Some pranksters just don't know when to stop. Pulled off perfectly, a good prank can be comedy of the highest order. When pranks go wrong, however, they can result in hurt feelings, physical injury, or worse; expulsion. These jokers had their pranks backfire, but lucky for us, they lived to tell the tale. The victim's of their pranks might not be laughing, but you will be after reading these hilarious stories of pranks gone wrong. Next time, stick to the elegant simplicity of a whoopee cushion. A fake fart never hurt anybody.
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33. Google maps was his downfall.
I was in a filming class and the teacher was this Croatian lady with a very heavy accent. One of my friends said, "If you find out where the teacher lives, I'll give you $5." Nobody knew where she lived because she was extremely quiet about her personal info. I went online and found out where she lived. Here's the kicker: I wanted to be extra so I went in google maps and printed a picture of her house. I then walked over to the printer and set the printed picture on her desk, hoping to get a shocked reaction. She was away from her desk, but when she got back first thing she noticed was the picture. Her eyes got extremely wide, and she began to stare at it for 3 minutes straight. At this point I knew I'd overdone it. She ended up calling the principle because I didn't confess at first, principle came in, threatened everyone for suspension, I confessed, the teacher cried for 30 minutes according to my classmate. I talked to the principle and had to explain it was a sick joke and that I wasn't stalking her. She was convinced I was, and wouldn't let me back in the class. I still have the email she wrote that was sent to the school board of how I was stalking her.
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32. This prank needs to be retired.
I don't prank people that often, so mine is a little tame, but when I was in 7th grade, I pulled a chair out from under this girl I liked at the time. You know, where you're like "here, have a seat" and then they go to sit down, totally expecting a chair to be there, but then you pull it away and it's totally not there, so the person drops right to the ground? I thought it'd be funny, but she dropped pretty hard and ended up fracturing her tailbone. She never liked me back.
Photo by Rodolfo Quirós from Pexels
31. Paper or plastic?
Last April Fools Day me and my buddy went to Target and picked up a bunch of cover-up-a-crime stuff. Rope, duct tape, two hatchets, a shovel, a cooler gloves, full body tarp suits, regular tarp, bleach, sos pads, and a few other cleaning fluids.
Then we put our actor faces on. I put all the stuff on the conveyor belt while my friend stood behind me, arms crossed, stone cold stare and completely silent the ENTIRE TIME. Meanwhile, I acted very sheepish and afraid. I actually made my body shake nervously for extra effect. As the cashier is ringing up the items I watch the puzzle pieces fit together in her head and a look of terror wash over her face. Her eyes were wide and after everything was rung up it took her a good minute to say anything. We just sat there staring at each other. Finally she asks "Will that be all?" and with a crack in my voice i say "Y-yes maam" then quickly look down, grabbing for my wallet. I pretended I forgot it in the car and turned to ask my friend if I could go get it. He sighed, angrily raised his hand like he was about to hit me, which I want expecting so I actually did flinch a bit, which was perfect. Then he got real close to me, and whispered gibberish in my ear. I began to fake panic and started saying "i'm sorry" over and over again. Then we walked out and began questioning our mental health.
We later found out the cashier had an anxiety attack and had to go home after we left. Apparently nobody could convince her it was just an April Fools joke. She said it seemed too real.
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30. The beginning of a beautiful friendship.
We had a super Catholic, slightly crazy kid in my Freshmen college dorm. Trying to prove I was cool, I had brought a jumbo box of condoms to impress the rest of my friends during the first week of school.
Because this kid thought all forms of birth control were evil, I thought it would be hilarious to put a condom filled with shampoo on his pillow. I told my buddy the idea, and then he actually did it. It was pretty funny, the kid ended up freaking out and yelling at everyone.
But a few weeks later there were some unintended consequences. I came back from a party one night and didn't want to sleep in my room, because my roommate was also very odd (a story for another time). I crashed in the lobby and lay down on the couch. Suddenly I felt something move beneath me. I jumped up scared and realized in my hammeredness I had laid down on top of someone covered in a blanket.
Guess who was sleeping on another of the couches covered only in a towel (which I had initially mistaken for a blanket) . . . that's right! Catholic kid.
He had no idea I was involved, so he told me that ever since the condom on pillow event he became paranoid about "Someone trying to make a baby on my bed" and had been locking his room whenever he left it, even to shower. He forgot to bring his key that night so he was forced to crash on the couch in just a towel because his roommate was out of town.
I felt terrible, got him some clothes and a blanket from my room and crashed with him in the lounge (on separate couches). After that time, I went out of my way to make sure no one messed with him anymore because I realized he didn't get that people were just joking, which made it bullying.
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29. He was only protecting the children.
Someone let a greased pig loose in the school. It basically ran around and was pretty funny. Teachers did try to catch him, but basically they opened doors and figured the pig would run outside.
The janitor went caveman and killed the pig with a broken broom handle. Blood all over the floor.
Janitor was fired that day.
28. Perfect time to visit the snake store.
The senior class before I was a freshmen had dumped whole buckets of crickets into all of the school’s garbage cans. Fast forward, a fight broke out at lunch, and a student was knocked into one of the garbage cans and thousands of crickets spilt out onto the concourse causing a massive riot— I’m talking mobs of kids leaving the school. The school was infested with crickets for years after.
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27. Slip and slide should stay outdoors.
At my high school when I was a freshman a group of seniors had broken into the school the night before with hundreds of bottles of lube to grease up all the stair cases in the school. Like 15 kids went to the hospital. One kid cracked his head open and had to be rushed to the ER.
26. Not-so-grand theft auto.
A teacher in my school had a crummy old car that the lock was broken and could easily be put in neutral and pushed around. The steering still locked, so mostly kids would push it into a parking space ahead or behind of it. One day they pushed it and it got away from them and it damaged another teacher's car. The kids owned up to it, but considering the owner was so sick of his car being messed with he called the police. Turns out moving a car a few meters is considered vehicle theft around here and three kids were charged and expelled.
25. School bathrooms smell bad enough.
Someone bought multiple bottles of this stuff called “Liquid Butt” and absolutely poured like 10 bottles of the stuff in the mens restroom. It was truly the smell of putrid rotting dead elephant. It was horrendous. If I smelled a dead body it would be the 2nd worse thing I’ve ever smelled it was that bad. Our poor janitor was assigned to clean it up and so he walked in and immediately projectile vomited all over the bathroom and quit the job on the spot, we were now out a janitor and the mess now had the new addition of vomit on top of 10 bottles of Liquid Butt. It took awhile to find a new janitor so the vomit just sort of sat there for a week and it was basically a biohazard at that point. A new janitor eventually cleaned the mess in a full body suit but even after bleaching everything we could still smell it for over 6 months. They had to permanently remove the front door to that bathroom.
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24. It's not a felony if it's funny.
A group of kids in my town staged a kidnapping one time.
They borrowed a van and drove in front of a busy shopping center. One guy, pretending to escape, jumped out the trunk all wrapped up in duct tape. To the horror of all the bystanders, the van stopped, two kids ran out and recaptured the escapee and drove off.
Cops had to go to their homes when the van was identified and they had a lot of clearing up to do.
23. Fork this.
So the senior class two years ahead of me forked the lawn in front of the school. A classic right? Well... they took it a bit further.
Instead of buying plastic forks in bulk, the seniors, for their whole school year, methodically pocketed the metal silverware from lunch and breakfast. Not every piece every time but just enough that the lunch staff would think it was accidental loss.
(We have a small class size so kids would buss their own trays by dumping the scraps into big trash cans and sometimes people would forget to take their silverware off first and they’d get lost. We had regular announcements at lunch reminding us to make sure we didn’t throw away the utensils.)
So in this massive conspiracy that only they knew about, they collected hundreds of metal utensils. The night before their last day of classes they snuck into the school grounds and methodically stuck hundreds of forks, knives, and spoons into the grass a foot apart each.
To make it worse, one of the two custodians had recently been fired and the remaining custiodian was an older guy who was perfectly kind and in an ideal world should have retired sooner. He had to pick them all up by himself. I heard one of the teachers came in early and helped him a little bit, and saw the custodian had tears falling down his cheeks.
22. An unwelcome find.
This actually happened at a friend’s school. A guy found a dead pigeon, and the class decided it would be fun to hide it inside a hardcover folder that a teacher left on her desk. The only problem was that the pigeon would bulge out the folder, so they had no better idea than to put it inside and stomp the folder (and pigeon) flat... when the teacher (she was pregnant at the time) opened the folder she yelled in terror and fainted. They took her out in an ambulance. Needless to say they never told anyone whose idea it was or who participated in the prank.
21. So much for the after party.
A couple of underclassmen crashed a wholesome senior prank and ruined it. The original prank was spray-painting the graduating class year all over the building in washable paint, but these kids came by after they were done and did swears and slurs. The graduating class almost didn't get to graduate, until parents kept complaining that their kid wasn't at fault. They ended up having to do whatever they did to cover up the writings and there was still a pillar with a swear word on it for a few weeks after.
20. Time to nail those desks down.
Some seniors at my school came in at night and moved all the desks and whiteboards so that the classrooms were now set up outside. School was outside the next day.
The school made them clean up after school.
They repeated the same prank five more times.
19. Piano prank falls flat.
I broke into my friends middle school email account in the middle of the night to tell send his current email address a message “from the future.”
This message was inspired by that one prank from The Office where Jim sends Dwight faxes from the future about the coffee being poisoned. My dumb self took it one step farther and said that my friend needed to stop me and my other friend from playing the piano at break, as otherwise a bomb would go off. My friend took this seriously and alerted a teacher, who immediately knew it was me.
Yeah the police were called, I was nearly suspended, and I was grounded for a month.
Image by Alexander Antropov from Pixabay
18. Pet prank loses points.
When I was around 12, we had a big old fat dog named Chip who did nothing but sleep and eat. So one day when my mom was grocery shopping, the dog was laying in the kitchen so I squirted ketchup on him and on the floor and everything. When my mom came home into the kitchen I pretended to cry and said "Mom! chip went crazy I had to kill him!". She legitimately started bawling and and dropped the grocery bag breaking stuff and got on the floor, only to see Chip roll over and walk outside. She was furious, and Chip dragged ketchup everywhere. No longer have an appetite for pranks, OR ketchup.
17. Bathroom pranks are never a good idea.
So when I was about 14 I was going to prank my sister in the bathroom by hiding in the cupboard under the sink (it was large) and make scary noises while she was in the shower. Obviously not well thought-out, but I was bored.
I knew she was showering soon so I got under there and shut the doors and waited. To my horror, my mom came in and took a long pee, and then opened the cupboard doors for some reason and found me curled up in the cabinet. I exited hastily with a burning red face and later my dad chewed me out for trying to spy on my sister in the shower. I still feel the horror many many years later.
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16. Major misfire.
My brother and I discovered a joke shop on a day trip. My mother was a smoker and we found those explosive cigarette firecrackers. We both bought them knowing how hilarious they would be, but we only had the one person to prank. We both targeted her by putting them in her pack randomly.
So she is driving along and the first one explodes, and she freaks out. Wasn't as funny as we thought. Later on another one explodes and she has a minor meltdown. She flips out on both of us, we don't dare say a word, but we know that there is probably one more exploding cigarette in the pack. Our dread was probably worse than hers.
About 50 miles from home, the last cigarette explodes. If she yelled at us, it might have been better. Instead, she relit it and kept driving, with tears going down her face. That next hour was excruciating as mom drove and cried.
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15. Doesn't she have enough to deal with?
When I was in high school, this guy I was friends with had a very realistic looking cockroach. It was huge and glossy and rubbery. It looked very real. He gave it to me for some reason, so one day while my mother is blow-drying her hair in the bathroom with her head upside down, I sneakily placed the roach on her bare foot and stepped back. She FREAKED! She probably jumped up in the air 5 ft. and screamed and cursed. When she saw me laughing, she realized it wasn't real and proceeded to beat me with the blow dryer. She was so ticked that I don't even think she intended to really hurt me, but she did. I ended up with a huge lump on my head and a major headache all day. She hates roaches, so I guess I should have seen that coming, but she hit me hard. Moral of the story: don't prank your mother.
14. Stowaway regrets.
When my older brother was between his freshman and sophomore year in high school, he was taking a summer school class. So every morning he would wake up, shower, eat breakfast and drive to school. So my middle school idea of a prank was to grab his keys while he was in the shower, unlock his trunk, put his keys back, then hide in the trunk and scare him when he went to throw his backpack in the back.
Nope, he doesn't do that apparently. He just tosses his bag on the front seat and drives to school. So with his radio blasting, he can't hear me yelling to him that I'm in the trunk. We get to school, and he shuts his car off, so I hit the trunk lid hard once. He goes to check it out and finds me in the back. He laughs, and tells me to have fun on the walk home.
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13. Alonzo, come home!
When I was a teenager my buddy Shawn and I loved to prank call people. We would just say stupid nonsense and laugh. We never said anything mean or hurtful.
So, one weekend he was staying over and we decided to make some calls. I was talking to some woman and was making her laugh when she asked if I was Alonzo. I said yes and she yelled to someone with her, "Alonzo is trying to prank us and I knew it was him!"
So now I'm like this is awesome! She thinks I'm someone else! So the other woman gets on the phone and is talking to me like I'm Alonzo... which is her husband! This is getting even better! So I play along and pretend to be Alonzo. After about a minute or two of making them laugh the woman says, "All joking aside, hun, is Katie home yet?" I then decide to break my own rule and say to her "SHE'S DEAD!" and then hang up the phone. Shawn and I laughed so hard for like 10 minutes.
Then it hits me. I feel my blood drain and I go white. One of my dad's good friends is named Alonzo. And he has a daughter named Katie. To this day I think I pranked his wife at work and told her that their daughter was dead. I never had the guts to ask if it was them I pranked years ago.
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12. Status update fool.
I'm at the age where many of my co-workers and friends are either getting married or popping out kids. Within the past year I've been to 5 weddings and held more newborn babies than I ever thought humanly possible. I'm single, so as a result of all this I was constantly getting grilled about when I was going to get hitched or have a kid.
When April Fool's day rolled around, I made an announcement on Facebook that I was not only getting married to my "special someone" but that we were also expecting. A torrent of messages and comments began to roll in, everything from "Congrats!" to "I hope our kids will be best of friends and play together!" and "I'm SO happy you're finally settling down and starting a family."
My good friends knew better and were in on the troll, so they rolled with it and started to ask about names for the baby and wedding dates. My acquaintances and co-workers took the bait hard.
When I finally announced April Fools, the congrats switched to a flood of hate mail. When I came into work, those who were pregnant were especially miffed and told me not to joke about big life events. Some just told me they were really disappointed. One dis-invited me to her baby shower.
No one bothers to ask when I'm getting married anymore.
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11. Shaved the hide off him.
When I was younger, I was on a baseball team with my cousin and one of his best friends. One night after winning a game, we all stayed over at the cousin's house. Once his friend goes to sleep, we pull the old shaving cream in the hand prank and our laughter wakes up his dad. Now, his dad might have the shortest temper of any man I've ever met. He runs upstairs, yells that we could have blinded him, grabs my cousin and makes him grab the stair rail in a way that his back is flat, and starts whipping his back with a belt. Afterwards he came in and yelled at me with murder in his eyes. I've never done that prank since.
10. A ghost from her past.
When I was in high school a friend of mine decided to do a little prank to a teacher: he came to school in his pijamas and with his pillow under an arm, waited until everyone was already in class and then he rushed in the classrom yelling "I'm sorry, I overslept today!"
Pretty simple and innocuous, right? Except that the teacher went white as a sheet, had her eyes wide open and almost fainted.
It turned out that some years ago she teached in a class with a mentally disabled kid that one day actually came in class in his pijamas and then threw himself out of the window.
So that was like an horrible flashback for her.
9. Friendship fail.
In middle school I convinced my English teacher to give us a fake surprise test as a way to prank my friend. I provided the test and got everyone in the class in on it except for one friend. Everyone finished the "test" in < 5 mins while my friend sat there panicking. The teacher was great and actually made him turn it in early because he was the last one, then went through them all and made fun of his answers. We waited another 20 minutes before telling him it was a joke. We're not friends anymore.
8. Plus seven years bad luck.
A very simple pull the chair out from under my sister prank went horribly wrong. We had just bought a house that a nice italian couple owned before, and it was literally covered in mirrors. Like the walls were just mirrors, it was weird but didn't look too out of place. Anyway, I pull the chair out and she falls down and crashes backward, taking down the entire mirror wall and shattering it. My dad instinctively shielded her and only got minor cuts. I got grounded for a year.
Photo by Sharon McCutcheon from Pexels
7. Now about those snacks...
I was hanging out in my brother's room with my brother and some friends. He ran outside to grab some CDs out of his car. We quickly filled a 1 gallon ice cream tub up with water, and set it above his door frame, expecting that when he came back and opened the door, the bucket of water would spill on him. Instead, my mom came into the room to offer my friends some snacks. The bucket fell on her head, only it fell straight down without the water spilling and knocked her out cold, then spilling the water all over her afterwards. My friends bailed immediately, my brother punched me because it was meant for him, and my mom grounded me for the summer when she came to.
6. No tiara for her.
When my mom was pregnant with my sister, my family threw her a baby shower. As a Hispanic family, we have the normal baby shower games (guess mommy's tummy measurements with toilet paper, etc.) And we have crazy games.
So we had this game where all the ladies went into the house and one by one, they would be brought out with a sash, each one aspiring to be "Miss Baby Shower 1997." At the end of their cat walk, they would sit on their "throne" (three chairs, seats covered with a blanket, the middle one missing the actual seat.) With two gentleman sitting on the outside chairs. When the contestant would sit, they would stand up, she would fall through, we would all laugh.
Well, one of my mom's friends actually thought she was in a pageant. Took the whole thing seriously. So when she fell through, she caused the hugest scene, told all the party guests off and stormed off to the bathroom.
Needless to say, the games stopped and we all went inside and awkwardly ate cake.
Image by Robin Higgins from Pixabay
5. She lost control.
I worked at a restaurant and the walk-in freezer was in what we called the "compound" which was an outdoor area behind the kitchen. I worked the shift that left right when we closed, but I didn't have to stay and clean.
Right when I turned the corner from the compound, my friend was leaving the freezer with our bulk size icecream in it's cooler, which was fairly heavy. I decided to prank her because I knew she frightened easily. I ran up behind her and shouted "AHHH" and she immediately went weak in the knees and began to cry because she'd peed herself.
I haven't pranked anyone since.
4. No monster under the bed.
As the eldest of three brothers, it was my duty to mess with them as often as possible (in a fun, brotherly way of course - nothing bad). One of my favorite pranks was hiding under one of their beds just before they went to bed, wait a while to allow them to settle in, and then start shaking the mattress from underneath. It always got a hilarious reaction.
Well, one day my dad saw me sneaking into my brothers' room and warned them (I found this out after the fact). I was in position and ready for them to come into the room to go to sleep. They never came. I waited and waited, not wanting to come out from under the bed because I thought they could walk in at any moment. I waited for probably close to 15 minutes (I was a dedicated kid). Finally, I said screw it and left the room.
My mom and my two little brothers were out in the living room watching TV. They laughed when I walked into the room and my mom explained that my dad had warned them. Defeated, I headed down to my room. I opened my closet and my dad jumped out making monster noises. Scared the bejeezus out of me. He had been waiting there the whole time, ready to turn a variation of my own prank against me.
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3. No use splitting hares.
My good friend in high school put a dead rabbit under our other friends pillow. It was horrific. I am aware of that, and yes, it was a female that did it. It started a huge prank war that lasted for days. Girls against boys, we were the girls, btw. It involved dog food, corned beef hash, eggs, car chases (manhunt style), silly string, glass markers, shaving cream, etc. During this time, a few things went wrong. We caught the guys at our vehicle, and they ran and drove off without one of the others. He was chasing the car like a moron. We had an entire carton of rotten eggs that smashed into my friends vehicle as we were driving to find the guys. I threw an egg at one of the boys when we found them at a gas station, and our other, poor, unsuspecting friend who wasn't involved, had the window to his 3 day old SRT 4 rolled down, and it landed in there. The worst for me personally, was when I shaving creamed one of their cars only to then fall asleep in my bed later on, while trying to watch out the window. They came and covered my entire vehicle. Just COVERED it, and my apartment complex had no outside hose. I had drive to the gas station with it like that, and I was late for work. A truce was called after that night.
2. Feeling cute, might delete later.
My brother and his now ex-wife bought a digital camera so they didn't have to buy anymore disposable cameras. I came over one day to visit and my brother was showing me the new camera. While I was messing with the camera my brother said that he had to use the restroom. When that happened, a stroke of genius hit me. I take a picture of my butt, thinking that they would see it in a few days since this is a new camera and they would be going picture crazy with it. 3 months go by and I completely forget about my prank, we are having a birthday party for my youngest niece and my sister in law brings out the camera to take pictures. After they take pictures of the birthday cake, my sister in law decides to show pictures they have taken of the kids, themselves, etc. Nearly the whole female side of her family (mother, cousins, nieces, etc) are looking at the photos with her on the digital camera and all of a sudden I hear a mixture of screams and laughter, they have come across the picture of my bare bum. Apparently they just took a few photos here and there then just set it down letting my picture go unnoticed. The only thing I could do after they saw the photo and were looking directly at me was laugh and say whoops.
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1. We're just glad the bird is okay.
During every winter, this giant flock of seagulls would always show up at my high school and hang out around campus until springtime. The majority of students ate lunch outside in this huge central courtyard. The seagulls were so annoying and constantly hovering and pretty much begging for food. It was also common to get your food stolen by one if you weren’t looking. One day a fellow student had some string in his backpack. So we took 6ft or so piece of string, tied a bite sized piece of pizza to one end, and an empty 20oz soda bottle to the other. We then proceeded to throw the contraption into a group of seagulls. We never thought they’d fall for it. One seagull swallowed the pizza and started to fly across campus with the string and bottle floating behind him, hanging from his beak. The rest of the seagulls freaked out and we’re flying behind him as if they were chasing him. The funniest part was that a random female student looked up, saw what she believed to be a floating empty soda bottle, and screamed in horror “OMG that bottle is floating.” The seagull then vomited up the pizza string contraption and went about his life unharmed. We felt really bad after that and decided not to prank the seagulls anymore.
A few days later some younger kids (freshman) tried to mimic our little prank. Except it all went wrong for them. A seagull fell for the bait, but ended up getting caught in a tree. The freshman then started to panic, fearing they’d be in trouble if caught, and had to boost each other up to free the seagull from the tree. The seagull was fine and flew away but after that, the pranking of seagulls came to an official end.
