The Prankster

"I've got gadgets and gizmos a-plenty, I've got whozits and whatzits galore"

"Your PRANKSTER'S GAMBIT plunges to an all time low. You cannot hope to defeat Egbert in a prank-off. He is simply the best there is."

— Homestuck

A person who loves Practical Jokes more than just a friend, and will not be selective about who they choose for a target - in fact, a success record with as many people on it as possible seems to be one of their life goals. They will be the constant annoyance of their friends, albeit humored and tolerated, akin to the Lovable Rogue. Using their tricks against the villain will usually be their Moment of Awesome that makes you forgive them for the rest.

April Fools' Day will be their favourite day of the year when they are even more out of control than usual (and sometimes it will be their actual birthday).

Occasionally someone will decide to teach the prankster a lesson and give them a taste of his own medicine, which will often expose them as a hypocrite who is unable to laugh at themself (although there are genuine jokesters who enjoy a good joke even when it is on them), but note that more than one practical joker on the block for any longer duration will quickly lead to an Escalating War.

Usually there will be at least one episode where the prankster's behavior ends up backfiring on him - maybe they go too far and actually harm someone or they are thought to be joking even when they are not. Having the prankster lose his trademark behavior is a clear sign that your story has just become Darker and Edgier.

Compare Court Jester and Mirth to Power. Sometimes also a Pungeon Master. See also The Trickster and Mischievous Body Language.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Doctor Slump:
  • Akane has a reputation of being a troublemaker. Senbei is often her primary target, but she would prank some others as well.
  • On the non-human spectrum, there's Donbe, a Kitsune who pranks via Voluntary Shapeshifting followed by a Jump Scare.
  • Senbei himself becomes one after he creates a time-stopping device, causing mischief all over the village.^note This ends up backfiring on him, as his own time keeps ticking while everyone else's stops, resulting in him aging early by forty years.
• As with their mythological counterparts, all Kitsune (especially Kyouka) and Tanuki in Kitsune no Yomeiri are irrepressible pranksters. The two races even have competitions to see who can prank the most people in a single day.
• Haré+Guu: Guu is a Deadpan Snarker who spends most of her time pulling various pranks on Hale using her seemingly unlimited powers. With Hare + Guu being a rather screwy anime in the first place, the fact that one of the main characters is this is to be expected.
• I Want to Eat Your Pancreas: Sakura Yamauchi, who spends a lot of time teasing and prodding at the protagonist. This is especially shown off during the Truth-or-Dare game and the protagonist's visit to her house, where her tendencies end up going too far.
• Majokko Meg-chan. Rabi that love play tricks on his big sisters Meg.
• Majokko Tickle. Tickle is a mischievous fairy who was imprisoned inside a book for playing pranks on people.
• Kanna from Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid has this as an Informed Attribute. She was banished to Earth for pulling too many pranks, but we never see her do so at any point in the story. Justified later on when it's revealed that she was doing it to get attention from her parents. Since Kobayashi pays attention to her, she has no reason to do so anymore.
• Kenta from Miss Machiko. He is also a Dirty Kid and most of his pranks are toward his Hot Teacher Machiko and some of his female classmates.
• Mysterious Joker. Spade was a prankster in childhood. Now, in his late adolescence, his pranks have become an essential part of his style of theft.
• Naruto:
  • The main character in his younger days; his hobbies were pulling pranks due to him craving attention. He grows out them as the manga goes on.
  • According to the databooks, his mother enjoyed pulling pranks, though in her case it probably wasn't for attention.
  • Boruto is a prankster as well. He's Naruto's son but pulls pranks to get his father's attention.
• The Narutaki twins and Misora in Negima! Magister Negi Magi.
• Urusei Yatsura: Ryoko Mendou (younger sister of Shutaro) loves to act like The Ojou, but in reality she's a rather cruel version of this. She loves pulling pranks, setting people up against each other, and generally causing utter mayhem for reasons boiling down to "it was funny" or "because". And she always does this. Her antics include (but are not limited to): shoving someone she knew couldn't swim into the water, removing the ladder someone had used to scale a tree, putting firecrackers in the mouth of someone who was sleeping, encasing someone in a block of concrete, locking her severely claustrophobic brother up in a locker, planting bombs in a building where people were throwing a Christmas party she wasn't invited to, and goading people into climbing a giant tree and then launching that tree into the stratosphere (it was actually a rocket disguised as a tree) because they were not climbing the tree quickly enough for her liking… and more importantly it looked like they were having fun without her… Honestly, she seems to cross the line between being a mere prankster and a flat-out Sadist.

Asian Animation

• In Happy Heroes, when Lele greets one of the Supermen and shakes his hand in "Troublesome Seatmates" (S7E3), he triggers his joy buzzer on him and states he's a master prankster. Earlier, in the episode "Extraterrestrial (Part 1)" (S7E1), he's doodled a fake mustache on his mom Ambassador Wang's face by the time she arrives on Planet Xing. This means Lele's prankster nature is established before he's even on-screen, by the way - his first physical appearance in the series is in "Troublesome Neighbors".

Comic Books

• Archie Comics: Reggie Mantle is a serial practical joker; most of the time he has a rule that his pranks are harmless.
• Bart Simpson: You guessed it, Bart Simpson is the prankster.
• Batman: The Joker's characterization was often like this during the Silver Age (between the early stories depicting him as a genuinely dangerous criminal and the later ones depicting him as a murderous psychotic).
• Pre-amnesia Jesus in the Italian satiric comic Jenus of Nazareth. It also led to Judas' betrayal, as Jesus, needing someone who truly hated him to die on the cross for our sins, made him his favourite victim fully knowing he was the most hypercompetitive man in Judaea. For example, during a race that Judas was winning with Jesus in the last place the Messiah warned him that "The last shall be first, and the first last", and at the last moment Jesus miracled his way into swapping places with Judas, winning the race and getting Judas last, and at Judas' betrayal...
  Jesus: Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?
  Judas: He who sows wind will reap whirlwind... Master! Fate is a funny thing... In the end, the last aphorism shall be mine... Ah ah!
  Jesus: Beans!
  Judas: Mh?
  Jesus: He who sows beans shall reap whirlwind.
  Judas: What absurd phrase is that? It means nothing!! You lose!! This time you...
  (Beat; Jesus is grinning)
  Judas: AAARGH!! I GOT IT NOW!! DIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEE!! DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEE!!
• Pocket God: Ooga likes to play deadly pranks on his tribe, usually on Nooby. He gradually stops with the pranks when he becomes leader of the tribe.
• Richie Rich: Reggie Van Dough is a mild villainous example.
• The Smurfs: The main personality trait of Jokey Smurf is his love of pranks, especially his exploding gift boxes.
• Superman:
  • Superman's enemy called... the Prankster. He has no powers, and his favorite target is the most powerful being on Earth. Gotta respect his ambition!
  • On a more mundane level, Clark Kent's co-worker Steve Lombard is overly fond of practical jokes. Thanks to Clark's powers, these tend to backfire on him, but he never gives up.
  • Superman himself used to be quite the super-powered prankster pre-Crisis.
• The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye: Swerve loves to play tricks on people, sometimes with assistance. Some that are either shown or mentioned include gluing Tailgate to his recharge slab and grabbing Riptide to hold fake auditions for prospective crew that reject everyone for clearly spurious reasons. He's not great at calibrating it, though; moving Red Alert's furniture in secret went a bit past "fun prank" and into "literal gaslighting".
• W.I.T.C.H.: Irma Lair.
• Wonder Woman Vol 1: In The Golden Age of Comic Books Etta Candy was a notorious prankster who drove her college professors mad. She stepped back the number and intensity of her pranks when one on some freshmen nearly turned deadly.

Fan Works

• Merry and Pippin are this in The Official Fanfiction University Of Middle-earth. They're called "the Urple Bandits".
• Socrates from Calvin & Hobbes: The Series - his life almost entirely revolves around pranks.
• Eileen Fields in Futari wa Pretty Cure Dragon is definitely this, though some of her pranks fall under Villainy Discretion Shot, particularly when she isn't seen in a particular episode and another character has to mention her to get her Once an Episode prank quota in for that episode. This eventually stops due to Character Development, and this aspect of Eileen's character is revealed to be more of an act she puts on for plot-relevant reasons. It also becomes a Chekhov's Skill later on when Nobunaga Oda attacks Ichiban High directly... only to fall victim to numerous booby traps Eileen had laid all over the school, including one that unleashes a swarm of bats on him as she taunts him by singing "Jingle Bells, Batman Smells".
• Shuran Harkol in Hivefled goes out of his way to be nice to the resident masochist when the normal social rules of trolls would entitle Harkol to beat the hell out of him, just to see him be disappointed.
• Kent in Sandswept. To quote: "Your name is KENT and you REALLY LOVE PRANKS".
• Minako Aino already enjoyed pranks in canon, but went up a notch in the Italian remake of Battle Fantasia Project (most notable is the list of her prank presents, that include a gardening manual for a Magical Girl capable of controlling plants and a street lamp for a friend who collects normal lamps). For some reason, her pranks to Usagi never work, as they either backfire or she loves the prank presents (as with the giant hamster wheel. She uses it to exercise). Also, Michiru has helped at least once, keeping in line with her being The Gadfly in the anime.
• Peach is revealed to be one in The 3 Little Princesses when she accidentally pulls out the "Prank Cap Of Destiny", instead of the "Sleepover Cap Of Destiny", at the sleepover. Daisy is very unamused that Peach has pulled various cruel pranks on her.
• The Invisibles (especially those two of them who are always together) in Hope for the Heartless are Great Gazoos who just love irritating the Horned King with their numerous creative pranks.
• In Ask the Ryans, both Ryans are fond of pulling jokes on the other boxers, which usually involves putting something insulting in their lockers.
• Johanna Mason: They Will Never See Me Cry: Beetee confides in Johanna that he once electrified a chair to deliver (mild and non-dangerous) electrical shocks to a teacher and also sabotaged a vending machine to dump salt on the food.
• Wolfgang Wentworth Junior (more commonly called "W.J.") and Edgar, the sons of Wolfgang and Edmund, are known for playing mean pranks on the other kids at their school and have even gone so far as to prank teachers. For example, in "A Perfect Disaster," W.J. had pulled a prank on his and Edgar's 5th-grade teacher, Mrs. Sherman (who also happens to be Andy Shortman's Aunt Olga), with something that involved putting a bunch of frogs in her desk (which ultimately resulted in Mrs. Sherman giving him detention).
• How Friendship Accidentally Saved Magical Britain: Fred and George Weasley prefer to put their magical talents towards pranking, as in canon, but Tom Riddle, of all people, winds up gaining a taste for pranks as well, thanks to (somewhat unwilling) influence from the twins. His first prank is when he's still trapped in the Diary Horcrux- the twins had been relying on his magical knowledge, so he gives them a spell to try out that he claims enhances their hearing, only for it to make the twins' ears grow to the size of melons on top of enhancing their hearing. He doesn't give them the counter-curse to reverse it for two whole days. It comes precisely during a time when Fred and Elestren won't stop getting into rows with each other, forcing George to hear every inane word at maximum volume.
• Little Hands, Big Attitude: Obsidian, Obfuscating Stupidity (as he is de-aged and nobody in his new family knows of his past identity), enjoys doing as many pranks as his infant form can manage. He starts with Jump Scares by screaming at whichever moment will result in a spilled drink, Trolls other characters during discussions (like when Sonic asks him to say "Sonic" and Obsidian opens his mouth to bait him and then spits at him), hides everyone's belongings and puts them in the most absurd places, and more. The only one on to him is Knuckles, who knows that Obsidian can understand everything they're saying. At one point even Shadow calls him out on his love for Slapstick comedy.

Film — Animation

• Dash's first scene in The Incredibles has him using his Super-Speed to play a prank on his teacher during class. It's heavily implied that Dash has done this before.
• Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure has Sir Leonard Looney, a knight in service to King Koo-Koo of Looney Land. He's introduced tormenting Raggedy Ann & Andy and the Camel with the Wrinkled Knees with a series of pranks, and plans to make them his new victims for the amusement of the king.
• Jack Frost from Rise of the Guardians. Being mostly invisible helps. So do the ice powers.
• Woody in the Animated Outtakes over the credits of Toy Story 2, all on Buzz—hiding in one of the spaceship boxes and making faces in the background, drawing on Buzz's helmet and making the film crew break up when Buzz puts it back up (twice), and finally writing "This Space For Rent" on his wings.
  Buzz: (marches away in the final prank) Darn it, Woody!

Film — Live-Action

• The Body (2012): Flashbacks show Mayka playing a lot of sick jokes on Álex, even during their wedding ceremony. This makes the idea that she would fake her own death quite believable.
• Jim's buddies in Date with an Angel are wacky pranksters. The start the movie by faking a terrorist attack, complete with prop grenade.
• The novel Die Feuerzangenbowle, better known for the second of three movie adaptations, is about Dr. Johannes Pfeiffer, a famous young author from Berlin who regrets having had private lessons and never attended school because he missed out on the fun that's school pranks. Next we see him in a school in the small town of Babenberg as the student Johann Pfeiffer, pulling off increasingly elaborate pranks on the teachers.
  • In the late 60s, around the time of the third (and quite inferior) Feuerzangenbowle film, a whole series of movies started with Die Lümmel von der ersten Bank. In these, a student (usually) named Pepe Nietnagel is The Prankster who keeps driving his teachers insane (literally in one case). His pranks aren't quite as elaborate as Pfeiffer's, but Germans are quite easy to entertain.
• Charlie Agapiou in Ford v Ferrari enjoys throwing firecrackers at girls "all damned day" according to Phil Remington, another employee of Shelby American, Inc.
• Laughter in Paradise begins with the death of notorious practical joker Henry Russell. His perverse sense of humour lingers after his death, with his will requiring his heirs to undertake some exceedingly odd actions to receive their inheritance. His will also turns out to be his last great joke, as he was broke and had nothing to leave them.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe: Loki is an Attention Whore, so pranks are his way of dealing with Thor hogging all the spotlight—if Loki can't get others to notice him in a positive manner, then the negative kind will do. Plus, it amuses him to hoodwink his chosen victims.
  • As an eight-year-old, he had shape-shifted into a snake in order to trick Thor into picking him up (Thor loves snakes), and Loki then stabbed his brother (yes, this counts as a prank on Asgard). This was apparently one of his finest ruses from boyhood because as an adult, Loki smiles fondly at Thor's recollection of the event.
  • According to the play The Tragedy of Loki of Asgard, Loki once transformed Thor into a frog, and Loki-as-Odin mutters under his breath, "'Twas indeed hilarious!"
  • In a deleted scene from Thor, Loki is displeased with a male servant who chuckles when Thor belittles spell casters ("Some do battle while others just do tricks"), so he metamorphoses the wine into three snakes, which causes the servant to yelp in fear. Loki thinks this is damn funny.
• In Murder on Flight 502, teenage passenger Millard Kensington is suspected of writing the death threat because he has a history with the airline as a known prankster. Although the teenager admits he did place the fake bomb in the passenger lobby, he is clueless about the letter.
• Trick or Treats: Christopher spends the bulk of the movie pulling a seemingly endless string of pranks on Linda. From the Electric Joybuzzer, to the Ding-Dong-Ditch Distraction, to dropping a rat on her.

Literature

• Betsy Sobak in The Baby-Sitters Club book (and graphic novel version) Claudia and the Bad Joke is this, to the point she's lost other sitters in the past. When Claudia sits for her, she ends up breaking her leg on the swings from Betsy not telling her the swing's chain was broken, scaring her so much she considers giving up baby sitting.
• Geronimo Stilton's cousin, Trap, is a relentless prankster who teases his cousin whenever he sees him, when he isn't taking advantage of Geronimo's fame and fortune.
• Harry Potter's Fred and George Weasley.
  • As well as James Potter and Sirius Black, who were directly compared to the Weasley twins. Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew too, to an extent.
• George and Harold from Captain Underpants.
• Legs Mortimer, in P. G. Wodehouse's "A Farewell to Legs", and the members of the Drones Club in other stories. (Mortimer Mouse in "Mickey's Rival" may have been inspired by this story.)
  • Lest you think only the Drones have this quality, mention should also be made of Roberta "Bobbie" Wickham, who, when it comes to pranking, is More Deadly Than the Male.
• Pumuckl, the kobold protagonist of a German children's series.
• Andrusch in Krabat.
• Linked: Link, Pouncey, Jordie, Pamela, and Sophie are famous for pulling immature pranks, like putting poop made up to look like their idea of dinosaur poop near an archaeological dig. This mostly goes away once they get preoccupied with responding to the swastika graffiti.
• In Aaron Allston's run on the X-Wing Series, he wrote several prank-happy pilots. Grinder in Wraith Squadron perhaps the most so, and certainly he was the only one to pull pranks that could be harmful. Fandom seems to believe that Wes Janson is absolutely this trope, but while Wes is amazingly irreverent and snarky, his actual "pranks" are rare, simple, and tame.
• Galaxy of Fear's Zak Arranda shows flashes of this now and then. A Pseudo-Crisis in The Brain Spiders is his fault.
• Some of Jacky Ha Ha's pranks include replacing the class's presidential photos with pictures of actors, bringing a cooler labeled "Human head" to biology, and making droplet noises until the janitor thinks there's a leak.
• Felicity Merriman and Elizabeth Cole from the American Girls Collection, most especially in Very Funny, Elizabeth, although some criticised the book for making Cole Out of Character.
  • Speaking of out of character, Merriman is mostly portrayed as such in the Hitler Rants parodies on Youtube.
• Julian from The Boy Next Door, whose pranks get steadily more serious and dangerous.
• Veikko from Valhalla is constantly playing practical jokes on everyone in the ravine. His sense of humor is his most defining, endearing and dangerous characteristic.
• The British children's book series Agent Z is about a group of schoolboys who enjoy carrying out pranks on people. Unusually, their pranks almost always get out of control and cause potentially dangerous situations, but the situation is usually resolved humorously and peacefully.
• Journey to Chaos:
  • Trickster gods in general are like this. Zaticana caused a Curse of Babel because she thought it would be funny, Remoh terrorizes entire cities in the name of "performance art" and Tasio makes water pipes burst or fills buildings with skunks. However, they make sure nobody is hurt and they often have a Trickster Mentor style ulterior motive.
  • Aio is a high energy boy that loves messing with people, especially Eric. One time, he snuck up behind Eric while he was reading and shut the book on his head.
• Monster of the Month Club: Owl pranks Rilla a few times, such as playing dead when she first meets him, and later after Sparrow and Poppy meet him for the first time (Rilla asked him to pretend to be stuffed while they're there, and after they leave, he pretends that he'd really gone back to being just a stuffed animal). He even gets Sparkler and Butterscotch to join in on it the second time.
• The Stoll brothers from Percy Jackson and the Olympians and all of Hermes' demigod children, to an extent: they are known throughout camp as troublemakers and pranksters (one of the first things Luke tells Percy is to make sure he keeps a close eye on his stuff while staying in Cabin 11). In The Titan's Curse, the brothers coat a t-shirt with poisonous centaur blood and give it to a hunter as revenge so she can't go on the quest.
• The titular duo from Max And Maurice A Juvenile History In Seven Tricks. Sadly, their first trick has deadly consequences for Widow Tibbet's hens and rooster.
• Moongobble and Me: Book 4 introduces the Mischief Monsters, who love pulling pranks on everyone. Snelly, in particular, loves causing trouble for people.
• The Enchanted Files: In Diary of a Mad Brownie / Cursed, brownies — as part of their "Great Oath" — have to swear that "We will do a modest amount of mischief every day, mischief being an important part of a life well lived." Angus's idea of mischief is things like rearranging the silverware drawer.
• Goblins in the Castle: The goblins have a tendency to pull off harmless pranks, such as switching salt for sugar, tying laundry in knots, and leading children to play in the mud. But they can also do some more dangerous ones, such as putting soap on the stairs, which could cause someone to slip and break their neck (which nearly happens to Karl when he slips on a soap-coated step and falls on his rear, sliding the rest of the way down them). Rather fittingly, Goblins on the Prowl reveals that a group of goblins is properly called a "mischief".
• The Many Mysteries of the Finkel Family: Micah and his brothers are always playing pranks on each other. When The Bully Marissa destroys Caroline's art project, Micah comes up with ideas to get revenge on her, first by filling her pen with fake blood and then by leaving a fake dead rat in her lunch box. Caroline goes along with it even though she doesn't like pranks partly because she wants revenge on Marissa and partly because she wants Micah to be her friend.
• The Terrible Two is a kids' series centered around two characters who exemplify this trope: Miles Murphy and Niles Sparks, who pull pranks as a team. As the series continues, they get their principal involved as well.

Live-Action TV

• Our Miss Brooks: Walter Denton. Occasionally, Mrs. Davis as well.
• B.J. Hunnicutt from M*A*S*H. While B.J. is the most notable example, several of the show's other characters were capable of engaging in pranks, including Hawkeye, Trapper, Charles, and even (in one episode) Frank Burns.
• Harry Stone from Night Court raised it to an art form.
  Harry: You may be younger. You may be faster. You may even be smarter. But you will never, ever be crazier than me.
• The titular brothers of Drake & Josh has their evil little sister Megan, who often pranks them for almost the whole series.
• Chet "The Phantom" Kelly on Emergency!.
• Mystery Hunters: All of the presenters seem to be this. Araya and Christina sometimes play pranks on each other from time to time, sometimes with the assistance of Doubting Dave. Dave also sometimes shows viewers how to conduct paranomral type pranks in his "Mystery Lab" segments.
• Klus the Gnome from Studio100's Kabouter Plop series who loved playing pranks on the other gnomes. He once scared the other gnomes by dressing up as a ghost, and later gets scared by the same ghost, this time played by Plop.
• All four lead detectives in Saving Grace. When they're not busy busting bad guys, they're busting out laughs with their elaborate pranks.
• In The Amazing Extraordinary Friends, the Comedian—who is one of the more dangerous villains the heroes face, despite no having any powers—is a sadistic practical joker, among his many other villainous qualities.
• The Office (US):
  • Jim Halpert can verge into this. He tends to play pranks on Dwight and Andy out of boredom, but occasionally because they're driving him crazy and pranking them allows him to turn their insanity into comedy. How sympathetic Jim is depends a lot on how funny his pranks are and how much the victims did to deserve them that episode.
  • In one episode Dwight discovers a box full of his grievances against Jim for this that he thought Toby had been sending to corporate. As Michael read through the list, Jim commented that these didn't sound nearly as funny back to back. Since then, he has occasionally been shown being nice to Dwight, or having his pranks backfire, or even being the victim of the occasional prank by Dwight. He takes it better than most Screwy Squirrels do.
  • He takes this from his counterpart in The Office (UK), Tim Canterbury, who played pranks on Gareth to try to cope with the soul-crushing boredom of working in the office environment.
• LazyTown: Trixie can be a troublemaker and likes to draw mustaches on Mayor Meanswell's posters.
• Vlad in Li'l Horrors. A notorious trickster around Maug Stone Hall, his favourite pastime is to pull practical jokes at the other Horrors' expense.
• Joe Parker from Microsoap. The very first episode has his delivery of prank equipment, which includes itching powder, inky soap and a frog to hide in someone's coffee to freak them out. Unfortunately, he can't wait to try them out and both his mother and her potential new love interest Roger end up on the receiving end of all three pranks, and things go south from there.
  • Roger turns out to be a prankster himself and gets his own back in the following episode by stating he left a present for Joe in the shed. (The 'present' was a bucket of water propped atop the door.)

Music

• The video for "Original Prankster" features the exploits of a life-long prankster.
• Acts pranking each other on the last night of a tour together is considered a tradition in the music business among touring bands.
  • In their book, The Dirt, Mötley Crüe talked about how, on their last night opening for Ozzy Osbourne, Ozzy's road crew dumped flour on them during their set. They retaliated by dressing up as Ozzy's roadies (his road crew would wear hooded robes and walk around freely onstage) but naked underneath and flash Ozzy and his band during their set.
  • Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi is infamous for pulling off pranks at drummer Bill Ward, sometimes bordering on cruel and lethal, such as when during their stay at the DuPont mansion they rented, Bill was spotted passed out and naked after having one too many drinks. Tony found a cache of spray paint cans at the mansion's garage (unsurprising considering the mansion's owner and all), and couldn't resist the urge to spray Ward gold from head to toe. This didn't sit well with Bill's body as the paint covered nearly all of the drummer's pores, and considering the highly-toxic paint formulations during the 70s, Bill could've died from the incident. Such was the severity of Tony's pranks that Bill's mother gave him a verbal beatdown on the phone chastising Iommi for nearly killing her son.
• Richard Strauss wrote a tone poem, Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks, about the legendary prankster. It follows Eulenspiegel through a series of "merry pranks," and ends with a depiction of his being captured by the authorities and hanged for blasphemy.
• "I Remember Larry" by "Weird Al" Yankovic is a song about a serial prankster who constantly made the singer's life absolute hell with pranks that ranged from mean-spirited (pulling the singer's pants off, taking colour photos, then posting them all over town) to borderline lethal (dumping toxic waste on his lawn). While reminiscing about "what a funny, funny guy" Larry was, the singer eventually gets to reminiscing about that time he broke into Larry's house, kidnapped him, murdered him, and left his corpse in a plastic bag in the woods, while still remembering him fondly.

Professional Wrestling

• Owen Hart was considered a prankster in the WWF. His pranks included:
  • Hiding a bunch of sardines in the turnbuckle before a match with his brother, Bret, then stuffing the sardines in Bret's mouth during the match and putting him in a Camel Clutch (sitting on his back, pulling him up by the jaw) so he couldn't spit them out.
  • Inviting Davey Boy Smith to sit up with him and Bret in first class, then pretend not to know him when flight attendants tried to send him back to his seat in coach.
  • Telling The Rock to give him a shoulderblock during a match, then going down v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y when he did the move.
  • Striking Edge with a hidden foreign object during a match. The object in question? A napkin.
• Curt Hennig was also known for his pranks.
  • According to Shawn Michaels, Hennig loved to use padlocks and would lock people's bags to overhead pipes, or put locks on people's glasses.
  • In his book, Goldberg told a story about Hennig spraying his seat on a plane to make it look he had urinated on it.
• In one episode of WWE Storytime, Mark Henry mentioned, "Vince McMahon pranks everybody. And nobody pranks him back because they're afraid they'll be fired."

Tabletop Games

• GURPS:
  • This is one of the hats of kobolds in GURPS Fantasy Folk. Their other one is that they are all complete idiots, so their pranks aren't terribly sophisticated.
  • A Pyramid "Supporting Cast" article by Phil Masters introduces a prankster AI named Avril to Transhuman Space. The description says she doesn't really have much of a sense of humour, she just knows how to annoy people, adding that the same can be said of many human pranksters.
  • GURPS Discworld Also has the sample gnoll character "Wet Weather" Wigliss, who is described as a practical joker, with a note that this really means "low-level sadist". (This was also by Phil Masters, who does not appear to be a fan of pranks.)
• Dungeons & Dragons Copper dragons have this as their hat. Presumably they are the nice kind of pranks, since they are always Chaotic Good.

Theater

• Launcelot Gobbo, the clown in The Merchant of Venice, seems to genuinely love Old Gobbo, his aged, blind father. Which doesn't stop him from practicing deceptions on Old Gobbo's blindness when the poor guy doesn't recognize him, finally informing him that his son has died.
• Comes up occasionally in the Commedia dell'Arte, although with so much of the plays Depending on the Writer, it varies who it is—usually either Harlequin or Pulcinella. Any clever zanni, really.
• Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream is this most of the time, although Oberon generally tries to employ him as a Karmic Trickster (for Oberon's definition of karma). However, he's introduced as a prankster who plays tricks on travelers, self-serious old ladies, and random horses, he transforms Bottom's head into that of an ass just for the fun of it, and he's thrilled when it turns out he's given love potion to the wrong Athenian, so he fits this category much better.

Video Games

• Astra Hunter Zosma: The twin fairies, Waxing and Waning, need to prank humans in order to live. The humans don't mind, since they also bring blessings to human civilization.
• Luciana and Emilia in Blaze Union. While we do get a list of pranks they've pulled off, we never see them at it directly, so it can be called an Informed Attribute.
• Dragalia Lost: This is Luca’s favorite pastime, and will frequently try to prank people all over the Halidom. Occasionally, he will even use some of his pranks for combat, which can be surprisingly effective. Just don’t expect his pranks to get very far when Sarisse is around.
• Sera from Dragon Age: Inquisition - she sees pranking high-ranking people (especially if they're jerks to the less powerful) as an act of political rebellion and karmic justice both.
• Kogure from Inazuma Eleven. He especially likes to put chilli sauce in people's food and give them a frog when he shakes hands with them.
• The Prankster ability in Pokémon boosts the Action Initiative of any move that doesn't deal direct damage, including buffs, debuffs, and status conditions. Recent games gave Dark-type Pokémon immunity to Prankster moves because they're sneaky enough to see them coming.
• In Potion Permit, Russo's a mischievous little boy who likes pranking the other residents of Moonbury Town to get their attention. In his first Friendship Event, he pulls a Laxative Prank on the mayor by lying to you to make a purgative potion for Socellia's stomach problems.
• Rune Factory 4 has both Doug and Leon, though surprisingly, they neither engage in a prank war nor team up to torment the more serious members of the cast.
• Star Control II has an entire race of these with the Umgah. Since the Umgah are a bit insane and pretty immoral anyway, their pranks involve things like sparking interplanetary wars or slamming asteroids into other species' homeworlds.
• Tewi Inaba from Touhou Project, whose pranks range from mean-spirited (digging pit traps in the forest) to outright sociopathic depending on the doujin.
• Sans from Undertale has an Establishing Character Moment where he introduces himself to you with a whoopee cushion gag. Later on, he'll actually abuse his powers over time and space just to pull a series of pranks at your expense; his brother Papyrus implies that he does that sort of thing a lot.

Visual Novels

• C14 Dating: Rosemarie at the very least has a streak of it. The following are all things Melissa can potentially hear about within six weeks of meeting her for the first time:
  • In Hendrik's romantic route, Rosemarie compares the face he made when she first suggested he could be in love with Melissa to the one he made when she glued googly eyes on his (huge) rock collection.
  • She got on Kyler's bad side by planting knapped flint in his wet screen. Twice.
  • If Melissa watches Rosemarie knap flint during the festival, she gets a piece as a souvenir and Rosemarie tells Melissa to not plant it in her digging square or someone else's.
• Satoko Hojo from Higurashi: When They Cry is practically the master of pranking. But they're not "pranks", they're traps.
• Haruka from Little Busters!. At one point she even proudly boasts that she delivers chaos.
• Tomoya Okazaki of CLANNAD starts off as a bit of a prankster, but grows out of it as he matures. His ability to keep a straight face while telling outrageous lies is nothing short of amazing.

Web Animation

• Mystery Skulls Animated: Lewis's little sister Cayenne put hot sauce in Arthur's milkshake and then hid under the table to laugh at his reaction. Her appearance and devil horned headband imply she's always doing things like this.
• Revenge Films:
  • My prankster boyfriend crossed the line and tried to shave my hair with a knife: Steven loved practical jokes, but his fiancee Amy felt something was off about him as the pranks he pulled on her bordered on lethal. She becomes fed up with his crap when he covered her sister's baby's nose and mouth shut, to which she punches him off the distressed baby and shoos him out of her house. His parents call off the engagement after she told them about it.
  • My stupid colleague played a terrible prank and severely hurt one of our employees: Ted loved to pull pranks on his coworkers, with the boss not doing anything to make him stop. The employees had to put up with his crap until one day, an ambulance showed up because he spilled lotion on the floor to prank Cassie, who slipped and hit her head, fracturing her skull. This causes the other employees to get fed up with him. Turns out he was free to do what he wanted because he was the CEO's son.

Webcomics

• Bronze Skin Inc.: Chapter 7 features a Saci, a trickster character from Brazilian folklore. He is summoned by Raymond to mess with the Bronze Skin crew, and rewards him and his sons by sending them flying into the sky before then playing pranks on Bronze Skin.
• Bo-Woo and Ra-Woo from Divine Bells are a mischievous masked pair who play pranks on their king.
• In Homestuck, John is described as the best prankster there is. But he regularly gets trounced by his Nanna, and both revered her adoptive father, Colonel Sassacre, as a master prankster. Post-Scratch, Jane and her famous Poppop share the same qualities. Since they're John & Nanna after switching places in history. John is not one to be overlooked, however, as he drops a bucket on Rose's head as a friendly thank-you gesture for her kind gift to him on his birthday.
• The Insecticons of the Insecticomics are this, out of lack of anything better to do. Kickback once spent four hours waiting to pull a prank on the first person that walked by, stating that he "has a lot of free time for some reason."

Web Original

• The entire reason why there's an Escalating War in Hermitcraft since Season 6 is because of Grian's reputation as a prankster, where he would provoke a fellow Hermit into pranking him back. Sometimes he would also get some Hermits to help him do some of the pranks in regards to some Hermits he wants to prank such as leading and summoning thousands of chickens inside of Doc's Perimeter with a device he and Scar made in Season 9 and tricking Scar into getting killed over and over again with a death loop in-game in Season 7. He's also the one to make events that would involve pranking a Hermit if one were to sign up such as Secret Fools Day and Multi(verse) Tag in Season 9. He's also more than happy to participate in any pranks if a Hermit needs help.
• In Real Life, Hermann Otto Fegelein was an S.S. officer during World War II and the personal adjutant of Heinrich Himmler, who tried to defect a few days before Germany surrendered, but was caught and executed for treason. However, once he was depicted in Downfall, Fegelein started to gain a new reputation in the parodies, where he is a ruthless prankster who performs all kinds of hilariously cruel antics against Hitler. Even better is that he somehow keeps avoiding capture due to the incompetence of Hitler's staff, and whenever he is found he is literally able to cheat death and come back.
  • There's also Heinrich Himmler, who is among many "Grand Masters" of antics, and he is Fegelein's mentor.
  • A number of other pranksters exist in the parodies. Aside from Fegelein and Himmler, Traudl is occasionally shown performing antics. The Stalin Parodies see Joseph Stalin's general Mikhail Tukhachevksy performing all kinds of bizarre antics. While the U-Boat Parodies only have one official antic master, they still turn the entire cast of Das Boot into Loveable Rogues. Felicity Merriman was also depicted as a prankster, similar to what she and Elizabeth did in one of the original American Girl stories, albeit in a more extreme and crude level.
• We Are Our Avatars: If something seems weird enough for Krissy, or if he comes up with something unique, he’ll use his illusions to mess with people.
• Thomas Sanders has two long-running Vine series, "Disney Pranks with Friends" and "Pokemon Pranks", which are all about adapting various Disney and Pixar movies into pranks and pranks based on Pokémon attacks, respectively. Some of his "Narrating People's Lives" Vines are pranks as well.
  Disney Pranks with Friends! *sprays a friend with Silly String while singing "I've Got No Strings"*
  Zubat, go! Use Supersonic! *friend plays a really loud guitar chord and scares someone awake*
  Story time! *walks up to a woman looking at a dress and her daughter* She stared at the gown and thought 'Yes, this is something my husband would wear.' *woman laughs and nods while daughter turns away embarrassed*
• Jack Vale Films is a YouTube video where a man does pranks such as pretending to fart and saying nonsense to people.
• Vester And Friends has Red Yoshi and the Plush Pranking Crew (Toad,Blue Toad,Yellow Toad ,and Pac-Man). A gang of mischief-makers that always humiliate the other characters , to the point where their pranks are borderline criminal.

Western Animation

• Reggie Mantle was treated this way on The Archie Show. He would attempt to prank Archie, and inevitably some authority figure would spring the trap instead. "Mrs. Grundy!"
• Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice — it's why everyone in the Neitherworld hates him.
• Classic Disney Shorts:
  • Horace from Mickey Mouse fame.
  • Mickey Mouse use to be a big prankster in his early days, especially towards Minnie. And while Minnie isn't as much of a prankster as her boyfriend, she sometimes likes to join in on the pranking herself.
• DC Super Hero Girls gives us Harley Quinn. Just see "Quinn-tessential Harley" or her "Hero of the Month" honor for examples.
• Fireman Sam has one mischievous kid named Norman Price. In many episodes, his pranks often bite him in the back one way or another, such as giving his mother Dylis Price an amnesia inducing concussion after scaring her with a tribal mask, or having his head jammed in a fence after tripping while skating away from the Pontypandy Fire Service chasing him down for a couple pranks he pulled on them.
• Luan's defining trait in The Loud House, which gets to a point in which even the parents are victims of her pranks.
• Rig (AKA Rig Digger) from Matchbox Hero City, cracks out jokes almost every time.
• Brattus from Mr. Bogus will periodically pull pranks on his older cousin Bogus.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • "Griffon the Brush Off" sees Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash bonding over pranks. Interestingly, rather than the usual route of having them learn that "all pranks are bad!", it's made clear that their jokes are all done in good fun, and they back down from pranking Fluttershy who they think is too emotionally fragile to just shrug it off. Both are just a bit Innocently Insensitive in "Luna Eclipsed", where Pinkie Pie's letting herself be scared by Princess Luna constantly undermines Luna's efforts to make friends and Rainbow Dash inadvertently causes an Interrupted Cooldown Hug just as Luna and Pinkie were about to make peace. Luna gets her revenge though. In "28 Pranks Later", Rainbow Dash gets really carried away with the pranking. Once again, her friends repay her in kind.
  • Princess Celestia's pet, Philomena in "A Bird in the Hoof". She even tops Rainbow Dash by being the only one able to make the Canterlot Guards move. Celestia herself seems to enjoy a little prank once in a while.
• T.J. Detweiler from Recess. King Bob was one as well, at least before he became the playground's king.
• This is Muscle Man's greatest pleasure in life on Regular Show. He limits himself to not physically harming anyone though, as shown with "Prankless".
• The Simpsons:
  • Bart Simpson, of course. After all, it is specifically why Matt Groening named him that in the first place, since “Bart” is an anagram for “Brat.” His career highlights include inciting a media frenzy by pretending to be trapped in a well, answering his teacher's personal ad, replacing the hymns in the church with "In-a-Gadda-da-Vida," turning the school weather balloon into Principal Skinner's "rumpy doppelganger," trapping the teachers in their cars by repainting the lines in the parking lot, and getting an Australian boy to accept a $900 collect call by impersonating a drainage commissioner. And then there's all those Prank Calls to Moe...
  • "How Lisa Got Her Marge Back" reveals that Bart's baby sister Maggie has a knack for pranking as well. The two of them bond over this, leading to a brief partnership that is only stopped because Homer doesn't want Bart to be a bad influence on Maggie.
  • The episode "Pranks and Greens" has Andy Hamilton, a former student of the Springfield Elementary School. He is said to be the best prankster ever. His first and most famous prank was when Andy was a student at Springfield Elementary School and Seymour Skinner loved to swim in the school's early swimming pool. Andy filled the pool with worms and locked Skinner in the pool for a whole weekend, including Monday, a teacher's holiday.
  • "Marge the Meanie" reveals that Bart gets his propensity for this kind of thing from Marge of all people. Marge Simpson used to torment her middle school principal much as Bart now torments Skinner. Although she regrets this behavior as an adult, her pranking phase experiences a brief resurgence when Bart, impressed to learn of his mother's past, starts egging her on.
• Yogi's Gang has an antagonist by this very moniker. Hilarious P. Prankster, to be exact.
• Jack O' Lantern from Billy and Mandy’s Jacked-Up Halloween was a prankster in medieval times who was granted eternal life by Grim, but at the cost of his head. He now wears a pumpkin head and goes out every Halloween with his bag of tricks.
• Imp from She-Ra: Princess of Power was a nasty version of this, with a fairly nasty sense of humor to boot.
• Danger Mouse: While inside Colonel K in "The Invasion of Colonel K", DM and Penfold encounter Funny Bone who subjects them to a humiliating barrage of practical jokes.
• Total Drama: Duncan can usually be found pulling these on Harold. Such as putting his hand in water while he's sleeping or putting hot sauce in his underwear.
• In What's with Andy?, the titular Andy Larkin is the self-titled "Prince of Pranksters" and strives to be the greatest practical joker in the world. Pretty much his entire town hates him because of his incessant pranking, and he goes to greater lengths to pull off the most elaborate tricks he can. Pranking apparently runs in the family, as his grandfather is also a prankster and his father was one as well when he was Andy's age.
• The Go-Go Gophers from Underdog play pranks on the Cavalry post headed by Col. Kit Coyote, usually for the LOLs but mainly to counter whatever plans against the gophers the Colonel has.
  Ruffled Feather: Whoopie doopie! We have fun!

Real Life

• Far too many spooks and spies to list, due to the necessity to keep a quick wit and a nature for deceit, have reputations as pranksters. One notable intelligence officer was Reginald V. Jones, who was the driving force in the radar countermeasures battle during the Blitz, responsible for jamming, spoofing, and otherwise playing merry hell with German communications, navigational, and radar gear. He also had a reputation as an incorrigible prankster before the war.
• The founders of motorcycle company Harley-Davidson were noted for being practical jokers, as mentioned by Jean Davidson in her book about the Harley and Davidson families. Arthur, for one, gained a reputation for pulling off jokes not only on friends and family, but to a crowd when Scottish comedian and music hall singer Harry Lauder was supposed to come to Milwaukee to perform, impersonating the performer at an event all while people thought they were watching the real Lauder. Another instance was when Arthur and his brothers decided to outright troll fellow co-founder and friend Bill Harley at a duck hunt. Harley was sleeping in his boat at the time, and was snoring loudly, attracting the attention of ducks. They went behind Bill's boat and fired a few rounds at the birds, much to Bill's bewilderment.
• St. Philip Neri was a priest who founded a pontifical society of apostolic life known as the Congregation of the Oratory, of which St. John Henry Newman was also a member. He is also the patron saint of humour because he was known to be a practical joker and stated that it is more fitting for a Christian to be joyful than sour. Some of his jokes included shaving off half of his beard, tugging at a Papal Guard's beard, skipping around like a kid, and deliberately misreading aloud, especially when there are academics nearby. The primary reason he pulled these pranks, however, is not to make people laugh, but rather to humble himself and sometimes to teach a lesson. For example, he was skipping around in the square of St. Pietro in Vincoli, but some passersby commented: "Look at that old fool there", which was the reaction he intended. He is also once said to tell one penitent, who confessed to gossiping, to scatter a chicken's feathers around town as penance. The penitent did so, thinking she was partaking in one of St. Philip Neri's gags, and presented the featherless chicken to him. With that, St. Philip instructed her to go back to town and gather all its feathers, but she replied that the task is impossible as the feathers might be anywhere and everywhere. St. Philip replied that this also happens to gossip.
• Charles Lightoller of the White Star Line (yes, that White Star Line) was also remembered for his playful sense of humour, as boredom or the need for amusement would drive him into pulling off an antic or two. His pranks ranged from the trivial, such as surfing around on the slippery linoleum floors of the Olympic, much to the chagrin of his superior, to bordering on insane and outrageous, like shoving a signal flare into a fellow crew member's cabin, and most notably the incident at Fort Denison, Sydney.
• Steve Wozniak, one of Apple's co-founders, is notorious for being one of these.
• Nazi diplomat Walther Hewel was well-known for playing practical jokes. His most frequent victim was Joachim von Ribbentrop. This makes him a real-life "antic master", though Hitler found his antics amusing rather than annoying.
• Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg Markus Sittich von Hohenems (1574–1619) was extremely fond of playing pranks on his guests, to the point where he commissioned the creation of the Hellbrunn water gardens, famous for their water games. He would dine outside with his guests at a beautiful stone dining table, and once the meal was finished he would stand up; social customs meant that all his other guests would have to stand up as well, at which point Markus would turn a little lever hidden on his side of the table and water jets would spring out of each chair (aside his, naturally) and splash his bewildered guests. Walking through the Hellbrunn gardens or the seashell grotto, he would often pull or twist secret levers and splash his unsuspecting guests, to their amusement. He knew exactly where to sit or stand so that by the end of the event, he would be the only dry one. Nowadays, his prankster nature is kept alive by Hellbrunn guide tours, who demonstrate the 400-year-old mechanisms on the often unsuspecting, but delighted visitors.

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