21 Of The Greatest Practical Jokes You’ve Ever Heard

As seen on AskReddit.

1. Cat Facts

I’ve been sending a stranger a “fun fact” about cats every morning for the last week and a half. When he responds I act like it’s an automated system. It usually goes something like this:

Me: Did you know that all cats are born blind? The ability to see comes within the next couple of weeks.

Him:Stop texting me.

Me: I hope you’re enjoying your subscription to Daily Feline Info*. To unsubscribe reply with “unsubscribe”.

Him:unsubscribe

Me: You’ve got to be kitten me! Are you sure you want to unsubscribe from Daily Feline Info?

Him:yes

Me: Command not recognized.

I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon.

2. The Rapture

When I worked at a church one summer, the choir director told me about a prank his dorm pulled while he was in college at a very Christian university. Apparently, there was one guy in the dorm that no one could stand. He was very egotistical and somewhat obsessed with the Rapture, as in he was sure it was coming, and no one was going to heaven but him.

The rest of the dormitory was fed up with his behavior and plotted a scheme: they all left the dorm in the middle of the night. Not only did they leave, but they left showers running, lights on, books open, washing machines going, the works. Apparently the guy was extremely freaked out to wake up and find the dorm abandoned with no one in sight.

The choir director was probably the coolest person I’ve ever worked for.

3. My Brother Got Syphilis

Back in middle school I was sick as a dog and had been home for a couple days. My little brother realized that “sick = no school”, so he asked me what I had. I told him “Syphilis”. He goes downstairs, tells dad, “I can’t go to school today, I think I got Syphilis from Nigel.”

All I could hear from upstairs was my dad laughing and my little brother pissed that he couldn’t skip school. My dad came up and told me how proud he was. I laughed so hard I threw up.

4. Who Let The Dogs Out

Mine’s a simple one, but I was always proud of it. We rigged my friend’s car so that whenever she braked, “Who Let the Dogs Out” would play. All you need is thread, electrical tape, scissors, and a singing birthday card.

5. Commence Judging

Kind of gross, but worth it. When I was in College, one of my roommates had a cat. I started cleaning the litter box immediately after the cat would poop without him knowing. I kept it up until I heard him mumbling one day… “I think there must be something wrong with my cat, he hasn’t taken a crap in like a week.”

Next time he was out, I shit in the Litter box. You may commence your judging…but his face when he saw it after he got back…I’ll never forget.

6. Morgan Freeman

One of my teachers is very old and clueless, and she has all the students bring in a picture of themselves so she can put them up on the wall.

So every day I bring in a different picture of Morgan Freeman and put it up on the wall, to replace a kid. Right now there are abut five Morgan Freemans. She still doesn’t have a clue.

7. The Ransom

The Mr. Potatohead I had on my desk was a stolen and a ransom note emailed to my work address from wheresmrpotatohead@gmail.com or something to that effect. This was the latest blow in a long series of escalating pranks between a coworker and myself (I had previous swapped the M and N keys on his keyboard, while he had encased my nameplate in a block of jello).

Determined to one up my adversary, I used Google’s forgotten password system and entered the current date (guessing correctly that he created the account the same day he sent the email) along with something else I can’t recall. No backup email was given for the account, so I helpfully provided my own work email address, to which Google later sent a password recovery email.

I changed the password, took control of the account, and emailed my coworker from it. He quickly admitted defeat and never attempted to prank me again. The legend is still told in the office how I “hacked into gmail.”

8. They Had To Break In

In college, a friend of mine left his dorm room unlocked so I loaded up porn on his TV, turned the stereo to top volume, then set up a pair of snow skis precariously so that when I closed the door behind me they would fall and blockade the door. They had to call campus maintenance to break in via the window of his (3rd floor) room.

This was in 1997. I admitted to it last year.

9.  Identity Theft

This is a great one and pretty harmless. Save a copy of your friend’s current Facebook profile picture. Change your profile pic and your name on Facebook to friend’s name who you have a bunch of mutual friends with. Make status something along the lines of: “Just got a new phone. Please text me your number.” your friend will be flooded with his friends texting him his number and be completely bewildered.

Did this to my friend who I was with. Hilarious.

10. Hacking Recess

In sixth grade, we had history class from 1:30 to the end of the day on Wednesdays. Generally, the lesson didn’t take the full hour and a half, so we got recess for the last 20 minutes or so, the only time all week.

Well, April first happened to be on a Wednesday that year, and our class came up with the perfect prank. A couple of us stall the teacher talking coming back from lunch, and a couple race ahead, and set all the clocks in the room ahead 17 minutes. About 25 minutes into the lesson, the teacher looks at the clock on the wall, looks at his watch, and asks if the wall time is right. A kid in the front row had also changed his own watch, and showed it to the teacher with the wrong time. The teacher then proceeded to change his own watch ahead to the wrong time.

We got 17 extra minutes on the playground, and the teacher didn’t realize anything until his watch said the school day should have been over 5 minutes ago, and no parents had arrived.

11. Texas Humor

I used to work at a restaurant and was talking to my manager one day. One of the new waitresses (fresh to Texas from Minnesota) walked up and asked us how to say “Enchiladas Verde” in Spanish. Without missing a beat he told her “Vergas Verde” (green dick).

We knew it was a win when we could hear the kitchen erupt with laughter from inside the dining room.

12. Abercrombie & Fitch

We saw that a huge storm was on the way to our area. So we made signs and put them up all around the school advertising the fact that Abercrombie & Fitch would be on the school grounds for an all-school A&F picture the next afternoon during lunch. And we said it was on the football field; which was some 500 feet from the school and the interior was hidden from view by bleachers.

So we who put up the signs sat and ate and watched as everyone decked in their A&F gear walked out there, waited and sadly trudged back into school soaking wet when they figured out A&F weren’t coming.

13. Christmas Cards

I like to send Christmas cards to people I know, only I sign them from made up people. I don’t just sign them from made up people though, I write notes in the cards talking about their (the recipient’s) family and the events of the year and how great the coming year will be… blah blah blah. The effect of this is that the people I know receive a Christmas card from someone they have never heard of, who seems to know an awful lot about their life.

The look on their face must be priceless. It worked like a dream on my wife’s parents.

14. Taylor Swift

In college I worked Saturday mornings. One night my friends were up pretty darn late blasting music in the basement which got annoying and they wouldn’t turn it down when I asked several times.

The next morning I put an alarm clock on my laptop connected to two VERY large floor speakers, locked my room and went to work. About half way there the texts and calls start rolling in. Album of choice? Taylor Swift which is hilarious.

They had no access to my room and spent an hour at 7 am trying to get in and eventually just flipped the circuit to my room. Hilarious none the less.

15. Rearranging The Furniture

I took all of the furniture out of my co-worker’s office. Put the furniture in the bed of a truck and then parked said truck in his office.

16. Directing Traffic

So, a few years back we were in the habit of collecting traffic cones and horses. We would occasionally use them to shut down a lane of traffic, but they largely sat in waiting in our respective garages.

One particularly rainy day, the main street that runs through our town flooded, causing massive traffic delays. The city decided to reroute the street through a residential area adjacent to a tiny collection of condos.

We took this as a sign to empty the warrens – creating a second detour through the subdivision and back out on to the main road. For about an hour, everyone on Dempster drove a long, winding path only to wind up right where they started.

17. The Chocolate Covered Tuna Ball Incident of 2009

I made chocolate covered tuna balls and a batch of chocolate covered peanut butter balls. I left them in the employee break room mixed together on a plate.

For those concerned about food safety I made they sure they got thrown away after a short period of time and kept the rest in the fridge. To this day I still hear about it. By far my best prank ever.

18. The Computer Expert

I had a co-worker who, despite being a computer salesman, was clueless. I took a screen shot of his mac while he was out to lunch, took all the icons from the desktop and put them in a folder and then set the screenshot to his desktop image.

He rebooted the computer 3 times before calling a tech in to help fix the problem.

19. That Will Be There A While

Stole a boat and put it in a swimming pool.

20. The Ultimate Senior Prank

When my dad was in high school in California the senior class burned the class number into the football field. The school, quite upset about this, made the senior class replant the grass. Instead the senior class planted the state flower, which I guess is illegal to remove from public property without special permission.

21. Hello?

The office phone system allowed me to transfer interal calls. So I would call a co-worker then immediately (before they could pick up) transfer them to another co-worker. They would both answer the phone expecting the other to ask them a question. I nearly pissed myself. Thought Catalog Logo Mark

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