April Fools - any good ones to share?

I just saw this one on a local PD departments FB page and was wondering if anyone else had some to share:

I called a coworker this morning at 630 asking him to cover for me since "I've been up all night sick" then I waited half an hour, called back and asked if he'd left his house yet, no, "good because it's April 1st"

My buddy posted this - kind of weak but all I've seen today.

Duluth Trading's "Fire Hose Anti-cat Suit" was pretty good.

Maverick convertible

That ocean liner disaster movie was based on a real event.

I'm sure I saw one go by where Dean's announced they were discontinuing their French onion dip. 

Can't find it now, but when I told my wife, she was surprised at the sudden physiological response that news caused her-- almost like I shot her dog. 

Another local brewery shared this new product announcement:

fasted58 said:

TIL that he's a football coach for various youth teams.

Long one.

About [redacted] years ago in college, I had some friends of friends (two roommates) who were hardcore April Foolers.  We'll call them Jen and Amy.  The year prior, Jen pranked Amy by tossing their apartment, and Jen laid halfway off the bed in a puddle of fake blood around her head.  Amy came home and lost her berkeleying E36 M3.  So this particular year, Amy wanted to get her back.

Amy was big into government conspiracy stuff, and Jen always told her that one day the NSA would show up at the door and take her away.  We started in January.  We had production meetings.  We had a budget.  Amy started planting little bits of electronics around the apartment - a little piece of a circuit board in the smoke detector, a resistor inside a pen.  I took "surveillance" photos of her walking around campus.  She gave me all of her data and history so I could make a fake dossier.

The week before April 1st, a friend of mine used his ROTC email (something with a us.mil.gov or something domain, with permission from his SO) to let her know that we at the NSA were on to her and needed to meet with her on Wednesday March 31st.  Amy played the role well, telling Jen about it and pretending to be freaked out, and they must have bugs in the apartment.  Then they "found" the bugs in the smoke detector and the pen.  Amy decided it was best to print out all the documents she had and wipe her hard drive.  She printed them all out and then stashed the papers inside an old broken printer she kept for parts.  Another email from the ROTC email that said "we" knew about the papers in the printer and it was now a felony attempt to conceal stolen classified documents.  Jen was in full paranoia mode now.

We showed up at the prescribed time with fake NSA badges.  I asked Jen to confirm that we had the right Amy by handing her the dossier and asking her to confirm.  We took the papers out of the printer, I retrieved a planted "bug" from Jen's room (which really made her start shaking) and I took Amy off in my 96 Impala SS.  I told them we would bring Amy back after questioning, and Jen was not allowed to leave the apartment for any reason and there were agents at all exits of the building.

In reality, the other "agent" and I took Amy to a friends' house where we had a beer and chilled for an hour or so.  We then put Amy in the center of the back seat with a pillowcase over her head and she sat on her hands.  We went back to the apartment, blazed in, put Jen in dollar-store toy handcuffs, and put her in the back seat beside her roomie who was acting a little drugged under the pillowcase.

Jen-Gurl was SOBBING.  We put a pillowcase over her head and buzzed out of town.  The other agent and I had some Talkabout radios and every once in a while we would key the mike and say some bullE36 M3 codes into it.  We made it to an old gas well site, pulled over, took off the pillowcases and got Amy out of the car.  I took her in front of the car in the headlights and "argued" with her, eventually landing a choreographed right hook to her face.  She played it so well.  She twisted her body and faceplanted in a mud puddle.  I turned around to the other "agent" and said "get that lying b*tch out of the car."

At this point, Jen was trying to get out the other side (sorry, gurl... child latches).  I took her over to look at her roomate's limp body in a mud puddle.  The rest went something like this:

Me: Amy spilled all the tea, Jen.  We know it ALL
Jen:  But I didn't...
Me:  She outlined how it was all YOU - how you hacked her email, how you illegally downloaded the documents... and you know what we found?  That this is the most treasonous, nefarious, premeditated..... April Fools Joke of your life.

Jen collapsed to her knees and said something like "Oh my god that was the best.  I berkeleying hate you guys, but you got me."

Denny's for dinner

aaaand... scene.

We named it "Operation Duck Season," and I still include it on my resume to this day.

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

I'm dying. I wish you had it on video. 

A couple weeks ago my car was towed from my Fiance's apartment parking lot for being in the wrong spot. So on April 1 my Fiance stole my keys while I was in the shower and moved my car from the visitor spot it had been in to another one around the corner. I found my car missing and was starting to imagine the earful I was going to give the towing company when she said "April fools!" We laughed pretty good at that one, that's the best I've been had in a long time :) She's sneakier than I give her credit for sometimes haha

barefootcyborg5000 said:

I called a coworker this morning at 630 asking him to cover for me since "I've been up all night sick" then I waited half an hour, called back and asked if he'd left his house yet, no, "good because it's April 1st"

Do I know how to pick my targets? Yes. I do. I ask my boss regularly, "where'd you find these guys?" I've heard three different versions of how I ruined dudes weekend from people he's told about my misdeeds. Satisfying. 

In reply to Appleseed : That ocean liner disaster movie was based on a real event.

I had just watched another faux documentary of the story behind "the Hunt for Red October" that was released on the 1st.  Pretty funny stuff.

Some shiny happy person on a discord server I am on changed the server image out to one with a notification bubble, making everyone think they had a notification they couldn't find.  It was well done.

This one is just weird though:  

 

Back in college, I gained notoriety for starting an April fools pranks that continued for several years *after* I transferred to another school.

I was an RA - "resident advisor". Another student in the dorms whose job was to be sure housing rules were being follow, help people with stuff.

I "reminded" the room of my biggest pot heads that UPD (university police) was doing room checks that evening starting at 7. They were surprised and freaked out. About an hour later, I planted the same rumor at a room of potheads in another dorm building.

Then I sat back and watched as the rumor mill spread around campus and ALL of the pot heads started freaking out and carting all of their stuff out to their cars. Almost like... they were paranoid or something.

In reply to Beer Baron :

That's classic.  Nice one.

It reminds me of a thing that I heard somewhere.  Not even sure it's true because it's kind of a myth, but it sounds epic.  Cops set up a sign that said something like "Truck DUI Check 1 mile ahead," right before an exit that said "no trucks this exit."  All the truckers with something to hide took the exit and got tickets for driving where they shouldn't.... and probably a breathalyzer.

One of my son's friends, who has had terrible luck since he started driving, has been in two car crashes. Neither one was his fault. Somebody turned into him, and the second time he was rear ended right in front of the police officer who was stopping traffic.

Anyhow, he took a trip to a town about 90 minutes away and messaged the Boy-Spawn with "Just got rear ended at a stoplight" and then sent a picture of a rear ended car of the same make and model that he found on the web. Queue a message storm that involved the entire teen circle, me, the owner of the place he works at and a few other people. He came clean a while later. The  brilliant little E36 M3 got us good.

When I was in college, there were still chalkboards in every classroom.  A group in the Engineering Department obtained some official stationary and distributed a letter from the Office of the Chancellor to all departments outlining the looming World Chalk Shortage. 

It was stressed that it was imperative that all teaching staff clap their erasers in, and collect all chalk dust and small pieces of chalk from the tray below each chalkboard, in the supplied plastic bag.  All chalk dust and pieces collected were to be delivered to the Engineering Department, where they would be compressed into new pieces of chalk and redistributed to each Department based on the mass of their 'contributions'.

I suspect that some of the English profs never would have figured it out if the Engineering Department secretary hadn't sent a memo advising that new chalk deposits had been discovered and the crisis averted.

In college my friend Jimmy was a student tour guide who would show the campus to prospective students and their families. Starting my sophomore year, when I would see him with a tour I'd shout " Happy Birthday Jimmy!" which was usually echoed by at least one person on the tour. He'd either have to explain to his new well-wishers that it wasn't actually his birthday or he'd have to just grin and bear it. After a little while this prank got a life of its own, and the poor tour guides would be inundated with cheerful birthday wishes from every angle every time they gave a tour. A significant portion of the student body made it a habit, and you could see the tour guides visibly wince when they walked into the cafeteria and saw a table of people they knew. To my knowledge this continued for a while after I graduated, I hope Covid killed it off lol.

I've never found April fools pranks to be particularly funny, but I do enjoy the day for one simple reason. It shows regular people what it is like to be a skeptic.

On one day a year when they read something online they think "wait a minute... is that true? Is someone trying to fool me? Am I being lied to? Manipulated?" Then the look for verification.

Can you imagine the world we could live in if people did that every day?

I liked the one where our basement filled up with water and we spent all day Saturday cleaning up...

Great prank, Mother Nature.

Also if the convertible Maverick were real I'd probably buy one tomorrow.

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

Figures you'd choose the name "Amy" for your story...