McDonalds Trolls Get 25K Each for Their Hilarious Prank

Some of the best times I've ever had in my life have been with good friends at a local fast food place. Just chilling, eating burgers, making fun of each other's receding hairlines, crooked teeth, or extremely specific personality and character flaws. It's a time-honored, late-night tradition that makes me ridiculously happy.

Which is probably why I totally love the prank that these two besties pulled on their local McDonald's. Because the nature of their prank is one that hits a lot of sweet spots.

The first is that it's a prank that actually has a practical application. These dudes noticed that their local Golden Arches had a wall that was blank and needed some gussying up.

The second: He didn't just decide to decorate it with any old poster, but a professional-looking photoshoot of him and him and his friend walking and talking, enjoying some Mickey D's like just a couple of bros. As far as "plant" pranks go, the more unnoticed, the better.

I mean, just look at this picture and tell me it isn't something you'd totally see inside of a McDonald's. Heck, they even got the lighting and generally inoffensive tone of their stock imagery down pat.

Now, either the people working at the McDonald's didn't notice (it does perfectly blend with the ambiance) or they thought it fit so well that they decided to leave it up.

Either way, these two gents went back day after day to confirm that their poster was still on the wall, and lo and behold, it still was, for more than 50 days, and counting.

From the looks of it, other people didn't notice anything amiss with the poster and went about eating their value meals none the wiser. I'd say even without the McDonald's branding and logos, you'd still just assume it was a regular old poster.

They showed off their work on Twitter and people liked it. Like, really, really liked it. It racked up nearly 1 million likes and has been shared over 238,000 times to date.

It got so popular that it prompted the friends to create a YouTube video detailing just how they were able to put the poster up without anyone noticing.

Which brings us to the third reason why this prank is so good: it's a celebration of their friendship. Awww. Their "friendship poster" prompted other people to respond with their other "photobombs hiding in plain sight." Like these pals who decided to pay a visit to Walmart's photo frame section.

I'm thinking that your average Walmart employee has about nine million other things to worry about, so taking out some photos that look like stock images out of their frames is probably at the bottom of their priorities list.

Nevertheless, they were able to keep their friendly mugs in the local chain's frames for almost 4 months before they were finally replaced by a crop of new products.

 They're probably sitting on a clearance basement of a Marshall's somewhere waiting to be snatched up by a bargain-hunting frame lover somewhere. Props for putting the "frameception" pic in the follow up prank.

Now, not all photo-bombing pranks are created equal. Sure, you might say that humor is oftentimes open to interpretation, but in this case, it isn't. Because in this particular instance, it involves Jeff Goldblum.

And when this guy tweeted "every single photo frame," he meant it. I love how they decided to use the perfect Goldblum photo suited for each frame. That takes dedication. And vision.

All right, so maybe there really isn't much of a method to the madness. But when you're plastering frames with pictures of one of the best actors ever, do you really need a "method"? I mean they've even got the sexy Jurassic Park pose photo in there, for crying out loud.

In Goldblum, and photobombing stores with random pictures, we trust. 

UPDATE: Now even though I think whoever Goldblum-ed this store deserves a cash prize, and I'm not sure if they got one, it turns out that the Mickey D's bros did.

The guys basically hit the viral media jackpot when their story caught the attention of Ellen DeGeneres, who gushed about bros Jevh Maravilla and Christian Toledo on her show.

Mickey D's loved the good-natured prank from the two college students so much that they awarded them $25,000 each. The poster was recently taken down due to a remodeling of the restaurant, but it hasn't gone to waste.

The burger chain donated their poster to a Ronald McDonald house, and Ellen handed the duo a painting of herself, in case they feel like pulling off another McDonald's random painting-hanging prank in the near future.

On her show, the pals went a little more in-depth as to why they decided to put the picture up in the first place, and it's because they noticed there weren't any photos of Asians in the restaurant, as diverse as their marketing materials were.

"We were eating McDonald’s one day and we looked around and saw there were posters around that didn’t have any Asians. They had other races but no Asians so we felt like it was our duty to put ourselves up there," Maravilla said.

So if there's anything to learn from this story is if you've ever wanted to pull off a good-natured prank, just grab your friends, and a convincing outfit like these guys did and get to work. You might end up on Ellen, or at the very least you'll become Twitter-famous.