Many of us have likely witnessed a prank in action or perhaps planned one at some point in our lives. They’re supposed to be harmless, like taping off someone’s mouse sensor or replacing family photos with those of Danny DeVito. However, sometimes, even with the best intentions, jokes go south. And in extreme cases, it can threaten the well-being of others.
Recently, the AskReddit community was discussing exactly that - practical jokes that went horribly wrong and almost ended in tragedy. From lighting hairspray to swerving cars, these stories now serve as cautionary tales for anyone who might think of pulling one.
#1
99% of tiktok/social media challenges/pranks. Just the other day I saw some kids climbing up a construction crane and filming themselves. I suppose that that is not really a prank but a few months ago, I heard about senior students in high school who thought it would be funny to criss-cross the hallway of toddlers with fishing line for them to trip over and film.
Call me a boomer (I'm not) but social media really brings out the worst in human group behavior.
244points
#2
Few years ago 2 guys went to a pub. They got drunk. There was a random guy who fell asleep on the patio of the place sitting in his chair.
The 2 men decided they gonna prank him and tie him to the chair with tapes. They asked the bartender girl for tapes and tied him.
This was close to closing time and they decided to leave him there for the night, cuz how funny it'll be when he wakes up taped to the chair in an empty bar. The bartender girl was fully in. So she closed the place and they left him there.
This was in November and the man froze to death at night. It was clear he woke up and tried to break himself free, so he didn't freeze to death in his sleep. He froze to death while being completely concious and awake.
All 3 were sentenced.
The 2 men decided they gonna prank him and tie him to the chair with tapes. They asked the bartender girl for tapes and tied him.
This was close to closing time and they decided to leave him there for the night, cuz how funny it'll be when he wakes up taped to the chair in an empty bar. The bartender girl was fully in. So she closed the place and they left him there.
This was in November and the man froze to death at night. It was clear he woke up and tried to break himself free, so he didn't freeze to death in his sleep. He froze to death while being completely concious and awake.
All 3 were sentenced.
228points
#3
So a group of the big beefy football jocks grabbed the dweeby nerdy kid under his arms and escorted him, against his will, to the rear of the football field / track / stadium. There was a drainage cistern there, covered by a heavy grate, built as a catchment for the water running off the sports complex. It was normally dry unless it was raining.
It was nicely dry when they dumped the dweeby kid in the hole and let the grate fall, trapping him there. Well, it was just a prank, just a joke, but they failed to tell him that they intended to return at the end of the day to let him out. Meanwhile the dweeby nerdy kid had a big exam he'd been studying for and he didn't want to miss the class. So after the beefy dudes left him there in the hole, he tried to climb out on his own.
The grate was too heavy for him to lift from below. It fell on him, breaking his neck.
It was the scandal of my high school career and the beefy dudes, though kicked off the football team, expelled from school, and brought before court, never served any time for this accidental murder.
That was in 1971; the dead kid would be retired by now had he lived through the prank, and he probably would have had a stellar intellectual career.
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161points
Folklorist Moira Marsh, author of the book "Practically Joking," believes that pranking appeals to people because it requires a good deal of creativity. "They take planning. They take knowledge of a situation, knowledge of the person you're targeting. Sometimes the planning is extremely elaborate."
Since harmless practical jokes often result in laughter, it adds even more fun to it. "It's important, psychologically, to have time for play," Marsh explains.
#4
I was in grade 1 if we had to use the washroom we had to go in pairs teachers rules. Some girl from a much older grade thought she'd prank her friend by "hanging" herself in a bathroom stall. She slipped off the toilet when we came in. Opened the door and saw her struggling. My friend grabbed her legs and tried to hold her up to keep her from choking to death while I ran to find my teacher. I remember running out of the bathroom down the hall, and seeing kids lined up peering into the windows. I don't know how many were in on it. The girl was helped by the teacher. The girl was not injured seriously but it must have been traumatic for me because I would wake up middle of the night screaming. I remember my mom visiting the girls home and losing it on the girls father a few days later. The nightmares continued for years afterwards.
147points
#5
A friend of mine's dad once decided to jump out of an empty wardrobe and scare his wife when they were house shopping. He didn't see a downward facing hook at the back of the wardrobe and when he jumped up to leap out he caught his back on the hook and ripped his skin open. They had to go to A&E to get stitches and the police showed up as the doctors were concerned it was a stab wound. So he had to explain to the police how he had f****d up a simple prank so badly he had basically stabbed himself in the back.
133points
#6
Decades ago, a neighbour's brother was getting married and went out for his stag night with his friends. There was a tradition at the time of getting the stag really drunk and then doing something like stripping them, tying them to a lamp post and throwing flour/sugar/eggs/paint at them and leaving them like that for hours. The stag was absolutely terrified of this and was waiting for it to happen the whole night long. When they finally made a move to grab him he started to run. They gave chase. He ran into a chip shop, drunkenly leapt the counter, and fell right into a vat of boiling oil. The wedding had to be postponed, and he eventually got married on day release from hospital whilst covered in bandages. He required skin grafts and was left with permanent scarring and disabilities.
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117points
Another motivation is the opportunity to have the upper hand over someone who normally has more social power. "If you are a younger person, you have license to play jokes on your teachers, your elders, your parents," Marsh explained. "You have the added thrill of a temporary role reversal or temporary power inversion. For a kid to be able to, for a little while, get the upper hand over an adult, it flips the usual relationship. It flips the usual power dynamic. That's thrilling and enjoyable."
However, Jonathan Wynn, a sociology professor, notes that if the prankster has more social power or privilege over their "victim," like a parent pranking a child or a group of students “pranking” a transgender student, then this should cause some concerns. A good prank should be shared, not targeted at one “inferior” person.
#7
I was in my senior year of college. Some guy threw a grad party at one of his parents houses. I ended up going, cause why not?
Three guys who were wasted as f**k had this idea to shoot Roman candles at one their buddies who was coming out of the poolside bathrooms. It was two bathrooms attached to a small closet with pool chemicals and the door happened to be ajar.
One of the rounds went right into the closet and started a fire while there was a girl passed out drunk in the next stall. Everyone freaked out and called the cops, but nobody knew the girl was passed out.
Luckily, she survived with minor burns, but the guy's parents got sued. The girl was only 19 and had half her arm burned and a lot of her hair singed off.
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111points
#8
Don't push someone head into a cake "randomly". By randomly I'm saying without knowing anything about the cake. Sometimes to make big cake pastry chief put big wood pointy thing in it so the cake doesn't fall.
It can be VERY messy.
Just assume every cake have theses in it.
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111points
#9
A kid at school whose dad flicked a towel in his face. It got his eye really bad and he had permanent damage. The kid was an up and comer in the local tennis league as well. Really sad.
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106points
One of the most common ways pranks go wrong is when they physically harm another individual. Therefore, knowing when it's a good idea to refrain from pulling one might be necessary. Psychologist Dr. Ronnie Siddique suggests asking these questions before carrying out a practical joke:
- Has the target of the prank stated they want this behavior to stop, or have they shown previous distress with any pranks?
- Is the target of the prank a vulnerable person, such as a child, an individual with a mental disorder, or a person with disabilities?
- Could this prank in any way cause harm to a person, either psychologically, physically, or both?
If the answer is yes to any of these questions (or perhaps all of them), it’s best to stop in your tracks and reevaluate your joke.
#10
I was at a swimming pool with friends as a kid maybe 10 or 12 years old. We were in the deep end, and diving down to 12ft, picking up coins off the bottom of the pool. I was coming up from the bottom, and one of the kids thought it would be funny to hold me head underwater with his foot. I gasped as I broke the water, then got shoved back down and inhaled a s**tload of water, and panicked, and two other kids had to drag me out of the water onto the concrete where I coughed and vomited for what felt like 10 minutes.
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106points
#11
Dumb neighbor kid thought it was a good prank to hide behind parked cars along the side of the road and jump out at approaching cars.... Didn't get hit because the first car was driving very slowly and the owner got pissed enough that he never dared to do it again.
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99points
#12
Medical student graduated. They tied him naked to the bridge. Died of exposure.
98points
#13
My great grandfather got his chair pulled out from under him by his best friend at work on April Fool's Day. My great grandfather broke his neck and died, his friend never forgave himself.
We never celebrated April Fools at my house, and everyone always thought it a prank when I explained...
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98points
#14
When I was younger my mom was out on a walk with her friends and my dad thought it would be funny to pelt them with water balloons when they came around the corner. As soon as they rounded the bend, we ran out with our water balloons and my dad tripped and fell and broke his foot, his leg, and his arm.
90points
#15
Compressed air up the butt. Destroys the gut and ends lives...saw a few of those and people never learn.
90points
#16
Recently my coworker pranked my friend and I by removing the wheels on our desk chairs. Unfortunately she removed two wheels right beside each other and thought we would notice before sitting down. Then she had this crazy elaborate scavenger hunt for us that ended with us finding our wheels in jello at the end like something out of the office. It was an amazing prank on paper but I had been having a rough morning when I got to work and didn’t notice and just sat right down…suffice to say I fell right backwards off the chair and hit my head on the ground. Luckily it wasn’t bad and I just got a bit of a bump, but that certainly changed the pranking dynamics in the office.
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89points
#17
When I was young I went to a friends house for a sleepover where they had a prank planned. They dressed up in creepy clothing and makeup, and one of the girls (we didn’t get along) had a real knife and was planning to slam me against the wall and hold it up to my neck when I came downstairs. Luckily one of the girls got scared before I got there and ran upstairs to tell me what was about to unfold before I went downstairs. She was so scared she asked me when I went down there to ‘play along’. Wasn’t going to take that f*****g chance. I think I dodged something that would have gone VERY wrong.
86points
#18
Dumb kid thought it was a funny idea to push his friend from a sidewalk towards my car.
Good thing i was driving slowly so i was able to stop in time.
Since that day i'm always afraid someone is going to push a person under my car, when i drive near sidewalk with people on it.
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86points
#19
My buddy thought it would be funny to swerve his car towards the ditch and turn away at the last second. We wound up going into the ditch, slamming into a culvert, and flipping end over end. There's still debate amongst a few people whether he meant to do it or not. Apparently he was the butt of a lot of jokes and I just hadn't been around the group of people long enough to understand how deep it went. So, maybe a prank gone wrong, maybe attempted crime. I have no idea.
84points
#20
The guy who tried to jumpscare his family at the Grand Canyon and instead slipped and fell to his death.
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83points