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.
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 NG's office [1].
- An alt account (Formerly owned by NG 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.
- 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 userpage. The wordfilters were only temporary, and the posts reverted to their original text the next day.
2009-Chinagrounds
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. Sadly, after the prank was over the chat reverted to its original placeholder image, and the chat still to this day is under development.