3 Comments

  1. Scott Sandler
    March 28, 2013 @ 9:52 am

    How will anyone take it seriously? It’s APRIL 1ST!

    • BrianRommel
      March 29, 2013 @ 10:55 pm

      Yeah but that doesn’t make it not true

      From TV tropes April Fools subversions
      Demashita! Powerpuff Girls Z: The announcement that there was going to be a Magical Girl anime Spin-Off of The Powerpuff Girls was presumed as an April Fools joke due to being announced on said date.

      More than that: it was announced on an April 1st, then nothing was said about it for months and months, with no new information to be had anywhere, until a follow-up announcement on, you guessed it, the following April 1st.

      Comic Books

      A few years ago, Marvel announced that Spider-Girl had been Un-Cancelled on April 1st.

      Film

      The casting of Leonard Nimoy as the voice of Sentinel Prime in Transformers: Dark of the Moon was announced near April 1st. Extra skepticism points thanks to Nimoy’s retirement from acting (which, as of this, clearly didn’t stick).

      The trailer for The Simpsons Movie was released on March 31, 2006 with the second Ice Age. Despite being one day before April 1st, it did create some initial beliefs that Fox had been pulling an early April Fools’ Day joke.

      New Media

      Google’s Gmail service was announced on April 1, 2004 with storage limits that (at the time) sounded absurdly infeasible; it was no joke. Since then, Gmail has run an April Fools’ joke every year, including such “new features” as a free email printing service (subsidized by giant red context-sensitive ads on the back of the emails) and a feature allowing the user to send an email to days earlier.

      And in 2007, a Google NY employee had to continuously state that despite the date, it wasn’t a joke, that his 3 foot python really was loose in the building.

      Popular gaming site The GIAinitialism suddenly announced its dissolution on April 1, 2002. Readers were confused for months before finding out that, yes, it really was closing down, and many were angry that they would pick April 1 of all days to make the announcement. The GIA was later retooled into the ill-fated GameForms.com, which didn’t last very long and has now been replaced by a poker site.

      Naruto The Abridged Comedy Spoof Series Show was meant to be one of these, but it ended up as a side project of LittleKuriboh’s. It currently has 5 episodes.

      That was 2009’s April Fools joke. In 2008, he made a fake ending to the series and “moved on” to Zork and Pals. Then in 2010, he created “a Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds abridged” with everyone just shouting “CARD GAMES ON MOTORCYCLES!!!”; then it turned out to be Iruka and Joekage watching it and then showing each other their abridged series. Naruto lampshades at the end how tired it’s gotten and complains.

      An accidental subversion: Gamefront (known back at the time of the incident as Filefront) announced on March 24, 2009, that they planned to shut down by the end of March. However, they managed to deal with their issues at that very moment and thus didn’t close down after all; they just happened to be unfortunate enough to solve their problems by April 1st.

      Like Naruto The Abridged Comedy Spoof Series Show, My Little Pony: Camaraderie is Supernatural started as an April Fool’s joke for 2011 from the creators of Sonic F. It got popular enough that another episode was made.

      On April 1, 2010, Christian Chandler vandalized the CWCki, the site dedicated to him and his webcomic. Most users assumed it was a prank at first.

      Tabletop Games

      The official Magic: The Gathering website pulls off some sort of elaborate joke every year on April 1st, but occasionally hides some truth in it as well. Perhaps the best trick they pulled was on April 1st, 2004, when they announced Unhinged, a sequel to the popular Magic joke set Unglued. A few days later, it was revealed that the announcement was true.

      Aaah, but when else to unveil new Unglued cards but that most auspicious of days?

      The real Fool’s Day Joke was the announcement that they were banning the Plains card: one of the resource cards you need to play the game.

      In 2010, they put up an “Arcana” (mini-article) that was just a Long List of increasingly ludicrous rumors they want to debunk. Only the first 5 or so (of 38) were plausible enough to merit debunking.

      Video Games

      Announced on April 1st 2012 Saints Row The Third Enter the Dominatrix was thought to be an April Fools Joke until it was later revealed to be a real stand alone downloadable companion game retailing for $30 and would be out by the end of the year.

      It was later stated that the game was canceled and would be incorporated into a full retail title releasing by the end of 2013. It wasn’t clear if the game was being incorporated into Saints Row 4 or a separate game.

      It was later announced that it was indeed being incorporated into Saints Row 4 as Saints Row IV to be released in late August 2013.

      Def Jam Vendetta had an initial release date of April 1, 2003. Hardly anybody took seriously the idea of a Licensed Game where rappers beat the stuffing out of one another. The game actually met the April 1 release date, and it sold like hotcakes, inspiring a pair of sequels.

      As with several earlier examples, the merger of Squaresoft and Enix was initially thought to be an April Fools’ Day prank because it was announced on April 1.

      Team Fortress 2’s Jarate weapon for April Fools’ Day 2009 is now a genuine weapon as of the Sniper vs. Spy update, release by the end of May 2009.

      Valve have also made multiple Counter-Strike April Fools’ Day updates.

      On the subject of Valve again, 13 indie games on Steam saw odd updates relating to potatoes on April 1st, 2011. Surely enough, these potatoes served as the omen to something more sinister than a mere foolish prank…

      Similiar to the Powerpuff Girls Z example above is Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, which was also announced near April 1st and thought to be an elaborate prank.

      The newest version of Dwarf Fortress, two years in the making, was released on April 1, 2010. No surprise that the website broke within the hour.

      Ogmo from Jumper has been announced to be a playable character in Super Meat Boy. The fact that Ogmo and Meat Boy himself are look-alikes left those who saw the news skeptical.

      Narcissu -side 2nd- was supposed to be released on April Fools’ Day. It got updated a few hours early, and some still think it’s an April Fools’ Day joke.

      One April Fools Day, Max Barry announced that the UN-like organization in his browser-based nation simulation game Nationstates would change its name to the World Assembly because of a complaint from the real UN about his use of the name and emblem. Turns out, the UN really did send him a letter, and the change was made to comply with it.

      Hatoful Boyfriend’s introduction states that the character designs were released on April Fools’ Day, and there’s an anecdote (could be truth, could be just an Urban Legend) that the creators of this game had originally intended for the game to be a normal Dating Sim with human guys and posted bird designs for these guys on the website as an April Fools’ joke, only for fans to love them so much that the game ended up being all about dating birds instead.

      Roxio announced an Angry Birds animated series on April 1st 2012.

      Whilst League of Legends usually plays this straight, a notable subversion was the announcement of the long awaited champion Lee Sin, the Blind Monk who was released a few days later. In the April Fool’s version, he was indestructible and could kick across the map but the player was filtered through a blurry screen. Here’s the April Fools spotlight compared to the real spotlight.

      The remake of La-Mulana had an April Fools trailer, but not everything shown in it is fake…

      The announcement of Rewrite by Key Visual Arts on April 1st 2008 was subsequently validated the following day.

      The announcement that Rewrite would be an adult game on April 1st 2010 was revealed as a joke.

      The release of a video showing the characters in distinctly un-Key like situation on April 1st 2011 was also confirmed the following day (and the events in video do actually happen in the novel).

      Webcomics

      Subverted in 2010 by Looking for Group who chose April 1 for some real yet unlikely plot development. It would seem that two party members met long ago, but the sane one was too badly hurt to remember in detail.

      Loserz brought us this strip. Jodie completely naked!

      After several months of MegaTokyo being almost entirely Miho and Piro talking, April 1st, 2012 unexpectedly delivered a barely offscreen naked Magical Girl wrestling match and Piro getting smacked in the face with a washbasin. Canonically.

      Web Original

      The Other Wiki features a set of articles each April Fools’ Day, and despite their absurdity, each of them are true. The site also runs rampant with pranking, such as changing all the links on the Rickroll article to point to, well, a Rickroll.

      On the Agatha Christie section of the Golden Age Mysteries Forum, one member posted a thread speculating about a possible lesbian couple in one novel. Because this thread was posted on April 1 2006, another member at first thought it was a joke.

      Western Animation

      The long-awaited DVD sets for both Tiny Toon Adventures and Freakazoid! were announced by Warner Brothers on April 1st, 2008.

  2. Chenix Stuart
    March 28, 2013 @ 5:19 pm

    Now if only hurricanger was fully subbed and not HK.

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