April Fools Pranks Inspired by 'The Office': Five Ideas From Jim's Pranks on Dwight

We're all just trying to get by—ambling through the mundane, attempting to find meaning in a life largely saturated with meaninglessness, squeezing drops of joy from brief, fleeting bursts of laughter.

Anyways, The Office was a hell of a show.

As the the character Oscar deftly noted in The Office's finale (using origami as a visual aid), the beloved sitcom turned something so simple—a bland working place in a nothing town—into something wonderful, hilarious and charming.

So why not bring some of that into your life this April Fools this weekend?

There's hardly anything more April Foolsy than pranks. And you'd be hard pressed to find anyone better at sweet, sweet pranks than the fictional character of Jim Halpert—The Big Tuna himself—played by John Krasinski.

If you didn't watch The Office—wait, why are you clicking on a story about a show that went off the air five years ago if you didn't watch it? The only person I can imagine doing that is my Mom. Hi Mom—you just need to know that Jim played increasingly elaborate pranks on Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson), his annoying and gullible (if ultimately redeemable) desk neighbor.

There are so, so, sooooo many Office pranks out there, but we did the heavy-lifting of narrowing it down to a choice few you might want to try. So without further ado, here are five good pranks you can attempt to recreate:

1. The classic Jello prank

It debuted in episode 1 and it remains a classic. Jim puts Dwight's stapler in Jello; Dwight gets angry; Jim feigns ignorance. "That's real professional," Dwight seethes. "It's the third time and it wasn't funny the first three times either, Jim." I beg to differ.

Some folks have even gone out of their way to write instructions for recreating this prank, so have at it.

2. Identity theft

I mean, this one is simple. Buy clothes that look exactly like the prankee's, dress up, act like the person, end prank.

3. Self Identity Theft

In a particularly inspired prank, Jim brought in an actor friend to pretend he was Jim. It took a bit of effort: replacing family photos, giving the actor passwords, having Pam (later Jim's wife) get in on the joke—but it's doable. If you really go all out, you might be able to really freak someone out and make them question the nature of reality. Not bad.

4. The ol' meatball joke

Is this the best trick in the Jim Halpert playbook? No. But a lot of his pranks in the show are incredibly elaborate—you're a busy person, I assume, and don't have the time to recon someone's dry cleaner and replace their entire suit with a Velcro version that you can tear away without them noticing—so this one will have to do.

The meatball prank actually ends up being a prank on Jim. The character Stanley convinces Jim that he finds it hilarious when Jim stuffs Dwight's drawers with meatballs. It's really a ploy by Stanley and Dwight to get free meatballs. But honestly, if it were April Fools and I found a bunch of meatballs stuffed into my personal space, that's actually kind of hilarious. So have at it: Make some meatballs and hide them in somebody's stuff—why not?

5. Inch by Inch

This is perhaps the most elegant Jim on Dwight prank. It's so simple: He just slid Dwight's desk a few inches every time he used the bathroom until everything seemed out of sorts. We never actually get to see this one on screen—Jim recounts it as they go through a personnel file with all Dwight's complaints to corporate—but it's so smart and so subtle. If you're around someone all day, one little bit at a time, you can turn their world slightly off kilter—and isn't that the point of April Fools?