Every April 1, Newgrounds has a tradition of playing an April Fools Day prank on the website. These range from just a switch of the logo or (Especially recently) become an elaborate takeover of the website, complete with a recolor of the site's graphics, games, and art based off the theme. Every prank is always accompanied by a post by an administrator (usually Tom or in the case of the 2010 prank, an alt account) giving the story behind the prank.
2023 - Clock Day April Fools[]
Front page showing the Clock Day banner and various Clock Day submissions.
On March 22nd, alongside closing down the General and Politics forums, Tom Fulp announced that their plans for April Fools Day have been canceled in favor of focusing on ongoing projects.
Instead, the Clock Crew suddenly announced that Clock Day would be celebrated on April 1st rather than August 15th, making 2023 the only year to have two Clock Days.
2022 - Dankmen NFT Drop[]
Tom Fulp posted a thread announcing the Dankman NFT drop and announcing his plan to sell them one at a time with the price rising with each sale. They will currently also change the border to a pentagonal shape if downloaded and set as your profile photo. The "NFTs" were made by artists Potatoman, DaemonPlus, Joe-Mega, LobsterMango, and PhantomArcade.
On April 2nd, the Dankmen were "cancelled", citing everyone who downloaded it made it worthless. On April 4th, custom profile picture shapes were carried over from the prank, previously announced as a “Plan B".
2021 - Pico's School Remake[]
Pico's School Remake BBS post
Tom Fulp posted a thread announcing that with the fame Friday Night Funkin' is bringing to Newgrounds he doesn't want people to see the original version of Pico's School because of how he sees it as insensitive with a link to an "updated" version.
On April 1st, Pico's School was replaced by Pico's School: Love Conquers All. This game starts like Pico's School, but Pico and Cassandra become friends and Cassandra tells him that she and all Penillians wants to destroy Earth because humans are homophobic, and Penillians are gay. Pico says he is gay and he is dating Boyfriend from Friday Night Funkin'.
If you want to play that other version of Pico's School, click here.
2020 - Postal Distancing[]
Forum post showing postal distancing (infected posts turned green).
Tom Fulp posted a thread announcing that his account had been infected with a virus and to protect users he was announcing Postal Distancing. This involved: spacing forum posts farther apart to prevent spread and giving everyone a complimentary care package of hand sanitizer and toilet paper.
New supplies of hand sanitizer and toilet paper appeared every hour, but users soon began hoarding the supplies and there wasn't enough to go around. By the end of the day most forum users were infected.
2019 - EU control[]
Front page showing censored thumbnails.
The site had a message about cookies and a message about how the EU requires Newgrounds to block Copyrighted material, which NG cannot afford to do, so they are blocking everything. When a user tried to view a submission a message came up with a Tankman picture saying that everything is blocked. Users were invited to do a survey to determine if they were from the EU, which was a spoof on the characteristics of Europeans.
2018 - The Room is Coming to the Switch[]
Front page with the Room is Coming to Switch design
Tom announced in a thread that he was bringing The Room Tribute game to the Nintendo Switch in a partnership with Serbian game developer Epikgames Games. The port would add a new Denny side quest that was twice as large as the original game along with discussion of online play, multiple characters made playable, and procedurally generated levels.
A number of forum users also changed their names (along with their avatars and signatures) and made believe they were each other for the day.
2017 - PRAISE THE SUN![]
Front page showing solar panel design.
Tom announced in a thread that starting that day Newgrounds would be run off of 100% renewable solar power. When you opened up a new page a popup came up with a message telling people that they were running out of power and asking them to aim their monitor at the sun to recharge it. The page then faded to black and shut down the site. Additionally typing a number of related words would automatically change them to solar panel after you submitted them. That way trying to acknowledge the joke would just lead to some very odd phrases about solar power.
The original prank would have done this endlessly and made the site essentially unusable for the day, however after a significant uptick in subscriptions related to a youtube video about Newgrounds led to the last minute change.
2016 - Trumpgrounds[]
Trumpgrounds front page with interactive slots game.
An account purporting to be Donald Trump announced that he had bought Newgrounds.com and fired Tom Fulp. He announced that he had created a Trump chat and was going to build a firewall to keep Mexico out and make Mexican Google pay for it. He would also kick out the Chinese users and wanted every user to pledge to visit Newgrounds ever day and become a supporter. There was also a Trump slot machine game playable from the Front page. Newgrounds remained as Trumpgrounds the entire weekend.
2015 - Newgrounds+[]
Front page with a minimalist Google like skin.
Tom Fulp posted a thread announcing that starting April 6th, Google+ would be the only way to log into Newgrounds. You would be required going forward to use your real name on Newgrounds, which would be displayed on all parts of the site you interact with. Additionally context sensitive ads would be added to the site via Google Adsense. A Content ID system would be integrated and any content which violated that system would either be removed or redirected to the relevant Youtube video. Finally, suggested searches would be added to the site search.
The reason for these changes were given as follows:
- to encourage better behavior
- to increase accountability among users
- as a way to address harassment
- in order to more easily deal with piracy issues
2014 - Store Relaunch[]
Store relaunch with new Newgrounds toilet paper!
Tom posted a thread announcing the relaunch of the Newgrounds store with a shift to more practical consumer products with broad appeal. Tom had met with an ecommerce consulting agency prior to the original store closing and they had recommend this pivot away from shirts with cartoons on them to consumer products that everyone needs. The first new product would be Newgrounds branded toilet paper, available to purchase for $5 per roll.
2013 - Segway of the Dead[]
Evil-Dog and 3 other Newgrounds users collaborated an a game called Segway of the Dead, which turned out to be an unbeatable April Fools gag game. Tom and the Newgrounds staff were too busy fixing publishing bugs related to a recent site redesign to organize an April Fools prank this year.
2012 - Hunger Games[]
Tom, JohnnyUtah and Oney submitted a flash called Hunger Games - The Game. The flash was built in order to make people think they were playing a simulation of the Hunger Games described in the book, but the flash was entirely unplayable as the player was always killed in the first 10 seconds. Due to the vast fanbase of the Hunger Games, this was one of the most successful April Fools jokes, which is evidenced in the Hunger Games BBS topic as well as the reviews. This is still a very popular flash game. A featureless chat was also released.
2011 - The Hunt[]
2011 was an unusual year in that there was no obvious April Fools Day joke. Tom Fulp announced on the front page that there was a prank somewhere on the site, and the first person to find it and properly describe it to him via Personal Message would win $250.[1]. He claimed he changed it this year because he was tired of the April Fools Prank being 'too obvious'. Many threads were created on the BBS to help collaborate and find what it was, but as far as anyone knew nobody had the answer. In a later post, Tom stated that the joke was that there was no joke at all.
One popular joke submission was Jerry 2, which was essentially a dubbed edit of the 2007 classic Jerry.
2010 - Kevin Bacon Day[]
The front page on Kevin Bacon Day
One of the most elaborate pranks yet, admins declared the day "Kevin Bacon Day", in honor of prolific actor Kevin Bacon. The prank was inspired when the movie "The River Wild" was playing on a TV in Newgrounds's office [2].
- An alt account (Formerly owned by Newgrounds user Mizar, only used for one BBS post) was set up for Bacon, who made a post on the BBS encouraging users to post Bacon-related creations, which resulted in numerous Bacon-related flash and art submissions. Two submissions-Tremerz and Wild River-were submitted by Newgrounds staff, with Tremerz earning the Daily Feature.
- The site logo was redesigned with a strip of bacon behind the tank and skyline, with the site name and tagline changed to "Kevin Bacon-Kevin Bacon, by Kevin Bacon" The page's window title remained unchanged.
- Wordfilters were put in the BBS and the Flash Portal that changed any pronoun to "Kevin Bacon" or "Kevin Bacon's" if it was possessive, which resulted in many confusing conversations and reviews. All BBS posts were signed with three large red estimation signs, giving the appearance of bacon. Clicking on it would take you to Kevin Bacon's user page. The wordfilters were only temporary, and the posts reverted to their original text the next day.
2009 - Chinagrounds[]
Chinagrounds front page
Tom made a post on the front page explaining that Newgrounds was now unblocked in China, however, they had to make several site changes in order to comply with Chinese standards.
- The website's graphics were colored red and the logo was redesigned.
- The BBS was completely locked and replaced with Chinese conversations.
- The Newgrounds chat was replaced with a chat window that had ongoing conversations-also in Chinese. This caused a major hype that the chat feature was finally arriving, it had been in the works for some time. After the prank was over the chat reverted to its original placeholder image. It wasn't until April Fool's Day 2012 that an official chat was released.
There were also a number of submissions that were made, either for the Chinagrounds theme or as an independent joke. Nene was given credit for the game "super sweatshop mastar," which was given three unlockable medals.[3] Kirbopher led a collaboration called $eG@, which was supposedly a Sonic the Hedgehog parody in the style of his earlier Nintendo collabs. A game called Tianmen Square was also made for the special "holiday." As of September 2010, it has just under half a million views, making it one of the most popular April Fools Day submissions ever.[4] I-smel submitted a game called .New Grounds., which pretended to be a Tankman game, but would always end when the player tried to drive across a bridge.[5]
2008 - Poogrounds[]
Newgrounds BBS with Poogrounds logo
The site logo was replaced with one colored brown and with the tank replaced with a pile of shit.[6] The logo contained references to Rickrolling, NEDM, and the Dancing Banana internet memes, and that it was presented by the website eBaum's World. Several classic feces-related movies were also posted on the front page, including Vegeta's Problem, Britney Spears' Mustache, The Clog, Doody The Clown, and several others.[7]
2007 - The "Redesign"[]
The "redesigned" logo
Tom posted that the long-awaited site redesign was finally here. The only thing that changed was the logo and navigation bar, which was given a "web 2.0" feeling. The prank was highly criticized for being unoriginal and for having very little effort put into it.
2006 - Noogrounds[]
Note the similarities to Google.
2006 was odd in that in contained two practical jokes. For approximately one minute, Newgrounds was replaced with a search function that resembled Google. Immediately afterwards, Tom Fulp posted that Newgrounds had acquired the website I-Mockery and was renaming it I-Grounds.[8][9]
2005 - Numagrounds[]
Other popular prank.
Tom Fulp claimed that since 9/11, the Newgrounds tank had been an overly violent symbol. Therefore, it was time to get a new mascot for the site. This mascot was Gary Brolsma from Numa Numa Dance, who brought Newgrounds positive press attention for once and attracted the vital middle-aged housewives demographic. The website would be renamed numagrounds.com. To this day, entering that URL will redirect people to Newgrounds.[10]
2004 - McDonalds[]
Tom Fulp announced that Newgrounds had a six-month advertising deal with McDonalds. He joked that now that Newgrounds's financial problems were over, and that he was literally swimming in money. Apparently, the joke was based on a real deal that IGN, a gaming website, had with McDonalds.[11][12]
2003 - Fake Edit Button[]
A fake edit button was added to the left of your posts. When you click on it, a message saying "Redirecting..." comes up. After a while a message saying "Please wait..." comes up. Click on "OK" and the message will go away, and nothing else will happen.
2002[]
Tom Fulp had several plans for April Fools Day, but ultimately passed the holiday over. This was during the internet slump, which was lowering Tom Fulp's spirits at the time.
2000 - Ribbagrounds[]
Tom Fulp pretended that he had been arrested, and might be in jail for a long period of time. In the meanwhile, the
An animation that ran on Ribbagrounds.
website would be run by Marty, the first person on Newgrounds whose work was so unpopular, it was removed from the site. All of the material on Newgrounds was replaced with low quality animations. This caused a huge ruckus around Newgrounds.[13] This was one of the most believed Newgrounds pranks mainly because NG had not done an April Fools prank anytime in the past.