Pranking Montage

Luan Loud's April Fool's Highlight Reel.

It's an all-night party that we're gettin' into
If you think it's all over, then the joke is on you
It's a dream, it's a scene, and it's all brand-new
If you think you can't stop it, then the joke is on you!

— iCarly

Exactly what it says — a sequence that shows a character or characters pulling various pranks! Either they can be just for fun, for revenge on someone, or when someone is being humiliated by The Bully of the show or episode.

Often part of an April Fools' Plot. Can sometimes overlap with Good-Times Montage since the pranksters are having a good time as well (although their victims usually aren't). Compare Escalating War; watch out for a Prank Gone Too Far!

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Cells at Work!: The "Common Cold" chapter (adapted as episode 14 of season 1) focuses on an Ordinary Cell befriending what he thinks is another prank-loving Ordinary Cell and spending their time goofing off. A montage is devoted to the pair playing pranks on every immune cell group they could find, which in part was truly a distraction so Rhinovirus could start invading the body.

Fan Works

• Trolling the Toad: Almost the whole fic consists of a montage of Harry and/or his friends plotting against Umbridge by trolling her with pranks or otherwise annoying antics, one which spans the entire school year.

Films — Animation

• Near the beginning of Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie, we are treated to a montage of George and Harold's various pranks on the staff of Jerome Horwitz Elementary.
• The Cars short film Mater and the Ghostlight begins with a montage of Mater pulling various night pranks on the folks of Radiator Springs, ironically set to Brad Paisley's "Behind the Clouds".
• Teen Titans Go! To the Movies has a musical montage called "Shenanigans" in which Beast Boy, Cyborg, Starfire and Raven play pranks around the movie studio, including unplugging a treadmill The Flash is using, popping a pool that Aquaman and some dolphins are swimming in and prank-calling Superman.

Films — Live-Action

• In The Hazing, there is a montage of the pledges 'acquiring' (i.e. stealing) the items required for the Scavenger Hunt, and the various ruses they use to do so.
• Problem Child has Junior going on a prank spree aimed to ruin the birthday party of a girl who was treating him like crap, including things like redirecting a blindfolded kid trying to pin the tail on the donkey, filling a pinata with pickle juice, and putting a frog in the punch bowl. It all culminates in Junior blowing up the big cake with firecrackers that he replaced the candles with, which ends up getting him in big trouble.
• Rushmore showed a sequence of escalating pranks between Herman and and Max: Max tells Hermans' wife about Herman's infidelities and fills Herman's hotel room with bees, then Herman stole Max's bicycle and ran it over with his car, so Max cuts Herman's brakes, which results in Max getting arrested. Because this sequence was shown in the film's trailer, many people though that was what the main plot of the film was going to be about.

Live-Action TV

• iCarly: The episode "iGet Pranky" has a montage after Spencer gets re-addicted to pranks where he pranks Carly and her friends, set to the song "The Joke is On You."
• Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide: The opening of "Revenge" (just after How We Got Here) shows Ned being humiliated by Loomer in various ways.
• New Girl: Winston fancies himself The Prankster, but he is notably bad at it. When an episode brings it up, there will be a montage of him failing to pull off pranks because they are either too big (eg. registering Nick as a sex offender) or too small (eg. putting a blueberry in Schmidt's cereal).
• The Office (US): In Conflict Resolution, Michael tries to resolve Dwight and Jim's problems with each other by reading out Dwight's complaints. This quickly devolves into him listing off Jim's pranks, which includes replacing Dwight's pens with crayons, trying to convince Dwight he committed murder, tricking Dwight into seeing Meredith on the toilet, tampering with Dwight's handset, changing the autocorrect to spell Dwight as 'diapers', paying everyone to call Dwight 'Dwayne' and moving Dwight's desk every time he leaves to go to the bathroom. Initially, Jim finds it amusing before seeing just how many pranks he's pulled, causing him to feel guilty and realize how bored he is all the time.
• The Better Call Saul episode "Inflatable" features a montage of Jimmy deliberately annoying and pranking his co-workers in a bid to get himself fired and keep the big bonus he'd forfeit by quitting. We see him intentionally spill coffee on a client, pretend not to know a Latino co-worker speaks English, repeatedly leave the toilet unclogged, and coming the work the whole time in obnoxiously colored outfits that make everyone at the firm look ridiculous.

Video Games

• The Trespasser DLC for Dragon Age: Inquisition has an optional montage of scenes in which the Inquisitor and Sera go on a spree of throwing cream pies into various people's faces, culminating in one in which they do it to each other simultaneously.

Web Animation

• Rooster Teeth Shorts: Inverted in Prank King, where a montage of Gus's "pranks" on Matt plays, but they're really all surprise favors seemingly mislabeled "pranks".
• Strong Bad Email 206 has Strong Bad complaining about various internet April Fools Jokes, complaining that they're pointless because no one falls for them. He demonstrates with an old-timey homepage for the website, fake Trogdor merchandise, and a Real Trailer, Fake Movie for Dangeresque IV while Homestar falls for all of them. After that, he decides to bring April Fool's Day back into the real world, "where it can physically hurt people!" He tricks Homestar into running into a full-length mirror by claiming it's his long lost twin brother, gets Marzipan to eat The Cheat by claiming the latter is gluten free, gets the block-like Strong Mad stuck in a head stand, tricks the King of Town into eating a hand mirror by claiming it's his long lost twim brother, and tapes the gremlin shut with Bubs outside wanting to get in and Coach Z inside wanting to get out.

Web Comics

• Batman: Wayne Family Adventures: Most of Episode 12 consists of a montage of the escalating pranks Damian and Tim play on each other after Damian responds to Tim borrowing a pencil by wreaking Tim's favorite mug and Tim starts a prank war against him in return.
• A 2005 Penny Arcade strip showed how Gabe "celebrates" April Fools' Day with Tycho — by screwing him over in various ways.

Western Animation

• Big City Greens: In "Date Night", Cricket plans his first date as a couple with Gabriella to see the new America Rat movie, but Bill takes them to a luxurious sky diner instead; to get back at him for messing up their plans, the two go on a pranking spree where they humiliate the snooty rich people in many ways.
• Camp Lazlo: In "Campers All Pull Pants", we're treated to a montage of Edward going on a serial pantsing spree through Camp Kidney, which includes a gag where he pulls down one of the four lemmings' pants and somehow makes all of theirs go down at once.
• Done in the Fanboy and Chum Chum episode "Prank Master" as Fanboy is getting repeatedly pranked by the prank-loving queen Yo. With each one, she slaps a sticker on him claiming "In Yo face!"
• Family Guy: In "Halloween on Spooner Street", Peter and Joe pull a series of pranks on Quagmire, including Joe dressing up as a girl and offering to have sex with Quagmire.
• The Fairly OddParents!: The episode "Fool's Day Out" begins with a montage of Timmy getting pranked through the various holidays in many ways; he gets a Pie in the Face on the Fourth of July and Halloween, and on Groundhog Day, he gets mauled by a stuffed groundhog.
• The Loud House: Luan Loud ABUSES this trope, especially with the April Fool's episodes. The first one in particular, which provides the page image, has Lincoln present the viewer an "April Fool's Highlight Reel" where the Louds are suffering her reckless pranks.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • The opening of "Griffon the Brush-Off" has Pinkie and Dash pulling pranks on the rest of the Mane Six — they put sneezing powder in Rarity's flowers, give Twilight a jar of disappearing ink, and paint over Applejack's apples. They were about to surprise Fluttershy, but Pinkie stops them there; Dash then gets a prank of her own by getting ink around her eye from a telescope.
  • "28 Pranks Later": Rainbow Dash pulls off so many individual pranks (including a cake frosted and constructed to look like a realistic sewing machine for Rarity) that she gets hit with a massive prank in return.
• Recess: "The Big Prank" has one showing King Bob during his days as the school's Prankster Prince.
• The Regular Show episode "Big Winner" begins with a montage of Muscle Man pulling pranks on Mordecai and Rigby, such as shaking up a bottle of soda so it spills all over them, putting a bucket of water on top of a door, and putting glue on their game controllers so their thumbs get stuck, which kicks off the plot of Mordecai and Rigby pranking Muscle Man on his birthday to get back at him.
• The Simpsons: In "Treehouse of Horror XVIII", the segment Heck House has Bart and his friends playing a Halloween trick on Agnes Skinner when she refuses to give them candy, and they find it so fun that they decide to spend the rest of the night tricking. The ensuing montage shows them going on a destructive prank rampage throughout the town, set to "Blitzkrieg Bop", prompting Ned Flanders to set up the titular "heck house" in an attempt to bring some sense to them.
  Milhouse: I hope the next people don't give us anything, so we can trick them too!
  Bart: Why give 'em a choice? That trick was sweeter than any treat we'll get tonight!
  Lisa: I'm concerned we might be heading down a slippery slope. What do you think, Nelson?
  Nelson: Can't talk, lighting poo.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • The first half of "Fools in April" has a montage of SpongeBob pulling various April Fool's pranks on people.
  • Done in "Pranks a Lot" as the invisible SpongeBob and Patrick are tricking the Bikini Bottomites into thinking they're ghosts.
• Teen Titans Go! has this in "Batman vs. Teen Titans: Dark Injustice" as their April Fools' Plot episode where the Titans play very mean-spirited pranks on each other to the point of Comedic Sociopathy and With Friends Like These....
• Time Squad: There are a few montages within the show where all three main characters indulge in pranking in some form. But you're more than likely to notice that the main culprits are Tuddrussel and Otto, who are fully committed to making historical figures who don't follow historical record go insane from the psychological torture that's ultimately done to them. Examples include-
  • When the Hatfield family decides to back off and become good neighbors to the McCoys, a montage of Tuddrussel and Otto occurs where they throw bombs into the Hatfield's outhouse, pour quick drying cement into the McCoys well, paint graffiti on the neighbors houses, and steal the Hatfield's scarecrow so that the birds will decimate their corn crops. The pranks work, and both families immediately go to war over the abuse.
  • The Time Squad try to give Abraham Lincoln a taste of his own medicine by out-pranking him in secret. He has no idea that it's the Time Squad that's executing the following- Anonymously order a hundred anchovy pizzas to the cabin, ding-dong-ditching Lincoln and leaving a flaming bag of dog poop for him to stomp out, sending over a box of chocolates laced with laxatives from a "secret admirer", and confusingly enough prank call him jokes that wouldn't make sense for another hundred years. The onslaught of constant pranking works, and Lincoln swears off pranking for the rest of his life.
• The Trolls: The Beat Goes On! episode "Prank Day" has several short pranking montages between the main plot scenes.

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