If laughter is the universal language and creativity knows no boundaries, then harmless pranks are definitely the best of both worlds! And if you were planning for a fun prank or two, then the ones mentioned in this enthralling Reddit thread will be exactly what you’re looking for. And if not, you’ll at least have an entertaining minute reading them - that’s for sure.
Now, once we started digging around in this awesome AskReddit thread, we uncovered some very profound truths - the very best pranks were the ones that had the factor of the unexpected nailed perfectly yet left the receiver in tears of joy rather than tears of any other kind. Sure, such funny, harmless pranks do require a bit of unconventional thinking, but that’s just an added bonus of an added brain-xercise. However, if you’ve overexercised in that department, there’s definitely no harm in borrowing some of these cool pranks and adapting them to your own circumstances, whatever they might be!
Oh, and one more thing - because these good pranks come straight from a Reddit thread and have been tried and tested by actual people, you can rest assured they’re very effective and truly funny! So, scroll on down below, check out the funny pranks, and give your vote to the best ones. Lastly, don’t share this list with the person you’re trying to trick!
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wino4eva said:
"Hard boil their eggs and put them in back in the box secretly."
irsic replied:
"This actually happened to me once, but at a store. Was buying eggs from a local mart to bake a cake. Later, went to crack open the eggs only to find all the eggs had been hardboiled.
Returned to the store immediately, showed the cashiers and they both just looked at each others and exclaim, 'F*ckin' Mike.'"
terriblueberry said:
"I have placed 9 lollipops in various places of a colleagues cubical and numbered them 1-10 obviously skipping a number. Drives them crazy not being able to find the last one."
TedioreTwo replied:
"Prompt said 'harmless,' not psychological torture."
"Two of my high school teachers were in a prank war. This was my favorite prank they did:
Hide walkie talkie. My teacher hid his on top of the ceiling tile above the other teacher's desk.
Periodically meow into walkie talkie."
YourBelovedCountOlaf said:
"Duck tape a few harmonicas to the bottom of the front of their car. The more the better. They will hear a strange noise while driving. It may take them a while to notice, but it's one of those subtle things that can make a person thing they're going crazy."
bananathudnutspow replied:
"You just invented the car-monica."
“If there is something new (example: coffee machine, printer) Put a sticker on there that says ‘Voice Activated’ and the company’s logo, prepare to watch people talk to a machine and have it do nothing.”
Ineedzthetube said:
"My three year old 'found' my car keys three days in a row. Unbeknownst to me she was hiding the keys, so she could be the hero. I was pranked by a toddler."
LilGoughy replied:
"Not only pranked, but outsmarted.
That toddler is going places."
heeero said:
"Empty a bunch of tylenol capsules. Fill with kool-aid and place them in the shower head. When they shower, the capsules will dissolve and stage 1 will be complete."
WillchairJimmy replied:
"Whoa, great idea. Would this work with alca-seltzer tablets, making a foamy terror-shower??"
Rushrofl replied:
"Alca-seltzer and kool aid."
Commenter replied:
"Calm down, Satan."
"One of my favs from college. (house of 4 guys) three of us waited until the 4th fell asleep. About 15 mins later we bust open his door and run into his room shouting things like 'DUDE WAKE UP', 'OH MY GOD ITS HAPPENING' 'QUICK (name) YOU HAVE TO WAKE UP LETS GO LETS GO LETS GO'. All while we are handing him random objects such as a stapler, cheese, notebooks etc. We got him about 30 feet outside until he realized what he had in his hands and that we were laughing."
My friends and I convinced one of the little brothers it was morning and breakfast was ready, we had shut all the blinds and he made it all the way downstairs and into the kitchen. It was 2am :)
“Tape on the bottom of a computer mouse. Or... take a screenshot of your friend’s desktop, then make that their background. Create a new folder and place all the desktop icons in it. They will click around on all the pictures of the icons and have no idea why they aren’t working.”
In the old days I took the ball from the mouse and hid it.. really immature 😛
"I used to live in a college dorm with 5 other girls. All of our bedroom doors opened inward, facing each other in a hexagonal shape. I took skipping rope and tied each door handle to its opposite-facing neighbour. Stood in the middle of my 6-point masterpiece and started blaring 'Never Gonna Give You Up'. Loudly. Maniacal shenanigans ensued."
demontague said:
"If your sink has one of those handheld gadgets that sprays when you turn the faucet on, just stick a rubber band around that thing and wait. When they go to get a drink of water all unexpectedly they'll suddenly get sprayed. No stains, very little mess, preparation time: roughly 10 seconds."
apapachie replied:
"My older brother tried to do this, ended up forgetting about it and spraying himself."
cornshartz said:
"When you finish a jar of mayonnaise, rinse it out as best as you can and fill it with vanilla pudding. Bring it to a public setting like a park or a library, and just eat it with a spoon."
canibalbarca replied:
"One of my friends is a librarian, and I did this once when I went and had lunch with him. His co workers looked at me like I was committing a war crime... I have never seen people look so genuinely upset at something."
I wonder if you can buy like, an unfilled tube for paint and fill it with that gooey sour squeeze candy.
“There was that one on here a few years ago where the guy kept a hidden bottle of ketchup and would refill the empty bottle just enough to have ketchup for the next day until his wife thought they had a magic ketchup bottle.”
trim_dougherty said:
"My wife put Orajel in the bristles of my toothbrush. Didn't notice until my entire mouth was completely numb.
I knew I picked a good one."
beanieb replied:
"Did this to my sister. Hilarity ensued. She couldn't talk right for a good 20 minutes, which made it even better when she tried to tattle on me."
"I had a full beard and needed a change. Went upstairs and cut off an inch, then back to watching TV with family and hanging out.. Cut off another inch ever 20 minutes. Many hours later, I can down with just a Charlie Chaplin and my daughter was like... 'dad, what the heck happened to your face'....lol"
"Before my wife and I started dating I put googly eyes on EVERYTHING in her fridge."
"Tell him you've switched the contacts in his phone around, but don't actually do it."
“Set their text tone to a camera sound, and text them while they’re in a public restroom.”
"Stick a small helium balloon in the toilet and close the lid. When it opens the balloon will float out and startle them, could even draw a face. Don't let it get wet."
"My family has a portrait of an ancestor of ours that was painted by a fairly famous painter hanging up in their dining room. So I found an electronic copy of the painting online and did some quick photoshopping to switch his face with my own. I got the edited painting printed at Staples and replace the original one night. Then I just sat back and waited till someone noticed."
"Leaving pennies random places they will come across. Start with something simple like one or two on their desk then branch slowly putting more and more of them everywhere they go. This works best if you live with them but it is still possible otherwise too. The key is to never let them see you with the pennies."
"Buddy's sister posted his cell number on Yahoo Answers under the question: 'What is Justin Bieber's phone number?'. She then made 10 to 15 additional accounts to validate her 'answer'. Over a year later and he is still receiving calls for the Biebes."
"Tell them you have set up a prank that'll surprise them when they least expect it.
There is no prank.
They'll go insane."
"Put a large zucchini in somebody’s mailbox. Somebody did this to me years ago, I never found out who, and I still think about it all the time."
Put a Belgian waffle under a wiper blade in restaurant parking lot. 1978. Wondered ever since what the owner thought when he found it.
“I used to take spoons from the cafeteria and slip them into people’s pockets throughout the day. I once got 5 In the same pocket.”
“Take all the labels off of all of the canned food in their house. You wanted peas? Too bad, it’s ravioli.”
"Re-lace their shoes from the tongue down, with the aglets at the bottom."
"I am way late to this party but I must share the greatest prank I have ever pulled. Bear with me as there is quite a bit of set up. A friend of mine, who was a visual arts student, and I took sheets of newspaper and glued them as a single piece over the door frame of a friends dorm room. We did this for three nights in a row on days we were sure she was asleep in the room. It's important to note that the door opened inwards. The reason we did this was to cause her to become comfortable with just ripping it down without thinking about it. Now the actual prank was done on the fourth night. We did exactly the same thing with newspaper completely covering her door, however this time there was a surprise on the other side. On the outside of the newspaper we glued a bed sheet to the door frame as well. We only attached it on three sides in the shape of a U. The glory of the prank is that we then poured about 50 liters of styrofoam packing peanuts in between the sheet and newspaper. When she woke up that morning she assumed we were just being unoriginal idiots again and tore down the paper causing an avalanche of packing peanuts to fill her room. It was glorious."
Commenter said:
"Zip-tie everything together. Clothes zip-tied to hangers, drawers zip-tied shut.
Lastly, zip-tie the scissor handle and leave it in the middle of the room."
TheKermode replied:
"It was all fun and games until you zip tie the scissors..."
Commenter said:
"'100 dollars to best Chewbacca impression' and their phone number on craiglist."
Daswooshie46 replied:
"Just looked on Craigslist and there's a bunch of these posted now."
"Move everything in the office except the stapler one inch to the left. The target will have a funny feeling that the stapler is out of place. If you're really feeling crazy you could try 1.5 inches."
"Best pulled on roommates:
Step1: unscrew shower head and put chicken bullion cubes into said shower head.
Step2: put shower head back in place
Step3: Laugh to yourself when roommate gets out of shower and wonders why he is sticky and smells like chicken soup."
"Have you and a couple of friends go up to a random person, not all at once, maybe 30 seconds apart from each other, and say things like 'Wake up!', and 'You know you're dreaming, right'. To top it off, have someone ride past on their bike wearing a banana costume."
I wouldn't call it a "harmless prank", if the person was psychotic or schizophrenic, it could lead to some pretty serious consequences.
“When u have a group of people over and 2 that don’t know each other, tell each one separately that the other is hard of hearing and u have to speak loud when talking to them... U end up with the 2 yell talking to each other.”
"Hide a picture of yourself behind every cabinet door, even the furniture doors. Replace your picture in some of the framed picture. Put your picture behind the medicine cabinet door, closet doors, just anywhere like that. Under the dining room table is good to. And the sun visor in a car.
Took my sister 6 months to get every last one I left her. We still laugh about it."
my brother and i hid little pieces of paper all over our house and i still find them sometimes. we hid them over a year ago...
“Make a bowl of cereal and put it in the freezer overnight, with the spoon submerged in the milk. Offer the person breakfast in bed and laugh at them as the entire bowl lifts up with the spoon.”
Then put the person who froze your cereal in the freezer submerged in milk overnight.
“I have a couple that we’ve done to rude customers. Ship them a bag of glitter. Place pictures of Nicholas Cage everywhere.”
“Rearrange his drawers. Works best when the drawers can be easily pulled out and put back in. I’ve been doing it to a buddy of mine for awhile. Harmless and only mildly annoying.”
"Put bubble wrap under their desk chair. All those pops going off at once unexpectedly is surprisingly scary. I know because I accidentally did this to myself."
"Put yellow food coloring in the toilet tank so they think something is wrong with the toilet flushing."
"Leave many plastic flamingos in their yard. Bonus if it’s in a HOA type neighborhood. I think there’s a prank company that actually does that for you for a fee or provides the plastic flamingos."
“If they aren’t a touch-typer, switch the ‘m’ and ‘n’ keys on their keyboard.”
NotTMNT said:
"You know those dinosaurs that grow when you leave them in water? Put that in the toilet."
LouisianaBob replied:
"Sounds like someone would eventually flush it and then it would wreck the pipes."
bro i almost got grounded bc of those, my mom thought they were dr**s. so i just said 'put them in water'.
"Instead of making Caramel apples, make caramel onions. Pass them out as a treat."
"My cousin installed a remote access program on his sister in law's computer after she took it to him to "make it faster" for about the millionth time. He waited for her to listen to music with it in the next room (they lived together) and started turning the volume down little by little each time she would exit the room. Being computer illiterate she would only turn the volume up with the knob on her speakers, so once he was sure she had maxed out the volume of her speakers he maxed the volume on her computer and almost ruined them. Her reaction was priceless. She's still convinced that it was a virus."
"The ol’ ridiculous magazine subscription prank.
It’s not a free prank, but it’s worth it."
“I told my brother that I hid six diapers in his room only one was dirty. I only hid five clean ones. After about a week he called almost in tears demanding to know where the dirty diaper was.”
threegigs said:
"Draw something on their front or back car window with Rain-x. If there's frost or dew, it looks different where the rain-x was applied, otherwise you can't tell it's there. They'll wash and wipe and clean, but enough sticks around that even after washing, you can still see the effects the next time there's condensation on the window.
Only way to get rid of it is to put rain-x on the whole window, but if they don't realize what you did, they'll never know how to fix it."
GlowWolf replied:
"Rain-x would be good for creepy messages on bathroom mirrors as well."
independent_hustler said:
"Crazy glue quarters to the laundry room floor."
3z3ki3l replied:
"Or an elevator wall/floor. The wall is funny, 'cause people will try and pry it off, when it is clearly glued to the wall. They have nothing better to do, and nobody spends enough time in an elevator to truly worry about it. They will, however, consistently try to remove said coin, figure it is no big deal, and continue on their merry way. It is astounding how long it will last there."
Messing with other people's property is against the law. If they ever figure out who did it, that is. And on a floor could be a trip hazard if the toe of the shoe hit it just right.
"Glitter in the pockets of all their jeans. Its like a pretty herpes every time they pull something out of their pockets. It takes forever to go away.
Take those little holes from a hole puncher and put them on top of the ceiling fan blades. Wait for victim to turn on ceiling fan. Instant snow."
Glitter NEVER goes away. It's worse than Easter grass and Christmas tinsel combined.
"This is what I did in college:
So my good friends all had a house together (5 guys). Well, like the typical college house, they were dirty and left their clothes and shoes everywhere. Oh, and they never locked their front door. EVER.
One day, my roommate and I went there at night when they were out. Spent about an hour stealing all their shoes. But only the left one. Later we came back in the middle of the night, we stole the left shoe of what they wore earlier.
So, the next morning they start to leave for class. But they don't have shoes. This is where stealing all of the same foot is key. In a pinch you can wear mismatched shoes, no biggie. But, not when they are all the same shoes. So they couldn't go to class.
I didn't mention, this was in the first two weeks of the quarter."
“Funniest prank I’ve ever seen was when I worked at a summer camp. We got a hold of a fellow counselor’s keys, and a buddy who was good with cars crossed the wire to the brake lights with the wire to the horn. Any time the driver even remotely tapped the breaks, the horn would blast.”
"Do this with your friends at a fast food place, when they go to the bathroom or leave the table for a bit: Cut the corner of a ketchup packet just big enough for the straw. Then take the straw and lid off their cup and put the ketchup packet on the end and put it back in the cup. Then sit back and watch the look on their face when they take their next drink."
"Put clear nail polish on a bar of soap so that it won't lather up at all."
"If he uses a white stick type deodorant, spread a thin layer of cream cheese over the top of it and wait for him to use it. He will sweat through out the day and begin to smell like sweaty cheese."
“Get gummy worms without the sugar sprinkled on the outside and put salt on it.”
“If you have access to their computer, change their resolution to one pixel short vertically and horizontally, i.e. 1919x1079 looks fuzzy, but still good enough to know that it is at the correct resolution.”
Commenter said:
"Whenever I'm asked what someone's name is, I purposely give the wrong name."
anunkneemouse replied:
"Dude that's genius. The awkward embarrassment as they go talk to them after would please my soul."
“Rearrange all the apps in their phone.”
"Change a few words used often in texting in the prankees phone to something else (probably to potato, for example). Sit back and watch the frustration build. Have done it, works well."
What the towel I will get you if it takes my whole lightbulb
“My Dad used to carpool with a guy who bought a new car and bragged continually about the gas mileage he was getting. So my Dad would sneak over at night and put half a gallon of gas in the tank every night for a month. Dad would just smile as this guy was getting 70 miles to the gallon. Then for the month after that, he took out half a gallon. Epic.”
"A year ago we dumped 2 giant bags of glitter all over my friend's car. He still shows up places with glitter on him."
“Putting ketchup packets under a toilet seat.”
"Well there's always the classic 'throw a mattress in his pool'. I hear it takes a crane to get out."
"Attach a speaker or boombox (something that can play music or audio) to a RC car. Put the car in their vent above their room and start playing (blasting) music. Move the car around so that they cannot track where the sound is coming from."
"Lightly spray water on the carpet and then sprinkle water-cress seeds on it. Those things will grow anywhere!
Preferably do it when the person is away for a few days, by the time they come back they will have a mini garden patch growing on their carpet."
"Put really long zip ties on their CV axle.
Put extra wheel weights on their rims.
Leave a 'Sorry I damaged your car' note.
I think of others here soon."
"Wrapping everything in someone's room with Aluminium foil. Floor. Ceiling. Bed. Desk. Pictures. Toiletries. Individual pencils. EVERYTHING.
Time-consuming but so worth it."
Just don't wrap the computer. It will overheat and will end up getting destroyed.
“Hire an acting student he doesn’t know to pretend she’s pregnant with his baby and confront him very loudly and in public.”
Some of the early ones were amusing. Many of the later ones are just plain mean.
I got to the tenth one and was crying with laughter, literally. The rest? Not so much 🫤
Load More Replies...Only thing bad I ever did was put a dollar in wife purse for a month. Drove her nuts try to figure out why she never running out of money.
If you so delight in the misery of others that you're willing to spend time and money on usually wasteful, possibly dangerous pranks, maybe you need to figure out why your sense of humor stagnated at the age of 12.
Some of the early ones were amusing. Many of the later ones are just plain mean.
I got to the tenth one and was crying with laughter, literally. The rest? Not so much 🫤
Load More Replies...Only thing bad I ever did was put a dollar in wife purse for a month. Drove her nuts try to figure out why she never running out of money.
If you so delight in the misery of others that you're willing to spend time and money on usually wasteful, possibly dangerous pranks, maybe you need to figure out why your sense of humor stagnated at the age of 12.