Prank Call: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

A '''Prank Call''' is a telephone call made in order to make somebody look foolish.

 

A subversion of this is known as [[Mistaken for Prank Call]], where a call sounds like a prank, only to be found that it wasn't.

 

[[The Other Wiki]] has [[w:Prank call|a page about this topic]] that goes into more detail than we do.

 

{{examples}}

== [[Fan Works]] ==

* ''[[Mars Attacks: Simpsons]]'': Each chapter has at least one such call to a random location, mostly to Moe's Taven.

== [[New Media]] ==

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== [[Puppet Shows]] ==

* "Leroy Mercer" was a character created and voiced by John R. Bean, a Knoxville, TN resident in the early 1980s. As "Mercer", Bean would make and record prank calls, including calling businesses and individuals to threaten them with an "ass-whuppin'" if they didn't pay him money as recompense for some fictional incident. Like The Jerky Boys' early work, his tapes were shared hand-to-hand rather than sold commercially.

* Several years later in the 1990s, disc jockeys Brent Douglas and Phil Stone on radio station KMOD-FM in Tulsa, Oklahoma created a character (voiced by Douglas) whom they called "Roy D. Mercer", originally as part of their morning show. This Mercer also made prank phone calls in which he demanded payment for a fictional offense against him and promised an "ass-whuppin'" to anyone who refused to pay up. Collections of Roy D. Mercer calls were eventually distributed on CD. Despite the similarity of character names and material, Douglas and Stone denied that they had copied "Leroy Mercer".

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

* ''[[Maniac Mansion]]'' has the option for the player to pull a prank call to distract villainess Nurse Edna when she enters her room.

 

== [[Web Original]] ==

* Beginning in early 2011, [[4chan]] organized a prank calling of the Gold and Silver Pawn Shop, home to the popular television show ''[[Pawn Stars]]''. The callers would repeatedly ask the employees if they sold ''[[Battletoads]]'', a video game for the [[Nintendo Entertainment System]] notorious for its difficulty. This call led Rick Harrison, owner of the store, to repeatedly swear and yell at the prank callers, who recorded this and uploaded it to [[YouTube]]. This originated several other similar videos of pranksters dialing random establishments and asking about ''Battletoads''.

* ''[[The Annoying Orange]]''{{'}}s episode [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_ety9JGwRI "Prank Call #1: Tanning Salon"] is a real prank call.

* In one episode of ''[[Powerpuff Girls]]'', the Gang Green Gang used the Mayor's emergency phone to prank call the Powerpuff Girls into beating up [[Not Me This Time|villains who weren't doing anything]].

* In the episode "Up All Night" of ''[[The Angry Beavers]]'', Daggett tries to make a prank call. Not only does he botch the delivery, he accidentally calls his mom.

 

== [[Real Life]] ==

 

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