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April Fools' Day

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"APRIL FOOL, n.: The March fool with another month added to his folly."
— Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

A long time ago, April 1st was the start of the new year, and after it was officially changed to January 1st, people who still celebrated at the old date were dubbed "April Fools". Or possibly the term originally referred to people who prematurely celebrated the start of summer (which was traditionally May Day, May 1, in many ancient cultures), only to be met with lingering snowfall; the exact origin is unclear. Regardless of where the term originated, it has since become something much sillier.

April 1 is known as April Fools' Day, where almost every single person in the world becomes The Fool. A time to trick Muggles that the joke is real, and a time to pull pranks and tricks. You will then reveal the trick with the line "April Fools!"

Many works of the media include April Fools' Day jokes: usually articles presented as news or truth that go beyond the limits of sense, contain blatant inaccuracies, would be completely outrageous, etc. They usually assume Viewers Are Geniuses and that no one would be stupid enough to take it seriously, but of course that's not always true. People are often taken in, get outraged, get laughed at, get made to feel stupid. A good time is had by all.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, a common April Fools' Day Joke on Webcomics was for two different webcomic authors to each do the other's strip. By far the most popular joke on the Internet seems to be a claim by the owner that the website is shutting down. A common joke specific to fansites is to suddenly denounce what the fansite stood for and revamp it to focus on a different franchise, most commonly one that bears similarities to the original, or even a competing one. Another joke specific to gaming sites with free content is the introduction of a "premium" version of the site, where it's said one gets exclusive content if one pays for it; generally, the site makes "preview content" available, with most of the "premium perks" turning out to be silly (or duplicates of free services by other sites devoted to the game).

Subversions of April Fools' Day are to have something improbable published on that day be actually true (either on that day or on a later date, or when a prank goes just a little too far).

In any case, woe betide someone who dies (or worse, is born) on April Fools' Day. And God help you if a natural disaster happens and people think the blaring sirens are a prank.

See April Fools' Plot for in-universe fictional examples.

Real example subpages

Other real examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Advertising 
  • The mouthwash company Scope used the couple of days leading to April 1st, 2013 to advertise a bacon-flavored mouthwash. Consumer reactions were overwhelmingly positive, and there were plenty of people ticked off to find out it was all a joke.
  • On April 1, 1996, Taco Bell took out newspaper ads in several cities announcing that they had purchased sponsorship rights to the Liberty Bell, and it would subsequently be renamed the "Taco Liberty Bell." After millions of angry phone calls to both Taco Bell and the US government, then-White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry sarcastically quipped that Ford had also acquired sponsorship of the Lincoln Memorial and would be renaming it the "Ford-Lincoln-Mercury Memorial."

    Anime & Manga 
  • Hetalia: Axis Powers usually has an event on the author's blog where one of the characters takes over the site for the day.
  • In 2003, mahq.net made an April Fools' Day prank announcement of a Mobile Suit Gundam SEED sequel, which some websites in Japan apparently thought was a genuine one. And when Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny was released, the uncanny similarities just made it funnier.
    • In addition April 1st is the site's anniversary, meaning they generally don't do April Fools' Day jokes. That, and it's admittedly kind of hard to top Grandiose Gundam.
  • In 2010, promotion for the upcoming Gintama movie was changed so that Shinpachi appeared to be the main focus. Worth it for Gintoki's expression in the cutaway panel alone.
    • For April Fools Day 2014, the fan site ToonamiFaithful.com uploaded an article claiming that Dragon Ball Z, one of Toonami's biggest Killer Apps during its Cartoon Network years, would be returning uncut and in 16:9 HD... and would be taking up the entire lineup, pushing every show currently airing off the block. The article, which was written to be as conspicuous as possible, even included fake quotes from FUNimation and Williams Street. The reaction was mixed, from those who took the joke in good spirits, to those who were pissed that it was just a joke, and to those who were convinced that it was actually true (to the point where some people on Twitter asked Jason DeMarco for confirmation). The joke itself was made ominously prophetic, however, when it was announced shortly after that Toonami would be airing the Cooler's Revenge movie, and even more so when, on that same night the movie aired, it was announced that the 2009 recut Dragon Ball Z Kai would eventually be coming to Toonami.
  • In 2012, Crunchyroll announced a new streaming app for Game Boy. The original Game Boy.
  • In 2015, someone created a PV for a nonexistent spinoff of A Certain Magical Index starring Accelerator's Gender Flip counterpart Yuriko Suzushina, who doesn't actually exist in-universe and is just an imaginary character.
  • Dragon Ball Super:
    • In 2017, Toei released information saying that the next storyline would be the "Society Survival Saga", which cast the Dragon Ball characters as white-collar office workers trying to survive during an economic recession. This was accompanied by artwork depicting Team Universe 7 from the Universe Survival Saga (the actual next storyline) wearing nice business suits.
    • 2018 had two: News saying that Dragon Ball Super: Broly (which didn't have an official name at the time) was going to be a crossover with Pretty Cure, and the official series website getting transformed into the official Android 17 Website.
  • In 2017, Okawa Bkub's manga Hoshiiro Girldrop was announced to have an anime adaptation coming later that year. Only for the official website days later to reveal Popuko tearing through the protagonist's face to reveal that Pop Team Epic would be getting the anime instead.
  • Numerous anime and manga franchises do April Fools' Day jokes. Anime News Network compiles a list every year (e.g. 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019).
  • Beginning in 2018, the official Pretty Cure website will change the main page so that the show is now centered around whoever that year's mascot is. The ninth episode of HuGtto! Pretty Cure aired on April Fool's Day, and had Hugtan do the Previously on… segment.
    • The year Healin' Good♡Pretty Cure was airing, the website instead did a "spot the mistakes" game, likely a reference to one of the kinds of games that is shown at the end of each show.
  • In 2019, all the manga on the Cycomi website had header images taken from Zombie Land Saga.
  • In 2020, Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo took over the Weekly Shonen Jump website, and the mangaka also drew a parody chapter of Death Note.
  • In 2021, Harper Anime Reviews talked about a familiar yet forgotten masterpiece known as Keit-Ai, referencing the anime as something Toradora-like.
  • In 2017, a "live-action Love Live! Sunshine!! movie" was annouced by the show's official staff. The preview video for said movie turned out to be a video done entirely with puppets.
  • It's become something of a Running Gag for anime blogs to make April Fools' Day announcements of an Animated Adaptation of ShindoL's Metamorphosis, a notoriously nasty and very Not Safe for Work deconstruction of schoolgirl-focused hentai manga. These fake announcements inadvertently gained additional credence after the similarly rapey Redo of Healer actually did get a quasi-mainstream anime release: it's now common for these fake articles to say the anime is being produced by the same studio.

    Comic Books 

    Comic Strips 
  • In 1997, several comic artists swapped strips, producing such oddities as a Dilbert comic in the style of The Family Circus (which Dilbert author Scott Adams described as one of the signs of the Apocalypse), and Garfield migrating to Blondie (1930) while the new paintjob at his house dries (and he gets to eat a Dagwood Sandwich while there).
  • In 2005, several comics including FoxTrot, Pearls Before Swine, and Get Fuzzy, did identical comics where one character plays with a Ouija Board and uses it as an excuse to hit another, eliciting the response "Somehow I imagined the afterlife to be a more peaceful place."
  • A Peanuts comic strip from 1979 had Linus announcing that "he" was coming. The Easter Beagle? No, not the Easter Beagle. The Great Pumpkin? No, not him either. So who's coming, then? It's...the April Fool!note 
    • It also did many other strips before and after this one, although not all of them were April Fool's Day gags. Some just simply talked about it, including one strip where Charlie Brown tries and fails to do one, and then laments how no one falls for his April Fool's Day jokes.
  • In 2012, a number of guest artists took over work on Cul-de-sac while Richard Thompson was trying to manage his Parkinson's disease. On April 1st, Stephen Pastis did a guest strip, which he used to make an extra Pearls Before Swine strip about how much he sucks at replicating Thompson's iconic art style.
    Pig: I don't think he'll ask you for any more favors, Steph.

    Films — Animation 
  • In 2013, Pixar launched a website to promote Monsters University that resembled the website of real colleges. On April 1st of that year, the site appeared to have been hijacked and vandalized by rival college Fear Tech.

    Films — Live-Action 

    Literature 
  • In 2012, weeks after the final book for Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi was released, Suvudu published a fake epilogue by Timothy Zahn, claiming it was Luke's clone who survived the events of The Last Command, not the real Luke. Also, there's a revelation that Grand Admiral Thawn's master plan was to collect a complete set of clones, and almost all of the characters may or may not be clones, marking the launch of an unending Star Wars series called Star Wars: The Clone Wars 2.
  • The Hunting of the Snark was first published on April 1, 1876.
  • Tales On Kaimere
    • For 2022 there were two episodes released on the novel's YouTube channel, a serious episode about Tricksters in Kaimeran myths and a joke episode about the Guerick Unicorn being the dominant lifeforms on Kaimere, which was part of a trend for speculative biologist at the time.
    • The 2023 episode was written in the style of Casual Geographic, focusing on three deadly animals in the Known World. Notably, one of these animals, the non-newtonian spitting tetrapod Xhetsukaan, turns out to be a Chekhov's Gag towards the Heterotherms and The Silent One's true identity.
    • The 2024 episode focuses on the titular mammal clade from The Snouters: Form and Life of the Rhinogrades being introduced to Kaimere during the mid-Pliostene harvest. This also ties into an episode at the end of the same month focusing on the mid-Pleistocene harvest.

    Music 
  • In April Fools Day 2015, Brentalfloss released the song everyone has been requesting for over 7 years... the overworld theme of Super Mario Bros. with lyrics. There's just one catch though... the lyrics he sings are in Japanese. (Accurate Japanese, mind you, Brent had a translator working on it.) Like Brent himself said, Be Careful What You Wish For.
  • On April 1st, 2013, The Doubleclicks released Meowsic To Your Ears, an EP of previously released original songs rearranged to feature the "cat keyboard" playing the main melody, and declared this to be their "new sound" . The cat keyboard in question is a toy keyboard shaped like a stylized cat face with piano keys for teeth, and naturally one of its instrument settings is a synthesized cat's meow - it's been used for videos on the band's youtube channel before, mainly for jokey cover songs.
  • The day after April Fools Day 2015, Eminem added annotated selections to his full catalog on Rap Genius as well as music from other rappers. And you know what the funniest part of the joke is? It wasn't a joke at all.
  • In 2019, Buster Bros from Hypnosis Mic performed a rap remix of of the King of Prism version of "EZ DO DANCE".
  • In 2007, Alanis Morissette covered the Black Eyed Peas' infamous "My Humps", seemingly as an April Fools joke.
  • Nine Inch Nails:
    • On April 1st, 2009, the band announced the release of a new album: Strobe Light, produced by Timbaland and featuring artists like Justin Timberlake and Fergie, with such tracks as 'Pussygrinder' and 'Clap Trap Crack Slap'. For extra silliness, the cover showed Trent Reznor wearing shutter shades. Clicking the 'download' link on the official NIN website would lead to a fake blue screen of death.
    • On April 1st 2019, a fan made a defictionalization of the album for its 10th anniversary, consisting of strange NIN mashups.
  • List of SiIvaGunner examples:
    • In 2016, SiIvaGunner released "April Fools Remixes" of the entire soundtrack for The Flintstones: The Rescue of Dino & Hoppy, with additional "remixes" for a few songs from Sonic Lost World, Sutte Hakkun, and Final Fantasy XIII. The gag behind all these "remixes" that they are actually unedited rips, with the non-Flintstones rips already sounding like the theme from the cartoon. He later tweeted that he's quit making remixes, but worded vaguely so that people thought he meant he's quitting the channel. The joke album "GilvaSunner's Highest Quality Video Game Rips" was also released, but the original release was intentionally bloated with 245 uncompressed FLAC copies of "Grand Dad Metropolis" (244 of which being the original unedited song from Sonic Heroes), 245 identical pictures of Kevin Spacey, and an image of the "Official GilvaSunner Seal of Quality" with a filepath so long that it's impossible to delete if the downloader isn't careful upon extracting the .ZIP archive the album was contained in. An actual high quality rip of "Final Destination" from Super Smash Bros. Brawl was released through the channel of the real GilvaSunner.
    • In 2017, the channel mimicked the upload schedule of the real GilvaSunner and released the entire soundtrack of "Zero Grand Prix" (the accompanying album wasn't released until the following day). In addition, a collaboration with Chris Niosi was released in the form of a "Agent Yoru o Yuku" rip.
    • In 2018, a supposed Undertale album called "A High Quality Journey Through the Undergrand" was released, but the download links are fake, with the FLAC download being their earlier Maroon 5 parody album, and the MP3 download being just copies of "We Like Digging?", the debut album of Kara's Flowers (the original incarnation of Maroon 5). The accompanying video was designed to look like an announcement video for the album, but it was actually a lore video in which Inspector Gadget returns and takes over the channel again. Then an unexpected new face shows up on the channel — The Nostalgia Critic, who complains that Gadget is wasting his potential as a channel host by fixating on a single joke, and vows to steal the channel for himself. The following week after the video's release, he manages to do just that.
    • In 2019, an "Afro Mix" of Five Nights at Freddy's's "Circus" (itself a Running Gag on the channel) was uploaded, only to be just a reupload of "afro - circus" from VvvvvaVvvvvvr (a mashup of Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted's "Afro Circus" scene and Sensory Abuse edit of Edy Lemond's "Madagascar" by YouTube Pooper Study Giss. They also streamed a SiIvaDirect episode containing info relating to the upcoming King For Another Day tournament and other tidbits; this was all completely sincere, with the exception of what appeared to be a Weezer tribute/parody album called The Blue Album being announced at the end - it turned out to be a compilation of Blue Ball Rips. Following the Direct, a four-minute recap video in the style of News Wave (with Spawn Wave himself) was posted, ending with a fake-out reveal that Spawn Wave himself was joining the King For Another Day tournament.
    • 2020 was dedicated to rips inspired by April Fools Day games and announcements. A "quarantine edition" of SiIvaDirect was also streamed, announcing Cloud from Final Fantasy VII to be a "DLC" addition for the King For Another Day tournament, which had already ended. However, the music uploaded for him was actually just the music used for his appearances in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.note  The "Direct" was padded out to exactly seven minutes by repeating Adam Levine's reveal trailer from the tournament, only to slowly zoom in on a freeze frame of him while jazz music played.
    • 2021: The previous day was devoted to Mario-related rips, as a nod to the fact that several Nintendo-related things (mostly related to the 35th anniversary of Super Mario Bros.), such as Super Mario 3D All-Stars and Super Mario Bros. 35, would be discontinued on March 31. On April 1, more Mario-related rips were uploaded, but with the word "Mario" removed from their titles and thumbnails, and many previously-uploaded Mario rips (i.e. well over 1700 rips) were privated in keeping with the joke. This channel-wide Ret-Gone lasted until the late evening of April 3, and into the next day, when new rips featuring Mario were uploaded, and all the other Mario-related rips were unprivated.
    • 2022: Since April 1st doubles as Logan Paul's birthday, a Logan takeover was initiated for the day, complete with him replacing the Lighthouse in the channel banner.
    • 2023 was essentially devoted to "Beta Mix" rips of previous videos - not just previous rips, mind you, but videos from the entire history of SiIvaGunner, including album announcements, lore videos, material from the King for A Day and King for Another Day tournaments, and songs from the SGFR remix projects. In some cases, the rips already had a designated mix name but the "(Beta Mix)" was added as an additional mix name, resulting in such Department of Redundancy Department-laden rip names as "Underground (Beta Mix) (Beta Mix) - Super Mario Bros. 2", "Play a Mini-Game! (Unused Version) (Beta Mix) - Mario Party" and "Konga Conga Kappa (King Conga) (Alpha Mix) (Beta Mix) - Crypt of the NecroDancer". "Christmas Spirit [FILE-07] (Beta Mix) - Haltmann's Archives" in particular reveals that in an alternate universe, in place of Christmas Spirit, Haltmann Works found something called "Fool's Spirit", which is powerful enough to warp space and time, and may even open rifts to other universes. However, their attempts to generate more Fool's Spirit failed, so it was put into permanent storage. The lore video concludes with some Fool's Spirit seeping into the room holding the laptop where high quality rips are produced, giving context to the uploads. There's also a stealth release of a new Fall Guys-themed joke album called "Mediatonic's Highest Quality Video Game Rips Volume WOO".
    • 2024: The day was devoted to rips In the Style of the popular "X but Y" edits of video game music that seemed to show up in every fan's recommended tabs, all featuring some sort of twist (for instance, "Green Hill Zone but it's in minor key" becomes an arrangement of "Stay" by The Kid LAROI, while "SM64/NSMB (DS) - Bob-Omb Squad in Negative Harmony" is actually the negative harmony cover of Britney Spears' "Toxic" with that song's soundfont, and "The mario brothers movie trailer but its vocoded to miss the rage" is actually a YTPMV based around the latter song and the webcomic video "MARIO BROTHERS MOVIE"). According to a community post, this was done to push the channel into the algorithms of more users. The event also lasted well into April 2, after which Joke-Explainer announced that all of the rips would be compiled into their own playlist, and regular rips would resume on April 5.
  • Tsukiuta's April Fools jokes always involve April representative Arata in his superhero alter-ego, Heartbreak Red.

    Pinball 
  • In 2022, Stern Pinball announced a pinball machine based on Frasier (limited to just 264 units, in reference to the number of episodes in the series). Clicking the link to purchase it instead leads to a Rickroll.

    Podcasts 

    Print Media 
  • Discover magazine has published a number of notorious articles featuring absurd scientific discoveries, such as a macroscopic subatomic particle improbably named the "bigon".
    • The most infamous of these articles is the Hotheaded Naked Ice Borer, a fictional Arctic animal created for the holiday in 1995. The critter was briefly picked up as an actual news item by at least one other source, and there are anecdotes of inquiries by zookeepers looking for a specimen! Discover claims it has received more mail about this one article than any other it has ever published.
    • Another dealt with a native culture that had created primitive "computers" by tying multiple knots in ropes using a system they had devised. A little common sense applied showed that this was not only silly, but a pun - they were knot computers.
      • For further humour, this was at one time seriously proposed (fringe) explanation for the quipu.
  • Sports Illustrated ran a story in its April 1, 1985 issue called "The Curious Case of Sidd Finch". The article, written by George Plimpton, ostensibly profiled a phenomenal and unknown New York Mets pitching prospect. Mr. Finch (it was claimed) grew up in an English orphanage, went to Harvard, studied yoga in Tibet, played the French horn, and could throw a baseball up to 168 MPH. The magazine even teased readers with a Fun with Acronyms subhead to the piece:
    "He's a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. Impressively liberalted from our opulent lifestyle, Sidd's deciding about yoga�and his future in baseball."
    • The bogus story was nonetheless taken at face value by numerous Met fans, sports reporters, and rival general managers.SI continued the gag the following week with an article announcing Finch's "retirement" from baseball, then finally let the cat out of the bag in the April 15 issue.
  • Doctor Who Magazine has had several, including a claim that the Doctor Who story "The Daemons" was meant to be six episodes long, not five, and that the sixth episode had been discovered (much later, fan historians such as Tat Wood were still having to explain that this wasn't true).
  • Nintendo Power does this a lot:
    • 1997 ran phony newspaper clippings, one of them saying that the Headless Snowman from Super Mario 64 was getting his own game instead of Luigi.
    • 1999 had an article featuring Pikachu from Pokémon as a Y2K expert. However, his advice was completely useless since all he ever spoke was the iconic Pokémon Speak. The authors eventually turn to Bill Gates himself...who unfortunately also speaks in Pokémon Speak.
    • 2001 discussed "Warp Pipe Technology", a fake Defictionalization of the warp pipes of Super Mario Bros.. fame. At least two readers were fooled and wrote in to ask about the technology; their response:
      How can we put this gently? The test subject, Dr. Dru Wiliamskini, has a new nickname: "Steaming Puddle of Goo." Better luck next year!
    • There was also the infamous Zelda April Fool's joke, showing fake screenshots of Link holding the Triforce. This only further fueled rumors of secret ways to get the Triforce, even after Nintendo repeatedly explained it wasn't possible.
  • GamePro had an annual April feature called "LamePro", which mostly featured crude reimaginings of the hot games of the day, along with some mashups like "Barney and Butthead" and "Street Fighter Alfalfa".
    • Lamepro had a review of the Daredevil console game, and exclusive screenshots of a black screen - and the multiplayer mode (a black screen divided into four black screens.)note 
  • Electronic Gaming Monthly was so good at this, they ended up creating Urban Legends Of Zelda out of most of them. They are described in detail in the aforementioned article, but for the sake of summarization:
  • Game Informer has a section in every April issue called "Game Infarcer", complete with a faux cover and mini-articles poking fun at various aspects of the gaming world. In each May issue, GI publishes a few choice letters from people who believed the jokes to be real, despite the fact that every Game Infarcer page has "PARODY" in capital letters at the bottom. Interestingly enough, in 2010, most of the objections were not to the articles, but fake Editor-in-Chief Darth Clark's declaration that his game reviews had surpassed actual games as an art form.
  • In 2008, Hot Rod published an article proclaiming the revival of American Motors (bought by Chrysler in 1987). The article contained detailed information and drawings of forthcoming models including the AMX, Matador, Ambassador, Pacer, and Gremlin. It was later revealed to be an April Fools' Day joke.
  • Road & Track usually prints a review of something other than a car, but a mode of transportation none the less.
  • In their April 2012 issue, Car and Driver listed 25 cars that would be released within the next few years. Most of them were real, except for the Chrysler TD By Maserati.
  • MacAddict (now Mac|Life), upon its first April Fools' Day in 1997, ran a lot of jokes. Among them were a letter from the editor explaining that the magazine would be shifting its focus to Windows, and an Onion-esque fake news section.
  • The April 1988 issue of Your Sinclair included a glowing review of a fictional lawn-mowing Simulation Game. Advanced Lawnmowing Simulator was inevitably defictionalized.
    • The 1980s Sinclair Spectrum home computer came in two models: one with 16K of RAM and a more expensive version with a whopping 48K. One issue of the Sinclair magazine claimed that the interiors of both types were identical, but the extra memory on the cheaper model was blocked off. It printed a very lengthy machine code program which it claimed would unlock the upper 32K of RAM giving 16K owners full access. When the program was run it printed APRIL FOOL! on the screen.
  • The One Magazine's April 1990 issue contained a preview of a supposed upcoming game, Cyber Assault 556, a highly complex Wide-Open Sandbox space sim game (complete with fake screenshots).
  • The Polish gaming magazine Reset had a different kind of joke in every April issue (except for April 1997, because that was their first issue.)
    • In 1998, the entire magazine layout was turned 90 degrees, and there was a enthusiastic review of a fictional game 666, a supposedly highly complex Wide-Open Sandbox game produced by the Polish company Teser Interactive. There was also a humorous hardware review of a drinking glass, and a spurious article about Bill Gates converting to Buddhism.
    • In the 2000 issue the order of sections was reversed from the usual, so the magazine started with comics and off-topic articles and ended with reviews and previews. The same issue also contained a review of "House Renovation 2000", supposedly a Nintendo Hard strategy game where the player must hire highly lazy and recalcitrant worker units to renovate his house.
  • The Polish gaming magazine CD-Action pulled off subtle jokes sometimes. For instance, in the April 1999 issue, they claimed that in Tomb Raider 4 Lara Croft would have a second pair of breasts added to her back, and that id Software was preparing to release Doom 2000 that would run on the Unreal engine.
  • Going back to earlier days of video gaming, the March/April 1984 issue of Atari Age magazine had a portion called Not The Atari Age, with a fake cover, improbable news articles (like Ion Defender, a game designed to be unplayable and which literally cheats if you get any good at it at all, and a game called Big Brother that just watches you), and impractical items for sale (like a one-million-dollar gem-encrusted joystick, or a Trak-Cube controller that doesn't move)
  • An April edition of Red Dwarf Smegazine claimed that the next season would be entirely animated. The article ended by acknowledging the whole thing was ridiculous and outright saying that surely nobody was going to believe it. In the next issue's letters page...
  • In April 1993, Marvel Age #124 had a one-page teaser for an upcoming Marvel Universe team called "The X-cellent Misfits" (with the word "Misfits" cobbled together with letters from other Marvel book logos), consisting of Frog-Man (a low-tier villain from Daredevil), Razorback (a Fad Super trucker in a warthog costume with an electrified mane), 3-D Man (another fad superhero based on 3-D glasses), and Squirrel Girl (who, at the time, was considered a One-Shot Character with no real future). Accompanying the announcement is a footnote reading, "APRIL FOOLS!" Below the joke promo is a calendar for April featuring various Marvel characters reacting to the "announcement" in disbelief.
  • On April 1, 2019 the Los Angeles Times printed a piece called "For cramped New York, an expanding dining scene." The entire article was an elaborate Troll, a legitimate story about eating in New York, but written in the condescending, Damned by Faint Praise style that The New York Times often uses in lifestyle articles about anyplace outside Lower Manhattan, and especially in articles about Los Angeles. The detail went all the way down to the NYT's love of glib regional stereotypes and treating commonplace items like exotic artifacts.
    My first culinary encounter was with pizza, a mysterious kind of baked tlayuda, covered in macerated tomatoes and milk coagulation, and occasionally smothered with a type of thinly sliced lap cheong called pepperoni. The odd dish, sometimes referred to as a pie, washed ashore from Naples some years ago.

    Radio 
  • On 3rd April 2020, The Now Show, which had recorded the previous two episodes in lockdown conditions due to coronovirus, opened with the cheers of an audience and the presenters saying how great it was to be back in the studio, despite the fact the lockdown was very much ongoing. Then the police supposedly arrived to arrest everyone, and they said "That's the April Fool's out of the way", and admitted they were indeed still recording separately at home.

    Roleplay 
  • Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues:
    • One of the gimmicks of the RP is numerous flashforwards to the future provided by the GM. For April Fools 2018, one of the players provide their own flashforward, where two of the characters successfully defeat the Big Bad and then wonder what to do next. Once they realise that they're inside an April Fools joke, they bust out and resume the regular story.
    • For April Fools 2019 there's another player-supplied flashforward, this one seeming to take itself seriously right up until Ivy plays a certain song to comfort herself.
  • April Fool's events have occured numerous times in Destroy the Godmodder, oftentimes relating to the April Fool's jokes of a game's host forum. A list:
    • On April 1st, 2014, TT2000 played an incredibly funny prank on the Godmodder, involving a year long quest for the ultimate practical joke that involved piranhas, sharks, piranha sharks, and anti-godmodding water. The entire quest turned out to be fabricated, and the Godmodder proceeded to go into an almost comatose rage, where the only thing he would say was "Heh."
      • Two weeks later, during 4/13, the Godmodder turned into Psychopath Godmodder and created the fearsome Calamity. All because of a joke.
    • On the same day, the Minecraft Forum staff posted some new rules to the forum to make discussion more "serious." TwinBuilder pretended to shut down the second thread because it broke all of the new rules.
    • On April 1st, 2015, in accordance with Mojang's April Fool's prank of that year, the Love Update, TwinBuilder renamed the game "Love the Godmodder 2: Love Harder!" and removed all traces of combat, making the game an adventure of spreading love and happiness throughout the universe. The Godmodder proceeded to throw an unholy fit which crashed the game and caused it to restart at an earlier point in time. This earlier state was almost a year earlier. Thankfully, the game was restored, and the players got a super-powerful weapon out of it: the Disc of Mojang.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Cards Against Humanity have always done things that are rather off-the-wall on April Fools' Day.
    • In 2015, they advertised that what they were selling was bullshit. People ordered it, not realizing that what the developers said was Not Hyperbole: they literally sent people the feces of a bull.
    • In 2016, they raised over one hundred thousand American dollars to dig a really big hole. The more money they got, the more time they kept digging, and the more expensive time became to purchase. They didn't put anything in the hole, mind you. They just dug a hole. And once they were done, all they said was "Hole got dug".
    • In 2017, CAH held a sale on their website for their newest expansion, which was released that same day. However, they also held a "99% Off Sale" for other things. These things included cars, round-trip vacations, and even cash, all at 1/100th their normal price (ex. a luxury vacation to the Bahamas that normally cost $7,500 would cost just $75, or you could buy a briefcase with ten thousand dollars in it for one hundred dollars). They even included a "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer in an FAQ that said "yes, we are really selling these things for these prices" in it. But there were two catches to the sale. Firstly, CAH only sold one of any of those items. Secondly, what they were selling would change every ten minutes, and could not be purchased by anyone else. Thus, it became an absolute mad scramble to see who could click the "Buy This!" button at exactly the right moment.
  • Sandy Petersen holds Kickstarter campaigns starting April first like Deep One dating & a Hastur Energy Drink with real prize for backing the campaigns being the miniatures for his Cthulhu Wars that are offered a bonus rewards.
  • Dragon Magazine, the house organ for Dungeons & Dragons, would usually dedicate their April issues to sillier fare. For example:
    • One issue had a series of mixed up spells like "Find Terrain" for which the "somatic" component is to fall forward, at which you have just "found the terrain".
    • Another issue had on its cover a chubby warrior holding flowers up to a beholder which had on makeup and flowers... "Beauty is in the eye of the... Oh nevermind!"
    • Another time, they packaged the April Fools material in one section of the magazine, with a cover page that parodied the heroes-steal-giant-demon-statue-eyes cover of the 1E Player's Handbook. Exact same scene, except the demonic statue and gem thieves are all teddy bears.
    • The April 1982 issue "Dragon's Bestiary" section included stats for Donald Duck, the Jolly Green Giant (as "valley giants"), Marvin the Martian, the Tazmanian Devil, baseball bugbears, and a Theodore Cleaver-like werebeaver.
    • Shortly after 3.5 introduced a Flaws mechanic, they did flaws for Commoners (the least powerful of the NPC classes); one of the flaws, called "You Got Chickens", had the character suffering a 50% chance of retrieving a chicken any time they tried to draw something from their pack. This was promptly exploited on the Character Optimization board.
    • The parody songs of "Bard on the Run".
  • White Wolf and its Spiritual Successor Onyx Path Publishing are in the habit of releasing a joke supplement on April Fools' Day.
    • They kicked off in 2008 with the release of an excerpt from a pitch for Shadows of Iceland.
    • In 2009 they released the Scroll of Swallowed Darkness, an incomplete, sex-themed supplement for Exalted. In 2012, they released errata for it.
    • 2010 saw the release of Dudes of Legend, a very NSFW Take That-filled nWOD supplement with rules for, among other things, using glitter to let vampires go out in the sun, and gaining superpowers from homoeroticism.
    • For 2011, they released Paths of Storytelling: Vampire, a Gamebook-style piece for Vampire: The Masquerade.
    • In 2013, they released Scion: Extras, a collection of (perhaps justifiably) obscure Gods and their Scions.
    • 2014's release was a set of nWOD Overly Narrow Condition cards, for use when PCs ran into highly unlikely situations.
    • In 2015, they announced that, inspired by the popularity of the Kickstarter for historical nWOD supplement Dark Eras, they'd be transplanting all Old World of Darkness and New World of Darkness gamelines to the nineteenth century, at the height of Gothic literature's popularity, in order to add Historical Angst (TM) and gothness. As an indication of where this would be going, they released nWOD supplement Gothic Icons, statting up characters from Gothic literature who represented goth archetypes.
  • Palladium Books has a combination fanzine/sourcebook for Rifts and other Palladium titles called The Rifter. They created an April Fool's Issue called The Rifter 9 1/2, which was full of ridiculous characters, alternate rules, and other silly content. A Running Gag throughout the issue was that Palladium Books had been sold to the fictional Percy Ferkleberger, who began effecting massive changes in Rifts. The most notable example was the new rules for "Giga-Damage," which was a massive in-joke regarding the game's love of More Dakka, the fact that Rifts tends to attract Munchkins, and Power Creep, Power Seep in general. Most amusingly, the Rifter 9 1/2 was made primarily as an April Fool's Joke on The Rifter's editor, who had heard nothing about it until the first copies arrived at the warehouse.
  • Catalyst Games Labs, the current publishers of BattleTech and Shadowrun, celebrates April Fools' by releasing gag products which are nonetheless playable. Considering that they're also free products, it's a pretty good deal if you can take the joke.
    • The 2012 releases were Taiwan-themed scenario-packs. The BattleTech releases included a "Third (Star) League Turning Points" scenario-pack (set two centuries beyond the current in-universe date, complete with units and weapons advanced beyond even Clan technology).
    • The 2013 BattleTech release is an 'Experimental Technical Readout'. It's titled XTRO:1945, and details a range of units from World War 2, complete with the gear they need to fight a BattleMech. They are playable units, and incredibly deadly to each other. Against 'Mechs is another matter.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh!: Kevin Tewart, a member of Upper Deck Entertainment, sent a letter claiming that the card Card Trooper had been misprinted, making its effect vastly different. The first letter of each line spelled out "APRIL FOOLS".
  • Over the years, Games Workshop made a few April Fools jokes. Including the announcements of a "How to throw Citadel dices" book and the 'Eavy Metal Spraygun (that allows you to give your figures a perfect paintjob like the ones from the 'Eavy Metal team just by placing the right colors inside and spraying them on the figure)
    • In 2016, they announced a paintbrush for left-handed and a Horus Heresy pop-up book.
    • In 2017, they announced Citadel-branded water for cleaning brushes.
    • In 2018, they announced that from now on they will cast all the miniatures in chocolate.
    • In 2020, they announced Aquilos, a Warhammer 40,000-branded cereal.
    • In 2021, they announced a movie about the most beloved hero from Warhammer 40,000... the Primaris Lieutenant!
    • In 2023, they announced the release of Warhammer themed gym apparel.
    • In 2024, they announced jewelry made with Warpstone as a tie-in to the new Skaven models that will release with the fourth edition of Warhammer: Age of Sigmar.
  • On April 1st 2021, the Twitter feeds of both Evil Hat Productions and April Kit Walsh announced that Thirsty Sword Lesbians was rebranding as Friendly Sword Pals.
  • On April 1st, 2024, Paizo launched Starfinder: The Gap, an extensive setting book covering a period of lost history. In keeping with the theme of lost history, every page was blank.

    Toys 
  • Bionicle Sector 01, the BIONICLE wiki, Lost quite a few of their images and pages a while ago, but managed to find some replacement images of the Toa Nuva, Mata Nui, and Makuta Teridax, thanks to a certain Derpy Hooves...
  • In 2015, Hasbro announced that the Transformers Fan Made Combiner poll they were doing at the time was closed and the whole thing was going to be replaced with a new figure of Reflector.

    Western Animation 
  • Late in March 2015, the creator of Codename: Kids Next Door linked to a Rainbow Monkey website that had a search bar. Various names from Kids Next Door could be entered into the search bar, which would return a single line answer. One term showed a countdown in strange alien numbers. Around the same time, a Galactic Kids Next Door video was uploaded on YouTube; this video was apparently supposed to be shown when the countdown ended, but it was leaked. Strange messages from the original Kids Next Door voice actors suggested that some kind of revival was in the works. Problem was, the countdown would end on April 1st. Fans waited with baited breath to see what would happen when the countdown ended... and while a new video was released, it ended with the message "As of right now, there are no plans for a Galactic Kids Next Door Series. But... there should be". It appears that the whole thing was part April Fool's joke, part Viral Marketing pitch.
  • In 2019, the Twitter page for Hilda saw itself get taken over by the Wood Man.
  • Episode 17 of Making Fiends was released on April Fools' Day. Absolutely nothing was strange about it. Well, besides the fact that every dialogue was spoken in Bulgarian. A subbed version was later released... in Intentional Engrish for Funny.
  • In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fandom:
    • In 2013, series writer Meghan McCarthy released a lot of false episode titles and synopses for season four.
      • Notably some of these were actually correct (though with silly synopses). Since the existence of a fourth Pie sister was already confirmed, many fans correctly guessed that "Maude Pie" was a reference to her.
    • 2014 saw the release of two promos for nonexistent spinoffs:
    • 2015:
      • Someone released a fake Discovery Family promo for a side series called "Apple Bloomers", a Magical Girl anime parody starring the Cutie Mark Crusaders. note 
      • Also in 2015, Andrea Libman tweeted that the show has been merged with Transformers, with Michael Bay set to direct it. The image tweeted is of Pinkie Pie (one of the characters she voices) in an Optimus Prime costume.
    • 2016:
      • The official Facebook page announced that the show was going to be replaced with "My Little Dragon: Spike is Magic", a new show about Spike going in the Dragon Lands to teach friendship to his inhabitants, making friends and eating gems.
    • 2019:
      • The show's social media claimed that Spike would be leaving in the first episode of Season 9 (the final season) to embark on a quest for his mother. This "announcement" included a graphic reminiscent of the Game of Thrones title, whose final season also started that April.
  • Nickelodeon:
    • In 2017, they launched a new channel called "Nick Sr.", ostensibly a sister network to Nick Jr.. They also replaced the opening of SpongeBob SquarePants with various different versions of the theme song, ending with SpongeBob saying "April Fools"! These SpongeBob themes would return in 2018.
    • TeenNick:
      • I 2013, the channel advertised that they were planning to show a long-lost episode of Rocko's Modern Life at midnight as part of its NickRewind block. Said episode was 30 minutes of Mayo from the "Wacky Delly" episode, followed by a showing of said episode (presumably to clear things up for any confused viewers who didn't watch Rocko).
      • They did a sort of "Spot the Difference" thing for 2017—the difference being random Jump Scares from other shows being inserted into episodes with no rhyme or reason. One example being that Face, already a source of Accidental Nightmare Fuel for many 90s kids, would show up on the screen at random.
  • In 2018, Phineas and Ferb and Star vs. the Forces of Evil had their theme songs sung by Grunkle Stan in these videos.
  • South Park:
    • Done with the season 2 premiere in 1998; the audience was expecting a resolution to Season 1's Cliffhanger about who Eric Cartman's father was, but instead they got an episode dedicated to the farting Canadian Show Within a Show Terrence & Phillip that aired on April 1st. Reactions from viewers were quite negative, leading to Trey Parker and Matt Stone resolving the cliffhanger in the season's second episode. This was later lampshaded in the episode "Terrance & Phillip: Behind the Blow".
    • It was also referenced in the 2006 episode "Cartoon Wars Part II", which pulled a similar "this episode will not be seen tonight" gag involving Terrence & Phillip. Which had its own Muhammad joke that gets censored on its own... wait...What?!? Are Terrence & Phillip arguing with the executive behind the edit now? And they're bringing up Family Guy showing Muhammad uncensored? And the executive is saying someone is probably going to FOX to stop them? Ah, now the second part of Cartoon Wars truly begins...
    • Also parodied with another "Part 2 is cancelled" stunt in the 2009 episode "Eat, Pray, Queef" (which ALSO aired on April 1st). This time, it's an in-universe example where the boys get mad after the conclusion to a 2-part Terrence & Phillip episode is replaced with a Queef Sisters episode. The creators actually originally intended to do a whole episode about the Queef Sisters, but went against it.
  • In 2015, Steven Universe had a Crossover with Uncle Grandpa. While it aired on April 2 (as to fit with the pattern of airing new episodes on Thursday), the episode itself says "April Fools'" in it. Part of the prank also included one of the staff members considering it a Canon episode, though the episode itself outright states that it isn't canon.
  • In 2024, "Cartoon Network" had an 'Acme Fools' marathon that ran all the Looney Tunes themed shows they had, starting with "Bugs Bunny Builders", "The Looney Tunes Show", "Tiny Toons Looniversity" and ending with old fashioned Bugs Bunny cartoons.

    Real Life 
  • Online tech news site The Register regularly put up joke articles on April 1st. The articles are usually gone by the next day however, although some of them are archived for posterity.
  • China, notorious for their censorship regime, bans the media in the country from publishing or airing fake articles and reports on April Fools' Day.
  • A popular joke is the "Fools' Day Parade", wherein someone announces a time and place and big acts for a parade that never happens. Some of the more entertaining press releases are of New York's "Annual April Fools' Day Parade", written by world-class prankster Joey Skaggs.
  • British newspaper The Daily Mail pulled one when Tony Blair was still the Prime Minister, saying that he had replaced the black door of 10 Downing Street (the Prime Minister's residence) with a red one.
  • In 1977, another British Newspaper, The Guardian, ran a seven-page travel special on a small Indian Ocean island nation named San Seriffe, riffing off similar special reports by The Financial Times. They even pulled in advertisers such as Kodak and Guinness to make joke ads. As word processing software and, by extension, most typography terms had not yet entered the popular consciousness, puns such as the country name, cities such as Bodoni (the capital) and Garamondo, island names Upper Caisse, Lower Caisse (together shaped like a semi-colon), and little extraneous Ova Mata, the ruler General M.J. Pica, and the currency Corona and Ems all flew over the audiences' heads, who filled the Guardian's switchboards with requests for information and provoked angry responses from travel companies and airlines when they refused to believe it didn't exist because they "saw it in the Guardian."
  • Many cable networks do April Fools' Day pranks. The [adult swim] programming block has its own page, but Cartoon Network proper isn't too shabby either:
    • In 1997, they ran the Screwy Squirrel cartoon "Happy-Go-Nutty" repeatedly for twelve hours straight. The network's AOL site note  ran banner messages saying that Screwy had taken over the network and was making demands with the authorities. The banners read "April Fools" after the madness ended at 6pm. A six-hour Looney Tunes marathon immediately followed as an apology.
    • In 2000, they ran a 4-hour Boomerang marathon to celebrate the new network's launch.
    • In 2001, they ran Tex Avery's Marathon of Fools, which presented 18 hours of Avery's shorts.
    • In 2009, they replaced the majority of their programming with a surprise Cow and Chickennote  marathon. Not to mention that said marathon was disguised as a Chowder marathon, using the latter's theme song and up next bumpers.
    • In 2010, they added fart and belch sound effects to almost every cartoon they aired throughout the day, even to the intros.
    • In 2011, the logo bug at the bottom of the screen was flipped upside-down.
    • In 2012, they aired a rerun of the first Screwy Squirrel cartoon, which marked the return of a Tex Avery cartoon since April 11, 2004.
    • In 2017, the main characters in every show have googly eyes placed over their faces. They were even edited into all the advertisements for the shows on the network, including for ones that hadn't premiered yet.
    • In 2018, Richard Watterson would interrupt programming by dancing, throwing eggs at the screen, and other random actions.
    • In 2021, the network became Cat-Toon Network, showing their regular programming with cats edited into it.
    • in 2024, the network had an 'Acme Fools' marathon that ran all the Looney Tunes themed shows they had, starting with "Bugs Bunny Builders", "The Looney Tunes Show", "Tiny Toons Looniversity" and ending with old fashioned Bugs Bunny cartoons.
  • The Hotelicopter.
  • For 2008, the morning DJs at WBPM in upstate New York announced they were quitting. All throughout their show, they received calls from listeners asking if it was true and begging them not to do it. Just before they signed off, they admitted that they were quitting... smoking.
  • In 2008, users of the Kubuntu Linux beta found that their wallpapers were now one of those sickeningly sweet unicorn images. And that the dialog boxes for changing the wallpaper were disabled.
  • In the late 1980s, the U.S. Armed Forces Network (radio) in Europe celebrated April 1st with such news items as an invasion of Germany by giant grasshoppers. Also, the German "phrase of the day" feature was replaced with a cow phrase: "Moooo!" which means, "Hey, watch where you're putting those cold hands, buddy!"
  • Something about the radio business must really lend itself to these. From 1964, here's WABC's Dan Ingram being victimized during his on-air shift.
    • George Weber, who hosted a talk show on KOA in Denver in the early 1990s, was fond of elaborate April Fools pranks. These included: telling listeners that the gold on the dome of the Colorado state capitol building was being replaced and that they could go to the grounds to get free chunks of the old gold, claiming that Denver had just built a subway system (he even mocked up a "subway entrance" at a local comedy club), and making it sound as though KOA had changed their format from talk to Country Music.
  • On April 1st of 2010, the CD trading site swapacd.com included a link on their homepage promising users "free credits". Instead of credits that can be exchanged for CDs, what they got were the kind of credits you see at the end of movies - a scrolling list of bad puns on names of famous actors.
  • All Things Considered, the evening news program of NPR, does an annual April Fools news story, delivered in their usual deadpan style. Among others was a report on the dangers of exploding maple trees in Vermont one year, and then another was a reading outraged "listener mail" concerning Whale Farming (as in, raising whales in massive tanks in the Midwest) which was a long series of Comically Missing the Point gags.
  • The Swedish television channel SVT had a glorious one in 1962. Known radio technician Kjell Stensson told the viewers that by simply cutting up a nylon stocking and attaching it to the television screen, they would get color TV!
  • A few years ago one Christchurch newspaper published a news report about how the iconic Christchurch City Cathedral was going to be demolished due to bad structural damage. This became Harsher in Hindsight considering the catherdral was demolished in 2012 after a 7.9 earthquake struck the city.
  • In the 80s, the Australian Cricket team played a tour match in India on April 1st. The rules of cricket state that if the ball hits the stumps but fails to dislodge the bails, the batsman is not out. The Australians superglued the bails on, and then just stood back and let the ball hit the stumps.
  • For 2011, Channel 4 modified their (live-action with CGI effects) Station Idents for the day by removing the CGI 4 logos.
  • On April Fools' Day 2011, Shout! Factory announced on its website that it would be producing a DVD box set containing the entire 72-year run of the radio/TV soap opera Guiding Light, collected on nearly 4,000 discs.
  • On April 1, 1966 the well-known Buccaneer Broadcaster Radio London, operating from a ship off the British coast, found its signal being drowned out by Radio East Anglia, which claimed to be broadcasting with an implausibly-powerful transmitter from somewhere in eastern England. This was so convincing that the police actually searched the region for illegal transmitters. Naturally they never found one, because the whole thing was broadcast from the Radio London ship with the help of two fake DJs (actually engineers) and good editing. It had all been planned by a couple of the real DJs - without the knowledge of the station's management, who weren't happy at the loss of scheduled commercial slots.
  • In 2005, a website was launched for "Googolplex Theaters", a supposedly innovatitve theater where patrons use a virtual reality headset that lets them watch any movie at any time. The theather, of course, didn't exist, while the technology wouldn't exist for over another decade.note 
  • The Internet Engineering Task Force often writes humorous Requests For Comments (the IETF's name for standards they adopt). The Other Wiki has a list. The very first one, "TELNET randomly lose" was taken serious enough times that for a while the IETF put a header saying "note the date of issue".
  • In 2014, grocery delivery service FreshDirect ran a promotion for "eagle-caught salmon": "Sustainably harvested in the wilds of upstate New York," the salmon is captured by company-sponsored eagles in the wild that are "tied with green and orange ribbons for tracking as well as a bit of flair."
  • In 2011, Auckland Zoo released online adverts promoting the zoo's newest attraction, the Tasmanian Tiger. Clicking on the adverts sent viewers to a webpage where the joke was revealed, as well as an appeal for awareness of conservation.
  • On 1 April 2016, automated DVD rental service Redbox announced it was hiring Kiosk Ambassadors to dispense and retrieve DVDs from within their familiar red boxes.
  • This backfired with the U.S. division of Volkswagen in 2021. During the last week of March, they promoted a name change to "Voltswagen" to celebrate their new focus on electric cars, insisting that it was not an April Fool's prank. Turns out, it was a prank, to promote their all-electric SUV. Unfortunately for the company, this resulted in a lot of confusion and a sudden rise and fall in VW's stock.
  • On April 1, 2014, Domino's Pizza announced that they were creating edible pizza boxes.
  • On April 1, 2016, Honda released images they claimed were of the world's first official emoji number plate on its "race car for the road", the Honda Civic Type R.
  • On April 1, 2009, British supermarket Waitrose placed adverts in newspapers announcing the availability of a new fruit, the pinana (a combination of pineapple and banana).
  • On April 1, 2021, Goodlife (a company which produces vegetarian food) announced the launch of their new Chickpea Praline and Falafel Dough Ice Cream.
  • A wristwatch enthusiast website, Hodinkee.com, published an April Fool's article in 2014 about Dan Ackroyd's fictional Rochefoucauld wristwatch from the film Trading Places as though it were real. In June 2020, GQ magazine wrote an article about the watch from the film and treated it as real, apparently having taken their information from the Hodinkee article without stopping to check the date on the article.
  • Teletoon:
    • Teletoon aired the special computer-animated Adventure Time episode "A Glitch is a Glitch" on April 1, 2013, the same day as its US premiere, even though they still hadn't caught up on the series. However, a week before that day, Teletoon started airing a promo that promoted the episode as "Ice King Time". On the day of the premiere, other promos featuring clips of the Ice King were aired, including at least one clip (of him singing "Fries" to Gunter) from an episode that hadn't aired on Teletoon yet. When it was finally time for the new episode, a special bumper said that "Ice King Time" was coming up next. Then, near the end of the episode, an animation was superimposed over the episode that featured Jake pushing his butt up against the screen and farting, causing the screen to fog up so that it reads "HAPPY APRIL FOOLS' DAY". The following day, Teletoon uploaded both their promo for the episode and the animation of Jake to their YouTube channel, the latter with music and sound effects added.
    • On April 1, 2014, Teletoon aired the alternate ending of Total Drama All-Stars. (This wasn't a surprise, since there was a press release saying that this would happen.)
  • In 2023, CSIRO's official Facebook page made a post claiming that a very tiny species of wombat (known as the "teacup wombat") had been discovered. The included link to more information on this species was a Rickroll.

    TV Tropes 
And so on.
  • 2014: The site thought tropers needed help editing and writing articles so they employed Lampshade, a knock-off of Clippit from Microsoft Office, that gives "helpful" tips. After two minutes, Lampshade will leave until the next time an article is being edited.
  • All of Trope Report's April issues have been April Fools' themed:
  • Following a proper ban on April Fool's entries on the Complete Monster and Magnificent Bastard thread, a joke thread was spun off on April 1, 2023, so people could post write-ups for candidates that would obviously never make either trope.
  • The Featured Trope for April 1, 2024 was the joke page People Sit on Chairs.

Subversions

    Anime & Manga 
  • Just Because! was originally announced through a teaser site for an unnamed "April 1st Anime" project. When further details were announced in Megami magazine the magazine made sure to point out that it was not a joke. Part of the reason most people considered it a prank was because artist Kiseki Himura, typically known for his Slice of Life cheesecake Tawawa on Monday, was the character designer for a straightforward romance.
  • Unlike Pop Team Epic's first April Fools joke (see its entry in the "Real Examples" section), the anime's announcement that it would be getting an hour long special really did happen. The real joke was that Popuko and Pipimi got new voice actors per channel broadcast.
  • Powerpuff Girls Z: The announcement that there was going to be a Magical Girl anime Spin-Off of The Powerpuff Girls (1998) was presumed as an April Fools joke due to being announced on said date.
    • More than that: it was announced on an April 1st, then nothing was said about it for months and months, with no new information to be had anywhere, until a follow-up announcement on, you guessed it, the following April 1st.
  • Sarazanmai's collaboration with the famous sushi chain Sushizanmai was revealed to be real the next day.
  • Masaaki Yuasa formally announced his retirement from Science SARU on this day in 2020. To make sure nobody got the wrong idea, he also mentioned his retirement started on March 25th.
  • The first episode of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann aired on April 1, 2010.

    Asian Animation 

    Comic Books 

    Films — Animation 
  • The trailer for The Simpsons Movie was released on March 31, 2006 with the second Ice Age. Despite being one day before April 1st, it did create some initial beliefs that Fox had been pulling an early April Fools' Day joke.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • The casting of Leonard Nimoy as the voice of Sentinel Prime in Transformers: Dark of the Moon was announced near April 1st. Extra skepticism points thanks to Nimoy's retirement from acting (which clearly didn't stick as he continued to act right until his passing in 2015).
  • The announcement that Hideaki Anno would be directing Shin Godzilla film. It was announced on March 31st, but due to timezones it was April 1st in Japan.
  • The digital release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens was on April 1st, 2016.
  • The Sesame Street documentary Street Gang, adapted from the 2008 book of the same name, was announced on April 1, 2016.
  • AMC Theatres announced Marvel Studios: 22 Movie Marathon, a premium 59 hour and 7 minute marathon of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's entire Infinity Saga, from Iron Man up to Avengers: Endgame (which screens an hour earlier than the regular showing). This event was announced to begin on April 23 (three days before Endgame), limited to three theaters.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Just days after the series finale aired, The Science Channel announces that they're rebooting MythBusters, starting with a reality TV style season in search of getting a new team together. Many assumed it's an April Fools joke given the day the news was published. As it turns out, nope, it's real.

    Music 
  • Kasane Teto, the most well known vip@2Ch April Fools joke Vocaloid, actually did recieve her own voice, albeit synthesised in a different program. And for free.
    • Inhabitants of vip@2ch used to do it every year since then, most of not all of them gaining voice banks in UTAU.

    Print Media 

    Tabletop Games 
  • The official Magic: The Gathering website pulls off some sort of elaborate joke every year on April 1st, but occasionally hides some truth in it as well. Perhaps the best trick they pulled was on April 1st, 2004, when they announced Unhinged, a sequel to the popular Magic joke set Unglued. A few days later, it was revealed that the announcement was true.
    • Aaah, but when else to unveil new Unglued cards but that most auspicious of days?
    • The real Fool's Day Joke was the announcement that they were banning the Plains card: one of the resource cards you need to play the game.
    • In 2010, they put up an "Arcana" (mini-article) that was just a Long List of increasingly ludicrous rumors they want to debunk. Only the first 5 or so (of 38) were plausible enough to merit debunking.
  • Sanguine Productions' 6-page, $1,279.95 PDF supplement for Ironclaw, known as The Book of Fools, is free on April Fool's Day.
  • Dungeons: The Dragoning was released on /tg/ on April 1st. Those who actually checked the PDF found an RPG way better than it had any right to be.
  • In 2022, Games Workshop posted a short trailer that teased the return of the Squats to Warhammer 40,000, a faction of space Dwarves who had been removed from canon in the game's early days. The next day, they released another trailer with shots of an actual miniature, revealing it as a double bluff - the Squats really are back, in the form of the Leagues of Votann.
    What? You thought we were JOKING?!

    Theme Parks 
  • Walt Disney World's Blizzard Beach waterpark leaned on the absurdity of its "Melting Ski Resort in Florida" premise by opening on April 1, 1996.
  • 2014 finally saw the debut of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit as a mascot in the Disney Theme Parks, specifically in Tokyo Disney Resort. Of course, since the announcement happened on April 1, one of the first comments was a verification on whether or not this was an April Fools' prank.

    Video Games 
  • Announced on April 1st 2012, Saints Row: The Third: Enter the Dominatrix was thought to be an April Fools Joke until it was later revealed to be a real standalone companion game retailing for $30. Triply subverted as development on the game got so ambitious that it got revamped into Saints Row IV, and then the first Saints Row IV mission DLC is called — wait for it — Enter the Dominatrix.
  • Def Jam Vendetta had an initial release date of April 1, 2003. Hardly anybody took seriously the idea of a Licensed Game where rappers beat the stuffing out of one another. The game actually met the April 1 release date, and it sold like hotcakes, inspiring a pair of sequels.
  • As with several earlier examples, the merger of Squaresoft and Enix was initially thought to be an April Fools' Day prank because it was announced on April 1.
  • Team Fortress 2's Jarate weapon for April Fools' Day 2009 is now a genuine weapon as of the Sniper vs. Spy update, release by the end of May 2009.
    • Valve have also made multiple Counter-Strike April Fools' Day updates.
    • On the subject of Valve again, 13 indie games on Steam saw odd updates relating to potatoes on April 1st, 2011. Surely enough, these potatoes served as the omen to something more sinister than a mere foolish prank...
    • The 2013 April Fools was a form of zig-zag, since it was originally a straight-up joke (see Reddit's section in New Media above), but resulted in two new promotional hats for Reddit being added into the game two days later.
  • Similiar to the Powerpuff Girls Z example above is Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games, which was also announced near April 1st and thought to be an elaborate prank.
  • Similar to the previous example is Poker Night 2—however, the Team Fortress 2 items that you can get from this game were added to the Team Fortress 2 files before it was even teased.
  • Version 0.31.01 of Dwarf Fortress, two years in the making, was released on April 1, 2010. No surprise that the website broke within the hour.
  • Ogmo from Jumper has been announced to be a playable character in Super Meat Boy. The fact that Ogmo and Meat Boy himself are look-alikes left those who saw the news skeptical.
  • Narcissu -side 2nd- was supposed to be released on April Fools' Day. It got updated a few hours early, and some still think it's an April Fools' Day joke.
  • One April Fools Day, Max Barry announced that the UN-like organization in his browser-based nation simulation game Nationstates would change its name to the World Assembly because of a complaint from the real UN about his use of the name and emblem. Turns out, the UN really did send him a letter, and the change was made to comply with it.
  • The fan-made Pokémon MMORPG Pokénet was shut down by Nintendo on April 1, 2010.
  • Hatoful Boyfriend's introduction states that the character designs were released on April Fools' Day, and there's an anecdote (could be truth, could be just an Urban Legend) that the creators of this game had originally intended for the game to be a normal Dating Sim with human guys and posted bird designs for these guys on the website as an April Fools' joke, only for fans to love them so much that the game ended up being all about dating birds instead.
  • Rovio Mobile announced an Angry Birds animated series on April 1st 2012.
  • Whilst League of Legends usually plays this straight, a notable subversion was the announcement of the long awaited champion Lee Sin, the Blind Monk who was released a few days later. In the April Fool's version, he was indestructible and could kick across the map but the player was filtered through a blurry screen. Here's the April Fools spotlight compared to the real spotlight.
  • The announcement of Rewrite by Key/Visual Arts on April 1st 2008 was subsequently validated the following day.
    • The announcement that Rewrite would be an adult game on April 1st 2010 was revealed as a joke.
    • The release of a video showing the characters in distinctly un-Key like situation on April 1st 2011 was also confirmed the following day (and the events in video do actually happen in the novel).
  • For War Thunder, in 2013 Gaijin Entertainment released a trailer showing cute, colorful ponies as a new playable faction. Then they actually updated they game to include said ponies, each packing 4 20mm machine guns, 8 rockets tubes, and 2 half-ton bombs. Oh, and they each flew like a high-speed rocket plane. Bronies were ecstatic, while brony-haters were... uh... not.
    • In 2014, they added a Kaiju snail for the Japanese army. With eye stalk lasers.
    • 2015 saw them go for a two-fer.
      • One event was all about walking tanks - think the turret from a KV-2 plonked onto a pair of walker legs that wouldn't look out of place in Battletech and then whack a 20mm turret to either side of the KV-2 one. Players would start in a pre-set roster of normal tanks and have to earn points before they could spawn in one of the walkers.
      • The other was called "Unrealistic Battle" (referencing the game's own Realistic Battle mode) where players would control inflatable Shermans that launched high-explosive potatoes and armour-piercing carrots at each other in order to deplete their health bars (as a not-so-subtle dig at World of Tanks). The Shermans would bounce around and their barrels would bend and wobble like you'd expect from a giant inflatable tank while holding the button that lets you check the status of your machine's internals would reveal that the interior was four guys on bicycles around a wooden platform that the 'gunner' stood on. He had crates of vegetables at his feet and used a strong slingshot to fire them out the barrel.
  • In 2013, Konami redecorated◊ the jubeat e-Amusement website to promote "Wow Wow VENUS", with the unlock condition for the song ostensibly requiring tons of Level Grinding. The site was reverted the day after as expected...but then, much to the joy of players wanting to play it, "Wow Wow VENUS" became an actual playable song the day after, freely available with no unlock precondition for one week, permanently so for the player if they played it once during that week. Currently, the song can be obtained by grinding through the "bistro saucer" unlock system.
  • Also in 2013, WayForward Technologies announced a game called Cat Girl Without Salad, which eventually saw an actual release on June 2016, available only on the Humble Bundle store. Seven years to the day after its initial announcement, CGWS made its console debut on the Nintendo Switch.
  • In 2014, Skullgirls developers revealed the newest addition to the game's cast: Palette Swap Moveset Clone character Fukua. Intended as a quick Take That! against a certain other character trailer, she was removed from the game shortly after April Fools... and was later permanently added, with a complete moveset and her own story mode.
  • The Binding of Isaac was confirmed for the 3DS, Wii U, and Xbox One on April 1, 2015. Due to the timing, and a well-known history that BoI has previously run into issues being released on Nintendo's eShop service, some thought it really was a joke, prompting the game's creator to state on Twitter that it's no joke. The dev did take the chance to still add in some jokes though, by making a joke post stating that the Nintendo versions would have three "subtle" changes — Isaac will now wear a fig leaf, the voice Isaac's mother hears coming from Max the dog rather than God, and the references to Christianity would be replaced by references to Scientology. A crossed-out section at the end claims that there are additional changes to the Nintendo versions such as replacing "blood" with "sweat" (a la the SNES version of Mortal Kombat (1992)) and "pills" with "lollipops."
  • Nintendo made the announcement that they would indeed be holding a Nintendo Direct on April 1, 2015, even stating in the announcement "despite the date, this Direct is no joke!" During said Direct they made announcements that caught many off-guard, such as releasing the first debut trailer for Shin Megami Tensei × Fire Emblem (after two long years of not announcing anything besides a short teaser), announcing that the fifth entry in the Fatal Frame series (for the Wii U) will indeed see a release outside of Japan (after the previous entry failed to see an official non-Japanese release), Lucas will be the next DLC character for Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, and even the announcement that Donkey Kong 64 will hit the Virtual Console service after many fans previously thought the game wouldn't due to rights issues.
  • The Talos Principle announced DLC that would replace the voice of Elohim with the voice of Serious Sam on April 1, 2015. It not only is an actual DLC, but it was also free for a short while.
  • On April 1, 2015, BioWare revealed ZITHER!, a Wandering Minstrel mage with The Power of Rock as the first multiplayer DLC character for Dragon Age: Inquisition. A month later, the Dragonslayer DLC was announced, and ZITHER! with his unique mechanics were confirmed as the DLC's new Mage agent.
  • On April 1, 2016, SF Debris posted a review of the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episodes, "Party of One," "Lesson Zero," "It's About Time," "Luna Eclipsed."
  • On April 1, 2017, Arika showcased footage of a long-awaited follow-up to Street Fighter EX and Fighting Layer as part of an extended celebration of the company's 20th anniversary. Though the video description clearly states that it's Arika's prank for the holiday, Akira's vice president quickly clarified that the game's closely guarded development, not the product itself, was the actual joke, and a demo build was livestreamed at an official promotional event/location test by Arika later that day. The game would be released as Fighting EX Layer in 2018.
    • On April 1, 2019 they apologised for a delay in releasing the next playable character (Area), then showed footage of a mobile version... which was released immediately afterwards.
    • On April 1, 2021 they released the Nintendo Switch version titled Fighting EX Layer: Another Dash. The joke is that it is a completely reworked version, therefore cross-play is not possible with the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, or Steam versions.
  • The announcement of the English localization of The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV came out on April 1, 2020.
  • Rivals of Aether's developers make most of their announcements on April 1st of each year in videos titled Rivals Direct. The videos have comedic elements to them, but the most of the things shown are real.
  • The mobile game Sonic Forces Speed Battle introduced Longclaw, Baby Sonic's caretaker in Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) to the game. The company that made the game, Hardlight, had to reassure people that this was real.
  • In 2020, PlatinumGames launched a teaser on April 1st for Sol Cresta, an arcade game collaboration between the studio and Hamster Corporation on a new entry in the Terra Cresta series. Unlike the previous teasers Platinum had done near April 1st (see its entry in Video Games for more), Sol Cresta was revealed to be in development the following year, and showed off its first gameplay trailer on April 2nd.
  • Terraria: In the form of a joke post about a new boss and new invasion that came alongside it. This became Foreshadowing when it turned out that the boss, Duke Fishron, was a real thing (sans the invasion). Further foreshadowing with the same boss, the April Fools post claimed that Duke Fishron demands a fair fight, and will scale its HP based on how many players are in the server. In 1.3's Expert Mode, this is actually the case, where Duke Fishron's HP will increase the more players there are.
  • Yakuza: Like a Dragon weirdly went about this. On April 1, 2019, Sega showed gameplay of a new Yakuza game which is a turn-based RPG and not a beat-em-up like all previous games. And then the first official reveal trailer for Yakuza: Like a Dragon shows that the game was actually going to be an RPG. The thing is, the creators weren't actually planning on switching genres when they showed that footage, but they saw people were actually rather open to the idea of a Yakuza JRPG and ended up going through with it.

    Visual Novels 
  • Nekopara originally joked about making a Gender Flip of the premise, Nekopara: Cat Boys' Paradise, in 2019. Two years later, the spin-off was announced to be real and coming to both smartphones and Nintendo Switch.
  • In 2016, Sega released a browser game known as Big's Big Fishing Adventure 3: The Trial, which was a parody of the Sonic the Hedgehog series while starring the big purple cat. It started off as a Running Gag from the franchise's official Twitter account, before it was officially released on April 1st.
    • In 2023, Sega did it again, declaring that the Sonic franchise was moving in a new direction: he's dead. They released a murder-mystery Visual Novel spin-off titled The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog on Steam. (Though due to the fact that it was a worldwide release, some time zones had it happen while it was still March 31st.)

    Web Animation 
  • An Inanimate Insanity Kickstarter campaign was set up on April 1st 2016. This was justified as this was the series' fifth anniversary.
  • RWBY Chibi was first announced on April 1st, 2016. Despite Rooster Teeth explicitly stating that they would never make any April Fool's jokes on account of the company being founded on April 1st, some people still thought it was a joke until the series was officially announced.
  • In 2017, asdfmovie10 was given an un-announced release.
  • Minilife TV premiered a channel update on April 1, 2019 announcing an estimated release date of late 2020 for Minilife Origins (before it got delayed) and a new series of shorts called Minilife Chronicles, the first episode of which aired not long after the announcement.
  • The Strong Bad Email "parenting" was released on April 1st, 2022. Given that this is Homestar Runner, which has a history of actual April Fools' Day pranks, maybe not having a joke is the joke.

    Webcomics 
  • Subverted in 2010 by Looking for Group who chose April 1 for some real yet unlikely plot development. It would seem that two party members met long ago, but the sane one was too badly hurt to remember in detail.
  • Loserz brought us this strip. Jodie completely naked!
  • After several months of MegaTokyo being almost entirely Miho and Piro talking, April 1st, 2012 unexpectedly delivered a barely offscreen naked Magical Girl wrestling match and Piro getting smacked in the face with a washbasin. Canonically.
  • On April 1, 2003, Queen of Wands put up a comic where Shannon is shown crying and announces she's pregnant; it was removed a few hours later. Naturally it caused quite a bit of discussion as some fans had seen it and some did not. One year later the comic was put up again and stayed up, beginning a legitimate story-line.
  • Most of the plot of Exiern's Wild North story arc was brought to a sudden conclusion on April 1st, 2014 when a newly arrived character interrupted the villain. This was so abrupt, and done by someone known to be trusted not to overreact, that it sparked debates as to whether it was real.
  • In Rascals, this page in rascals right here with the sudden introduction of Candy Star.

    Web Original 
  • Google's Gmail service was announced on April 1, 2004 with storage limits that (at the time) sounded absurdly unfeasible; it was no joke. Since then, Gmail has run an April Fools' joke every year, including such "new features" as a free email printing service (subsidized by giant red context-sensitive ads on the back of the emails) and a feature allowing the user to send an email to days earlier.
  • Popular gaming site The GIAinitialism suddenly announced its dissolution on April 1, 2002. Readers were confused for months before finding out that, yes, it really was closing down, and many were angry that they would pick April 1 of all days to make the announcement. The GIA was later retooled into the ill-fated GameForms.com, which didn't last very long; the site would remain dead for many years before a brief resurrection lasting from 2013 to 2015.
  • Naruto: The Abridged Comedy Fandub Spoof Series Show was meant to be one of these, but it ended up as a side project of LittleKuriboh's. It currently has 5 episodes.
    • That was 2009's April Fools joke. In 2008, he made a fake ending to the series and "moved on" to Zork and Pals. Then in 2010, he created "a Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds abridged" with everyone just shouting "CARD GAMES ON MOTORCYCLES!!!"; then it turned out to be Iruka and Joekage watching it and then showing each other their abridged series. Naruto lampshades at the end how tired it's gotten and complains.
  • An accidental subversion: Gamefront (known back at the time of the incident as Filefront) announced on March 24, 2009, that they planned to shut down by the end of March. However, they managed to deal with their issues at that very moment and thus didn't close down after all; they just happened to be unfortunate enough to solve their problems by April 1st.
  • Like Naruto The Abridged Comedy Spoof Series Show, My Little Pony: Camaraderie is Supernatural started as an April Fools' joke for 2011 from the creators of Sonic F. It got popular enough that another episode was made.
  • ReZonance Soundtrack Reviews' Bubble Bobble's soundtrack review ran on April 1, 2013. After a lampshade of the trope, the review was played completely straight. It wasn't a gag review, or a prank, it was a straight up honest review. It even plays an important part to the continuity of the reviews.
  • On April 1, 2010, the CWCki (a wiki dedicated to Sonichu) was vandalized by the comic's author Chris Chandler. Most users assumed it was a prank at first. Imagine their surprise when it quickly became apparent that Chris was there for real.
  • The Other Wiki populates the "Featured article", "Did you know?", "On this day" and "Featured image" sections on its front page with content that appears humorous or absurd, but are legitimate topics, such as factoids with puns and wordplay ("...that space travel cost only US$50�75 in 1969?" Specifically, the video game), and featured articles on such diverse topics as prophetic names, "Fanny scratching" (the Cock Lane Ghost), Disco Demolition Night, and an Indonesian film literally titled ? (the Featured article space contained a giant question mark and nothing else). Since 2016 the jokes have been scaled back, with only the "Did you know?" section being silly in recent years.
  • On the Agatha Christie section of the Golden Age Mysteries Forum, one member posted a thread speculating about a possible lesbian couple in one novel. Because this thread was posted on April 1 2006, another member at first thought it was a joke.
  • Once there was a major Dragon Cave release on April Fools; neither the date or the name ("Mod Madness") lent credence to the idea that no, this was a legitimate release, and the eggs weren't going to disappear or become something ridiculous.
  • An edit button for Twitter, one of the site's most requested features, was announced on April 1st, 2022, probably done on purpose to make people think that it was a joke. Followup tweets confirmed that no, it was not a joke, and no, Elon Musk had nothing to do with it.

    Web Videos 
  • Freeman's Mind has had several over its run:
    • 2009, Episode 10.5: Short non-canonical episode, at the end of which Gordon dies. Episode 11 begins at the same spot as this one, with Gordon having a strange feeling of deja vu, which he suspects comes from eating bad Doritos. The title card features X marks in Gordon's glasses.
    • 2013, DoomGuy's Mind Episode 7 set in Brutal Doom. Here he plays a psychotic, bloodthirsty Space Marine as he happily slaughters his way through Phobos base.
    • 2014 gives us a trailer for Freeman Across the Universe, in which Freeman enters every first-person game ever made, often with hilarious results.
    • The very first episode of Freeman's Mind 2 aired on April Fools' 2017. The joke is that the viewer clicks on the video expecting it to be a joke, only to be surprised when it's actually the real episode. Some people suspected that it would turn out to be the only episode released or that, like its source material, it wouldn't reach Episode 3, but those proved false too. Ross Scott also deliberately stayed offline and didn't respond to any attempts to contact him for a week or so after the episode went up to help stoke the paranoia.
  • The Mysterious Mr. Enter did a unique subversion, where, on April Fools 2015, he posted a Admirable Animation video that appears to be about the highly requested Foodfight!... only for it to actually be a surprisingly good (and fairly recent at the time) The Fairly OddParents! episode, also named "Food Fight" (note the spacing). Of course, those who watched his "Top 11 Things I'll Never Review" video should have at least known that he wasn't talking about the movie.
  • Todd in the Shadows pulled a similar trick, where he posted a One Hit Wonderland video involving the song "Float On". At first it appears to be the Modest Mouse song, but it's actually a completely different song with that name, this one by the 70's soul group The Floaters.
  • Rooster Teeth, having been founded on April 1st 2003, has as a corporate policy to not to do any sort of pranks and usually uses the day to introduce trailers for new series and new seasons for existing series... However, they do admit that it's amusing that fans will tend to claim one or more trailers are fake and are actually shocked when it turns out that it actually exists, despite that other fans will tell them that RT doesn't do April Fool's pranks. For example, take RWBY Chibi an extremely Lighter and Softer spin-off of RWBY, made extra silly-sounding by the fact that it was announced shortly after the extremely dark Volume 3.
  • Ross's Game Dungeon, also by Ross Scott, had one with the review of Wolfenstein (2009), released on April Fools Day of 2015. It was a perfectly normal episode, except that every character in the game had their head replaced by a pumpkin. Ross did not acknowledge this at all, except for a comment about the game having extremely satisfying headshots for some reason he couldn't quite put his finger on. The video even includes a Bait-and-Switch where he finally admits that he was playing a joke on everyone... that joke being that he knew all the requests he received to review "Wolfenstein" were actually referring to Wolfenstein 3-D, he followed the requests literally instead. The pumpkin heads still never get mentioned, and Ross even played dumb in the comments section.
  • ProtonJon uploaded Stage 10 of Superman 64 on April's Fool Day 2021. Considering that the last episode was uploaded in February 25, 2017, which is four years ago, the upload of the video itself could be the joke in it of itself.

    Western Animation 
  • The long-awaited DVD sets for both Tiny Toon Adventures and Freakazoid! were announced by Warner Brothers on April 1st, 2008.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • On 1 April 2012, Netflix added the first season to their online service. When Equestria Daily posted about it (in the midst of a "Hasbro Takeover" for the day), no-one took it seriously. The next day, people realize they weren't joking. One more day later, and Friendship Is Magic occupies the "Most Watched Right Now" spot on Netflix.
    • Meghan McCarthy announced that Mike Vogel would be working on the sixth season on the 1st of April, 2015 (this was just before the fifth season even started). Equestria Daily even waited until the following day to announce this, as they knew that if they announced it then, people would think this was another joke.*
  • Mike Nawrocki announced that VeggieTales had been cancelled on March 31, 2018. While this could possibly sound like an April Fools' joke to some, Mike suggested that this was serious.
  • The cast of AMC's Ultra City Smiths was announced on April 1, 2021.
  • The international debut of the Phineas and Ferb episode "Attack of the 50 Foot Sister" on Disney Channel Brazil was April 1st, 2009.

    Real Life 
  • Marvin Gaye was shot and killed on April 1, 1984 by his father. People were shocked the next day because then they knew it was true.
  • People did not initially believe Tazz's departure from WWE was real because it was so close to April 1.
  • "Think Geek" added a Tauntaun sleeping bag to their catalog as an April Fool joke ... but response was so great they're now checking with Lucasfilms about making that bag for real. (They got permission.)
    • The same happened with the Personal Soundtrack t-shirt, which was an April Fools' Day joke that was so popular they ended up actually making one.
    • Same with their ever popular 8-bit tie.
  • Following a shift in power at CBS Sports and complaints over his being overexposed on the network (and appearing to be overly power-hungry), sportscaster Brent Musburger ended up getting fired on April 1, 1990, with the NCAA Basketball Championship game serving as his lame duck assignment prior to joining ABC Sports.
  • The death of comedian Mitch Hedberg was questioned because it was announced on his website on April Fool's Day.
  • Steve Jackson Games had an announcement about the long-desired Ogre update on April Fools Day 2012. But it wasn't a joke, the wargame is being republished. (The Kickstarter campaign was fully funded before the formal announcement.)
  • In Spain, the Philippines, and most Spanish-speaking Latin-American countries April 1st is just a regular day, though April Fools does have an equivalent celebrated on December 28th, the Day of the Holy Innocents. Be wary of the media in those parts of the world those days.
  • The April Fool's Day Blizzard. After a fairly below average winter, some people didn't believe that a huge blizzard would hit a week and a half into Spring; it ended up being Boston's third (now fourth) biggest snowstorm ever, coming only an inch shy of the winter season's 26 inches.
  • Traditionally in the UK, if you try to pull an April Fool joke after mid-day, you are the fool, as April Fool's Day ends at mid-day. If someone tries to pull an April fool's prank on you after this point, you can get them back by chanting a rhyme similar to the followingnote :
    April Fool's Day is past,
    You're the biggest fool at last!
  • Cynthia Lennon (John's first wife) died of cancer on 1 April 2015.
  • Also in 2015, Amazon announced their dash button service on March 31. They actually had to flat-out explain that it wasn't an April Fools joke.
  • The AMC Gremlin - the first American car designed to compete with foreign compacts - debuted on April 1, 1970. The car's highly divisive appearance ("Where's the other half of your car?") led many to call it a joke.
  • Google Fiber Phone, a home-phone service by you-know-who, was announced close to April Fools Day 2016.
  • At late March 2017, Crayola announced that they were retiring the color dandelion from their list. The company confirmed that it was not an April Fools stunt, and they announced that a new blue color, appropriately named "Bluetiful", is taking its place in September that same year.
  • The Canadian territory of Nunavut was established on April 1, 1999, officially separating from the Northwest Territories.
  • Titanic's sea-trials were originally scheduled to be on April 1, but high winds delayed them for the next day.
  • Villanova's 66-64 win over heavily favored Georgetown in the 1985 NCAA Division I men's basketball championship game, typically considered the biggest championship game upset ever, happened on April 1.
  • For April 1, 2021, the fast-food chain Culver's announced the "Curderburger" — a massive deep-fried cheese curd on a bun.note  Customer response was so strong that on October 15 of that year, the company released a modified Curderburger (this one a regular burger topped with a burger-sized fried cheese curd) as a one-day-only special menu item. 2022 saw the return of the Curderburger, still a limited-release but this time running for two weeks or until locations run out.
  • The full cancellation of E3 in 2022 was announced on April 1 of that year. Due to the unfortunate timing, many news sources had to tell their readers that that was not an April Fool's Day joke. (They learned their lesson the next year, as E3 2023's cancellation was announced on March 30.)

 
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Video Example(s):

South Park - April Fools

The episode that would have revealed Cartman's father was actually a Terrence & Phillip special.

Alternative Title(s): April Fools

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South Park - April Fools

The episode that would have revealed Cartman's father was actually a Terrence & Phillip special.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (19 votes)

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