Prank Date: Difference between revisions

{{examples|Examples}}

* In ''[[Yu Yu Hakusho (Manga)|Yu Yu Hakusho]]'', Yusuke helps a girl who literally died waiting because her boyfriend [[Kick the Dog|wanted to see how long she would wait and then forgot about her]].

* In ''[[Casper (Film)|Casper]]'', a boy asks the main character, Cat, out on a date. It turns out that he only does this to sabotage her Halloween party.

* Happened to Arnold Rimmer in his backstory in one of the ''[[Red Dwarf (TV)|Red Dwarf]]'' novels. His date was part of a scam escort service and ended up skipping out on dinner after he paid for an expensive dress and gave her extra to pretend they were long-term lovers.

* Happened on ''[[Glee (TV)|Glee]]'' as a way of giving Sue a taste of her own medicine. And to Puck--Lauren stood him up to make him want her more.

* In ''[[Friends (TV)|Friends]]'' episode "The One With The Blind Dates", Phoebe and Joey scheme to get Rachel and Ross back together by intentionally setting them up on horrible dates so that they will want to get back with each other. However, Joey accidentally sets Ross up with someone who would be perfect for him (but awful to Joey), so he just tells the woman not to come and Ross ends up thinking he was stood up.

* The [[They Might Be Giants (Music)|They Might Be Giants]] song "Four of Two" combines this with [[Rip Van Winkle]].

* In a series of ''[[FoxTrot (Comic Strip)|FoxTrot]]'' comics, Paige receives letters from a "secret admirer". The letters are actually from her brother Peter, who leaves her out in the rain for hours while she waits for her nonexistent secret admirer to show up.

* ''[[Homestar Runner (Web Animation)|Homestar Runner]]'': In his blog, Strong Sad describes getting "joke invitations to online singles sites (which, of course, I don't discover are 'joke' invitations until after waiting around the proposed meeting location for 4-8 hours. but hey! you never know when one might turn out to be legit!)."

* ''[[The Simpsons (Animation)|The Simpsons]]'': Bart does this to his teacher in one episode, as part of his impersonating a possible love interest.

* In one ''[[Batman (Franchise)|Batman]]'' comic, the [[Alpha Bitch]] of Jonathan Crane's school once suckered him in to one of these so that her [[Jerk Jock]] boyfriend could ritually humiliate him. Of course, since Jonathan Crane later grew up to be the Scarecrow, this came back to bite them both on the ass very, ''very'' badly.

* Peter is set up by [[Jerk Jock|Flash]] and some classmates this way in an issue of ''[[Marvel Adventures]] [[Spider-Man (Franchise)|Spider-Man]]'', where they trick him into believing he has a date with Liz Allan. This ends up being subverted where, whilst it was still a prank, when Liz learns she's less than amused and decides to go on a date with Peter anyway.

* ''[[The Toxic Avenger (Film)|The Toxic Avenger]]''.

* ''[[Terror Train (Film)|Terror Train]]'' opens with bunch of med schoolers setting a date for one of their own. When the subject of the prank finds out that his "date" is really a corpse, he goes crazy and returns after year or two to exact revenge.

* Tyrion underwent a particularly tragic version of this in ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire (Literature)|A Song of Ice and Fire]]'': when he was young, his big brother paid a whore and two thugs to stage an [[Attempted Rape]] that the two of them could foil and the girl could fling herself at Tyrion in gratitude. Tyrion ended up marrying the prostitute in secret, and when his father found out, he had her gang-raped by a barracks full of soldiers and paid in full "for her services".

* On ''[[Criminal Minds (TV)|Criminal Minds]]'', Reid recounts an incident from his high school years; the prettiest girl in school said she wanted to meet him behind the football stands. Not only was she there, but so was the entire football team and a bunch of other students who just stood and watched as they stripped him, tied him to the goalpost, and taunted him. He got free hours later and made it home, to find that his schizophrenic mother was having an episode and hadn't noticed he was missing.

* Anya on ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)|Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' granted a wish for a girl who had been humiliated this way once. She took it back at the end of the episode though.

* In a rare case of this having a happy ending, on ''[[WKRP in Cincinnati (TV)|WKRP in Cincinnati]]'', Mr. Carlson learns, years after the fact, that his wife and her friend only accepted their first dates with him and his friend as a joke. Both couples fell in love and married but when Mr. Carlson learned things had started as a joke, he felt humiliated.

* Internet version: An episode of ''[[NCIS (TV)|NCIS]]'' has as its B-plot the saga of McGee's new online girlfriend--who is actually Tony using a fake screenname. The idea was to get McGee good and attached, then suddenly turn sour and eventually break up with him, so that Tony could have a good laugh at McGee being heartbroken. Only [[A Simple Plan|it goes wrong]]; when Tony turns on the shrew, McGee loves her more than ever, baffling the hell out of Tony. It eventually turned out that McGee wasn't fooled, but figured he could wind Tony up by playing along.

* In the ''[[Alcatraz (TV)|Alcatraz]]'' episode "Johnny McKee", one of these provides the motivation for McKee's mass murder attacks.

* Used twice in the same episode in ''[[Code Lyoko (Animation)|Code Lyoko]]''. Ulrich sends a text to Sissi, asking to meet her at the garden shed, where she is instead jumped on and licked by Kiwi (a dog) while Ulrich and Odd taunt her. In revenge, Sissi reports Kiwi to the school authorities. Post-RTTP, having learned not to put Odd's dog in danger, Ulrich, Odd, Jeremie, and Yumi prank-date and humiliate Sissi AND Herb, who is an unlucky enough geek as is. [[Moral Dissonance|Did we mention these are the heroes of the story doing this?]]

* In ''[[Eight Crazy Nights (Animation)|Eight Crazy Nights]]'', the former [[Alpha Bitch]] of Whitey’s high school class confesses (in song!) that she told Whitey to meet her at the prom, and he showed up only for her, her real date and all of his classmates to laugh at him, saying they couldn’t believe he thought she was serious. [[My God What Have I Done|She’s not proud of it.]]

** And the recent American remake, ''[[Dinner for Schmucks (Film)|Dinner for Schmucks]]'', starring [[Steve Carell]].

* ''[[Married With Children (TV)|Married With Children]]'': Kelly Bundy undergoes this; the criterion is "[[The Ditz|unintelligent]]."

* ''[[Cold Case (TV)|Cold Case]]'': Several fat girls were brought to a fraternity house party, and then publicly weighed and mocked by guys with pig masks. One of them had been friends with a fraternity brother (who felt guilty), but the other brothers beat him up and attempted to rape her. The other girls, enraged, set the house on fire for revenge. The girl who had gone back inside wound up locked in a side room while her friend heard her last wishes before she died.

* May also be done for ''both'' datees, to push them toward each other. Nick did that to Jerry Steiner and Shelly in ''[[Parker Lewis Can't Lose (TV)|Parker Lewis Can't Lose]]''.

* On ''[[Malcolm in The Middle (TV)|Malcolm in The Middle]]'' a group of girls set Reese up with a date who was a pig as a joke. He became so depressed afterwards that [[Mama Bear|Lois]] went after the girls...

* Happened to Moist in ''[[Doctor Horribles Sing Along Blog (Web Video)|Doctor Horribles Sing Along Blog]]''. He and another character had a double date with Bait and Switch. Moist thought he was supposed to be paired up with Bait, but... [[Stealth Pun|yeah.]]

* In ''[[Hot Gimmick (Manga)|Hot Gimmick]]'', Hatsumi is invited over to Azusa's apartment. {{spoiler|Turns out he and his friends want to gang-rape her. Luckily she's rescued.}}

* Chloë attempts this with Ray in the movie ''[[In Bruges (Film)|In Bruges]]''. Doesn't quite go according to plan.

* {{spoiler|Lord Barkis Bittern}} successfully does this once {{spoiler|to Emily}} in the [[Tim Burton]] stop-motion musical ''[[Corpse Bride (Animation)|Corpse Bride]]'', and it is at the very least implied he is also trying to do this to Victoria.

* In ''[[Red State (Film)|Red State]]'', a woman who is a member of an extremely conservative church accepts propositions from horny teenagers via a website for that purpose. When they go to meet her, accomplices capture them, kill one and nearly kill another.

* On ''[[Criminal Minds (TV)|Criminal Minds]]'' Garcia got the full romantic date treatment before her date brought her back home, almost kissed her, then turned to go... {{spoiler|and turned back, said "I've been dreaming of this moment all night," and shot her}}.

* A ''[[CSI (TV)|CSI]]'' episode had a plot that involved luring a boy into a trap of all of the three examples (the bait lured him to a construction site with the prospect of having sex, then her friends proceeded to beat him to death with hammers before taking his wallet and split the money four ways.) The boy had originally been friends with the rest of the teenagers, who were all emo punks, but when he stopped hanging out with them, got a job and started doing better in school, the other teenagers were angry at him for "ditching" them, figuring that he thought he was better than them.

* [[Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)|Xander]] has had this happen to him a couple of times.

* Albert is propositioned by a peasant girl at the Carnival in Rome in ''[[The Count of Monte Cristo (Literature)|The Count of Monte Cristo]]''. She turns out to be [[Unsettling Gender Reveal|a young boy]] working for an infamous bandit who kidnaps him.

* This happens to Montblanc from ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (Video Game)|Final Fantasy Tactics Advance]]'', who received a letter from Mogumi, a townsgirl. She asked him to go to Materiwood. As he gets there, it was actually {{spoiler|Reaker, the leader of Clan Rose who are going to attack him}}.

** This reappears again in ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics a 2 (Video Game)|Final Fantasy Tactics a 2]]'', involving a viera named Cois. It turned out to be Fras instead, for some [[Revenge]].

* A trio of female bandits try this on a male PC in ''[[The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion (Video Game)|Oblivion]]''. If the PC is female, they instead lure her out to invite her to join the con. [[But Thou Must|When]] said female PC turns them down, they try to mug her the same way as they would a male PC.

* In ''[[Code Lyoko (Animation)|Code Lyoko]]'', this is used as part of a XANA attack. Odd is sent a text from an anonymous girl asking him to meet her in the woods and Odd goes gladly, only to be knocked out and trapped in a sewer thing slowly filling with water.

[[Category:Trope]]