1) The Panorama (British news show) segment on Italian spaghetti groves (yes groves, as in trees, where the fresh spaghetti is harvested ripe off the branch).

2) The Energizer Bunny ads. You know which ones.

3) In the same vein, Tiny House.

4) When Alex Trebek and Pat Sajak switched syndicated game show hosting duties.

Yours?

How about when South Park promised to reveal who was Cartman's father? On the night that it was supposed to happen, fan saw the words, "April Fool", and gave us Terrence and Philip's movie "Not without My Anus" instead. It forced the real premiere to be moved up a few weeks.

Really?! They did that? When?

Any Seattle fans out there? Remember Almost Live! a few years back? (a talent-packed customized Seattle version of Saturday Night Live all you nonlocals).

April Fools Day once, they put a breaking news sketch on announcing that the Space Needle had toppled over.
Despite the fact that NO other channel had news crews on scene or was covering the event at all, despite the fact that their film footage showed the Space Needle laid neatly on its side down a street with no damage whatsover to it or surrounding buildings, people actually bought it!
Viewers freaked out, producers had to apologize, etc. I think (hope) most were intelligent enough to figure it out especially with the timing on April 1, but the idiots who didn't were even funnier than the actual sketch.

A lot of people think the famous H.G. Wells War of the Worlds Martian invasion was a prank, but it wasn't.
Another popular radio show that aired at the same time, had technical difficulties. Everyone changed their station and came upon the War of the Worlds broadcast right at the most inopportune time.
Can't blame them a bit, especially for that time period, but it's still classic and funny.

When Cartoon Network ran that same damn Screwy Squirrel cartoon over and over.

The best TV April Fools Day Prank ever.

I don't think that's quite right. It wasn't "technical difficulties" but a commercial break that made thousands of listeners switch from the other station to Well's broadcast just as the "news reporter" was describing the astounding sight of giant machines coming up out of the ground & attacking people, only to have the "report" then abruptly cut off, followed by 15 seconds of silence. And Orson Wells knew *exactly* what he was doing. He was media-savy to a degree unheard of in that era, and he knew that the first half of his Mercury Radio Theatre program always had much fewer listeners than the second half because the first half was up against the highest rated show of the day, Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy (exactly how they measured ratings back then, and how a ventriloquist act managed to be the most popular show on *radio*, are two things I've never been able to quite figure out). Wells also surmised that, since so many "Charlie McCarthy" listeners tuned to his show once "Charlie McCarthy" was over, that many of them were probably tuning in during the commercial breaks for a quick look (well..., listen) as well, so he very deliberately timed the dramatic moment of the realistic-sounding "news report" suddenly being cut off with 15 seconds of silence to coincide with the first major commercial break of "Edger Bergen & Charlie McCarthy".

So even though there actually were several warnings during the broadcast that what listeners were hearing was fictional (all of them coming while the other station was *not* in commercial break), and the second half of the story was not even presented as a fake news report but rather in the form of a conventional radio play, I still think it has to count as a deliberate, pre-meditated "prank" by Wells.

All this week on Countdown with Keith Olbermen, they've been playing a short, blurry video clip over & over that they found on the "internets" (as Keith calls it for some reason), reportedly of Italian Prime Minister (or something) Berlisconi walking from a building to his limousine and on the way doing something extremely rude, offensive, and hilarious to a meter maid minding her own business. All week long they made certain to mention that they "could not independently verify" that this was the Italian prime minister, in fact they said it so often that it started to seem downright suspicious, then finally on Friday they "sheepishly" admitted that they had just now "discovered" that the clip *is* a fake, it's a scene from a fictional German Mockumentary about Berlisconi featuring a Berlisconi look-alike. Olbermen insists that they really didn't know for certain until Friday that the clip wasn't real, but with an almost literal wink and a nod. Left unanswered in all this is what, exactly, the Germans are doing making scathing, misleadingly realistic, slanderous Mockumentaries about the Italian heads of state up for re-election, and then allowing attributed clips of to show up on the Internets, in what seems to be a deliberate effort designed to turn him into such a laughingstock that he's driven from office. If you ask me, the Germans are definitely up to no good again.

I just found out today about the fakenicity of the Berlusconi clip. Here's the IMDb link. Keith Olbermann has really been teasing this all week? Savvy!

As far as I know, the clips were meant for promotion of the movie but then were never used as such. The company explained last week (?) they didn't know how they showed up online.

Also, in my opinion, you can never make enough fun of Berlusconi.

I'm going to go with the "Who can put on the best concert" and the "Who can stay up the longest" episode of Kenny vs Spenny. Having a choir full of children sing a purposefully sacchrine song? Driving around the Ontarion Science Centre in electric wheelchair? Being tricked into running up the CN Tower.

Pure gold.

Tiny House was awesome. I still want to see Tiny House. The voiceover was perfect.

... (upthread just around the corner for the rest)

Whoops - thanks for setting me (us) straight!


When did this happen? Is there footage anywhere on here? How did contestants react?

Oh, I loved that. Especially the tricks to stay upright while sleeping and the itching powder on the carpet and the overload of righteous indignation. Only episode of that show I ever caught, but I was doubled over laughing.

Years ago - sometime in the late 80s - the Irish Nat'l broadcaster RTE put out a news bulletin that one of the two people in the "big couple" - think Luke & Laura from General Hospital - on Glenroe (a rural-based soap opera) would be leaving because he or she - I forget which half of the pair it was meant to be, Miley or Biddy - wasn't comfortable with the upcoming nude scene that they had to shoot. A large portion of the country bought it and many letters were written.

What really made the "Who is Cartman's father?" thing work is that, before the actual joke, viewers had been waiting an entire month as per the announcement "Find out on the next South Park in just four weeks" and Cartman's "What? Son of a bitch!"

The cast from The Office spoofed those NBC "The More You Know" blurbs hilariously last week. The one about the brown bears and the black bears had Mr. Boogalo doing a double take.

For the two of you that asked, Alex Trebek and Pat Sajak switched hosting duties on April Fool's Day 1997. Here is a link to the Jeopardy Archive listing of the boards for that rather unique game: http://www.j-archive.com/showgame.php?game_id=226

I have to go with one that I actually fell for.

When the X Files episode "War of the Corprophages (SP?)" first aired, my brother and I were watching intently with all the lights in the house off (as you do when watching X Files). During one of the scenes, a cockroach ran across the screen and seemed to disapear toward the back of the tv. We both flipped out and spent the commercial break looking for that damn thing armed with a shoe and a Tv Guide.

We never found it and it freaked me out to go to bed that night knowing that there was a huge bug running around our house. The next week I was reading the tv guide and there was an article stating that the bug was on the show as a prank on the viewers. We felt kind of dumb, but good one!!!!

I loved this one too. I wasn't a devoted South Park viewer, but I ended up watching this (and not to find out who Cartman's father was). I cracked up during the entire episode.

Later, when I found out what regular viewers expected, and what they were pissed about, my attitude was "So what? What they did show was damned funny."

For once in my life, I'm grateful that the TV I was watching X-Files on was crap. Simply couldn't tell the difference. I didn't even find out about that prank until long after the show was over. I may be the only person who watched that episode and missed it.

There used to be an Orkin ad that started with a woman bathing, as though it were an ad for soap. Then, a couple of roaches crawled across the screen and an Orkin man leaned in and sprayed them.

I was watching tv with friends, lights off, when that happened. I must've sprinted to the other side of the room.

I loved this one! I had heard that several viewers called to ask where they could buy their own spaghetti tree.

I was really young when I saw this so I just accepted it without question. I later found out how you made pasta but I just figured some was made and some was grown.
I love the roach commercial!

Maybe it's due to my extreme hatred of Sex and The City, but the My Boys ep "Douchebag In The City" mocks it mercilessly and makes me just heart My Boys so much more. My personal favorite is the mocking of Kim Catrall's "I'm such a sexy cougar rowr!" bit.

Ack. Double post.

Scrubs ran a spot on ABC for their new season that I love but I've only seen once. Zach Braff says something everything being set to a song by The Fray which is followed by a brief musical build-up and then John C. McGinley beating the crap out of an acoustic guitar. I love any show that mocks Grey's Anatomy. I especially love that it was done by another medical show on ABC.

cacophony, what makes it sweeter is that the Scrubs episode using that song (My Lunch) was about 1000 times better - better writing, better acting, and used to better effect - than the crappy grey's anatomy eppy, but since GA was the New Hot Thing at the time they stole the thunder from the always-superior Scrubs.
I think the Scrubs gang had been wanting to get that dig in for a while, and I'm so glad they did.
Also reminded me of another dig at GA in a previous Scrubs episode (paraphrasing):
"Grey's Anatomy, I love that show! It's like someone is watching our lives and then taping it."