List of computer pranks

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The following is a partial list of computer pranks. For the main article, see Computer prank.

This is an incomplete list, which may never be able to satisfy certain standards for completeness. Revisions and additions are welcome, but should only include notable pranks which can be verified from reliable sources.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Type	Link	Prank
Screamers first grab the user's attention, and are then abruptly interrupted by an unexpected image, usually accompanied by a burst of sound, such as a scream or roar.	Steve Irwin Death Footage	This Video starts out with text warning about the disturbing content of the video. After the text is onscreen for a few seconds, the image of a zombie woman with white eyes suddenly appears, accompanied by a scream. Finally, the video states that Steve Irwin "loved to play pranks." On September 28, 2006, this was the most popular video on Google Video.
	Color Vision Deficiency Test	The user must complete a Color Vision Deficiency Test, consisting of a series of circles with colored dots that form numbers. The plates are similar to the plates used in real colorblindness tests. The user enters the number he sees, and is presented with a new plate. After the first few tasks a seemingly empty circle appears, with an unclear number 5, compelling the user to look closer. Then suddenly Dr. Judith Kutter from Basket Case appears, accompanied by loud screams. Part of Liquid Generation's sabotage line.
	K-Fee	This video pretends to be a car commercial, showing a small car driving through a rural area. The car moves behind a clump of trees, and the camera pans past it to an open field. Suddenly, the gruesome head of a zombie with red hair comes into view, accompanied by a hoarse scream. This video is actually an energy drink commercial by German beverage maker K-fee. It ends with the text "So wach warst du noch nie. Kaffee in hohen Dosen" ("You've never been so awake. Coffee in high doses (alternatively: coffee in tall cans; a pun)"), or with "Now go change your shorts and go back to work!" (in German). Note that on the K-fee website [1], you can download other commercials, all of which present a calm scene followed by a zombie and a scream, then the slogan. However, the 'car' version is the only one that has so far been propogated as a 'prank'.
	Steady Hand and Steady Hand 2	This prank flash is a game similar to the maze. In the game you have to use your mouse to control a dot through the maze. Once you at about halfway finished, a cat pops up. There is also a sequel call Steady Hand 2. The only difference is that a deformed man jumps up instead of a cat.
	Kikia	This is the first prank flash to be widely spread and thus provide inspiration for other similar creations. It originated on Taiwan's Kimo webhosting service from a person with the online username "Netspooky." The first frame shows a cartoon boy sitting on a lawn gazing at the sky. Two lines of Chinese text appear. A rough translation is "Hasn't it been a long time... / Haven't looked at the sky closely..." The second frame shows the boy walking down a city street lined with buildings, accompanied by more Chinese text reading "Walking on the street... / You see..." The first two scenes are accompanied by Utada Hikaru's pop ballad "First Love." Suddenly, the flash switches to a screenshot of the game Fatal Frame - a grayscale photograph of a ghost woman - and a piercing scream. The animation ends with yellow text reading "Kikia," and does not loop.
	The Maze V1.1	Unlike many prank flashes, "The Maze" requires input from the user, who is required to navigate a maze, moving a dot around with the mouse without touching the walls. The maze becomes increasingly difficult, requiring more and more concentration from the user. Near the end of the third level, as the user is navigating an extremely tight corner, a picture of Linda Blair from The Exorcist pops up, accompanied by a loud scream.
	Say It	Plays the song Say It by Kumbia Kings, while scrolling the lyrics. The music plays at very low volume, motivating the viewer to turn the volume up. Then suddenly a picture of Linda Blair from The Exorcist pops up, accompanied by a loud scream.
	Subliminal Messages	This animation, sometimes known as "Subliminal Music and Images," has been distributed to many websites since 2002. After loading, an advertisement for gin is shown. After a few seconds, part of the image is highlighted and the word "SEX" is visible. An image for a flooring company appears, with a woman appearing to be touching her shoulder. The image is then flipped, so it appears the woman is masturbating. Then a song, Cradle of Filth's "Dinner at Deviant Palace" begins to play backward. The Lord's Prayer is heard along with faint noises. In the middle of the prayer, a loud scream is heard, along with a flurry of pictures; The first is a picture of a bloody face from Rotten.com, this is followed by Satan's face from The Exorcist. The next image is another face from Rotten.com, followed by a picture of a harlequin baby. The last image is a grayscale image of a mummy without wrappings. It ends with a message, "Never trust flash animations talking about subliminal stuff!"
	Urban Legends 3: Ghosts	The "Urban Legends" series is a popular series distributed on the internet, which show mini documentaries providing evidence of the paranormal. Most, but not all, of the movies usually stop for 5 seconds, then an image of a ghost appears suddenly, accompanied by a very loud scream. Urban Legends 3: Ghosts starts off normally, with a warning, and goes on to show ghost photography, ghost videos, and ITC. The first screamer hints to the viewer that ghosts may be haunting their computer monitor. 10 seconds later, a ghost girl pops up very briefly and is usually unseen. The movie continues with ghost EVP, then ends with a picture of an uncleaned room. The author tells the viewer to "LOOK CLOSER!!!!!" and then a loud scream and another ghost girl pops out from the door (this is actually derived from the animated GIF mentioned above - when using a Flash seek bar bookmarklet, the girl doesn't pop up).
	What's Wrong With This Picture?	Perhaps one of the most famous prank flashes is one that appeared around 2000 entitled, "What's Wrong with this Picture". It starts off with directions to find out what exactly is wrong with this picture, hence the title. It is then followed by a link that leads to what looks like a rather innocent picture of a dining room. This is actually a flash file, but because of its early appearance, many viewers had little or no knowledge of flash. After staring at the picture for about thirty seconds, a black and white close-up photo of a woman clenching her face, with her eyes colored black briefly pops up and screams (sometimes the scream is a deep masculine scream). Other versions of this include trying to see a ghost in a photo, and one link opens the picture in another browser and freezes it on the face until you exit out. The original version was featured on AFV showing videos of people being scared by this.
	Where's Waldo	This popular prank resembles a Where's Waldo? picture, in which the user has to find Waldo in a circus picture and click on him to win. Waldo is really nowhere to be found, but Odlaw and Wenda appear in the picture. After 20 seconds, Satan from The Exorcist with a loud scream appears.
	Jingle Bells Reversed	This popular screamer plays "Jingle Bells" first forwards, and then reversed, displaying a waveform representation of the clip. Midway through the reversed playing, a picture of a negative male face pops up with a loud scream.
	The Fact About Sajjad Ali	Uses soothing music from a Pakistani pop singer Sajjad Ali. Text appears over a picture of Stonehenge describing the song played in the flash, "Paniyon Mein", followed by some Romanized Hindi. A female zombie face suddenly zooms out to a scream, covering the Stonehenge picture. The flash animation was made by Freeek.
Loss of control pranks remove control of the computer from the user.	You Are An Idiot Beware, this is the prank itself! Causes popups! You Are An Idiot The Flash file alone; does not cause popups	In this popular prank, windows saying "you are an idiot" pop up and bounce around the screen; the windows continuously spawn and it's impossible to close them all using the mouse. Ending the browser process in Windows's task manager via ctrl-alt-del effectively quashes the pop-ups. It is also possible to end the popups by holding Alt-F4 until all the windows are closed (in Internet Explorer), but this risks accidentally closing one or two windows too many. Most major browsers block these popups automatically, thus renedering the prank rather useless, unless the user is running an outdated version of Internet Explorer.
	Last Measure Beware, this is the prank itself! Causes popups! Last Measure The Last Measure website; currently does not cause popups	Last Measure is a Flash script created by members of the trolling organisation GNAA (the idea is credited to "penisbird") which causes the main browser window to shake violently, whilst spawning popups bouncing around displaying famous shock site images and utilizing a Flash plugin to play a soundclip of a voice shouting "HEY EVERYBODY! I'M LOOKING AT GAY PORNO!" at high volume. The latest versions also include script to cause the user's default e-mail client to open and send the message "JOIN THE GNAA!" to all contacts, with a link to the GNAA website (http://www.gnaa.us). Early versions used JavaScript, but the growing use of popup blockers prompted the switch to Flash. The site is especially difficult to exit in Internet Explorer, as pressing Ctrl or Alt spawns a warning message, whilst pressing Delete spawns a popup window containing the "Credits". There are only two effective ways of stopping Last Measure. One is to close the process of the web browser via Task Manager; however, since the browser is now effectively a forkbomb, it is doubtful the computer will have enough RAM to open the Task Manager at this point, and even if the Task Manager is opened, the process is continually moving down the list. The other way is to shut down or restart the computer. Last Measure is known to work on all major web browsers and has also been made into an Operating System, known as LMOS Main article: Last Measure
	Red Room	Red Room is not a prank as such; there is no real "shock" as defined in this article, it is simply a horror story, albeit one with an unexpected ending. It is a Flash video, entirely in Japanese, about an urban legend called "the Red Room," a popup window that allegedly will result in the death of the viewer if closed. The protagonist in the video searches on the internet for proof of its existence, only for the results to go horribly awry. The "shock" comes after the movie ends, when the Red Room popup appears on the user's desktop and begins acting as depicted in the video. Main article: Red Room
External pranks use computers to manipulate other objects or systems, including the telephone network.	The Ring Prank V.2	This prank is a takeoff on the theme of The Ring, in which anyone who sees a certain video receives a phone call telling them that seven days later, they will die. The prank is set up by entering a friend's phone number, as well as a message, and a link is generated. When the friend clicks on the link, clips from the video (as displayed in the movie) are shown. Soon after, the friend receives a call from phone number "000-000-0000," and is given the message by a computer-generated voice.
Unexpected event pranks follow the same plot as screamers, but don't have scary content.	Phone Trace	This prank tricks the user into thinking they can track down an untrustworthy spouse's exact location via their mobile phone signal. A flash animation appears to zoom in on some satellite imagery then bombards the viewer with the MeatSpin video and music.
	Focus	This prank features the ouchi illusion. It says to stare into the circle for 20 seconds and then look around. But after 15 seconds, a person's butt is shown. Then some text saying "Got you there didn't I? ha ha ha ha ha."
	Seal Loves You	Unlike most Liquid Generation sabotages, Seal is not scary. It starts out with a seal on an iceberg. He mentions how much he loves you. Clicking on the buttons at the right cornes of the screen will make fart noises. In the middle of the seal's speech, an ad for analsex.com pops up, followed by a loud voice reading the text as the background flashes. Then, the "You've Been Sabotaged" screen appears as a window. Clicking the buttons at the right corner of the screen on the "You've Been Sabotaged" window will not do anything. This prank is a take-off of flash pop-up ads.