Pranks need to be planned out. They are not spontaneous things.

People who do pranks without thinking them through end up with stories like these 16 from AskReddit, which are great for us, but mostly pretty awful for them.

1. Loads

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.

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 melt down. 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.

2. Chip

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 pissed and chip dragged ketchup everywhere.

3. Prank-vert

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 piss, 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.

4. Mom’s Prank as Punishment

When I was in high school I borrowed (without permission) my dad’s car while he was away on business to drive to school. My mom found out and used the second set of keys to take the car back home.

When I came out to find the car gone I started to panic and called my mom confessing everything and saying that the car must have been stolen. Trying to teach me a lesson, she agreed and said I should just go home and wait for her.

I was so devastated thinking that I had ruined my family financially and that my sisters wouldn’t be able to go to college because my family would be broke from something I did (no, I didn’t think about insurance, I was panicking) I ended up going home and taking every pill I could get my hands on trying to kill myself, it was mostly sleeping pills and Tylenol with codeine.

Fortunately when I called my mom to tell her how sorry I was and that she wouldn’t have to worry about me doing something like that any more she figured out what was happening and called the ambulance.

The paramedics arrived just as I passed out and they were able to get me to the hospital and save my life.

It took years before my dad forgave my mother for that prank.

5. Nuts

When I was a little kid, I thought for some reason it would be hilarious to sneak under the table at dinner time and punch my dad straight in the nuts. To this day I vividly remembering grinning and pulling back my fist and letting go with all the velocity of a four year old. My dad proceeded to take me around the corner and give me the second worst spanking of my life. I don’t punch people in the balls anymore.

6. The Roach

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(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 pissed 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 damn, she hit me hard.

Don’t prank your mother…

7. Ore-uh-oh

My wife’s friends “Oreo’d” her car. Basically they open up the Oreo, lick the icing and place the sticky Oreos all over the car.

It was not her car.

8. Superhuman

My girlfriend had recently showered and was standing next to me wrapped in a towel. When I wrap a towel around myself, a slight breeze is usually enough to make it come undone. I grabbed the back of it and attempted to pull it off in one quick motion, like a tablecloth. I did not realize she has some superhuman towel wrapping powers, and she wound up on her ass. she was VERY angry with me for quite a while.

9. Blood Red

When I was 4 in kindergarten, a fellow kindergartner convinced me it would be hilarious if I put an upright crayon on a chair just as someone was sitting down…

That turned out very bad.

Blood was shed.

10. “He doesn’t do that.”

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 try to tell him that I’m in the back. 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.

11. Pickpocket

I met my girlfriend like this. I was 19 and at a music festival, with some friends. One of my friends had a big hand bag, and as a prank after I came back from our tent, I sneaked up behind her and took here phone from her bag, right under her arm. I sneaked off. I planned to return in a few seconds and ask her why she didn’t answer her phone, then watch her panic for a moment for an evil joke. So I did, and she pulled out her phone and checked it.

In a moment of horror I realised I had pickpocketed a stranger. I spent another 5 hours trying to track her down and explain what had happened.

Happy ending though: I proposed two weeks ago; she said yes.

Edit: I will marry the “stranger” not the friend, though she will be there!

12. Bad Call

When I was a teenager my buddy Shawn and I loved to prank call people. We would just say stupid shit and laugh our asses off. We never said anything mean or hurtful. Just dumb shit.

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 shit 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 fucking hits me. I feel my blood drain and I go white. Shawn is like, what the fuck is wrong man? 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 balls to ask if it was them I pranked years ago.

13. Did it really go wrong?

I’m at the age where many of my coworkers 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.

My reaction was this:

No one bothers to ask when I’m getting married anymore.

14. The Abusive Dad Factor

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 stay 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.

15. Corrupt

When I was in high school my dad bought his first Mac (mid 90’s). He was very protective of it. I discovered the joys of ResEdit and made a very official dialog box that popped up at start-up saying his system was corrupt.

I went out that night and completely forgot about it. I return a few hours later and he is pissed off. He spent the entire night troubleshooting his “corrupt” system. He starts yelling at me asking what I did to break his computer. He did not find any humor in my practical joke.

16. VIRUS!!

My boyfriend changed the desktop background on his mom’s laptop to two guys having a peeing contest.

When we talked to her later in the day, she had destroyed her computer trying to change it back. It wouldn’t even turn on. We guess that she downloaded a program to change it, and it was one of those “Oh, you’re too stupid to change your desktop background? VIRUS!!” kind of things. She claims she has no idea what happened.

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