April Fool’s Day jokes that backfired: Boston, Tesla, Google,
Updated April 1, 2026, 8:53 a.m. ET
The year was 1980, and people didn’t get the joke.
It was April Fool’s Day, and a Boston TV station was trying to add a little bit of fun to their broadcast so they came up with a prank. They told viewers that Great Blue Hill was erupting.
Great Blue Hill in Milton, is an ancient volcano, over 440 million years old, according to Boston Geology, and extinct.
But for the prank, a Boston TV news producer told viewers it was “oozing lava and spewing flames,” according to Reader’s Digest. They sold the story by using real footage of the Mount St. Helen, which has its first steam blast eruption on March 27, 1980 and cutting stock video of then President Jimmy Carter warning people.
The warning has cut into the normal broadcast, making it seem more believable.
There was a card at the end of the segment that said “April Fool” but not everyone made it that far.
Panicked, people started calling law enforcement wondering if they should evacuate.
“One man, believing that his house would soon be engulfed by lava, had carried his sick wife outside in order to escape. The Milton police continued to receive worried phone calls well into the night,” the Museum of Hoaxes website said.
The station issued an apology, and the executive producer of the show was fired for poor news judgement and breaching an FCC regulation about how file video could be used.
However, it’s far from the only time a prank went sideways. Here are four more times an April Fools prank backfired.
Elon Musk joked Tesla was ‘totally bankrupt’ in 2018 days after stock plunge — investors didn’t laugh
March of 2018 was not a good month for Tesla. Shares of the electric-car company nosedived to its then-worst levels amid a storm of unflattering headlines, which included factory production issues, an auto recall, an embarrassing downgrade of its credit status, costly legal setbacks and a public row with a federal safety agency investigating a fatal crash that killed a Model X driver in California.
Most company owners buried under the weight of such bad press might steer clear of any potential controversy. Elon Musk, however, announced on April 1, 2018, that Tesla had gone “completely and totally bankrupt.”
Musk tweeted that despite a last-ditch effort of selling Easter eggs, Tesla had filed for every chapter of bankruptcy — “including Chapter 14 and a half (the worst one).”
Musk’s social media antics were part of an April Fool’s prank, but investors weren’t laughing. Tesla shares dropped another 5 percent, according to The Washington Post, with business experts openly questioning Musk’s ability to lead the multi-billion dollar company.
Fake prize lands California radio station in real legal trouble
In 2005, KBDS-FM radio in Bakersfield announced the station would award a new Hummer to the lucky winner who could guess the correct mileage of the company’s own Hummer H2’s as they drove around town. Shannon Castillo, according to CBS news, was one of two people who guessed correctly (103.9 miles, matching the radio station’s carrier frequency).
Castillo hired a sitter to watch her two children and arrived at KBDS bright and early at 6 a.m. on April 1 to claim her prize, only to discover she was being awarded a toy truck and not a $60,000 vehicle, according to the East Bay Times.
After being handed a fake car from a dubious contest, Castillo filed a real lawsuit against the station for $60,000.
Angry, she was, after Hooters gave a Florida waitress a ‘toy Yoda’
A Florida waitress at a Hooters restaurant in Panama City was thrilled after learning she’d won the grand prize following a competition the company held to reward whoever could sell the most beer on April 1, 2001. The winner, according to the Associated Press, was supposed to receive a new Toyota.
Blindfolded, Jodee Berry was led out to the restaurant’s parking lot where it was revealed her grand prize was actually a brand new Star Wars doll, a green toy Yoda (complete with light saber), meant as an April Fool’s Day prank.
Perhaps the managers at Hooters forgot what Yoda’s character had said about anger leading to suffering, because Berry was furious. Devastated, she quit her job and sued Hooters’ parent company, Gulf Coast Wings Inc., for fraudulent misrepresentation and breach of contract.
The lawsuit was settled in 2002 for an undisclosed sum of money, according to the Orlando Sentinel, in which an attorney for Berry said she received enough compensation to “pick out whatever type of Toyota she wants.”
Google issued an apology after its ‘Mic Drop’ prank went awry
Google caused more headaches for itself than laughs after an April Fool’s Day joke in 2016 backfired, leading the company to issue an apology to dissatisfied users.
The search engine company announced as part of a prank that its newest Gmail feature, called the Mic Drop, was supposed to make “it easier to have the last word on any email” by adding a GIF of a yellow animated minion character (from the animated “Despicable Me” and “Minion” movies) dropping a microphone.
But a coding error from Google’s programmers caused the Mic Drop to appear on emails unintentionally and had to be turned off manually. “We love April Fools jokes at Google, and we regret that this joke missed the mark and disappointed you,” the company said at the time.
USA TODAY reporter Mike Snider contributed to this report.
John Tufts covers trending news for IndyStar and Midwest Connect. Send him a news tip at JTufts@Gannett.com. Find him on BlueSky at JohnWritesStuff.
