Pulling pranks can be a fun way to spend time with friends or show affection to someone. Using your wits to embarrass a friend to get some laughs can create lasting and hilarious memories for everyone involved. Planning pranks can be even more fun and satisfying when people try to “one-up” or outdo each other with outrageous practical jokes.
Sometimes, however, a prank goes awry, someone suffers some serious consequences and all those good intentions disappear.
Outrageous pranks have ruined friendship, cost people jobs, and even caused death.
Here we will take a look at 20 of the most outrageous pranks or practical jokes. Many of them earn the status of outrageous because of their terrible consequences, some with tragic outcomes.
Egging cars may not sound outrageous-it is one of the oldest pranks in the books! But in one case, it was a prank that turned deadly.
A group of teenage boys thought it would be fun to throw some eggs at passing cars. Sadly, these kids pranked the wrong people! Someone from one of the egged cars started shooting at the pranksters, killing one of the boys.
Teenagers are not smart. Two boys thought it would be good prank to cover a neighborhood stop sign in saran wrap and petroleum jelly make it nearly impossible for drivers to see. They were so proud of the prank that they posted all about it on Facebook, bragging about how funny they were.
Sadly, this “innocent” prank resulted in a crash that killed two elderly women. One driver did not see the stop sign, and plowed head on into an oncoming car. Her passenger, who was also her sister, was killed instantly. The driver died several weeks later from her injuries.
The boys were charged with reckless homicide in the deaths of the two women. Not so funny anymore?
Most boys have experienced the dreaded wedgie. In the locker room, camp bunk, school hallway, bus or elsewhere, wedgies have been a source of stress and fun!
Of course, there are wedgie variations- the shoulder wedgie, the hanging wedgie, and of course….the atomic wedgie! The atomic wedgie goes deep and is pulled upward above the victim’s head.
Legend has it, one prankster went too far and suffocated his stepfather to death with an atomic wedgie!
Who hasn’t made a prank phone call? I think it is rare to find someone who hasn’t.
One person took the prank call a little too far by prank calling President George Bush’s private phone! A 16-year old Icelandic boy dialed the president’s private number and got through – pretending to be the Icelandic president.
The police arrived at the boys’ home shortly thereafter.
The Actor, Sasha Baron Cohen, pulled off one of the biggest pranks when he, playing “Borat”, duped an entire village in Romania.
Borat is a character who is a Kazakhstani journalist. In Cohen’s movie, he went to the Romanian Village of Glod and under the pretense of making a documentary. Instead, he was making Borat and was pretending the entire time that Glod was a village in Kazakhstan.
When the villagers learned that Borat’s conventional documentary was a true mockumentary – the village sued Cohen. One villager said “if I see him, I’ll kill him.”
The text started as a prank to make his girl think he was hiding something-certainly not that she was cheating on him with his brother!
Maybe she was joking too?
This outrageous prank is so popular that you can find detailed instructions on how to conduct it on a variety of websites.
All it takes is some photocopies of your face and you can scare the pants off anyone who sees it. The head in a jar prank has been known to cause a few heart attacks- it looks so real.
In the 1940’s, Franklin Institute Science Museum in Philadelphia was trying to promote an upcoming planetarium show about cosmic apocalypse.
To promote the show, the museum’s spokesperson decided issue a press release telling the media that the world was ending. The fact that this terrifying press release came out on April 1 did not strike anyone as suspicious. The release specifically said the world would end at 3pm the next day and that it was NOT an April Fool’s joke.
The local media took it seriously and word spread quickly that an apocalypse was imminent. After all, the museum had and continues to have a stellar reputation – why would it lie about such a serious topic? (To get visitors!)
Needless to say, the prank caused massive panic and hysteria for the people of Philadelphia. Emergency lines were jammed with frightened callers all day and night.
The spokesperson with the outrageous prank idea, William Castelline was fired over this prank. Rightfully so, don’t you think?
Who doesn’t like a good prank that results in gut wrenching stomach pains and diarrhea?
Three Brooklyn high schoolers decided pull one outrageous prank on some teachers. They surprised the staff with a homemade cake covered with candies. The “candies” were little laxative tablets.
You can imagine what happened next. Teachers and staff happily dug into the cake and five almost immediately began experiencing dangerous symptoms – mouth numbness, stomach pains and chest pains to be exact.
Two of the teachers ended up hospitalized with what doctors described as symptoms similar to insecticide poisoning.
We can assume these teens were punished for the outrageous prank but even after the teachers became ill, they insisted it was a funny, innocent, prank.
Eighteen-year old Tori Wheeler from Oklahoma wanted to prank her boyfriend on April Fool’s Day and told him she was pregnant. The boyfriend just didn’t think it was funny.
Apparently, Tori takes her pranks seriously and when boyfriend didn’t respond the way she hoped, she pulled a knife on him. He called the police and they arrived to diffuse the situation.
When asked to explain herself to the police, Tori said that pulling the knife out and threatening her boyfriend was another prank.
Someone in the Philippines thought it would be a good idea to conduct a prank for his vlog during the pandemic. The vlogger was pretending to pass out in a mall – twitching, wincing in pain, and removing his mask to grasp for air.
Thankfully, for the public, he was arrested quickly by nearby police for violating covid-19 safety protocols.
One high school teacher got a little too into the Halloween spirit one year when he entered his classroom wearing a ski mask and wielding a chainsaw.
The terrified students panicked and nearly trampled each other trying to escape the perceived imminent massacre. Several students were injured. After a lawsuit the teacher was ordered to pay one student $100,000 who suffered two broken legs during the incident.
One funny family terrified its neighbors with a realistic dummy hanging from its roof. The neighbors were so startled by this outrageous prank that they called the fire department to help the “poor man” before he got hurt, after no one responded to their offers!
One man wanted to punish his ex-wife with a prank that would terrify her. He staged a fake suicide on her front lawn.
When his ex-wife called 911 in a panic, they sent fire trucks, police, and ambulances to the house, quite surprised to find him alive and well.
They didn’t laugh at this joke. They arrested him and took him to jail instead.
On April 1, 2010 a Jordanian newspaper reported that there was an alien invasion taking place. The article stated that a UFO was landing in Jafr.
The people who lived in Jafr were not phased by this report but the mayor was. He sent security forces into the town and nearly ordered an evacuation of all 13,000 residents.
After realizing it was an outrageous prank, the mayor and civil authorities threatened to sue the paper. Instead, the staff apologized stating they meant to “entertain, not scare people.” They avoided the lawsuits but may have lost some credibility.
Burger king pulled of one of the biggest pranks ever and at the same time may have implemented the world’s best marketing strategy.
On April 1, 1998 Burger King announced in a full-page USA Today ad that they created a left-handed whopper. They claimed to have specially designed this whopper for their more than 1.4 million left-handed customers.
The ad claimed that Burger King rotated the items on the burger, condiments, and sesame seeds so they were placed strategically to maximize the consumption experience for left handers.
Amazingly, people asked for the left-handed burgers for months after the ad came out, not realizing it was a hoax. Even right handers began to specify which whopper they wanted for fear of getting the “wrong one!”
A child, who was known by his family as a prankster accidentally killed himself when he tried to prank his sister. He was hanging some halloween decorations, when he decided to hang himself as a joke to scare her.
But things got real very quickly. The sister tried to get her mother’s help but she thought it was a joke and ignored her.
Just recently, an Irish grandpa with a great sense of humour had everyone at his funeral reeling with laughter at the prank he pulled on them. Before passing, the man recorded himself complaining about being buried alive and asking for help getting out of his coffin.
The recording was played at the cemetery during his burial sending everyone into fits of hysterical laughter. This guy was a master prankster until the very end!
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A guy decided to prank his ex-girlfriend by putting up flyers for a Chewbacca roaring contest. The flyer asked people to call in and leave voice mails with their Chewy impressions. The number to call? The ex- girlfriend’s!
So creative and funny!
On 1994, a magazine released a column as a prank, telling readers that congress passed a bill prohibiting drinking while surfing the Net. People believed it! The panic!
Not many people realized that the article provided a contact name for questions about the bill- “Lirpa Sloof.” Sure seems like an odd name. It is! It is April Fool’s backwards! Should have given it away.
Well, there you have them. 20 of the most outrageous pranks (or outrageous outcomes of pranks!). It is always good to maintain your sense of humor but stick to the safe pranks-not the ones that can get someone killed or arrested!