I’m not interested in “pranks” where someone is victimised, harmed, or upset.
Tell me the funniest harmless pranks where everyone involved can laugh and nobody feels bad.
I used to offer customers invisible change when they paid in full but no tip, it was super funny and sad when we both knew they paid exactly but were still expectedly waiting for their handout
Edit: used to. Would never do nowadays would I find myself in a customer-facing role. Take it easy guys
This was one I did to a buddy years ago but he still says it’s the best prank pulled on him ever. We had each other’s apartment keys so we could walk each other’s dogs.
He had gone out drinking and playing poker with some friends. I knew he’d be coming home drunk. I got into his place and took every single light bulb out. All the lamps, all the ceiling fixtures. His fish tank. The little one in the fridge. Every single one. Then I took his futon mattress and put it in his storage shed and made up the frame like it was all ready for bed. Then I took his couch cushions too. Fed and walked his dog and went home and locked all my doors and windows and made sure to put the chain on the door.
User name checks out
Stick a small piece of paper under the mouse of a colleague, covering the laser sensor and watch them go crazy trying to figure why the mouse doesn’t work. Bonus point of the paper is the same colour as the mouse and it’s hard to see.
When I was in high school, each department had a bunch of shared laptops that could be usedfor occasional lessons. They all had touchpads, but the school did also provide mice. They also had USB ports on the back. So of course you try to slyly plug your mouse into the laptop of whoever is sitting opposite you and just nudge their cursor astray every so often
Years ago I did this to my boss, and printed out the “troll” face from rage comics. Had the satisfaction of watching him move the mouse around, get confused, pick up the mouse to look at it, see his shoulders slump and shake his head.
Just the smallest, dumbest thing, but I remember it 10 years later.
Before mice had lasers this could be done with a piece of clear tape. IT guys got real tired of the number of “broken mouse” calls from our department.
I just replied about this in another thread, but I liked plugging an extra mouse into their computer and making subtle movements with it while they were working.
My friends/roommates used to “fire” each other’s rooms. It involved getting a couple big handfuls of taco bell fire sauce and hiding it in every place they could find.
I had my room fired and 3 years later while traveling, a fire sauce packet flew out of my shirt pocket as I was getting dressed. By far my favorite prank.
I was already imagining y’all were hiding the fire in it’s liquid form…which was a funny thought. But hiding sauce packs is harmless and funny!
Selling jars ‘full’ of dehydrated water.
Hey, good jars can be really annoying to find.
Someone asked to make a rap playlist of a hundred rap tracks by favorite rappers, and me and the other person making it, both wanting to make a statement regarding our respective view on rap as a music genre, snuck in the theme song for the Fresh Prince of Bel Air to see what would happen. The listener didn’t even notice until the tenth time listening to it.
For Christmas I bought a box of Ferrero Rocher chocolates, carefully unwrapped each one, replaced them with brussel sprouts, and wrapped them back up. My wife’s reaction was priceless as she went from pure joy at the gift to absolute horror. Of course after we had a laugh I got out the container of chocolates and gave them to her (they’re her favourite).
Had my son piloting a remote shark in the swamp at our camp, one of the ones that’s almost all fin.
Grabbed my daughter back at the main site, “Come quick! You gotta see this! Don’t know what the hell it is.”
“OMG daddy! What is it?!”
“I mean, it looks like a shark, and if that’s the fin it must be about 4’ long. How the hell does something like that get in here? And what’s it eating!?”
I was eating pistachio nuts on a bus in London and carefully put all the shells in the hood of my friends coat without her noticing. We went to a restaurant and I forgot all about it. At the end when we got up to leave she pulled her coat off the back of the chair and dozens of pistachio shells went flying all over the floor.
A few years later me and the friend got together. That was almost 10 years ago, so happy ending :)
Have you seen her since you admitted to this? ;)
I have a similar story! My family was having a reunion at a restaurant but some people didn’t know how to get to the restaurant (before GPS or mapquest), so my dad told them to follow him in their cars. My dad was driving in the first car and there were like 3 other cars behind us with family. As were driving on the highway my dad dumps a bag of pistachio shells out the window (idk where he got the bag from) and pelts all my family’s cars. It was so funny when we got to the restaurant and all the cars behind us were super confused about the pistachio shells.
Got my buddy with one I saw on Vine (RIP):
Walking near a construction site, got behind him, picked up a traffic cone, and barked like a dog into it with it pointed near his feet. Sound is amplified and originates low to the ground. I think he ran about 30 feet before he turned around and saw me on the ground laughing!
something harmless my dad likes to do when hes walking with a group of people and is in front is walk to the side and pretent to examine something. causes a whole group of people to go walk over and look. and go nuts when they dont see anything.
There’s a similar thing you can do - if you’re in a room of people, just start chuckling to yourself about nothing. Keep doing it every so often, and all going well, the whole room will be in uproarious laughter for reasons they’re entirely unaware of!
We were getting called in to HR one by one for unclear reasons. Turns out we were getting our annual raises, but my boss and his boss were both handing them out that day. I and a coworker go in first; on the way out, they ask us to send a third coworker in first.
We look at each other and instantly know.
We both walk up to her desk, stony-faced, and tell her “You need to go down to HR. [boss] and [big boss] need to see you.” She is nervous, but we insist she just needs to go, now.
Ten minutes later she comes back and chews us out, but is laughing all the way.
If you’re walking across a pedestrian crossing, and a car is pulled up and stopped at the edge, you pretend there is something knee-height right in front of the car by pantomiming climbing/stepping over it.
More harmless if there is no other vehicle behind them, so they can back up to look for it.
Walk, stop, look down, look shocked and/or disgusted and walk “around” it. That’s easier to simulate than trying to “climb over”.
We had an office with a backdoor out into a tiny parking lot (~5-6 vehicles). There were guys with weed whackers. The sound kept going forever and ever and ever. Turned out that my coworker had subtly tuned the stereo (hooked up to a computer for streaming) to a YouTube video that was four hours of weed whacker noise. It took like 45m for someone to complain and he just started laughing uncontrollably and was found out. He’s a good friend and I’m still mad at him for that when I remember it. Ace job pranking us, though. The workers had been long gone.
I have friends that used to hide canned hams on each other and their belongings.
