What’s the most believable April Fools’ prank you’ve ever seen that almost fooled everyone?

It was in Saskatchewan either in Prince Albert or Moose Jaw in the 1980s. The local daily paper asked people to leave their phone off the hook because the phone company wanted to blow the dust out of the lines.

Totally harmless prank to me from a co-worker years ago. Had something like 27 voicemails on my desk phone from different people. I went through all of them and they were a version of, “Anne needs to talk to you about a message.” The first message (so the last one I get to) was Anne saying, “hey, I hope you get this message.”

Best one I ever pulled was when I was six or so. This is early 90’s, so I’d walk to school and back home. Anyway, I come home and say to my mom, “what happened to the car?!?” I’ll never forget her screech, “WHAT!?!” “Yeah, all the windows are broken and the wheels are on cinder blocks.” A couple weeks earlier I’d seen some kids action film where that happened, that’s how I’d thought of it. Also, my mom had just gotten that jeep a few weeks earlier and she was SO in love with it! “WHAT THE FUUUUUuUuUUuuCK!!!” she starts screaming as she ashes out her cigarette and starts sprinting to the door, wearing only a robe with her hair wrapped in a towel. Suddenly my little brain goes, uh oh. I’m at the front door when she gets outside, sees the perfectly fine car, turns around and I just quietly say “April fools?” I’ve never seen such mixed emotion from her ever since, while hysterically laughing she screams “you little shit, get back inside!” Then she made me a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich with ice cream afterwards. She’s the best.

BBC put out a short video of penguins flying to migrate

hard aka non cooked noodles underneath toilet seat. u sit down it makes a noise as if the entire thing f****** broke. so believeable my dad nearby believed it too.

On the morning of April 1, 1978, a barge appeared in Sydney Harbor towing a giant iceberg. Sydneysiders were expecting it. D*** Smith, a local adventurer and millionaire businessman, had been loudly promoting his scheme to tow an iceberg from Antarctica for quite some time. The iceberg was actually white plastic and firefighting foam. I think the best part about this whole prank was that he had advertised broadly that he was planning on carving up the iceberg, and selling them as “Dicksicles” And everyone believed him.

Every year I give my 4th graders a list of ridiculous-sounding words I made up. I told them they need to review them because standardized tests are coming up and these words WILL be on the test. It takes a minute, but they usually figure out. It’s lots of fun, though.

A True Story. I swear. A few years ago, my then 87 year old mother decided to play a trick on my youngest brother. We have always known his birthday was April 2. She called him on March 31 and used a fake crying voice to say she had to tell him something. "There's something you need to know. I've lived with this lie for 50 years now and I can't keep it up. I'm ashamed, and I have to get it off my chest. You were actually born late in the evening on the first day of April. But my doctor knew you had 7 older brothers who would tease you without mercy about being an 'April Fool'. Every year on your birthday, you'd have to hear that. He convinced me to let him record your birth as happening after midnight, on April 2nd." My brother was shocked to the core that our sweet mother would have lied to all of us about this. For a while, he couldn't believe it. But Mom's tearful confession made him believe. They cried together over the phone, and laughed when the initial shock was over. He told his wife. While she called their two children and her parents and her siblings to tell them, he called all of us brothers and about a dozen friends to tell them his birthday was actually on April 1st, not the 2nd. The next morning, April 1, she called to tell him "Happy Birthday". They laughed some more, and he invited her to come to his house for the party they decided to hold. Dozens of friends and lots of family would be there. She agreed to attend, and everyone had a great time celebrating my brother's birthday on the correct day for the first time. As the party was winding down, Mom asked for everyone to be quiet so she could explain what had happened. She did the fake crying again, "I just didn't want my baby boy thinking he was an "April Fool" his entire life. So we told everybody a lie. And son? There's one more thing I haven't told you that you have to know. She yelled, "APRIL FOOLS! You were born at 8:15 am on April Second!" And that's how my youngest brother got two birthdays, April 1st and April 2nd.

In the long ago, when my office was still in person ( we've been wfh since March 2020), the copy machine technician was working on our copier one afternoon. The next morning we arrived to a printed sign on the wall above the machine announcing that it was now voice activated. It took quite a while before people figured out that the current date was April 1st. And my understanding is that the people whose desks were near the copier (and who had seen the prankster putting up the note) got very little work done trying to stifle their laughter as coworkers tried different phrasing and varying degrees of volume trying to figure out how to voice activate the machine.

I'm a massage therapist. Every April Fool's day, I'll gasp while I'm massaging their foot and say "I never noticed you had six toes!" Gets 'em every time.

I made a ton of photocopies of a paper clip. I then removed the paper clip and loaded the papers back in. Absolutely Everybody kept slapping the glass trying to find the stupid paper clip. It was hilarious and good clean fun.

I saw Spam'alot in a local theater when I was around 19. It was at the scene with the Nights who say Nee. Right after introducing himself, the actor just sounded so defeated, like he'd done it hundreds of times and lost all enthusiasm. He then just says, "I'm sorry guys, I quit. And walks off stage. The other actors just look at each other, not know what to do cause he was pivotal to the scene. Then he walks back on stage and says to the crowd, "APRIL FOOLS!" The amount of shock on the other actors' faces said he did this without telling anyone. It had everyone convinced he quit on the spot.

There was a Google prank where they announced a new feature in Gmail, circa 2006 or so: Gmail would automatically draft responses for you in your own style.

Mid 1990s (it was 1997), at the height of tensions over Quebec independence, an English language radio station in Montreal had the following news report: Quebec's official language commission was extending he law the French be the predominant language on signs to apply to ... **gravestones** in cemeteries. People called in **furious** at the government. And when it was announced that it was a fake report for April's fools, the radio station was bombarded with even more angry calls at them.

I got hold of the company president's stationary and made a full page announcement that our publishing company had been purchased by Beatrice Foods, including transition teams of people that were going to be coming in. I posted it in several key places and sent it through email. It got picked up and even was sent out to the sales force without page 2, which merely stated to note the date of the memo. I ended up pretty scared, but I guess the president had a good sense of humor about it.

I have to credit my son with this one. He picked out the proper colors of Skittles, mixed them in a bowl of M&Ms and set the bowl in the break room at his office.

Someone at my last job put a cup on the break room table with a note that said "DO NOT OPEN. SPIDER INSIDE". If you opened it, you were met with a note that said "April Fools!"

The creator of the YouTube series Fascinating Horror has done several episodes based on fictional movies (the series goes through real life disasters in about 10-12 minutes). He’s done Jurassic Park, Jaws, The Poseidon Adventure, and The Towering Inferno. His content is high quality and it takes me a few minutes to catch on that these are April Fool’s episodes. I get excited when I find a new one.

I’m trusting absolutely no emails from my company today lol.

Its not an April Fools prank but a prank I pulled on my brother. For 5 years I would change the name on his phone every couple of months to whatever he was talking about at the time. He was convinced his phone was listening to him. Everyone knew but him. If he pared it with a speaker the speaker says the name of the phone its connected to. I finally stopped because he was going to medical school and the words got harder to spell or remember. I finally told him.

A Seattle sketch comedy show called Almost Live did a fake news report that the space needle collapsed. It fooled a lot of people. https://youtu.be/zjfvVXLlKLw?si=d0LVB4IT6nJNO-QT

On April 1, 1992, Virginia Beach morning radio DJs Tommy and The Bull reported that a buildup of methane underneath the city landfill, Mt Trashmore (now a park), had reached critical levels and would (probably) explode. City emergency lines were flooded with calls and terrified residents showed up to emergency shelters. Chaos reigned for hours until the station retracted the joke. I believe Tommy and the Bull were both fired.

The legendary BBC Spaghetti Harvest prank: https://youtu.be/tVo_wkxH9dU?si=0MiAW36ZIqKHwAWB

My local newspaper printed a story about prime minister mulroney buying a local historical landmark (the town founder's house), with plans to dismantle it brick by brick and ship it to Montreal, where he planned to live in it. It ran on the front page, with a "continued on page 2" tag. Page 2 is where it was revealed to be a prank. The editor got so many calls that day. He thought it was hilarious

One of my guys zip tied an air horn under my office chair last year. Sat down at like 6am before coffee and about had a heart attack. Whole shop heard it and they had it on video before I even stood back up

Free car fron BMW. Ad in the national newspaper first in to trade in any old car for a free BMW.....  Next Minute.. https://www.listnook.com/r/newzealand/comments/bonzpj/flashback_to_that_time_a_dealership_in_newmarket/

My ex husband said he’d been approved for orders he’d put in for to England, which he definitely had put in for, and I VERY MUCH wanted to happen, and he woke me up with a call saying it was approved and the timeline. I spent four hours researching banking transitions, pet quarantines, electronic adapters, the new base in England etc then he finally called me to ask if I knew what day it was. Never forgave him.

Google announced an email service which would give *1 gigabyte* of email storage for free.  *ONE GIGABYTE!!!* This was at a time where Hotmail and similar free webmail services offered *25mb* as standard. You were constantly clearing stuff out to stay under the cap.  So haha google, very funny joke, that is so rediculous and completely outside the realms of possibility.  And then…

The game Runescape "accidentally leaked" a new skill by adding an anchor icon for the Sailing skill to the hi-scores back in like... 2010 or something. Players never stopped asking for it. It was just added to the Old School version as a real skill a few months ago. 10+ years in the making. All because of a joke.

Taco Bell took out full-page ads in six major U.S. newspapers (including The New York Times) announcing they had purchased the Liberty Bell to help reduce the national debt.

The comments on this NPR story post on social media was pretty awesome. Tons of folks proved the headline was right. It was really the most NPRish prank you could pull. https://www.npr.org/2014/04/01/297690717/why-doesnt-america-read-anymore

Tool posted that they were doing music for Game of Thrones or something like that.

Someone put a slew of burning tires atop a dormant volcano (Mt. Edgecomb, Alaska) and made people think it was going to erupt. [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qqJpWwyFb0)

Dudes made a video for "Helium Infused Beer,"called Heli-Yum. In the video, everyone who drank it talked in a very high voice like they just sucked on a helium ballon. https://youtu.be/3V9QHBgrPNY?si=aZbcnON81OEsy3Mw I worked in a liquor store with a huge craft beer selection and customers came in asking for it.

April Fools fell on a Friday one year. Where I worked at the time, they would put out snacks or candy in the corporate break room on Fridays. I mixed up a big bowl of M&M's and Skittles together, put the bowl in the break room with a bunch of little Dixie cups, and put away the other snacks so it would look like all there was is the candy bowl. Got about 2 dozen people, including the CFO, with that one. Looking back, it's not surprising that I was fired a few weeks later

I was teaching a college class as a new adjunct. I told my students at the beginning of class that I had some bad news, that something had gone wrong in my job paperwork, and I was being let go and the class was being canceled, no refunds or credits given, but I was going to advocate for them because it was not fair to them to lose their money and get no credit. "There's an office that helps with these issues that you need to contact, so please write down this number that I'm going to write on the board." The students were somber and upset and got out their pens, ready to write. Then I wrote "April Fools Day!" on the board and pandemonium broke out. The glorious part of it was that I knew that late students would trickle in one by one. i erased the board and told the students who got fooled the first time, when the next student comes in, let's do the whole thing again. One student comes in late and sits down. I tell them I have bad news. He's full attention on me, but the rest of the students are watching HIM and trying hard not to laugh. We get through it, he is shocked, but everyone else is laughing hysterically. I did the joke four times, with three latecomers. We basically didn't get anything done that class because the students were laughing so hard. It is one of my favorite memories with them.

Lake George Steamboat Company has three boats that do tours/cruises on the lake (spring through the middle of fall). Last year, they announced on Facebook that they were starting a sister company in Vermont to do cruises on Lake Champlain. But since it would take time to build or buy the boats, they were going to take one of their New York boats out of the water and truck it to Vermont to do 22-hour tours of the lake going up to the Canadian border. The comments were loaded with locals who were so upset at the prospect of losing one of the boats here, they didn't realize that most of the plan described in the joke was basically impossible.

Idk about most believable, but they did believe. One april fool's i was out doing karoke. I got the bright idea to set up an arrangement with the DJ to have me, a white dude, to sing WAP, but then to have the DJ change it to Never Gonna Give You Up before the first lyrics came on. So about 3 songs in advance my name and WAP show up on the screen. I go up to get the mic, and these girls were almost begging me to let them go on stage with me to sing it, and i was like "uhh, its not quite what you think" lol. Crowd of a couple hundred went a little wild when it switched over, and i will never beat that level of rick rolling again.

Around 2008 IGN released a movie trailer for a live action Legend of Zelda movie and a lot of people thought it was real. This was before the smartphone era.

An email from the CEO at a small engineering company I used to work at, instituting a business dress code. The 90% of us that rocked jeans and hoodies absolutely got suckered.

Drive time radio show in LA, late 1980’s. They did a whole show on the grand opening of the “Mall of America West” in Orange County. Funniest part was the interview with the owner of a gourmet cheese shop. Cheeses of Nazareth. I was dying. Had me hook, line, and sinker.

Orson Wells "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast back in the early/mid 1900's

Waaaaay back, I was 17 and the radio at work was set to BBC Ulster and I was only half listening to it when I caught something about selling Samson and Goliath to the Americans and there were some very irate callers about how you couldn't just sell off our heritage like that. I don't know how Gerry Anderson kept his voice so natural during that segment because my boss and I were laughing our heads off. Turns out they'd prepped for this the night before by mentioning something on the news about the sale of Samson and Goliath, they're shipbuilding cranes owned by Harland & Wolff, the cover story being that Americans love anything to do with the Titanic so why not the cranes too? You can tell a lot from a voice. Your woman's voice when he reminded her it was 1/4 was almost funnier than the entire rest of the phone call. RIP, Gerry. Not had such a laugh over an April Fools since.

google or msn announced that you could reverse and cancel emails sent out. People thought that was possible somehow

[1985 Sports Illustrated Sidd Finch story](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidd_Finch) It was a masterful piece of hoaxes.

Back in the 90s, Chris Tarrant used to do the breakfast show on Capital FM during the week. 1st April fell on a Saturday one year and Tarrant woke up London saying it was Friday 31st March, did the Friday news and traffic reports, his whole usual show. Loads of folks fell for it - lots of calls into the station saying "I was halfway to work when I realised" I mean, if the guy on the radio is telling you it's Friday, you'd believe them.

One year as my dad was in the garden I told him that there was a bad leak in the kitchen. Under the sink I had place a leek with a drawn on angry face 😠 He was not amused

How about a reverse April Fools Day prank? When I was a teenager decades ago, a few friend and I went out of town for a couple of days. We all lived together at a rental house and only one person in our group stayed behind. We got back on April 1st and when we came home, all the doors and windows were open and our friend wasn't there. In the living room there was a pool of what looked like blood on the floor next to the easy chair he usually sat in and the chair was stained too. Behind the chair on the wall was more but it was splattered and the wall was damaged. We discovered that he had shot himself the day before we got back and the police had already picked up his body, and didn't tape the scene off. They just left an open crime scene for anybody to walk in on. The entire friend group was also investigated to rule out homicide. Police were never held accountable for a botched crime scene and we all became homeless

Back in 2003 there was a radio rumour that Greece was not going to be ready for the Olympic Games in 2004 (popular news story at the time) so they where going to be held in Sydney again. Sucked in a large part of Australia that day.

Near where I used to live was a small airport. Only Cessna planes & helicopters were allowed to land there. The radio station made an announcement that the Space Shuttle was going to land there. Way too big for the airport. Right after the announcement, they said “this is an April fool’s joke, do not believe it.” The highway was backed up for 6 hours from people looking for the shuttle. There was a side road that ran parallel to the highway, so I went there & saw people sitting on their cars & standing in the road looking up. I asked a woman “why are you here?” She said “didn’t you hear? The Space Shuttle’s gonna land here.” I said “didn’t you hear? It’s an April Fool’s joke.” She the. Said “yeah, but you never know.” I gave up & went home.

My grandma saw a news segment about marshmallow crops. Said, well, I never considered where they came from! She told everyone, and obviously found out it was a load of shit lol Since then, other people have fallen victim to the marshmallow fields.  Famously? Me. I cannot visit my dad's family without them crying laughing at the idea of little me spending hours in the car excited to see the field. Then jumping a giant ditch, yes they stayed in the car, running over to the marshmallow field, and the utter look of betrayal when I found out.  I was totally suspicious from the beginning, but again... Had no idea where marshmallows came from! It's been 20 years and it's still my grandma's favorite story to tell.  (It was a cotton field)

Blizzard's pre-burning crusade announcement that the new alliance race would be night elf wisps with a racial ability to self destruct. People lost their shit over that

The Liberty Bell was renamed the [Taco Bell. ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taco_Liberty_Bell)

My friend was a really heavy sleeper as a teenager. While she was asleep, her parents moved ALL of the furniture in her room about an inch or 2 to the right. When she woke up, everything was just...off and she couldn't figure it out

I worked retail for years, from 2007-2012. The chain of department stores I worked for was slowly dying, but it's somehow still hanging on at malls everywhere. Anyway, for weeks leading up to April 1 at some point in the middle of that time block, I started telling my mom that they'd been talking about cutting hours, and that sales were getting bad. Two weeks before, I dropped into conversation that I thought I heard someone talking about layoffs. April 1st, I told her that I worked a full 8 hour shift when I was only working a 4 hour one. I called her when I was off, told her my manager told me to clock out for break and not to bother clocking back in as I was no longer needed and the store was going to be shutting down. I faked a few tears, Mom freaked out, and then I told her what a shame that it happened on April 1st. I don't think I've ever been yelled at that much over the phone since, but to be fair, I had it coming.

The spaghetti harvest in the late 1950s must be way up there.

The BBC’s straight-faced documentary clip about the Italian spaghetti harvest. It was classic dry wit.

My favorite is when I pranked my whole team of 16 employees. The day before April Fools, I came back into the office after everyone left. I bought a huge pack of googly eye stickers and went to EVERYONES cubes and put googly eyes on everyone's photos, calendars, etc. If it had a face on it, there were googly eyes placed on it. I was so proud and excited to come into work the next day. I even did it to my own office to make it seem like it wasn't me. I came into work on April Fools the next morning expecting chaos...but it was quiet. Nobody had noticed. After about 15 minutes though, one of my employees FINALLY noticed it on the face on her wall calendar and I heard her shriek in confusion. Once she said something, my WHOLE department realized what had happened and it was the most fun chaos I had observed! For a few years, people discussed 'The Googly Eyed Bandit', and to this day I don't think anyone knows it was me.

Used to work in IT. Got about 80% of the company with signs on the copiers with instructions for training the new “voice control” modules that were installed on the copiers. The directions included things like spell your full name out loud to the copier, and to repeat everything loudly if it didn’t catch your commands the first time. The last instruction on the sign was to flip it over and read the words printed on the back (“April Fools”) out loud.

I told my Mom that the dog had diarrhea allover the living room and she believed it.

The EGM Sheng Long unlock: https://www.svg.com/287490/the-april-fools-hoax-that-changed-street-fighter-forever/

Ikea offered a scratching post sofa for cats. People were surprised to be told it was a prank

My husband once worked on a landscaping crew with a bunch of pot heads. The kind of potheads that sleep as late as possible and just grab a loaf of bread for their lunch on their way out the door. They're definitely not watching the news before going into work. Anyway, my husband rolls up on April 1st with "did you guys hear? Obama was shot! He's in critical condition right now." Boss comes by, they ask if he's heard. Boss is not a pot head and just looks at them before asking the date.

I loved the ones that ThinkGeek would come up with. Sometimes they even turned into a real item they sold!

My brother took the fuse out of the plug on the washing machine, when mum went to use the machines, it didn’t work. Instead of being a harmless prank it caused a HUGE argument between mum and dad about money and how they couldn’t afford to replace it or have it repaired. My brother sheepishly presented them with the fuse after 5 mins of shouting.

I told my coworkers I was moving to another country via text. There were many goodbyes with well wishes. Then someone said something after several hours "you're not going anywhere!"

Not a prank, but i remember when the Canadian territory of Nunavut was formed. On Apr 1. I thought riiiight, “none of it” lol good one. I was shocked when the story was still in the news days later.

At work a guy brought in truffles his wife made. (She bakes ALL the time.) At least 2 times a month she was sending stuff in. They were unflavored sausage dipped in various chocolate. By the time the day was over, there were like 2 pieces left. Everyone fell for it, including myself.

The Sydney aquarium posted a picture of people with their cats and the aquarium. They were promoting a special day where owners could bring their cats to enjoy the aquarium. I was so excited, I thought of taking my own cat for an outing. Until I remembered the date

Two years ago Courtney and Shane (two members of the YouTube channel Smosh) announced on April fools day that they were married. No one before this even knew they were dating. These were two people who’d been shipped online forever, no one even knew they were in a relationship, and the fanbase surrounding them mostly shipped them as a “it would be cute but we’re not gonna be pushy here” way cause no one wanted to be parasocial and ruin a fun friendship I remember it being three months after and they still had asking people if it was real and their friend went on a podcast to confirm and some people STILL didn’t believe it was real Edit: for clarity the prank is a double prank, they knew people wouldn’t believe it and would think the marriage is the prank but the actual prank is that it WAS real and they are in fact married

Omni magazine had an article on how Artic naked mole rats super heated thier bodies to carve tunnels through the ice.

Someone put a piece of paper that said Push on the Pull doors at school and somehow nobody questioned it and everybody fell for it