Actor Aaron Paul learned a valuable lesson this week - that there is a certain finesse required to pull off a good prank.
The actor toyed with the emotions of Breaking Bad fans everywhere by taking to Periscope to announce that the character of Jesse Pinkman was going to gethis own spin-off TV show. He then admitted that, actually, he'd made it all up.
I don't know what offended me more about this act of deceit - that Pinkman wasn't going to be returning to my TV screen, or that the whole ruse was so lame. A good prank should be either clever or funny (hopefully both). Paul's was neither.
So, sit down Aaron and take note of these pranks the next time you're bored and feel like getting tricksy...
Cry me a river
Ashton Kutcher pulls the wool over Justin Timberlake's eyes on the TV show Punk'd.
MTV show Punk'd was famous for some genuinely funny pranks before it fizzled out: interrupting Kanye West's music video shoot, letting Beyonce think she had ruined Christmas for dozens of children and stealing Lindsay Lohan's limo.
But they shall forever have a place in my heart for the stunt they pulled on Justin Timberlake way back in 2002.
Ashton Kutcher, Dax Shepard and the rest of the Punk'd team took advantage of the fact that nobody worth millions of dollars does their own tax return and had Timberlake convinced he owed the US government $900,000 in unpaid taxes, meaning his belongings were about to be hocked off to recoup the money.
After some initial protests, the singer sat forlornly on the front step of his house as his possessions were marched down the driveway.
Kutcher eventually put him out of his misery, but not before the singer teared up and phoned his mother, begging her to get to his house.
It's behind you!
Pop star, Taylor Swift. Photo / AP
There is something so delicious about seeing famous folk get a fright. And Ellen DeGeneres obviously agrees, as she specialises in making celebs lose their highly polished cool.
Countless stars have had the bejesus scared out of them on her daytime talkshow, usually just by having someone creep up behind them in a crazy outfit and saying 'Boo.' It's simple, yet effective.
But it seems DeGeneres' favourite trick is sending her guests to a fake dressing room where she is waiting to jump out and frighten them. It might be juvenile, but seeing Taylor Swift literally scared off her feet was really quite good.
"She fell and hit her knee and I thought, 'Oh, she's young, she'll be fine,'" Ellen said of that particular incident. And she was.
Tis the season
US talk show host Jimmy Kimmel is well-known for asking parents to prank their kids every Halloween, but celebrities are also a favourite target of his - including the famous faces living across the road.
Last Christmas, Kimmel revealed he and his wife have a history of holiday pranks with their neighbours, actors John Krasinski and Emily Blunt.
From 26-foot-tall inflatable reindeers being left in front yards to the entire Blunt-Krasinski home being gift-wrapped, things escalated quickly.
However, Krasinski and Blunt got their revenge last year with a spate of Christmas-themed "attacks" on Kimmel's car. These guys clearly have too much time on their hands.
Playing the long game
Speaking of having too much time on one's hands, Hollywood megastar George Clooney is famous for hijinks that last weeks, months and even years.
Clooney has a long list of famous pranks, most of them aimed at his friends, Matt Damon and Brad Pitt.
He once convinced someone on the set of The Monuments Men to take Damon's costume in by a quarter of an inch each day. Damon was apparently trying to lose weight and couldn't understand why his clothes were getting tighter and tighter.
US actor George Clooney. Photo / AP
Clooney also likes to send letters to people, pretending to be from Pitt.
"I sent Meryl Streep a letter from him with a whole stack of dialect coach CDs saying they may help her for her role in The Iron Lady," Clooney told talkshow host, Graham Norton.
"I have sent letters to lots and lots of people from Brad and I don't tell either of them what I have done for a year or two and they are like 'Are you kidding me?'"
But perhaps one of Clooney's best gags was the one he inflicted on his friend, Spin City star Richard Kind.
Upon finding a hideous painting, Clooney framed it, signed it and gifted it to Kind on his 40th birthday, telling him he had painted it himself. Kind dutifully hung the painting in his living room - until Clooney spilled the beans FIVE YEARS later.
Now, that is good.
And Clooney's famous friends better heed this warning: he also told Graham Norton there's another prank in the works.
"I'm doing one now that I can't tell you about, but in a year you are going to hear I've been arrested," he said. "I'm not kidding, because I think I've crossed the line. But I have a wife, she's a barrister, I'll be fine."
What George's next trick might be is anybody's guess, but what we do know is that Aaron Paul has got a long, long way to go before he can compare to this list of mischief-makers.
