My boss at my first job was English. He made a big show about how he didn’t like “the bloody Irish” (which was all bluster). So, before every St. Patrick’s Day, we would decorate his office with banners and ribbons, and sprinkle little shamrocks everywhere, so that months later he would open a folder and shamrocks would fall out of it…
One of my roommate’s friends pulled a similar stunt with the local Mormon church. Evidently you could go on their web page and request information about the church and LDS. They also admitted it happens a lot to them.
A friend of ours has a brother who did jail time for pulling a very similar prank.
And the other ones aren’t funny, either. Yeesh.
A high school jock clique (one of whom went on to major league baseball) thought it would be funny to play a prank on some of the unpopular, plain girls at school. They’d take the girls out, then end up at someone’s cabin where they would party. The girls were to be out on the premise that they were staying over a friend’s for the night, and not out with the boys.
So each boy put on their nice-guy act and set up a date with someone they not only wouldn’t normally go out with, but they wouldn’t talk to or be seen in public with. Later in the evening, the who group is partying at someone’s cabin. They get the girls drunk. They waited until they were all passed out, then they pissed all over them.
A couple of amusing ones from student days, which I cannot take credit for myself:
One bunch were helping a paralytically-drunk friend home, but decided that instead of dragging him up two flights of stairs to his room, they’d bring his bed down to the car park. And after tucking him in, proceeded to move all his furniture down as well, and set it up just as it had been in the room. He was still there in the morning.
Another was when one guy was out for the evening with his new girlfriend, and had told his housemates that he was sure she’d be coming home with him that night. So they got a set of plain white bedclothes, printed loads of porn onto iron-on transfer sheets, and…well, in the end, she did stay the night, so no harm done 
That breaks my heart.
That’s because you’re a decent human being.
See, these type of practical jokes are, IMO, hi-larious.
Most of the others are just cruel and not at all funny.
Had a lazy co-worker, the sort that would come in as late as he dared, take a hour-and-a-half lunch, then be out the door by 4:45 at the latest. I couldn’t stand the guy.
Anyway, the boss had to go to Houston for an entire week. So I start a betting pool: Put $5 down and pick the correct number of hours David will be at the office this week (in half-hour increments), winner takes all. At the end of the day, we had 15 participants.
David, of course, found out. Got pissed and instead of coming to me, decides to call the boss (who, btw, is my father). Dad calls me up and asks what the hell is going on. I tell him and close with “Do you want me to shut it down?”
“No, I’m interested in seeing who wins.”
(Marla did, with 24.5 hours).
WTF? Is David mentally deficient?
If any jock ever did this to one of my 3 daughters, he’d be moving from the jock clique to the disabled due to smashed kneecaps clique.
Pretty much. Well, he was - he didn’t stay around too long. 
I guess it comes down to the people you pull your pranks on. Some people can’t take them and relationships are ruined all thee of the joke I pulled I am still close friends with the people and they tell them as funny stories at parties.
Sure the immediate note from them is down for the person they are pulled on but all of my friends appreciate the effort that went into them as showing how much you care. Because whether that time is spent making a blanket and thinking up the design or thinking up a prank and carrying it out you are still spending time on a person and my friends know that. I have been on the receiving end of many practical jokes including having my car stolen and having to take a bus to LA to catch a plane only to find my car parked at LAX.
Ya not all jokes go over well and like I said I feel bad about those even though the person they were pulled on doesn’t mind. But in general its about showing you care.
That is absolutely disgusting. If anyone did that to anyone I know, they would be in prison.
Seems to me that there are three kids of “practical jokes”:
-
Truly funny ones - where the “victim” can laugh with the perps afterwards. Like wrapping someone’s apartment in tinfoil when they are out, and then throwing a surprise party for them.
-
Revenge - the ‘joke’ is definiely on someone, highlighting some fault of theirs. Acceptable (and funny) as long as the joke is perportional to their “offence” (the office betting pool about how much some lazy officemate will goof off, as described by JohnT, is a perfect example of this sort).
-
Cruel humiliations - this is one in which any reasonable person hearing about would think that the perps are assholes (if not worse). Perfect example: the jocks described by Obeseus. Typically triggered not by a “fault” of the victim, but by some “flaw” of theirs (like being unpopular).
To my mind, these are ranked in order of desireability.
This reminds me Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Where the computer is learning what humor is, and is taught that there are three kinds of jokes:
Funny Once.
Funny Always.
Never Funny.
The best one I remember was done to a couple of friends of mine in college when I was a Resident Advisor in the same dorm as them(my Junior year).
My friends were named John and Paul. John was a sophomore, and a buddy of mine. Paul was also fast on the way to becoming a close friend, even though he was a freshman.
Unbeknownst to John, Paul had managed to get in some kind of practical joke feud with the guys across the hall.
For unknown reasons, few people locked their doors in my dorm. The guys across the hall came in one day when both Paul and John were in class, and put a raw chicken wing on the u-trap under the sink.
Their room gradually got more and more stinky, and both Paul and John came to me independently to complain about each other- Paul was convinced that the John didn’t bathe enough, and John thought that Paul didn’t do his laundry often enough.
Meanwhile, I’d heard about this through the grapevine, and didn’t say a word. It was too amusing to watch it unfold.
Finally, someone spilled the beans. Paul and John got their revenge by stealing the guys across the hall’s toilet room door (we had shower/toilet in one room, and the sink out in the dorm room), which meant that any time anyone watching movies, or hanging out had to use the bathroom, EVERYONE had to leave the room and hang out in the hallway until they were done.
I didn’t say anything about that either…
A friend of mine, “Steve,” had just gotten his Ph.D., and the department folks took him out for drinks to celebrate. It was generally a pretty tight group, and they all hung out together fairly often.
Steve was not much of a drinker and was widely known for having a very sensitive palate. He could only handle the blandest foods, and even a moderate smell could make a room intolerable to him. In retrospect, he was a supertaster, though I didn’t know the term then.
So everyone’s taking turns buying shots for Steve. For some reason, he liked drinking shots. One guy, Jan, whom I had always thought an asshole anyway (he doesn’t get a fake name for this story), went and bought Steve a shot. It was kind of pinkish. Steve didn’t smell it or anything; just drank it right down. Jan watched very closely as Steve sat there for ten or fifteen seconds with his head down, apparently trying not to throw up.
Finally Steve looked at Jan. “That’s pretty hot,” he said.
Jan began to howl with laughter. Apparently the pinkish shot he had bought for Steve the Supertaster was half tequila, half Tabasco sauce. He thought this was hilarious.
Steve took it pretty well, but I was disgusted. Yeah, you’re a real riot, Jan; glad you came to the party to make fun of Steve instead of congratulating him.
I’ve been pissed at myself ever since for not publicly taking Jan to task about that.
Horrible. Nothing tops this.
A year ago, my parents (and I, too) drove two hours hysterical with grief when my sister died in an accident. If only that had been a practical joke.
I know the OP asked for cruel ones, but here is a proper one for comparison:
I was cutting up a cantaloupe that I had brought over to my parents house. My nephew was there (age 6), so I offered him some. He said he didn’t like it. I asked why. “Because I never tried it.”
…? Whatever.
So later I was another room, and he came running in with a big fistful of cantaloupe. He said “I tried the cantaloupe and I STILL don’t like it!” and commenced to throw it at me. Wha…aaaaiiiggggh!
It bounced off harmlessly. It wasn’t cantaloupe. It was orange foam. He’d found it in my mother’s craft room and observed that it looked just like the cantaloupe. It was my mother’s idea to cut it in chunks and have him fling it at me. She was on the floor laughing to tears. I joined her.
Here are a few pranks I’ve pulled, witnessed, and fallen victim to.
-
One bright summer’s day, I was loitering around the local theme park with a few friends. We noticed another of our friends, an employee of the theme park, coming towards us in full uniform. With cigarettes in one hand and a lighter in the other, it was clear he was making for one of his many, many daily smoke breaks. Quick as a flash I ran to a phone box opposite the park, and entered the number into my mobile phone. I motioned for my other friends to join me and we retreated a safe distance from the booth. I waited until our “mark” was approaching the booth and then rang it. Obligingly, he entered the booth and picked up. And that was when I yelled "GET BACK TO WORK YOU SONOFABITCH!! in the scariest, most authoritative voice I could muster. I swear, I’ve never seen anyone run so quickly to get back to work.
-
One of my college roommates was a real porn freak. At any time of day, on any particular day of the week, you would just as likely finding him leering at the most depraved filth imaginable as you would doing anything else, which is pretty incredible when you think about it. Anyway, this guy was into some pretty deviant shit. I’m talking scatmunching, hardcore bestality, epic gangbangs where a single chick would attempt to satisfy a small island nation single handed (so to speak). Not for people of a tender disposition, basically.
Anyway, his big mistake was choosing to accumulate this vast digital porn warehouse on a laptop loaned to him by the university as a study aid. Unsurprisingly, the powers that be took a dim view of those who used their valuable learning tools to trawl the net for goat porn. And so it came to be that one Friday, when he had gone home for the weekend, I took his laptop and stashed it under my bed. I then left a note from his desk, ostensibly from the “Campus I.T. department” saying that his computer had been confiscated due to the detection of “Suspicious internet usage”.
So this guy gets back, reads the note, and gets understandably freaked out. After puzzling over what to do for a few minutes, I timidly suggested that, since the campus I.T. department were bound to find all his porn eventually, he should just give them a call and own up to it. We let him dial half the number before we took the receiver from him and told him it was a joke. When he returned to his room he discovered his laptop, sitting on his bed, beautifully wrapped with a big bow on top. No hard feelings and we all had a good laugh about it. He did manage to get me back, but I think I’ll save that story for another thread!
-
I remember a kid at our old high school named Tony. Tony was freakishly bright, desperately nerdy, and a total recluse. While I don’t remember him having any enemies (which was surprising, high school being what it is and everything), but he didn’t really have any friends either. He was also a bit of a headcase. Never better was this exemplified than the time when he was told off by an I.T. teacher, threw a hissy fit, stormed out of the class, went to a computer in the library, logged on as the I.T. administrator (God alone knows how he got his password) and somehow fixed it so that whenever anyone tried to access the internet they got a porno directory called ‘The Hun’s Yellow Pages’. It only took him a few minutes and…well, let’s say the rest of that class was particularly amusing.
-
When I was travelling around Europe, one of my friends decided to fill my shoes with shaving foam. Nothing particularly ingenious, but still a nice quick prank which didn’t cause any long term damage and got a quick laugh.