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Gallery: 13 Real-Life Trolls We Love

It may feel like a product of the Internet era, but really, trolling is nothing new. One could argue it’s been around since the beginning of time. “Hey Eve, eat this apple. You won’t die, you’ll just become extra awesome. Trust me.” The only thing the Internet has changed is that nowadays, everyone thinks they can troll. But trolling is more than just irritating someone. It’s irritating someone in a way that’s clever and amusing to outside observers. And this baker's dozen has mastered the art form.

John Mulaney is a true hero for the children. As a teenager Mulaney and a friend went into Chicago’s Salt and Pepper Diner and queued up 21 songs on the jukebox. Twenty of them were Tom Jones’s “What’s New Pussycat?” (The one other song was Jones’s “It’s Not Unusual” to lull everyone into a false sense of security.) Someone finally unplugged the jukebox after play number 11.

Imagine that you’re flying into Milwaukee. As if that weren’t bad enough, imagine that you look down and see “Welcome to Cleveland” painted in giant letters on the roof of a house. That’s just Milwaukee resident Mark Gubin’s way of welcoming you to Beer City, USA.

For at least a decade, Rudd has been stopping by Conan O’Brien’s show to promote various film projects. But invariably, he trolls the redheaded host with a clip of a wheelchair-riding dummy landing in a pond and a creepy alien popping up. We don’t know where Rudd’s love for Mac & Me originated, but it gets us every time.

Andy Kaufman trolled the wrestling world by proclaiming himself the “Inter-Gender World Champion” of wrestling. He then only defended his belt against women, whom he almost always beat. Crowds went insane back in the days when wrestling was basically just one big, mostly successful, con.

Sure, they’re mostly known for taking nut shots. But what about all the times they smeared a $100 bill with poop and left it on the sidewalk?

It’s kind of too bad that everyone knows about Sacha Baron Cohen now. Because he’s always at his best when he’s catching people totally off-guard. Who can forget his interview with Andy Rooney as Ali G? Just one of too many troll-like actions to count.

Jack Parsons was the inventor of modern rocketry, a black wizard affiliated with Aleister Crowley and a decidedly dark prankster. He would walk around Jet Propulsion Labs (which he founded, something JPL prefers not to discuss today) setting off firecrackers for the fun of watching people’s faces. He later accidentally blew himself up in his backyard.

Before he was inventing personal computers, the Wonderful Wizard of Woz designed a device that disrupted TV signals. He would go into bars and make the picture turn to snow. When someone went up to fix the rabbit ears, he’d allow the signal to work again. When they walked away, he would disrupt it again. He would only stopwhen someone was standing next to the TV holding the rabbit ears.

Back when the world was a larger place, Barry Faulkner decided he wanted to start making television appearances as former Monkee (and incredible solo artist, by the way) Mike Nesmith. Guess they did have something of a resemblance.

We have no idea who put that dick on his back, but we salute him.

We don’t know what magic really is, but we’re sure it’s not sitting in a box for 50 years. The joke is on us, though, because pretending to not breathe or whatever it is he does seems to be pretty lucrative work for those who can get it.

PT Barnum is maybe the world heavyweight champion of historical trolls. Not only did he exhibit a bunch of stuff that was fake mixed in with real oddities, he mocked the people who paid him to see it. His aphorism “there’s a sucker born every minute” is breathtaking in its simple truth.

Hall of fame baseball franchise owner and promoter Bill Veeck once brought a midget pinch hitter out for a single at-bat. Bearing the number ⅛, Eddie Gaedel popped out of a cake, got a four-pitch walk and had another player pinch-run for him. No one was really in on the joke except Veeck and a few trusted confidants. This same man also sign Larry Doby, thus integrating the American League.

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