My grandpa and his neighbor hated each other. Whenever grandpa would see him in the yard, he'd go into a long rager about something - the car he drove, the way he kept his yard, the dumb ass hat he's wearing, whatever. This went on for years - maybe 15 or so. Grandpa was just brutal to this guy.

Grandpa died and they opened up his will. He left the neighbor $10k (I think), a car and his golf clubs. We were all (including Grandma) in complete disbelief.

Turns out Grandpa and the neighbor were old military buddies. They had decided to scam both their families and see how long they could play it. They actually played golf and cards regularly the entire time.

Oh... they were in the military in their early 20's. Pre-marriage for both of them. They agreed back then to name their first born after each other - which they did. They apparently lost touch right after the service, but randomly moved next to each other 35+ years later. The neighbor said the plan was hatched on the very day he moved in.

—Source from u/kooknboo

When I was a kid my dad took the whole family to Red Rock Colorado. We lived in rural East Texas, so it was quite a long drive. Along the way I started noticing that every city had a street that was named the same thing. I asked my dad about it and he said, " What the frontage road? Oh sure, they are all named that because of Colonel Arthur Frontage. He was a WWI vet whose dying wish was to have a road in every city named after him." He went on and on and on about the exploits and heroics of Colonel Frontage and it helped pass the time on a long trip.

Fast forward 9 years, and I am going on my first camping trip with just me and some friends. I notice a Frontage road and pipe up with, "Hey guys, you know why that is called a Frontage Road?" I launch into a 10 minute account of the exploits of Arthur Frontage. After I was done everyone in the car was quiet for a minute until Scott says, "Dude... are you fucking retarded? It's a Frontage road because it fronts the main road." They then proceeded to laugh at me all weekend. "I wonder if Arthur Frontage slept in a tent like this?", or "I wonder if Arthur Frontage was ever attacked by a bear?" etc...

When I got home I confronted my dad. He just laughed his ass off and said that he had forgotten all about it and that I was a huge dumbass for still believing it.

I still keep up with some of those guys and still get shit about Arthur Frontage to this day,

20 great long con examples/ideas:

I put an ad on Craigslist in new york city looking for a wookie impersonation for a film I was "making" but I listed my friends phone number. In the instructions I wrote if I answer just make the noise and hang up, Ill call you back if it's good enough. If you get my voicemail follow the same procedure.

Long story short I forgot about it for 3 months and one day I was out getting wings with him when he received a call. He slammed his phone down pissed. I asked what was wrong and he proceeded to tell me about how he has been getting weird phone calls and people just making noises and hanging up. I couldn't stop laughing and finally let him know why and he was not as amused.

—Source from u/thechaplinhunter

You may have to spend a little bit of money for this one, but it will be worth the cost.

1. Start showing up to your job looking a bit haggard and weary.

2. If questioned about your appearance, insist that nothing is wrong.

3. Slowly escalate your performance, glancing over your shoulder, jumping at sounds, and so on.

4. If ever someone says something that sounds a bit like “clown,” act panicked.

5. Frequently deny being scared of clowns, even shoehorning the claim into unrelated exchanges.

6. During the latter half of February, start leaving balloon animals around your workspace.

7. Come visibly closer to a full-on mental breakdown as April Fools’ Day approaches.

8. On April Fools’ Day, walk in looking happy, content, and put-together.

9. Completely ignore the clown that you have hired to follow you around.

10. Act like your coworkers are crazy if they mention said clown.

TL;DR: Reverse-gaslight your coworkers with the help of humanity’s worst predator.

—Source from u/RamsesThePigeon

[Note: Several people also suggested that it could also work if YOU come dressed as the clown that day.]

Don’t know if you can pull this off, but it was of the funnier prank stories I heard on Klick and Klack/Car Talk. Some guys worked with another guy who was obsessed with his car’s gas mileage, so the coworkers slowly started adding gas to his tank without the owner knowing it, like they’d add two cups a day for a week, then the next week, they’d add three cups a day, etc. Since the guy was so obsessed, he thought his car was getting better and better gas mileage and was bragging to everyone in the office. Then the guys slowly started to reverse the process, the guy freaked out, everyone laughed.

—Source from u/desertsail912

The penny trick works great.

Start by leaving a penny on yours friends desk, chair, coat pocket, you know, places where you would expect to find a penny. Leave one a day for a while varying the locations. Then start leaving them in shoes. Socks. Bed. Pillow case. At first they will ignore the penny but eventually it will bug them. Took my roommate 3 weeks until he stroked out one night after finding a penny embedded in his bar of soap. I highly recommend this. Drives them fucking mad.

Edit I wanted to add go nuts with this. His final straw was the soap, but I really wanted to start putting them in his car and get a co-worker of his to play along and start leaving them around his desk. I’m upset my plans fell short.

—[Source](https://reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/17d7uy/_/c84fpei/?context=1 from u/T3hp3trock

Start learning a language in secret and then later on when you’re with someone, slip and act like you can only speak the other language

—Source from u/SeniorBLT

Hide a remote doorbell in their office, inside the light fixture for best effect. Wait a few months then start using it. When they question everyone about it deny deny deny. When you’re sitting in the office with them ring it and pretend you didn’t hear anything, only to see them come to terms with their insanity.

—Source from u/WiggleTownMayor

[Note, as was pointed out, this could work best if everyone but one person knew about it and pretended to not hear the noise.]

When my brother started college someone told him about a local bar that gave a free keg to anyone that brought in a 5 gallon bucket full of soda tabs. After 3 years of collecting tabs he hauls this heavy bucket down to this bar and asks for his free keg. They look at him like he’s nuts and tell him they have never done that.

—Source from u/epcow

I’ve joined a new company 6 months ago and I’ve been given three mugs during these months, one as a part of the welcome package, one for professional holiday and one just because it had a new logo of one of our products on it.

I also brought my own mug on my 1st day which is the only mug I use.

This got me thinking that there are probably like 3 mugs per employee here, and I wondered what would happen if I started bringing in more mugs and leaving them in the kitchen. To the point where someone has to write a @team email addressing the issue of too many mugs.

You can buy 500 mugs for $150 – $200 in China. Kinda expensive but you can get more people involved.

—Source from u/dial_m_for_me

Buy a little plant potter and say you are growing a little desk tree, but don’t actually plant anything in the soil. Make you water it whenever coworkers are around so they take notice of it. Make comments like, “Any day now, it’ll grow, you’ll see.”

Of course nothing is going to grow, but that doesnt matter because as April starts nearing you go to a tree nursery and buy rising increments of some tree, maybe a Leyland cypress. Some time in March all of sudden you have a little tree growing and then you show your coworkers that you always believed it would grow.

What you start doing is sneaking in really early and replacing it with a much larger tree. Make it seem like the pots broke because the tree had a sudden growth spurt. Then by the time April 1st comes by you bring in a 5 ft tree and act completely surprised.

—Source from u/-eDgAR-

This ones buried and I’ve posted it before but it’s worthy of this thread. I’ll give a shortened version... dude at work was complaining that his spoons were slowly disappearing from the lunch room. He had brought 6 to work and he was down to 2. Everyone else in his lab hatched this plan: every time someone sent him an email, at the bottom, in white text (i.e. invisible unless highlighted), everyone would write “SPOON SPOON SPOON SPOON SPOON SPOON SPOON”. We all did this for several weeks (he had a gmail account) and that’s when he started losing his mind: every website he visited had ads for spoons and flatware! He thought google was reading his mind.

—Source from u/beebhead

Slowly start hiding tree air-fresheners in their room/office. One a week, maybe more as you get closer. The smell will start subtle and grow at an insane pace. They may notice a change in smell, they may not. Either way, after a few months, it will reek.

We did this some friends of mine over a summer once. Three guys living in a small room, and we ended up with dozens of packs worth of the Black Ice-scented trees hiding under their beds. The infighting was amazing as they started to slowly blame each other and eventually tore the room apart looking for the smell.

The perfect blend of harmless and chaotic.

—Source from u/beckdawg19

Office prank here, pulled off with great success.

TL;DR - pushed bosses desk backwards a half inch per day for 6 months. He figured it out when we couldn’t push any further.

Every day my boss would leave early, make his rounds and say his goodbyes. Immediately after he left, we would go into his luxurious office and push his desk backwards toward the wall about a half an inch.

A month goes by, and we’ve pushed his desk back maybe less than a foot. We had to start moving his computer back as well to keep up appearances. He suspects nothing.

Few months go by, everyone in the office is in on it. He starts getting irritable quicker, mentions off hand that something doesn’t feel right, but can’t put his finger on it.

6 months. The desk is pushed back so far that he has to turn his chair sideways to get behind his desk. Finally gets upset and says that he thinks the cleaning staff has been pushing his desk backwards. Said he noticed it about a week ago. A WEEK!

Somebody slipped up, he confronted the whole office and was a good sport. Now he’s paranoid about everything in his office being in the right spot.

—Source from u/curlyone959

Bring hand moisturizer to work, and leave it somewhere like the break room. Conspicuously use it, and convince as many other people to use it as possible.

On April 1st, replace it with a bottle filled with water-based lube.

—Source from u/marco262

It’ll be expensive... But keep a small jar of M&Ms out on your desk for “public consumption”. Just let anyone have a few. Always keep it filled.

Then, on April 1, put skittles in it.

—Source from u/Tactically_Fat

The nameplates at my office job have paper inserts with the cube dweller’s name. I am going to print out a bunch of one person’s name in smaller fonts, like increments of .25. I’m going to start replacing with smaller fonts each day starting March 1. I know it’s not super crazy, but should be fun.

—Source from u/TheEntWithNoName

Leave an old keyboard on your desk, with the wire pushed down behind your desk. If anyone asks, tell them it wasn’t working, so you had yours replaced, but that support will be by to pick it up.

On April 1st, plug it into the computer in the cube beside you. When your co-worker arrives, do random things - hold down the shift key while they type in their password. Lock their screen if they look away for just a moment. Hit ‘caps lock’ while they’re typing an eMail.

I managed to do this to a co-worker for four days before he started losing his shit and pulled out all the wires from his PC except power and network. It was hysterical.

—Source from u/PsychYYZ

[Note: As pointed out by u/LehighAce06:]

Even better is a wireless keyboard, the dongles are super small and especially if it’s a standard PC can be hard to find, and it’s easier to get away with.

Start buying different lightbulbs for every light in your house. If you’ve got soft light, buy the sunlight bulbs, if you’ve got the sunlight bulbs, go with the soft light bulbs.

Install all of them overnight going into April Fool’s Day. Act like nothing has changed. For bonus points, continue swapping them once every few days and see how long you can keep it going...

—Source from u/SikoraP13

Here’s how I convinced a friend his house was haunted.

Rain-x is the stuff you put on your windshield to keep it from fogging up. Instead, use it to write on your friend’s bathroom mirror various “haunting” phrases. They go into the bathroom, lock the door, get in the shower, and come out to find someone has seemingly written on their bathroom mirror while they thought they were alone.

“Get out”, “help me”, something more personal, or whatever you like.

Every time you want to change the message, just use some dish soap and then glass cleaner.

—Source from u/Brainsonastick

So in my group of friends we have a buddy that is a crazy music snob. He had terabytes of music back in 2008, mainly because he refused to download MP3s, only going for lossless formats. He prides himself in being on the up and up of all the new underground stuff. So one of our more clever friends casually tosses out a reference to a group that he totally made up on the spot, and we all knew their entire catalog. We were all the biggest Guinea Pig Tribe fans. Our music snob friend took the bait, hook, line, and sinker.

He scoured the Internet searching for this fabled Guinea Pig Tribe. He tried to call us on it, stating they didn’t exist. We said he wasn’t searching hard enough, one of us produced a track and played it for him.

He continued his search. Dude got laughed out of dozens of underground music forums. Any time we found out he couldn’t go to a show we were all headed to, one of us would photoshop “GPT” into the flyer. He would get so mad that he couldn’t attend.

This went on for a solid year.

It all came to a head when he was lamenting once again that he was going to miss another performance by the most innovative music act the world has ever seen, when the friend that started it all, just as casually as it began replied, “What are you talking about dude? You’re the one who introduced GPT to us!” Then sent him a photoshopped photo of all of us in a group, complete with him wearing a “GPT” shirt.

He refused to talk to us for a solid month.

—Source from u/DrGirthinstein

My roommate and I found a picture of this white family we didn’t know in one of our toolsheds. I made a joke that it was some cursed picture or something. He threw it away, and later on I got it out of the trash and put it in one of his old photo albums. One day he’ll find it and have no clue how it got there. For some reason, I find that hilarious.

—Source from u/botron72

What long con(s) are YOU planning this year?

Edit: Added header.

Pre Covid my daughter went to NYC with her High School Show Choir. She returned with a souvenir flower shaped small container full of mini M&M’s that has compartments for the candy. She put a lot of effort into sorting all the colors into each compartment. She then stated that she wasn’t going to share the M&M’s since she bought it with her own money. And she said she would only take a few pieces of each color every day to see how long it would last.

As her father that gave her the money before going on the trip I decided I would give her a lesson in sharing. I went to the grocery store and bought a bag of mini M&M’s and whenever she wasn’t around I would secretly add a few M&M’s back into the container. It took her almost 4 months before she said the M&M’s were lasting longer than they should. I couldn’t keep a straight face and she realized she had been pranked. She was uncontrollably laughing for a bit and now accuses me of gas lighting her. I told her to complain to her therapist about her dad giving her M&M’s.

I recently refilled the container and sent it with her to college hidden in her clothes.

The Gnome Conspiracy. Friend of ours found a weird garden gnome in her backyard, and it seemed to be pointing at her. She didn't put it there and when we showed up for a barbecue, we found it right where she saw it. She was oddly afraid to touch it, but we all said it was obviously just some kids pranking her. It disappeared the next day.

Few weeks later she saw a gnome just like it on her way to work. She even took a picture of it and I have to admit, it was pretty similar. She left it be and thought nothing of it, until she saw another near the house of a friend of ours. And once or twice more in town. Huh.

She saw another one outside a B&B in Edinburgh that we recommended, then in a hedge in Provence. Then she saw it in the background of a picture we all took in Vegas on our last day there, near the pool at the Mandalay Bay. We all agreed, it did look similar, but, we assured her, it must simply be a popular model. I mean it can't possibly be the same gnome.

It's the same gnome. The owner of the B&B in Scotland is an old friend of ours, and he got it in the mail two days before she arrived. I positioned it on the side of the road several times, but she only saw it once or twice. I think she was beginning to suspect me so when it showed up at our friend's neighbor's house, I was conspicuously out of the country. She actually accused me of doing this but I just laughed and said A) I was on a different continent, and B) it couldn't possibly be the same gnome. If it was, there'd have to be dozens of people involved in some sort of conspiracy.

That's actually pretty accurate, including several of her sisters and most of her friends. Oh, and it's been going on for 11 years now. The gnome is actually in the background of several more of her vacation shots, most recently in a coffee house in Seattle. I have a friend there and they met for coffee, and the gnome was there. She hasn't spotted it yet in the 'met your friend' picture they sent me, but she will, and when she does, we'll all poo-poo it.

Pretty sure she isn't on Reddit - hate to blow this after so long.

—Source from u/Kevin_Uxbridge

I’m no speed walker, but I would guess, on average, I do walk faster than 80-90 percent of people—I think that’s partially because I’m somewhat tall and have longer-than-average limbs and partially because I just enjoy a brisk pace to keep moving.

In any case, I’m certainly a much faster walker than any 4-year-old. In fact, I do not struggle to exceed the pace of a 4-year-old running full speed while I remain walking (as I’m guessing would also be the case for the vast majority of adults).

I don’t mention any of the above with braggadocios purpose. After all, what kind of person would boast about being faster than a 4-year-old? I surely never would.

But, hey—glass houses and all, right? I know I’m certainly not perfect...as I shall now illustrate:

One day, about 18 months ago, I was on a walk with my son, who was 4 years old at the time. At some point, he decided he wanted to race me to the end of a block—a challenge I confidently accepted.

He went full speed, pumping those little legs as fast as he could and yelling he was going to catch up to me—but that was not to be. He had won our previous three races and was now somehow no match for my brisk, adult walking pace (anyone who lets their kids win every time at everything growing up isn’t doing them any favors).

As he caught up to me at the finish line, he was in awe—he asked,

“How did you beat me without running?! You must have been SPEED walking or something!”

Knowing he had no idea what speed walking actually was, I quickly replied,

“SPEED walking?! That wasn’t SPEED walking at all! Do YOU want to learn how to SPEED walk?!”

He was jumping up and down and squealing, so excited to learn this seemingly super-power-like skill for maximum speed—so I taught him:

“Okay—THIS—is SPEED walking!”

Immediately as I finished my sentence I made a loud “WOOSH!” sound started walking forward at a brisk pace, while also violently flailing each of my limbs around in the most ridiculous-looking way I could muster. Up and sideways, down and across, left and upward my body parts went, pulling my torso along for the ride.

As my demonstration spectacle came to an end, I made serious eye contact with him and as powerfully as I could, said,

“Now THAT—THAT is SPEED walking.”

Hook, line and sinker.

Congratulations to me—I had fooled a toddler.

I told my wife about the whole thing right away—and tried to convince her to keep it going with me. She was on the fence at first, but then I took her outside and he and I SPEED walked together down the driveway—too cute for her to shatter.

Ingraining him with his new skill began right away with SPEED walking races and continued in earnest for several months until some of the SPEED walking sparkle started to wear off for him.

As is the case with all humans—and especially children—interests come and go quite often.

As time went by, he SPEED walked less and less.

He turned 5 years old. The seasons changed. We moved to a new city and we changed careers.

So it goes.

He eventually stopped SPEED walking or bringing it up on his own altogether—but I decided I wasn’t quite ready to give up this long con.

I soon came to realize that though he had stopped doing it, he also wasn’t forgetting SPEED walking, at all, despite being at an age when remembering anything from even just one month in the past seems almost impossible.

He just had to be prompted to activate this nonsensical charade I love so much. For example, if I ever say something to him like “I’ll race you to X and I bet you’ll have to SPEED walk to beat me!” he doesn’t miss a beat and immediately takes off, limbs-a-flailing, with a “WOOSH!”

It’s perfect. He’s like a long-con sleeper agent.

I have accomplished my goal.

Now the only question is, how long will it be before my little sleeper agent is awoken?

When and where will someone say his trigger words?

It could be a while. When was the last time you said or heard anything about speed walking? However, it is not a term that is never used. It is just used very infrequently, which is the absolute sweet spot for this—it will certainly come up eventually.

Well, whenever it is, I’ll be there to bask in the glow of a long long con fulfilled.

I’ll also be there to laugh.

For now, we wait.

If you need the warm-and-fuzzy details to feel okay about laughing at this long con: My wife and I think this is not harmful at all and is quite hilarious—and that’s a big part of why I love this long con—but beneath that, this ruse lets us hold on to a younger version of himself for just a little while longer. We’ll love him at any age, but there will always be memories we wish we could experience again.

...I transferred to a new office across the country. I was in the field most of the time but occasionally I had to go to the office. Just inside the men's restroom there was a short hallway that took a 90 degree turn into the main area of the bathroom, but the light switch was right by the door. Once inside where you were doing your business whether just washing your hands or taking a piss, you couldn't see the door. Every time my boss went into the bathroom I'd wait just long enough for him to start whatever and reach in an turn off the light. Inevitably he'd shout something to the effect of "GOD DAMN IT I'M IN HERE!" Almost 7 years of this with him blaming it on everyone but me. Just before I left, I recruited a young guy to keep it up for me, cause fuck that guy.

—Source from u/Qlinkenstein

“Buty a shirt of the same design in each shade of every colour (of the same tone of course) and slowly progress through the rainbow, your friends won’t catch on at first and will think that you’ve been wearing the same shirt for a couple of months... until they look at an old picture...

“By far my favourite long con prank!”

—Source from u/therealMoseSchrute.

“My one friend's grandfather bought him the same belt every single occasion. Everytime he wrote a note that said "this is the belt you wanted last month!". He was going a bit senial and they didn't want to say anything. 20 years and almost 100 belts later his grandfather passed away. going through his journals for something to say at the funeral they found out that he was just fucking with him. He accidentally ordered 200 identical belts from a company when he meant to check the box for two. When he called the company they told him just to keep them and he'll have his account reimbursed. So he just gave him THE SAME THING every year and pretend not to know knowing that no one would say anything. He wrote down my friends reactions as well, from his 10 year old confusion face and his dad whispering not to say anything to his 30 year old sly grin of expectation. This is the longest con I know of.”

—Source (the comment is now deleted, so the poster’s username is not being included).

As one may imagine being a bus driver can be rather dull. Yet it's one of those jobs where you see folks from other companies also driving so you usually give a friendly nod or wave to each other.

I had an assigned route that I would see a driver for another company twice daily, Monday to Friday. The guy never waved, just looked morosely ahead. Originally it kinda annoyed me, he just seemed unfriendly.

I began to wave enthusiastically at him every time I saw him coming. Always with a big smile, happy wave, twice a day everyday.

Two years!

It took two years of insanely waving to wear him down, two years until he finally smiled and waved back!

At which point I stopped waving at him.

Then I bid off that route, never to see or wave at him again

:]

In October of 2014, four friends and I all met up to go to a hockey game together, followed by an evening filled with the consumption of many libations. We all stayed at one friend’s apartment, as the rest of us didn’t live in that city.

The next morning, four of us ate cheese balls from a huge container as we waited in a stupor for our host friend to finish showering so we could all go get breakfast. Breaking the hazy silence of the room, one friend mumbled,

“It would be funny if we hid cheese balls all around his apartment.”

There were a few soft chuckles—and a minute later, another friend got up, grabbed a handful of cheese balls and breathed life into this stupid idea. Without a word, the rest of us soon followed suit.

Drawers. Tops of picture frames. Cupboards. Battery compartments. The trays of not-yet-frozen ice cubes. Jacket pockets. Cheese balls here. Cheese balls there. Cheese balls everywhere.

It didn’t take long for our host friend to realize the ruse, but as time went by, he came to realize the depth of the cheese ball invasion.

We eventually figured out that there was but one cheese ball left undiscovered: “The One.”

Lest he live his life thinking he had overcome our curse, we informed him of The One, which he then insisted he would find.

Six years later—despite our friend moving several times—The One remains in his possession and successfully concealed, as confirmed recently by his girlfriend, who accepted the task of checking up on it and joining us in our dedication to this idiotic cause.

Praise be The One, may it exist undisturbed in perpetuity.

I have been sleeping on the edge of my bed for ~3 months so that, when the time was right, I could say, “I like to live on the edge!” Last night my dad said, “why are you on the edge of the bed, do you like to live on the edge?” And then I told him about the whole I’ve been working on this for 3 months yada yada yada. That’s my random story for the day.

So a co-worker of mine liked to play little daily pranks as he would pass my desk, flip over my mouse, turn off my monitor the usual little things. Nothing malicious, but I warned him that he I hit back hard, As April rolled around I decided it was time to teach him the consequences. Acquiring a few of the annoy-a-trons from Thinkgeek was step one. For those of you who don't know the annoy-a-trons are little battery powered circuit board with a magnet that beep at random intervals. Then it was just a matter of waiting for him to step away.

Now a normal human being would have hidden the devices in his cube, waited until he came back and laughed at his confusion when the beeping started to bug him. Instead I grabbed his keys and stepped out to his car, hiding the device under his steering column, I then locked the door, returned his keys and went back to work, at which point I promptly forgot about it and waited to see if he would react.

Four Months Later I finally casually mentioned to another co-worker who is a closer friend of the victim if said victim had mentioned anything about a beeping coming from his car. The guys eyes went huge and said "What do you know about that?!?!" As it turns out, the two of them had recently spent 8 hours on a road trip to a ski resort with the beeping driving them nuts the whole way. The victim had taken the car to the dealership twice to try and locate the source of the beeping, and was strongly considering selling the car.

Now a normal human being would have at this point copped to what he had done, and gotten a laugh. Instead I took his friend into my confidence explained what I had done, and then recruited said friend to help me sneak back out to his car, change the battery on the device (it was getting kind of low) and then add the second device, this time with a different tone, inside the door well of his driver side door.

Again about two months later By this point I had told practically the entire company about this gag who managed to keep the secret largely due to his reputation as a prankster. His friend we had been watching him to make sure he hadn't decided to sell the car, and finally came to me and told me he was about to go drop a few hundred bucks on an analyzer to see what could be causing the beeping. Now with something built up this long I couldn't just walk up and explain what I'd done. Again we waited again for him to leave his desk, and snagged his keys. Recovering the devices we hid them inside his cube walls, and waited. When he returned he heard the beeps. Immediately he jumps up and yells "There it is!, that's the beeping that's been going on in my car!" His friend in a level of acting that deserved an Oscar, managed to straight faced say "Hey maybe its a low battery warning in your keyfob (the victim having one of those switchblade keys with the remote unlock) The look of pure joy in this guys face at possibly having solved his now half a year dilemma would have made the whole enterprise worth it, but then, through the company IM I sent him a link to the annoy-a-tron.

After opening the link he had a moment of confusion, wondering why I had sent him the link. He even commented "Yeah I've seen those before" I smiled The series of emotions that crossed his face when it dawned on him will warm my blackened heart for as long as I draw breath, but the best part was when he realized his best friend, who he had been coming to trying to find a solution was in on it. The rest of the day was filled with people who had known about it yelling "BEEP" as he passed. tl;dr I hid an annoy-a-tron in a coworker's car and left it there for 6 months, only revealing it as he was nearly ready to sell the car

—Source from u/Calevara

20 great r/LongCons-curated examples/ideas to get your long con prank creativity going!:

I put an ad on Craigslist in new york city looking for a wookie impersonation for a film I was "making" but I listed my friends phone number. In the instructions I wrote if I answer just make the noise and hang up, Ill call you back if it's good enough. If you get my voicemail follow the same procedure.

Long story short I forgot about it for 3 months and one day I was out getting wings with him when he received a call. He slammed his phone down pissed. I asked what was wrong and he proceeded to tell me about how he has been getting weird phone calls and people just making noises and hanging up. I couldn't stop laughing and finally let him know why and he was not as amused.

—Source from u/thechaplinhunter

You may have to spend a little bit of money for this one, but it will be worth the cost.

1. Start showing up to your job looking a bit haggard and weary.

2. If questioned about your appearance, insist that nothing is wrong.

3. Slowly escalate your performance, glancing over your shoulder, jumping at sounds, and so on.

4. If ever someone says something that sounds a bit like “clown,” act panicked.

5. Frequently deny being scared of clowns, even shoehorning the claim into unrelated exchanges.

6. During the latter half of February, start leaving balloon animals around your workspace.

7. Come visibly closer to a full-on mental breakdown as April Fools’ Day approaches.

8. On April Fools’ Day, walk in looking happy, content, and put-together.

9. Completely ignore the clown that you have hired to follow you around.

10. Act like your coworkers are crazy if they mention said clown.

TL;DR: Reverse-gaslight your coworkers with the help of humanity’s worst predator.

—Source from u/RamsesThePigeon

[Note: Several people also suggested that it could also work if YOU come dressed as the clown that day.]

Don’t know if you can pull this off, but it was of the funnier prank stories I heard on Klick and Klack/Car Talk. Some guys worked with another guy who was obsessed with his car’s gas mileage, so the coworkers slowly started adding gas to his tank without the owner knowing it, like they’d add two cups a day for a week, then the next week, they’d add three cups a day, etc. Since the guy was so obsessed, he thought his car was getting better and better gas mileage and was bragging to everyone in the office. Then the guys slowly started to reverse the process, the guy freaked out, everyone laughed.

—Source from u/desertsail912

The penny trick works great.

Start by leaving a penny on yours friends desk, chair, coat pocket, you know, places where you would expect to find a penny. Leave one a day for a while varying the locations. Then start leaving them in shoes. Socks. Bed. Pillow case. At first they will ignore the penny but eventually it will bug them. Took my roommate 3 weeks until he stroked out one night after finding a penny embedded in his bar of soap. I highly recommend this. Drives them fucking mad.

Edit I wanted to add go nuts with this. His final straw was the soap, but I really wanted to start putting them in his car and get a co-worker of his to play along and start leaving them around his desk. I’m upset my plans fell short.

—[Source](https://reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/17d7uy/_/c84fpei/?context=1 from u/T3hp3trock

Start learning a language in secret and then later on when you’re with someone, slip and act like you can only speak the other language

—Source from u/SeniorBLT

Hide a remote doorbell in their office, inside the light fixture for best effect. Wait a few months then start using it. When they question everyone about it deny deny deny. When you’re sitting in the office with them ring it and pretend you didn’t hear anything, only to see them come to terms with their insanity.

—Source from u/WiggleTownMayor

[Note, as was pointed out, this could work best if everyone but one person knew about it and pretended to not hear the noise.]

When my brother started college someone told him about a local bar that gave a free keg to anyone that brought in a 5 gallon bucket full of soda tabs. After 3 years of collecting tabs he hauls this heavy bucket down to this bar and asks for his free keg. They look at him like he’s nuts and tell him they have never done that.

—Source from u/epcow

I’ve joined a new company 6 months ago and I’ve been given three mugs during these months, one as a part of the welcome package, one for professional holiday and one just because it had a new logo of one of our products on it.

I also brought my own mug on my 1st day which is the only mug I use.

This got me thinking that there are probably like 3 mugs per employee here, and I wondered what would happen if I started bringing in more mugs and leaving them in the kitchen. To the point where someone has to write a @team email addressing the issue of too many mugs.

You can buy 500 mugs for $150 – $200 in China. Kinda expensive but you can get more people involved.

—Source from u/dial_m_for_me

Buy a little plant potter and say you are growing a little desk tree, but don’t actually plant anything in the soil. Make you water it whenever coworkers are around so they take notice of it. Make comments like, “Any day now, it’ll grow, you’ll see.”

Of course nothing is going to grow, but that doesnt matter because as April starts nearing you go to a tree nursery and buy rising increments of some tree, maybe a Leyland cypress. Some time in March all of sudden you have a little tree growing and then you show your coworkers that you always believed it would grow.

What you start doing is sneaking in really early and replacing it with a much larger tree. Make it seem like the pots broke because the tree had a sudden growth spurt. Then by the time April 1st comes by you bring in a 5 ft tree and act completely surprised.

—Source from u/-eDgAR-

This ones buried and I’ve posted it before but it’s worthy of this thread. I’ll give a shortened version... dude at work was complaining that his spoons were slowly disappearing from the lunch room. He had brought 6 to work and he was down to 2. Everyone else in his lab hatched this plan: every time someone sent him an email, at the bottom, in white text (i.e. invisible unless highlighted), everyone would write “SPOON SPOON SPOON SPOON SPOON SPOON SPOON”. We all did this for several weeks (he had a gmail account) and that’s when he started losing his mind: every website he visited had ads for spoons and flatware! He thought google was reading his mind.

—Source from u/beebhead

Slowly start hiding tree air-fresheners in their room/office. One a week, maybe more as you get closer. The smell will start subtle and grow at an insane pace. They may notice a change in smell, they may not. Either way, after a few months, it will reek.

We did this some friends of mine over a summer once. Three guys living in a small room, and we ended up with dozens of packs worth of the Black Ice-scented trees hiding under their beds. The infighting was amazing as they started to slowly blame each other and eventually tore the room apart looking for the smell.

The perfect blend of harmless and chaotic.

—Source from u/beckdawg19

Office prank here, pulled off with great success.

TL;DR - pushed bosses desk backwards a half inch per day for 6 months. He figured it out when we couldn’t push any further.

Every day my boss would leave early, make his rounds and say his goodbyes. Immediately after he left, we would go into his luxurious office and push his desk backwards toward the wall about a half an inch.

A month goes by, and we’ve pushed his desk back maybe less than a foot. We had to start moving his computer back as well to keep up appearances. He suspects nothing.

Few months go by, everyone in the office is in on it. He starts getting irritable quicker, mentions off hand that something doesn’t feel right, but can’t put his finger on it.

6 months. The desk is pushed back so far that he has to turn his chair sideways to get behind his desk. Finally gets upset and says that he thinks the cleaning staff has been pushing his desk backwards. Said he noticed it about a week ago. A WEEK!

Somebody slipped up, he confronted the whole office and was a good sport. Now he’s paranoid about everything in his office being in the right spot.

—Source from u/curlyone959

Bring hand moisturizer to work, and leave it somewhere like the break room. Conspicuously use it, and convince as many other people to use it as possible.

On April 1st, replace it with a bottle filled with water-based lube.

—Source from u/marco262

It’ll be expensive... But keep a small jar of M&Ms out on your desk for “public consumption”. Just let anyone have a few. Always keep it filled.

Then, on April 1, put skittles in it.

—Source from u/Tactically_Fat

The nameplates at my office job have paper inserts with the cube dweller’s name. I am going to print out a bunch of one person’s name in smaller fonts, like increments of .25. I’m going to start replacing with smaller fonts each day starting March 1. I know it’s not super crazy, but should be fun.

—Source from u/TheEntWithNoName

Leave an old keyboard on your desk, with the wire pushed down behind your desk. If anyone asks, tell them it wasn’t working, so you had yours replaced, but that support will be by to pick it up.

On April 1st, plug it into the computer in the cube beside you. When your co-worker arrives, do random things - hold down the shift key while they type in their password. Lock their screen if they look away for just a moment. Hit ‘caps lock’ while they’re typing an eMail.

I managed to do this to a co-worker for four days before he started losing his shit and pulled out all the wires from his PC except power and network. It was hysterical.

—Source from u/PsychYYZ

[Note: As pointed out by u/LehighAce06:]

Even better is a wireless keyboard, the dongles are super small and especially if it’s a standard PC can be hard to find, and it’s easier to get away with.

Start buying different lightbulbs for every light in your house. If you’ve got soft light, buy the sunlight bulbs, if you’ve got the sunlight bulbs, go with the soft light bulbs.

Install all of them overnight going into April Fool’s Day. Act like nothing has changed. For bonus points, continue swapping them once every few days and see how long you can keep it going...

—Source from u/SikoraP13

Here’s how I convinced a friend his house was haunted.

Rain-x is the stuff you put on your windshield to keep it from fogging up. Instead, use it to write on your friend’s bathroom mirror various “haunting” phrases. They go into the bathroom, lock the door, get in the shower, and come out to find someone has seemingly written on their bathroom mirror while they thought they were alone.

“Get out”, “help me”, something more personal, or whatever you like.

Every time you want to change the message, just use some dish soap and then glass cleaner.

—Source from u/Brainsonastick

So in my group of friends we have a buddy that is a crazy music snob. He had terabytes of music back in 2008, mainly because he refused to download MP3s, only going for lossless formats. He prides himself in being on the up and up of all the new underground stuff. So one of our more clever friends casually tosses out a reference to a group that he totally made up on the spot, and we all knew their entire catalog. We were all the biggest Guinea Pig Tribe fans. Our music snob friend took the bait, hook, line, and sinker.

He scoured the Internet searching for this fabled Guinea Pig Tribe. He tried to call us on it, stating they didn’t exist. We said he wasn’t searching hard enough, one of us produced a track and played it for him.

He continued his search. Dude got laughed out of dozens of underground music forums. Any time we found out he couldn’t go to a show we were all headed to, one of us would photoshop “GPT” into the flyer. He would get so mad that he couldn’t attend.

This went on for a solid year.

It all came to a head when he was lamenting once again that he was going to miss another performance by the most innovative music act the world has ever seen, when the friend that started it all, just as casually as it began replied, “What are you talking about dude? You’re the one who introduced GPT to us!” Then sent him a photoshopped photo of all of us in a group, complete with him wearing a “GPT” shirt.

He refused to talk to us for a solid month.

—Source from u/DrGirthinstein

My roommate and I found a picture of this white family we didn’t know in one of our toolsheds. I made a joke that it was some cursed picture or something. He threw it away, and later on I got it out of the trash and put it in one of his old photo albums. One day he’ll find it and have no clue how it got there. For some reason, I find that hilarious.

—Source from u/botron72

What long con(s) are YOU planning this year?