Pulling off a seamlessly well-executed prank is one of the greatest feelings in the world. Considering that I typically don’t plan life things more than a day or two in advance, I can’t even imagine how glorious it would feel to pull off a long con.
When u/aab1020 asked the Reddit community for April Fool’s prank ideas that should be started a month in advance, our trusty redditors did not disappoint.
#1. GET OUT
Here’s how I convinced a friend his house was haunted.
Rain-x is the stuff you put on your windshield to keep it from fogging up. Instead, use it to write on your friend’s bathroom mirror various “haunting” phrases. They go into the bathroom, lock the door, get in the shower, and come out to find someone has seemingly written on their bathroom mirror while they thought they were alone.
“Get out”, “help me”, something more personal, or whatever you like.
Every time you want to change the message, just use some dish soap and then glass cleaner.
#2. The reaction will be priceless…
We spent 2 months in Europe 2 summers ago and rented out the house on Airbnb to cover expenses while gone. One of the renters was a film crew that shot a documentary about a local psychopath who killed a few people. The producers needed a home setting where they could interview witnesses and people who knew the guy or victims. There are plenty of interviews of people describing the murders and how evil this person was that clearly show our living room, guest room and kitchen in the background. My wife was not involved in managing the Airbnb listing so while I mentioned the film crew to her 2 years ago she never asked what it was about and I’m sure she has absolutely no idea that this footage exists. I plan on just casually coming across the documentary on April 1st and watch it with her to see her reaction.
#3. He had egg on his face
My great-grandpa got his kids to start cracking hard boiled eggs on their foreheads. Then, on April 1st, he gave my great-uncle a raw egg.
#4. Error Terror
A while back I got an app that could send an error message to a computer with customized text.
For a few weeks I would send sporadic messages like “Monitor Error 1003”. “Monitor synch error”, etc.
On April Fools day I sent the message “Monitor radiation shield has failed, please step back 5 feet”
#5. The slow burn
My friend got me with a glitter bomb one time, which she watched me open in my bedroom, right next to my bed. I still found glitter three years later when I moved apartments. The bitch.
When it happened, I knew she would be wary of a counter attack, so I waited. And I decided not to just wait, but to long con her. I knew she liked candles, so I went for simplicity: I got her a candle that smelled great at first, but eventually burned down to smell awful. Not after an hour, mind you, but after quite a bit of it burned off giving a very pleasant apple pie scent.
Months went by, and I would see it at her place. Burned a little, but not too much. Occasionally I would notice it getting lower, but it was slow going. I got disheartened when I didn’t see it any longer, until I noticed that she had moved it to her bedstand, right by where her head would be when she slept.
Aww, so sweet. She liked my gift.
Cut to many more months having passed. Almost two years since I first got her the candle, I get a bunch of angry texts late at night. “You as$hole! That f*cking candle! It reeks in my bedroom!” My magnum opus had finally been achieved.
It turns out that she had brought her date home that night and put the candle on to set some ambiance. As they’re getting hot and heavy, they start to smell what she described as “pure sewage”. It took them five minutes to figure out it was the candle and not some sort of sewage backup, then the smell lingered for an hour.
In the end, the guy was a good sport and recognized a quality prank when he sees one, so it didn’t ruin anything between them, but to have a long con end that spectacularly was just better than I could have ever hoped for.
#6. Because with lube, we all win
Bring hand moisturizer to work, and leave it somewhere like the break room. Conspicuously use it, and convince as many other people to use it as possible.
On April 1st, replace it with a bottle filled with water-based lube.
#7. Little by little
The nameplates at my office job have paper inserts with the cube dweller’s name. I am going to print out a bunch of one person’s name in smaller fonts, like increments of .25. I’m going to start replacing with smaller fonts each day starting March 1. I know it’s not super crazy, but should be fun.
#8. Patience is key
Leave an old keyboard on your desk, with the wire pushed down behind your desk. If anyone asks, tell them it wasn’t working, so you had yours replaced, but that support will be by to pick it up.
On April 1st, plug it into the computer in the cube beside you. When your co-worker arrives, do random things – hold down the shift key while they type in their password. Lock their screen if they look away for just a moment. Hit ‘caps lock’ while they’re typing an eMail.
I managed to do this to a co-worker for four days before he started losing his sh^t and pulled out all the wires from his PC except power and network. It was hysterical.
#9. Go big or go home
When I was in high school, I brought a bag of garlic flavored jelly beans to school to prank my friends on April Fools. Instead a classmate grabbed them out of my bag during group work (it was a school with under 100 students, so everyone knew I brought extra treats) and I hear some odd shouting from across the room. Said classmates then handed them off to our teacher to try, without saying why, and I unintentionally pranked my entire year.
#10. Just make a plan and stick to it
More or less long con, but I ordered a roll of “for rectal use only” stickers and I plan on covering all my sisters belongings with them
#11. I smell a spy…
I’ve been secretly learning russian for the past few months, on April fools day I’m just going to speak russian
#12. The Group Con
I work with a group of 5-6 guys. I plan on separately swearing each of them to secrecy, then revealing that one of their coworkers is planning a wicked April Fool’s day gag on them and that we should work to plan an even better one against this schemer. If I do it right, I’ll have my coworkers conniving to destroy one another and sit back and watch it all unfold…as long as they don’t catch on.
#13. Know your weakness
Don’t know if you can pull this off, but it was of the funnier prank stories I heard on Klick and Klack/Car Talk. Some guys worked with another guy who was obsessed with his car’s gas mileage, so the coworkers slowly started adding gas to his tank without the owner knowing it, like they’d add two cups a day for a week, then the next week, they’d add three cups a day, etc. Since the guy was so obsessed, he thought his car was getting better and better gas mileage and was bragging to everyone in the office. Then the guys slowly started to reverse the process, the guy fre*ked out, everyone laughed.
#14. Brilliant
Slowly move your friends desk 1 inch a day or every other day
#15. MyNameIsJeff
One April fools day I got a text from a wrong number. It happens, but he was nice so we kept talking from time to time, his name was jeff. Talked about video games, music, I feel like i made a really great friend. I told all my friends about it. Lasted a few weeks then stopped. Fast forward to the following April fools and jeff texted me. I was like oh sh^t what’s up man! We texted a bit when finally my friends broke down and said dude, jeff has been us the whole time, we just forgot to tell you last year.
#16. Wookie Wanted
I put an ad on Craigslist in new york city looking for a wookie impersonation for a film I was “making” but I listed my friends phone number. In the instructions I wrote if I answer just make the noise and hang up, Ill call you back if it’s good enough. If you get my voicemail follow the same procedure.
Long story short I forgot about it for 3 months and one day I was out getting wings with him when he received a call. He slammed his phone down pissed. I asked what was wrong and he proceeded to tell me about how he has been getting weird phone calls and people just making noises and hanging up. I couldn’t stop laughing and finally let him know why and he was not as amused.
I don’t even know where to begin. There are so many possibilities… so many…