Senior pranks are "tradition" in some places. Generally, they're supposed to be a good natured parting gift from the graduating class, one final blaze of glory. Of course, some times things go too far and things end poorly. The practice has been falling out of favor lately - maybe because of that chance of going poorly, maybe because they're generally really hard to organize. Have you ever tried wrangling teenagers? It's nearly impossible. On the rare instance it does happen, though... the reward could be entry into legendary prankhood status.

One Reddit user asked:

What's the best senior prank you've heard of?

We don't want to give too much away, but there are chickens, Fall Out Boy, a kidnapping, bubble wrap and a mariachi band. Yeah... things got awesome.

Some kids spread a rumor that they planned to leave half way through the day by sneaking out the fire exit.

When the faculty found out, they chained all the fire exits.

Students then called the fire department to report a fire hazard and the school was evacuated by the fire department.

All the seniors then left anyway.

When I was a freshman, a bunch of the seniors convinced the whole school that Fall Out Boy was coming to perform a concert for our school.

They started by hanging posters for a supposed contest Fall Out Boy was holding where they would come play a concert for whichever high school in America got the most students to sign a petition (the winning school would be the one with the highest percentage of votes, so we stood a chance even though our school has ~500 students in it, total). They hyped it up and passed around the petition for a week or so and then we didn't hear about it for a while.

Months go by, and then rumors start to spread that we won. No official word mind you, but some seriously persistent rumors. This goes on for some weeks, until virtually the entire student body is convinced it is the truth. Then, one day, a black escalade rolls up to the school in the middle of a school day, so certain classes can see it from their windows. It pulls up to the theater entrance and then some dudes rush in with instrument cases. Some kids who saw them swore that they were the members of Fall Out Boy. They must have been setting up and practicing for the concert.

Finally, the big day arrives. Our PRINCIPAL comes on the announcements one morning and tells us that there is a big surprise for the whole student body that afternoon and we are all to report to the theater during the final period of the day. Many a freshman girl spent the whole day screaming about how exciting it was that Fall Out Boy was here.

So we all go to the auditorium and the principal comes out and confirms it - it is a Fall Out Boy concert. He tells us that we need to give them a big welcome for them to start playing, so we all start chanting "FALL! OUT! BOY! FALL! OUT! BOY!" and as we're doing it the opening chords of Sugar We're Going Down ring out over the amps and the stage curtain lifts up.

On stage are a couple of scrawny white guys in tight pants rocking out playing Fall Out Boy Songs. It turns out they were some of the seniors responsible for this prank. Funniest part was that many kids didn't even realize and still were convinced it was Fall Out Boy halfway through the fake concert. I was a skeptic most of the way through the year, but they had me believing it when we were in there chanting.

Some seniors paid a company to move a big boulder in front of the main entrance to the school. The school then had to pay that SAME company to come remove it.

My class's senior prank was passing out marbles to as many people as possible pre-graduation. When you went to shake the principals hand during the ceremony, you would pass him the marble. By the time I got to shake his hand (this was a class of about 800 and my last name was towards the end) he was surrounded by a pretty big pile of marbles. The principal was cool about it, he just laughed when I handed it to him.

I have no idea who came up with the idea but it was so harmless and random.

The seniors at my school hyped up the prank, put posters everywhere, handed out flyers, posted daily on social media. Installed a countdown clock.

This also grabbed the attention of the local newspaper. They arrived at the school for an article. That was for us huge news. Some seniors even gave quotes to the press.

Then the clock struck zero. Everyone held their breath for wat was about to happen.

Nothing.

There was no prank.

I heard of a prank where the students went and spray painted "class of 2005" all over the school and sprayed grass killer on the football field in big letters that said "class of 2005."

The prank was that it was the class of 2006, they did it the week before they became seniors. So the senior class got in trouble for it but the juniors who did it never said anything until after they got their diplomas after senior year. Kinda lame, but I respect the approach.

We had an interior courtyard in one of the buildings. There was a restaurant about 15 miles away with a Paul Bunyan statue out in front. Most of the school showed up at 4am to get the statue, driving down the expressway with the head over the front of the pickup and the feet almost touching the ground in the back with a tarp over the middle. The pickup was surrounded by 100 or so cars and trucks. Nobody was getting close to it.

We got it to the school, hoisted it to the center of the main building and admired our work. The next day the school had to get a crane to get the statue removed. Best part was nobody saw a 100 vehicle convoy with a 15 foot statue in the center, on the highway

During my sophomore year of high school, the seniors covered the hallway floors with bubble wrap and managed to play elevator music through the announcement speakers.

During my senior prank we sent someone down to the office between every class period and had them play random music like Hannah Montana and stuff instead of the regular bells.

I heard a story of a senior class of one school switching with a senior class from a different school. Each person was assigned another person from the other school to switch with for the day.

A couple friends of mine and I kidnapped our headmaster/principal (with his permission) from assembly by rappelling down from the rafters and putting a bag over his head and ushering him off stage. Then we played a queued up video that looked like a ransom video that was happening live. At the end of the video the headmaster escapes and returns to the assembly and continues his speech as if nothing happened.

My class decided to bring a bunch of grills and hold a barbeque in the parking lot. The seniors before us actually destroyed so much property that we decided to just have something everyone could enjoy.

I live in Virginia and three years ago a bunch of kids planted a number of dogwood trees in the end zone of our football field. The kicker is that the law says dogwood trees can't be cut down. I mean, it may be illegal to cut them down, but nothing stops anyone from just...well, digging them up again and moving them elsewhere, and saying, "Wow! Thanks for the free trees!"

The school had to have them moved, but not harmed.

One year, the senior prank at the highschool was to park in the most a**hole way possible, taking up multiple spots and double parking. Not very good in my book, of funny, but hey it didnt damage anything, so whatever.

The parking lot was shared by a local business though, and the shop owner thought he'd play a prank of his own. Called a buddy, and an off duty cop came down to give everyone fake parking tickets. The econ class that most of them were in, had a view of the lot. The cop drove up in a cop car, with lights flashing. Wish i could have been there to see their faces when the cop started placing empty ticket envelopes under wind shields.

Away back in '69, our class painted a 55 gallon drum as a beer can. The "bottom" was removed, and they hoisted it up the flagpole very fast, so that when they hit the top of the lanyard, the momentum flipped it over onto the top of the flagpole.

Back then, 55 gallon drums were made of steel. Nowadays with plastic drums, it would likely be much easier.

The year I graduated, all the popular seniors got like 20-50 chickens and set them loose in the main building. Only thing is, our school was having work done on the main building at that moment. A bunch of the chickens found their way into the ceiling and died up there. They lived long enough to sh!t EVERYWHERE, too. So there was bird sh!t and several rotting chicken corpses stuck in the ceiling.

It was not a pleasant few days that followed.

I heard of one where the school banned senior pranks and were told that if they did it, they would not get their diplomas and be expelled. So all the seniors decided to bring a banana into school one day, and just walk around with it, not eat it or anything, just constantly be holding it. So the teachers got suspicious of this and told them they had to eat it or throw it away before they get confiscated. The students then never ate them and they got confiscated.

The next day, they did the same thing, but with big bottles of water, but never drank them, just carried them and all of them had the same bottle I believe (not too sure), so the school again, got suspicious and did the same as the banana's. They ended up confiscating them all.

The seniors contacted the local media about the school taking away their food and water.

The next day, parents were calling in complaining and reporting to the district saying that the school wasn't allowing them to have fruit or water in school. This was during a particularly hot summer, too.

At my sister's school the year before she graduated they managed to fill the courtyard/playground with 4cm of confetti.

That's an inch and a half of tiny round pieces of paper. School was not amused, as they had to pay to get a container for it, but they did got the entire class to clean it up.

Our football field bleachers were painted blue and white. The white spelled out 2008 in a block style font. So if you were on the fields and looked up into the stands you saw a giant "2008"

We used grass chalk spray (temporary white spray paint) to close off the 2. Since it was block lettering, it looked like it said "BOOB."

Was hysterical.

My senior class hired a mariachi band to follow our principal around all day.

H/T: Reddit