Best pranks around the Internet on April Fools' Day 2016

ByLA Blake WLS logo
Friday, April 1, 2016
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It's safe to say this has been a good year for fans of April Fools' pranks. Everyone from Pixar to National Geographic to Airbnb is joining the fun.

Here's a round-up of some of the best stories on the Internet today. And in case you needed any reassurance, none of these are real. We think.

Netflix gets a John Stamos makeover

"Who is John Stamos? What is John Stamos?" Those are two questions that will be answered by the documentary, John Stamos, a Human, Being.

The trailer for the documentary was featured on Netflix's homepage as part of their Stamos-themed April Fools' prank. If you sign in to the streaming service, you'll see that the Fuller House star has been incorporated into nearly every section of the site.

YouTube lets you watch its videos with Snoop Dogg

You've probably watched 360 videos on YouTube, but what if you could watch those videos with your buddy Snoop Dogg? That's the concept behind a prank feature the site rolled out on Friday, #SnoopaVision.

Warning: Adult language

"This technology is so immersive that sometimes I forget if I'm in a video or real life," Snoop Dogg raves about the feature.

While it doesn't work for every video, there is a playlist of videos you really can watch in 360 with Snoop Dogg by clicking on the "SnoopaVision" button.

The ultimate Pixar Easter egg

"No one's managed to find our biggest secret hiding in the background of every one of our movies since 1995," Pixar director Andrew Stanton says in a video pointing out how Hank the camouflage Septopus has appeared in every single Pixar movie.

While this would be an amazing discovery, there are quite a few Pixar Easter egg hobbyists, and it's hard to believe they would have missed something like this. (However there are plenty of great Pixar Easter eggs that are real, and Hank the Septopus is a real Finding Dory character.)

Google goes all-out with cardboard plastic and more

The creators of Google Cardboard wanted you to be more immersed in the stories you're consuming, a promo video explains, and "Google cardboard plastic" takes it a step further. That's because the product is a set of plastic glasses you wear to experience, well, actual reality.

The tech giant really went all-out for April Fools'. They also changed the stick figure for street view on Google Maps to a disco dancer, and they introduced a "new" form of delivery for online shopping: parachutes.

Perhaps the Google prank creating the most buzz, though, was the "mic drop" feature on Gmail. It allowed users to reply to an email chain with a GIF of a Despicable Me character dropping a mic, signaling the conversation was over.

Google released a statement Friday saying the feature had been pulled because they were getting complaints from people who accidentally clicked the button in chains where the GIF would not be appropriate. It's unclear whether the statement itself is a prank-within-a-prank.

Festus Ezeli gets cut from the Warriors while getting a ride from Lyft

Golden State Warriors Center Festus Ezeli, who is out due to an injury, was getting a ride from Lyft when the radio made an announcement that he would be getting cut from the team. That's when he started getting texts from his teammates.

"I feel kinda awkward right now," his driver told him. Finally, teammate Andre Iguodala told him he'd been pranked, and Ezeli chased after him with a cake.

"Kid Class" on Virgin Australia flights

If kids were in charge of choosing their airlines, Virgin Australia would have won them over with their new kids class.

It's 100 percent adult-free and comes with a hopscotch course, seats you can kick the back of and bubbles on demand. What more could a kid ask for -- except for it to be real.

"Lairbnb"

Airbnb offers travelers a chance to stay in some pretty quirky accommodations, but nothing quite like this.

You can be welcomed into the home of a superhero or a vampire with "Lairbnb." Hosts assure guests they will feel at home and be assimilated into their hosts' lives, even fighting crime, if they want.

Teleporting soldiers

The U.S. Army announced "successful" teleportation had been achieved earlier this year on Friday, explaining in an article that they were excited for the day when soldiers could be transported around the world in the blink of an eye.

"One moment, I was chatting with the young Soldiers, and the next, they all vanished into thin air," the man behind the accomplishment is quoted as saying.

Ice cream makes you smart!

Even media outlets are joining in.

The Economist wrote about a study that found "Ice cream consumption, it seems, has a strong relationship with reading ability." The only logical conclusion, the article claimed, was that kids should eat more ice cream.

No more nude animal photos

Humans are constantly posting photos of cats, dogs and other species completely unclothed without their consent. National Geographic is taking a stand, the media outlet's photography account tweeted.

Following the prank link takes you to a slideshow of animals wearing clothes.

Polar bears and volcanoes in the Great Smoky mountains

The tourism site for the Great Smoky Mountains said that 5,000 polar bears would be introduced to parts of the park in North Carolina and Tennessee over the next five years. The article explained how the "Polar Bear Relocation Project" would actually help save the animals from endangerment.

The park also announced that an active volcano had been discovered under the Great Smoky Mountains. An article outlined the new safety precautions the park would be taking until they could determine the danger level, such as asking local clothing stores to keep extra coats on hand "in case an eruption from Mount LeConte blocks out the sun, causing volcanic winter."

Police departments ditching dogs for other cute helpers

While dogs are useful for sniffing out illegal drugs, maybe other cute animals should have their shot at helping the men and women in blue. The Fort Bend County Sheriff's Office in Texas rolled out their idea for "narcotics detection swine."

Meanwhile, the Amherst Police Department in New York introduced Dusty, their new narcotics-hunting rabbit who specializes in small spaces.

The Walt Disney Company is the parent company of Pixar and this station.