What's the biggest prank you've ever pulled?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Since it’s April Fools Day; what’s the biggest prank you’ve ever pulled on a friend or family member?

When I was 14 I conviced my mother that World War III had started. I was watching a documentary on TV (either TLC or the Discovery Channel) on nuclear war. It was in the form of fake newscasts (ala War of the Worlds). I screamed at her to come into the living room while the TV was broadcasting reports of a nuclear detontation in DC reports of ICBM being launched at the US. I worked a little to well as she started panic-crying and called my grandmother. I was mean, but after she calmed down she thought it was very funny that she fell for it, escpecially since the channel logo was in the screen.

2

Well, fuck. If you’d done that to me, you’d have a gallon milk jug of water over your head before the day was out.

3

It’s a little outside the bounds of the OP, but in High School, we elected a fictitious fascist to Student council. Only one person had bothered to run for senior class president, so we started a write in campaign for ‘Adolph Zimmerman’, a Col. Klink / Fearless Leader looking guy who promised wierd things like MX missile bunkers on campus, and concentration camps for teachers. The schools rules stated all campaign materials had to be down for the day of the voting. We papered the campus the night before with huge banners saying things like “Adolph says Arm the Unemployed” and “Don’t jerk off, Vote Adolph”. Inside sources say he won by a landslide.

4

When we were a miltary family, a group of single officers went in together to buy a house, and had a housewarming party. We’d been teasing them that they needed a dog…the last thing any of them wanted when they could be deployed, out in the field, late hours…etc. We showed up at the party with our cat carrier, gushing about how we’d found them the perfect puppy, a Lhatsa Voltsa, not giving them time to stop us or protest. We opened the carrier and released a radio controlled dog that shot across the room and scared them! It took a few beats before they realized they’d been had…lots of panic about how to refuse this gift!

5

Ha. I’ve got a gooooood one.
See, my old roommate and I decided we wanted to start a prank war. I told him to shoot first, but he didn’t. So, since he took his sweet little time, I went first. Most decent sized cities have those free newspapers in restaurants all over the city. Well, I called one and left a liiiiiiittle personal ad for him.

“I am 6’1, 230 pounds of creamy nubian desire*. I am here for the taking and I love to give, although I don’t mind receiving. Give me a call at (insert his real cell phone number here) and we’ll set up a time to remember.”

Oh. He got calls. He got MANY calls. The first hit him during Thanksgiving dinner back home. He got about a half dozen in the next few days. By the time he got back to school, he was getting about 6 a day. Of COURSE my roommates (and everyone in the restaurant I worked with) knew what I did. We left the papers all over his bed to let him know who did it. He flipped out and it was SPECTACULAR. Ah…I can still smell the fear. The pinnacle hit when a man from England called him. He was going to have a business trip to the area and wanted to meet my lovable roommate.

It freaking went international.

Ah…it was better than I had planned! He didn’t fight back either. I was going to follow that up with putting clear, flavorless rock candy in the showerhead before he’d take a shower. The rock candy would melt and dirt and papers would stick to him and bugs would follow him. Then he’d go back and take another shower. Then, because he was a male cheerleader and his father never knew. We were going to videotape his cheerleading exploits and mail them to his dad. We never got that far because he knew we’d do it.

But yeah, that’s my best prank ever.

  • real stats, mind you.
6

A former co-worker bragged about his prowness when it came to practical jokes and how he could never be taken by one. A group of us devised a prank he would have no defense. The plan involved having a couple friends take him out on a Friday night and get him pretty wasted. This part worked to perfection, he was dropped off at his house at 3am. Little did he know that at about 5am, 3 of us plastered his neighborhood with phony garage sale signs. We planted a couple large signs in his front yard too. It also help we placed ads in a bunch of newspapers claiming this garage sale was the sale of the century. By 8:30 there were at least 20 car with bargain shoppers waiting for the sale to begin. By 9 there were twice as many and a mini traffic jam formed in front of his house. When 9:15 hit and there was no sign of anyone selling anything, a group went to his front door and started knocking. About 15 minutes later he staggered outside and started tearing down the signs. A few folks became hostile and names were tossed at each other. We left our observation post at about 10 and there was still a crowd at his house. Monday morning at work he was not too happy. He said there was a steady stream of traffic in front of his house all day Saturday and people kept knocking on his door despite the “no garage sale” sign he put up. He also called for a truce in the practical jokes war, he knew he had been defeated.

7

Well, I did this to our NT / networking specialist while he was at lunch one day.

8

That’s cute. I like that one. Computer people deserve such nice things on a continuous basis, I think.

9

When I was in college, we had some crazy assignments that often required us to stay in the studio working overnight. One late night a guy in the class dragged in a garbage bag full of styrofoam packing peanuts and asked for help pulling a prank on our prof. I joined him and about 5 other people in removing the ceiling tiles next to our prof’s office, then a couple guys got up on a table and one gave the other a boost into the ceiling, where he pulled out one of the tiles above our prof’s office. We then hoisted the bag up and dumped the pellets through the opening. But that wasn’t all - the guy still had a bunch more in his car. I don’t know where he got them all. But we dumped about 6 bags into the prof’s tiny office until the room was nearly full to the top. The next morning, the look on his face was priceless when he came in and was greeted by a cascade of pellets when he opened the door.

We all had to clean it up of course, but it was worth it.

10

I left a plastic snake in a drawer for someone who was deathly afraid of them.

Yeah, I suck at these kind of things.

11

A friend and I were the lunch hour DJ’s at our high school. We were in a small room that the principle used to make announcements. There were two large speaker that broadcast out to the lawn and benches were everyone ate lunch. There weren’t any windows in the room so we couldn’t see or hear what was going on outside.

Three days before graduation, we decided to play the “Fish Cheer” on the Woodstock album. This is where Country Joe McDonald and the Fish “misspell” FISH. At most concerts he would yell out, "Give me an ‘F’ “and the crowd would yell"F!”. Then he would spell out the entire word “FISH” in the same manor. He then would ask, “Whats that spell?” and the crowd would scream “FISH!!!” He repeated the question a few times and the crowd would go crazy yelling “FISH!!!”

Anyway at Woodstock he spelled “FISH”, “FUCK”. And the crowd went nuts.

My friend and I really had no idea what kind of reaction our playing this song would have. I sincerely believed that it would be “no big deal”, but again we had no idea what was going on out in the lunch area. As you have probably guessed by now, it turned out that almost the entire student body was screaming “Fuck!!!” before we knew anything. And because we hadn’t heard any sort of reaction, we played it again!

By this time another friend of mine came running into the room screaming, “Cut it off!” Unfortunately, the principle was right behind him. He looked at me and said, (my name), you really did it this time!" (He and I had been on a first name basis since my freshman year.)

My friend and I were suspended for the three remaining school days, weren’t allowed to participant in the graduation ceremony and our diplomas were held for six months.

Was it worth it? OF COURSE!

12

This didn’t play out as offensively as it sounds. This was as sick joke that I never thought in a million years we would be able to pull off and that is part of the reason I went along with it.

My senior year of high school, I had a friend who a continuous on-again, off-again relationship with his girlfriend. I was friends with his girlfriend too although I never thought of her that way before.

It was Halloween and our friends hosted a private hayride through backroads. This was to be followed by a party at an older friends house. Apparently, my friend (I will call him Greg) wanted to be more off-again with Shelley that day and he had given some thought to the matter. On the hayride, he proposed that he get her into bed and then we somehow switch places without her knowing.

Like you, I assumed that was impossible except in movies. However, he explained that we were the same build, same hair color, and were dressed very similar that night. Furthermore the house that we were going to after had a bedroom that was unusually dark with the the super-shades closed.

I agreed to give it a try assuming it wouldn’t work. We went to the house for the party, I went into the bedroom, removed my shirt, and hid in the closet. He brought her into the bedroom, they laid on the bed and started making out real heavy. At some point he said “Let me take off my shirt”, stood up, and I knew it was my cue like we rehearsed it and he got in the closet.

You would assume that a woman could tell a substitution in lovers but she could not. We made out for a good 20 minutes and I gently grunted and groaned if talking came into play. The good news is that I didn’t want to get too deep into this whole thing and as luck would have it, she was on her period that night so there was no actual sex and I would not have done that anyway. It was mainly kissing and light petting.

After a while, I decided that had gone on long enough and I just get up silently. She asked “What are you doing?” and Greg knew that was his cue and he stepped out of the closet, I stepped in and he replied to her.

She never found out the scoop that night at all. Greg and I probably would have never told her but other people thought that it was a little much not to share so they told her. She did not believe them. Would you?

I never really knew if she believed the story was real or if the story itself was the joke. In any case, we remained friends after that and I we never talked about it at all.

13

Ah, precious. Very nice. My compliments to the chef.

14

Ah well, lets see in College a group of us locked our prof in his office. We turned around his door handle when he was out. As soon as he got back one person asked to borrow his keys and another told him that the phone was for him. He went in his office, picked up the phone and about the time that he heard the dial tone we had the door closed and locked.

Then there was the good old dorm pranks like filling a large envelope with whipped cream and sliding under your neighbour’s door. One smash of a textbook on the envelope equals one very messy entrance way for them. Or covering the doorframe with plastic and then filling the gap between with crumpled paper, packing peanuts, or whatever you could find so that when the opened the door they got covered.

But this was my personal favorite.
One time when I was a kid I had a sleepover with a group of friends. One of the friends was very gullible and fell asleep early, so the rest of us got out the costume makeup and covered ourselves but didn’t put any on her. The next morning we all blamed her and, I kid you not, we actually had her believe that she had done it.

I take great pride in that one, not because it was particularly devious but because of the mind tricks I got to play.

15

Running fictitious candidates is all well and good, but last year my friends and I successfully elected Fidel Castro our high school Student Body President. We papered the enterence to the gym with 'VOTE FIDEL" posters. Oddly enough, I spotted teachers who went out of their way to make sure that these posters were visible to all the students coming into the gym. I suspect my Government teacher found it funny, he’s got a good sense of humor.

A month later, just to follow up, we ran a campaign for Chairman Mao, with posters sporting slogans like “Vote Red!”. Again, Chairman Mao won by a landslide. Good times…

16

I don’t really have any good ones of my own, but I witnessed a pretty good one in college. I attended Washington State University for one whole semester, where I lived in the same dorm as most of the football team. On my floor there was one especially large black player, whose name I forget, but he had be at least 6’ 6" and 350 pounds. He ended up becoming very good friends with a non-football-player on the same floor, who happened to be a very short Japanese guy. These guys got to be such good friends that they would have “joke battles”. By this I mean that they would sit in chairs facing each other and trade racial jokes back and forth. The black guy would tell Japanese jokes, and the Japanese guy would tell black jokes, and they would go back and forth, each trying to top the other. These became spectator events.

One night, the black guy won the “battle”, and the contest ended. He decided to call it a night, and headed off to the showers. Several of us were still standing around in the hallway after watching the joke exchange, and the Japanese student decided it wasn’t over. Instead of going back to his own room, he got under the black guy’s bed. The beds in the dorm rooms doubled as sofas. They weren’t hide-a-beds, but rather the seat of the sofa would just slide out, providing a twin-size mattress. This left a gap between the mattress and the back of the sofa, and it was into this gap that the Japanese guy went.

Pretty soon the black guy came back from the shower, and went into his room. The rest of us were doing our best to look like we were just standing around chatting. The events proceeded as follows:

Door closes.

Light goes out.

A couple minutes go by.

From inside the room we hear, “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHG!!!”

Door flies open.

350 pounds of terrified black man comes screaming out of the room.

Followed by hysterically laughing Japanese guy.

It turns out that the black guy had laid down on his bed, and his arm had fallen into the gap between the mattress and the sofa back. The Japanese guy had grabbed ahold of his arm and pulled for all he was worth. Scared the living shit out of the football player!

17

My best prank was a two-fer. It was the day of my brother’s wedding. It was no secret to my brother that I intended to wreak havoc on his car before the night was over. Every once in a while I would walk up to him with a shit-eating grin and say “Hey, can I have your keys?” and of course he would refuse. Finally, one of my friends went up to him and said “Hey, I think I left my wallet in your car. Can I go look?” (Several of us rode from the church to the reception in his car, so it was somewhat plausible.) Stupidly, my brother handed him the car keys. My friend and I grabbed a handful of bread and cheese slices from the buffet table, headed out to the parking lot, and proceeded to make open-face-down grilled cheese sandwiches on the engine block of my brother’s car.

My brother told me later that when they left the reception, they had got maybe a mile or two down the road when smoke started pouring out from under the hood. My brother pulled over, opened the hood, and just laughed when he saw what we did. But not only did I prank my brother, I got my friend too. When he asked me a couple weeks later what my brother thought of our prank, I told him my brother had to pay something like $600 to have his engine professionally cleaned. My friend felt really guilty until I told him I was yanking his chain.

Best April Fools prank – the first year I was married, I had the head accountant from the office where I was working call my wife and convince her that she was an auditor with the IRS and that my wife was being audited. When I came home and asked my wife “How was your day?” she was just about in tears, until I admitted the whole thing was a setup.

18

In high school, a friend and I removed every single bolt from all the tables in the library. They balanced perfectly, but the slightest touch would send them crashing down. The librarians agreed to amnesty if we returned the bolts. We couldn’t stay in the library to watch the prank for fear that they’d know it was us (we were known for tomfoolery), we’d start laughing uncontrollably, or both.

I got a friend in college pretty good once. While he was gone I used a mini-cassette recorder to tape 10 minutes of silence, followed by 10 minutes of his alarm clock going off.

His alarm was less than a foot from the window which had mini blinds. I waited until about 4am to make sure he’d been asleep for awhile, then I put the recorder behind the blinds and pressed play. I hid behind the door into our back room and looked through the crack by the hinge.

Ten minutes later, he hears the alarm, sits up in bed, hits the snooze button, and lays back down again. He realizes that the alarm is still sounding, sits back up, and smacks the snooze again. This time he doesn’t make it back to the pillow. He stares at the alarm clock quizzically, and starts beating the crap out of the snooze button. After a minute or so, he furiously unplugs the alarm. Staring at the unplugged alarm in his hands, he quietly (he thinks I’m still sleeping) says “what…the…fuck!?!”

At this point my laughter was uncontainable, and he realized he’d been had. I shut the tape off, he went back to bed.

He tells this story more often than I do. He was a good sport.

19

In my 6th-grade class, I spread the rumor that, according to prophecy, if two Popes died in the same month, the world would end the following Friday at noon.

We had lunch at the 11:40-12:10 slot, so I was in the lunchroom when the world was ending. As the clock approached 12:00 the room got quieter and quieter, finally coming to a dead halt - those kids who didn’t know what was going on took their cues from the ones who did, obviously. A few of the younger kids started crying, the teachers (those who weren’t watching the clock, at least :rolleyes: ) were studying us kids, seeing what was going on. About 15 seconds past the hour, the entire room seemingly took a deep breath and movement resumed.

It was one of the more surreal moments in my life.

20

We wanted to get rid of a guy who used to park his tractor trailer next to the firehouse on the dead end street next to the station (it was legal, but pissed us off cuz it took up parking places) on weekends. My bright idea was to make him think the truck was “haunted”. I picked the lock on the tractor door, then the ignition switch, and determined he had good fuel. I started the truck and relocked the tractor. It ran at idle until the following morning when he arrived to pick it up and found it running, with no keys in the ignition.

We never saw the truck again.