Candid Camera Prank: Difference between revisions

* ''Noel's House Party'' with its "Gotcha" (originally "Gotcha Oscars" until the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences threatened legal action) feature on celebrities. Memorable ones include a football manager ending up doing the Christine Keeler pose and something involving "Custer's Last Hat Stand".

* ''Punk'd'' is an entire American series of this.

* ''Beadle's About'' involved ordinary people.

* Dick Clark and Ed McMahon played pranks on celebrities as part of ''TV's Bloopers and Practical Jokes''.

* ''[[Stay Tuned]]'' parodied this with [[Show Within a Show]] ''Sadistic Home Videos''.

* An interesting British example is called ''Swag'', where people who actually did something wrong were targeted instead of helpless, random members of the public (which, for some people, is considered quite cruel). Prop goods are left around and are filmed until someone attempts to steal them, at which point the thief is punished in an embarrassing fashion. One of their more popular skits is when they leave boxes of snacks at the back of a truck; someone tries their luck and hops inside to grab them, only for the door to slam behind them and the sides of the truck to fall off to reveal a cage. They are then driven around the street.

* ''Scare Tactics''. Like ''Candid Camera'', but innocent people are tricked into extremely frightening situations. There's been at least one lawsuit by a victim, but the show continues.

* Subverted as a part of an [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9i2k-xXob1c ad]: it begins as the normal "guy hiding in a mailbox and throwing peoples' letters out" gag, complete with canned laughter and several successfully fooled people, but after the expected results, a huge bald guy gets his letter spat out at him. He tries again a few times, but instead of just standing there with a baffled expression, he pulls out a gun and fires several times through the mail slot.

* On the Discovery Kids channel, there's a version of Punk'd (with kids and animals) called Skunk'd TV.

* ''[[Creature Comforts]]'' (both versions) was a weird sort of '''Candid Camera Prank''' in that the victims knew it was happening - they were told at the time that they were being recorded for a TV show. Where the prank comes in was that neither character designers nor animators ever met the people being recorded. They wanted them to base appearance and performance on voice alone, so they were isolated from the process of recording so they wouldn't get any preconceived notions before setting to work. So there was an even chance you'd either be surprised to find out just how owlish you were, or offended that someone equated you with a gorilla. Thank God for anonymity, eh fellas?

** It's doubtful that they weren't told that they would be rendered in [[Claymation]], but it might be a surprise to find out exactly how.

* ''Videomatch''/''Showmatch'' was this before focusing entirely on "Bailando por un Sueño", and now it's back to doing this.

* ''Just For Laughs Gags'' is a Canadian version of these. Because there's pretty much no dialogue at all (overdubbing with music), it's often shown during flights.

* A ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'' sketch with [[Christopher Walken]] had such a show, [https://web.archive.org/web/20130924210843/http://snltranscripts.jt.org/02/02mpranksters.phtml Pranksters]. It starts with a guy pranking his rat-hating sister... and goes into a man who pranks a workmate who kept using his parking space [[Disproportionate Retribution|by killing him with a tire iron]].

* ''[[What Would You Do]]'' is a variation of this, in that it's a hidden camera show not done for comedy purposes; instead, it's more along the lines of a sociological/morality experiment.

* Several of the competions between the hosts of [[Dick and Dom in da Bungalow]] were this; for example, Om Pom Stick where they would have to try and stick pictures of themselves to members of the public without being noticed, or Bogies! where they would shout [[Captain Obvious|"Bogies"]] (US English= "Boogers") louder and louder in a public place. The producer would do a funny sports-style commentary over the footage.

* Inverted in ''[[The Gumball Rally]]''. The Dodge police cruiser team gets an [[Good Ol' Boy|Arizona state trooper]] to believe that they are filming a movie from a camera hidden on a far-away peak, and ask him to hold still for a face shot, as they make their getaway.

== Phone Scams ==

* Steve Allen was a pioneer in the use of this gag, on his '60s variety show.

* One of the most famous practitioners in the United Kingdom is impressionist Jon Culshaw, mostly but not exclusively on ''[[Dead Ringers (TV series)|Dead Ringers]]'', He once rang up then Prime Minister [[Tony Blair]] live on air and pretended to be William Hague, who was then leader of the opposition. The prime minister spotted it pretty quickly. Culshaw is also famous for his scarily accurate impression of the Fourth Doctor from ''[[Doctor Who]]''. He's used this several times, including in prank calls to Sylvester McCoy [the Seventh Doctor], Colin Baker [the Sixth Doctor], Peter Davison [the Fifth Doctor] and... Tom Baker, who ''actually played'' the Fourth Doctor:

{{quote|'''John Culshaw:''' "Hello, this is The Doctor."''

'''Tom Baker:''' "What, oh no, no you must be mistaken, ''I'' am The Doctor."'' }}

* Most ''[[Morning Zoo]]'' radio shows will do this at some point.

** The radio station PLJ in New York City actually calls it "Phone Scams".

** 93.3 FLZ's MJ Morning show really likes '''''REALLY''''' annoying crank calls.

** This [[Morning Zoo]] prank call went very very wrong http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRmAyyvAcZY

** [http://www.snopes.com/love/betrayal/radio.asp Snopes relays the tale] of a woman who called into a radio show on Valentine's Day to have the DJs prank call her boyfriend. The DJ called the man and offered him free flowers, and he chose to send them... to his wife. Oops.

* ''[[Crank Yankers]]'' was an example of phone scams on television. The performers would do the crank calls, and then a set of puppeteers wielding [[Jim Henson|Hensonesque]] caricatures of both parties would act out the scene with extra visual gags. One of the best was rapper [[Ludacris]] calling up his manager, claiming he wanted to change his name to "Mr. Peanut". On Luda's end, his puppet was trying on monocles and top hats, while his manager's puppet was calmly shredding Ludacris' contract, and pressing the [[Big Red Button]] marked "In Case of Insane Rapper".

* Apparently the fear of this has become so ubiquitous that a US senator hung up on US President-Elect [[Barack Obama]] because she thought he was a prankster. The fact that VP candidate Sarah Palin fell victim to a just such a prank several weeks earlier ([http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcEiR01QK7o this one from a group pretending to be the French president and his aide]) probably contributed. Barack Obama was said to have been amused.

* ''El vacilón de la mañana'' was famous in the Hispanic world for creating the infamous "Manolo Cabeza de Huevo" (Egghead Manolo) prank. It all begins with the DJ calling a concierge who ''hates'' being called "egghead". He promptly calls him and tells him "egghead". Then the DJ calls him and, with a high screeching voice, claims to be his bunhole. The final result: Manolo ends up yelling "Fuck you, fuck your mother, fuck you all, and fuck all your motherfucking genealogic tree!".

** Said radio show also managed to ''successfully'' trick Hugo Chávez into thinking he was being called by Fidel Castro, and viceversa.

* The most prolific American practitioners of the Phone Prank are The Jerky Boys, who've sold over 8,000,000 albums showcasing their work.

* Inverted by comedian Tom Mabe, who plays pranks on people who call ''him'' - namely, [[Acceptable Targets|telemarketers]].

** [[James Florentine]] has dabbled in this as well. ''[[Crank Yankers]]'' has also featured incoming call pranks to people who thought they were calling a package delivery service strongly hinted to be UPS.

** Steve Wozniak once owned a telephone number that was a frequent misdial for an airline. He would test his callers to see what kind of imaginary flights he could book, lowering the price by adding a ridiculous number of connections, and so forth. But these calls were never recorded or published.

** Minneapolis radio personality T.D. Mischke hosted a podcast when he was between jobs. The phone number his sponsors gave him turned out to have been previously owned by a few different people with credit problems. When the collection agencies would call in, he would have a lot of fun with them. [http://www.mischkemadness.com/audiofiles/dont_be_mad.mp3 Here's a sample!]

* The ''[[Fonejacker]]'''s entire schtick.

* ''[[The Simpsons]]'', in its early years, had the [[Running Gag]] of Bart prank-calling Moe's Tavern with Double Entendre names, similar to the Red Tube Bar Prank Calls.

** In "Krusty Gets Kancelled", Krusty's TV replacement, Gabbo, gets ready to perform a "patented Gabbo Crank Call" (on Krusty himself). When Bart complains that "he stole that bit from Krusty", Lisa counters that Krusty stole it from Steve Allen.

* In Quebec, the most well known phone pranksters were the ''Justiciers Masqués'', a team of radio hosts. They usually prank normal people from around Quebec, but they also successfully pranked many Canadian politicians, and even Nicolas Sarkozy, president of France, by passing as Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. They also fooled [[Britney Spears]] into thinking she was speaking to [[Celine Dion]]... despite them being an all men team ''and'' having French as their first language.

* [[Russell Brand]] sometimes does this in his stand-up set, usually finding a slightly silly advertisement in the local newspaper of the town where he's doing the show and calling the business up with outrageous requests.

** He also did this on his radio show, which led to the infamous [[wikipedia:Sachsgate|Sachsgate Scandal]], which (long story short) a message on comedian Andrew Sach's answer phone caused outrage due to comments about his grand daughter, leading to [[The BBC]] getting fined by the regulators, Jonathon Ross (who was also present) being suspended and Brand's eventual resignation from the BBC. Proof that this kind of joke [[Dude, Not Funny|isn't always appreciated.]]

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