America voted, and… IT’S A TRAP!

The only question is after he was done with the song, would the judges or viewers even know the crime he had just committed? Probably not. I’m sure his performance would illicit the usual:

“Dog, it was a little pitchy. At first I wasn’t feelin’ you but then you hit a couple of big notes and it was HOT! We got a HOT ONE!”

“First let me say that you are a breath of fresh air. You are an absolute joy and your shoes look fantastic. (sobs uncontrollably into an empty pill bottle).”

“Rubbish. Absolute rubbish. I wish you were tied to a tree with razor wire, covered in barbecue sauce and slowly eaten by a pack of rabid former idol contestants.”

The first time I fell victim to a ” Rick Rolling” I was at lunch with people who I thought were my friends. One of them mentioned this awesome Photoshop tutorial he had seen online. Another affirmed its awesomeness and added that it contained the secrets to Photoshop techniques that would open up a whole new world of flares and filters. I chimed in, “That sounds cool. Send me a link.”

Send. Me. A. Link. Four words, spoken alone they mean nothing. Together they are a dark and ancient incantation that invokes the most insidious evil. How many nights did this squadron of assholes stay awake planning my demise? Was I even the original target or were they just waiting for a wounded animal to snag their trap? Where the fuck was Admiral Ackbar when I needed him?

A few nights go by and I remembered that I was supposed to get a link to a certain Photoshop video, but no one had sent it. I IM’d Jeramy “Final Boss” Ook, who was so vocal that day about the wondrous knowledge contained within the tutorial. Why didn’t he send me the link? He wants to keep the magics all to himself! No, it was simpler than that. He had actually forgotten to follow through with his nefarious plot. I REMINDED him to make a fool of me. He sent me the link.

Judas! Betrayer! Lord of treachery! Prince of Lies! General douchebag! Lunch was just the set up and he was supposed to Roll me later that evening. It letting him hold out for two days I somehow made the Rolling more potent. Sweeter for him, but twice as deadly for me. Clicking that link, with enthusiastic expectation visible behind my childlike grin, was like a fucking poison dagger covered in scorpions shoved in my gut. Ever since that day, I’ve been planning my Rick-Revenge. I might just wait and Roll his kid in 20 years or so.

So tell me, what was the best Rick Roll you ever gave or the worst you ever received? Any more elaborate than mine?

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124 Comments

  1. Best/work rickroll: A church gathering, in the middle of a montage of pictures of community members, rick astley. I was the only one not involved with it who got it.

  2. A while back, though considerably after rickrolling had started, I had managed to not be rickrolled at all. A friend in IRC asked for a phone number of someone in the US, I can’t remember the reason he gave, but I gave him mine. I picked up the phone to WE’RE NO STRANGERS TO LOVE. He had found a site that let you call people in the US and rickroll them 😛 (I didn’t even know what was going on, because I had never heard the song before and thus had no idea I was being rickrolled until I got back to the computer to be taunted!)

  4. I think it's hilarious that everyone gets so upset about the Rick Rolled thing. I've been sent the link many-a-time but, fortunately, I've never heard the song. Every time I get a link, even from a trusted source, I wait for the page to start loading and if I see anything about "Rick" and/or "roll" I just shut 'er down. Of course, this prohibits me from watching or listening to anything related to the Rolling Stones, but I'm not big on them anyway. 🙂

  6. [Cool, my number's turned yellow!]

    I have not been RR'd because…I…have…no…friends! <runs from room sobbing>
    …
    <returning having calmed down> I am really liking the idea of sleeper-agent Josh. Please get him into Star Trek XI just in case it, well, you know, sucks. He could take it out and spare us all.

  8. I've never been rickrolled because my friends are evil bastards who'd rather send me tubgirl, goatse, 2girls1cup, etc. Oh, I used to dream about just getting a cheesy music video…

  10. I say you do it to yourself at least once. Its like an inoculation. Also the video is hilarious. This big deep 80's voice coming out of this squirrely red head guy that looks likes he's 14.

  12. The original plot for the 1996 comics was going to have Josh warning us that Lucas was going to destroy the Star Wars franchise. Then we were going to travel to Skywalker ranch and take him out. Then I realized that was too close to the plot of "Fanboys." Good news is I can recycle it after the movies comes out and call it a Fanboys parody.

  13. (old man voice) Back in my day, we'd be happy to get a Rick Roll. If it wasnt a girl shitting on her own face or a man with a 3 foot asshole we were lucky! And grateful for it! (/old man voice)

  15. Dude, I remember the same thing! It was all based on the fact that over dial up it might take 5-10 minutes to download a 1mb jpg. You were litterally salivating with anticipation until….BAM! DICK!

    We should call that "The Old School 56K Tranny Roll."

  16. Never been rolled. But anyone remember the puzzle that show the hot chick piece by piece, then it suddenly changes after you click the last piece to a fuckin' goatse'!!!!!! Damn my friend, gaping anus should only be viewed if you want it.

  18. First time? Was probably watching MTV or VH1.. whatever it was, the editor of that program was diobolical genius. He may not have even known it!

    I also love how this story is related to 2 girls, 1 cup.

    *spew*

  21. I haven't been Rick Rolled, or tubgirl'd, etc. Only once was I pranked.

    it was the winter of 1945… it was snowing.. oh wait. I mean it was last year actually, I was head of IT at my last job. No one had problems, so we were all in the office. We all shared a huge office, but had nice desks etc (i.e. not cubicle farm, yey!). One of the guys started to laugh, and told me I had to see this. Sent me a link. I put the link into google like I usually do (try it for a youbtube link, see why I do it :D). It seemed safe. I open it up, and it's showing hot girl after hot girl. Then the music stops, the screen goes black (full screen flash video = bad), suddenly it's start to flash bright pink and saying loud on my speakers 'HEY IM LOOKING AT GAY PORN' repeatedly. Worse, the flash somehow captured alt+f4, so that wouldn't close.

    I wasn't very happy, but the whole office was laughing. Good times. I must have gotten at least 12 others with the very same flash…

  23. Yeah, what is up with his voice and looks? I don't think that the synthesizer technology was that advanced in 80s, it looks like it is fandubbed or something.

    I remember the 80s, but somehow missed (or ignored?) this little guy.

  29. I like that song by Rick Astley, so I don't mind being rolled every once in a while. There are a lot worse things to be directed to. (goatse, tubgirl, 2g1c, bottleguy, etc….)

    I was actually Wham-rolled the other day. Maybe Wham-rolling is the new rick rolling…

    "Wake me up, before you go go. Don't leave me hangin' round like a yo-yo."

    • I have to admit I also like the song.

      The best Rick Roll I ever gave was when I played World of Warcraft and made the lyrics a macro which I used in a raid. I was temporarily kicked out of the guild 😛

  33. Yeah, the Family Guy folks seem to be good about having stuff pulled from YouTube. Which is bad since I have a friend who desperately needs to see Stewie singing "I have confidence."

  45. I am immune to Rick Rolling. How'd I accomplish this? It wasn't pretty. My father was a wedding singer in the 80's. Imagine hearing that song played almost every night very loudly and most times very very wrong. There's nothing worse than a rick roll that isn't played correctly.

    I built up a tolerance much like Jackie Chan in Drunken Master.

  47. Best Rick Roll I pulled was with my friend over at his house. One night we invited a bunch of our friends over to watch some Blu Ray movies on his new PS3 and projector. While watching Halloween we timed it so right as Michael sits up we switched the feed over to his computer he had hooked up to the projector and Rick Rolled our friends. It was very successful so now it's become a hobby of hours to invite people over to watch really intense horror films and Rick Roll them right after brutal or disturbing scenes.

  52. "Damnit Jim" might make it a little too easy to set off our agent. It might be better to use "Damnit, Jim, I'm a doctor, not a Chief Marshal of the Riddermark!"

  62. To be completely fair, cleric is a class while elf is a race.. you'd need more info 🙂

    And that is in NO way what I meant, just for the record. I was strictly talking about gaming, and *attempting* to keep it PG

  81. Hey, hey, I've got friends working on that! Be nice!

    But release got pushed back, didn't it? And in film terms, that usually means something about it is gonna suck. Like, I dunno, the trailer?

  86. Well, if you've got friends on it, then you're our best bet for getting sleeper-agent Josh in place. And we activate him only _if_ necessary. Joel needs to make sure SA Josh's activation code stays completely, completely secret so no inappropriate activation takes place.

  87. You're right. That's a good plan. We'll keep it super secret.

    Gather your troops for a separate assault on the new Hulk. That's all I can say for now. I think the forum may be compromised.

  89. Someone on my college gaming email list sent out a link with the new Starcraft Zerg gameplay release, and I was all excited. The email was followed by two or three emails saying something to the effect of, "Wow, look at the awesome graphics on those hydralisks!", etc., then about 7 emails of "Fuck you!".
    I didn't really connect the dots and clicked on the link, and there was a sequence of Starcraft II opening things, then… "I'm never gonna give you up!" and I thought, "I can't believe they just did that. Argh, the jerks!" I was so excited, and this was definitely not expected. That was definitely the worst I've been rick'rolled so far.

  92. After reading the DM's Tome, you get +5 to chicks. So i guess that means having almost every 3.0-3.5 book means my points to +chicks is so high.. it must have looped back around to 0?

    At least I get my gf's to play. Well, the ones that I date for their mind, and that can handle an imagination.

  94. I think it is worth mentioning that Josh has been Rick Roll'd so many times that he can immediately identify the you tube link thereby making himself immune to further Rick Rolling, true story!

    Best Rick Roll I saw was here at the office when a programmer put in a line of code that caused the you tube link to open when importing a specific type of object into the game. Fortunately not I but one of my office mates was the victim.

  98. You know until this comic, I never knew what being "Rick Rolled" was (I don't play enough video games apparently and/or troll video game forums). After being Goatsed, invited to a Lemon Party…um…tub girl, yatta, etc etc… I can honestly say being Rick Rolled is the least of anyone's worries. The tune is kinda catchy actually, it's just the video that's gay.

    Oh and I never realized that character's hair pointed into horns as shown in the second and fourth panels. It's also neat how panel 4 is just a panel 2 turned a little with jazz hands. I like the inward facing jazz hands. Heheh..jazz hands.

  99. In the grand scheme of internet sadness, being RR'd is not so bad. Parties with Lemons are much worse.

    I didnt mean for it to be horns on my head but hey, there you go. its an optical illusion. PS dont tell anyone else you caught on to my copy ->paste scam. It's secrets are worth millions.

  102. I feel as if I am obligated to share this story- I am a sophomore in high school, and when I'm in gym class, the teacher lets us bring in horrifyingly bad music for her to play while we play volleyball or what have you. Usually there are a bunch, so she lets one kid run the music and the rest vote on what they want to hear. Last month, my classmates voted for the new Kanye west CD, and as I covered my ears and prepared for the worst as we begun to play the game, I and the rest of my class were suddenly treated to those soothing sounds. We were rick rolled- most didn't get it, I laughed, and the teacher quickly made the one operating the CD system change it. I was quite proud.

  103. That is quite simply beautiful. Heart warming and touching in every way. Although, I am a Kanye fan (in that I need a soundtrack to my collar-poppin' lifestyle from time to time) I support all real world Rick Rolls. Its particularly great that no one realized what had been done to them.

  107. Hey…I work in an internet cafe in Ireland and over here all the customer PC's are set up with VNC so we can check they're not pirating or looking at porn (family place and all that!)

    Anyway what I've started doing today is using VNC to take control of say, a porn watcher's PC, and send them to http://www.internetisseriousbusiness.com!

    Oh, and the task manager is disabled on their PC's so they can't close the browser that way 🙂

  109. Back in the 90s, I was first introduced to this phenomenon (sending weird shit under false pretenses to people who thought they were your friends) with large photos of pre-op transsexuals (a.k.a. chicks with dicks). The picture has to be so big that it won't fit on the screen on once, so the recipient will linger staring at the large breasts before scrolling down and receiving a surprise eyefull of dick. And, of course, the only thing you can do when someone does this to you (apart from righteous holy vengeance) is immediately turn around and play the same trick on someone else.

    "The internet – bringing you unexpected penis since 1994." -Ghastly Comics

  110. 2 best rickrolls I've experienced: Spicks and Specks, an Australian music quiz show rickrolled the nation in their 2008 xmas special. The other was in a WoW addon released on April 1 2008, promising to make you roll 99s or 100s on loot rolls. Instead, the first time you rolled for loot with it installed, the rickroll video popped up in game.

  111. My dad loves that song and he doesn’t get why I groan every time it comes on(doesn’t get why I know it at all). I think the greatest would be when one of those celebrity new shows had it in there commercial.

  112. Man! My fave RR site was http://smouch.net/lol/
    I have to warn you that there are MAD pop ups and you basically click “OK” through all of the song’s lyrics then are given a chance to close the page down. Hilarious. I still send this to people.
    I know this post is a BUMP but I love this comic and I just found out about it.

  113. I was told that they were starting up Firefly again, and I could be linked to trailers of the new series…. it was a rickroll. I cried.

  115. I am just now discovering Hijinks Ensue and I have to chime in on this one even though my comment is really late. My husband and I got married about 6 months ago and as we were exiting the church we had them play the first bit of a normal exiting the church song and then it quickly switched to Never Gonna Give You Up. We effectively rickrolled all 225 people in attendance including grandparents who had no idea what was happening when at least half the audience started laughing. It was glorious.

  118. The sad thing is that I'm a fan of his! The first time I was Rick Rolled, I didn't even know it. I was like, "Hey, great! I love this vid." which made it even more embarrassing when I found out what they were trying to do to me. Now, the really sad part was how I found out they were RRing me. Again, I'm a fan, and I was just given the youtube vid…so, of course I had to share it with everyone I knew! Which got me cussed out for RRing my friends…

  119. I got Rick Rolled by ACME Market one time, no joke, my girlfriend and i were grocery shopping at an ACME Market and Never Gonna Give You Up came on the store PA system and i just started laughing my ass off

  120. I once linked a video of a Guitar-Hero-like version of the song to a friend's Facebook wall, but I changed the text and made up a news about his favorite band reaching GH DLC.

  121. I got revenge for being invited to join teh meon party..

    me *innocently, with good news to share*: Have you heard?
    Friend: nope, what?
    me *lightbulb*: link to "the bird is the word"
    Friend: FFFFFFFFFFFFffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

    bit late to the party, enjoying the comic. I can recommend "giving somene the bird" as above.

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