fondly.
1. The Walking Dead
My friend's dad owned a funeral home and in high school my group of friends would always joke about getting a tour of the family funeral home. So during spring break of our senior year we finally got the offer to see this place.
So a couple days before we were going to see it, my friend messaged me and asked if I wanted to pull a prank. Of course I said yes. I told my other friends that I couldn't go because I had to visit my aunt who lives in another state, but really I drove the daughter of the funeral home proprietor to the funeral home about a half hour before they were supposed to come.
She showed me around and also showed me the embalming room (which did have a body in it, we were not expecting that) and finally we put the plan in motion. I got on the table in the main room and she put a cloth over me. That was when our friends arrived.
They were told "Okay guys, so my dad is having a wake in a couple hours, so there is a body out, but it's covered up. Just please try to be respectful." Their response was "Uh... okayyyy..." They round the corner and I hear one of my friends gasp. Perfect.
They were brought really close to me because "It's fine, it's just a body. It's perfectly natural." I should add that I was trying to remain as still as possible, which is incredibly hard when you have a sheet over you (your breathing is somewhat visible). One of my friends gasped and said "Holy cow, I think I just saw the body move!" "Come on Jordan, that's absurd. It was probably the wind from the open window." "Yeah, come on Jordan, it's a dead body. It's not like it's going to turn into a zombie."
So I waited and waited until I knew they were really close. Then as my friend was giving them a history of the funeral home, I scream as loud as I possibly could while sitting straight up (with the sheet over my head) and I also grabbed one of my friend's arms as hard as I could.
That's when I hear blood-curdling screams as two of my friends are on the ground in the fetal position while one of my other victims started running away from the table as fast as he could—he was a cross-country runner.
To this day I still think that's the best prank I've ever pulled.
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