#1 Prank Caller in The World!
Ownage Pranks is a YouTube channel run by a comedian/impressionist named Russell Johnson. Basically, he utilizes his talent with impressions (all of which make up a veritable rogues gallery) to execute prank calls on people (most of which are requested by his viewers; the rest are mostly employees/managers of an establishment that has terrible reviews, people that answer to Russell's fake Craigslist ads, the gay hotline, and so on), often to hilarious results.
Here is his channel.
Here is his official website. Prank Calling App.
Tropes that apply to Ownage Pranks
- AcCENT upon the Wrong SylLABle: Done deliberately with some of Russell's impressions, most notably "som-BOO-dee".
- Asian Speekee Engrish: His Asian impression slips into this."Duh, herro. I liek to speek to som-BOO-dee who can speek a-Chiness?"
- Ass Shove:
- Asshole Victim: A decent amount of the prank victims are racist, homophobic, hateful, and/or just plain unpleasant, sometimes even before Russell has the chance to properly mess with them.
- Black Is Bigger in Bed: This is a common theme with Russell's Tyrone character, but it's occasionally subverted as well.
- Blatant Lies: When a victim hangs up on Russell for the first time, he calls them back and says something to the effect of "I believe we got disconnected".
- Boomerang Bigot:
- One of the prank victims was a black prostitute who hated other black people.
- Another was a Mexican woman who said that Mexican men don't treat women right.
- Camp Gay: His gay impression:"I'm, like, totally totes McGoats excited!"
- Cluster F-Bomb: Some of the victims engage in this.
- Compromising Call: As often as Russell manages to get away with his pranks, during 2021, there was a MASSIVE exception that led to a 4 month-long hiatus. As a result of his attempt to prank call an FBI Agent, he got into massive trouble after prank calling the target during a stakeout, and it's all but stated he was arrested for a few months.
- Dirty Cop: Whether or not he actually is a cop, the prank victim from "Racist Cop Rage Prank" exhibits traits of this trope, due to "filing a police report" on Russell-as-Tyrone due to the victim not believing that Tyrone was from the library and also due to him being racist.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Most of the prank victims threaten to call the police or even kill Russell for the littlest things, such as the Indian restaurant that threatened to kill Russell-as-Rakesh just for criticizing the taste of the naan.
- Though it is worth mentioning that some of the things that the victim thinks that Russell did could warrant a police call.
- This backfires horrendously in the case of the requester behind the call "Angry Dad Goes MENTAL on Pawn Shop Thief", and comes off as extremely mean spirited when you consider that the requester who paid Ownage to make the call to harass the titular dad over a stolen bicycle was the victim's own son, who thought it'd be funny to work up their parent who was already distressed by the theft. By the time the reveal was made, the father had already called the state police in between calls, and would now presumably have to handle the legal trouble that would result.
- Drama Queen: Gary, the boyfriend from "Model's Jealous Boyfriend Goes INSANE" is one, big time. For example, after storming out of his model girlfriend's house upon hearing Tyrone offer to photograph her nude, he had this to say:Gary: I almost crashed driving out of your house, I'm so upset. I almost DIED cuz of you!
- Early Installment Character-Design Difference:
- Earlier animated videos depicted Ownage Pranks' true form as a Living Shadow with horns. Later on, his default appearance takes the form of the orange imp that serves as the channel's mascot.
- While he generally retained his design, Buk Lau in his earlier appearances had different colored skin.
- Funny Foreigner: Russell certainly is good at portraying them. Buk Lau, for instance.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Some of the victims have this.
- Lame Comeback: Russell's Abdo character has one on standby if the victim starts swearing. It's so awful that it's oddly hilarious."Fuck to you and fuck to your face!"
- Let's Get Dangerous!: Stage 2. Usually when Russell uses this, he does something to startle the target by making them believe he's in the immediate area, such as calling with their store's phone number at midnight, calling from their girlfriend's phone number(As seen below), or even having someone hand the target a flier in real life.Rakesh: "I'm back. Hello, welcome to stage 2." (Cue Scare Chord)
- Man of a Thousand Voices: Russell is quite talented with his voices.
- National Stereotypes: A lot of his voices are these.
- Orwellian Retcon: The character of Buk Lau was later re-designed to have a more realistic skin color. Thumbnails featuring him were updated to match his new design however he still retains his old appearance within the old videos themselves.
- Pædo Hunt: One of the prank victims was a man on a gay sex hotline who wanted to roleplay as a child visiting a doctor.
- Prank Call: Russell is one of the most famous modern executors of these.
- Precision F-Strike: Often when a victim doesn't curse throughout the majority of the call, it's almost a shock when they do.
- Rage Quit: Some of the prank victims hang up abruptly, particularly when they're very fed up with Russell's shenanigans.
- Some of My Best Friends Are X: In the "INSANE Hostage Situation Prank" video, the victim proclaims that he's got plenty of friends who are taxi drivers.
- Suddenly Shouting: Most of the prank victims do this if they're pissed off enough.
- The Unintelligible: Some of the prank victims are quite difficult to understand, with the victim from "Drunken Racist Voter Prank" being an example.
- Unusual Euphemism: Russell likes to do this a lot with his characters for comedic value. Most notably, "Tyrone" refers to his own penis as his "Sham-lam-doobily".
- A Very Special Episode: The World's Worst Indian Scammer Exposed (animated) serves as one, with Russell scolding Rakesh at the end for attempting to scam innocent people, and proceeding to make an announcement for awareness of phone scams.
- Vocal Evolution: The portrayal of some characters has changed over the years. This gets Lampshaped in the Tyrone Halloween prank call, where Ownage notes that animation was based off of an older call.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: The animated videos portray Ownage as an imp with this ability.
