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.
2015 - Google+ integration
Tom Fulp posted a thread announcing a Google+ integration feature.
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.
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.
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
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
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]
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.