Difference between revisions of "Category:April fools' comics"

Explanation

In 2006, the first year that xkcd released in March and April, there was no comic released on April 1st and no April Fools' comic was released. The two comics before and after were 83: Katamari from March 31st and 84: National Language from April 3rd.

Randall first posted an April Fools' comic on Sunday, April 1, 2007. This comic ("Syndication") was not numbered; sequentially, it came between 242: The Difference and 243: Appropriate Term. It has not been preserved in the official xkcd archives.

For April Fools' Day 2008 Randall created 404: Not Found, which is a meta-comic, since it in fact doesn't exist. But that he considers it a comic is both made clear in the explanation for said "comic" and also since he links to it in his 2018 April fools' comic 1975: Right Click, from a fools' menu that links to all his comic alphabetically by title.

The comic for April 1st 2009 had no obvious ties to April Fools' Day, but on that day Randall made an April Fool in another way. See the Trivia section for 563: Fermirotica, released that day.

April 1st, 2010 didn't coincide with a comic release. However, on that day the site was altered to mimic a Unix command line interface, the so called UniXKCD. (This happened wile 721: Flatland was the newest comic, but it was released March 31st and had nothing to do with April Fools' Day, see this trivia).

Starting on Friday, April 1st, 2011 with 880: Headache, Randall has released a real April Fools' Day joke annually, except 2017 and 2023.

Beginning with the second year in that row, with 1037: Umwelt, he moved the release day to Sunday April 1st 2012, and thus began the practice of releasing an April Fools Day comic on April 1st, notwithstanding what day of the week it fell on by shifting the comic's release to that day. Typically it would thus replace the next release day, so there would not be a comic on Monday the 2nd or 3rd of April, if April 1st fell in the weekend.

This worked for the next three years with 1193: Externalities in 2013, 1350: Lorenz in 2014 (first Tuesday release) and 1506: xkcloud in 2015. But then the project became so complicated that in 2016, the release was delayed until Monday April 4th with 1663: Garden.

The yearly trend thus continued until 2017, where no comics were released on April 1st. And the two comics around the date had nothing to do with such a joke. See more on this, and why this may have been the case, in the trivia section of the first of these two, 1818: Rayleigh Scattering.

Then from 2018 Randall once again began releasing April Fools' Day comic. In 2018 he again moved the release day from Monday April 2nd to Sunday April 1st with 1975: Right Click. In this comic he both links to 404: Not Found and UniXKCD two of his previous "not a real comic" April Fools' Day jokes. In 2019 April 1st was a Monday so a normal release day, and he released 2131: Emojidome, another user generated comic.

In 2020 he again had trouble and the release of 2288: Collector's Edition was delayed two days for a Friday April 3rd release. Instead the planned Friday comic 2289: Scenario 4 was released on Saturday.

In 2021 2445: Checkbox was released on Thursday April 1st, making it the first April Fools' Day comic to be released on a Thursday. Only Saturday has yet to see a special release. It could have happened either in 2017 or 2023, but those have been the so far only two years without such a comic since 2011.

In 2022 2601: Instructions was released on Friday April 1st, a normal release day. There was though an interesting fact related to this release. First of all it visually was similar to the previous Fools' comic, which had only a checkbox to begin with. Instructions only had a radio button. But more interesting, like last year, this comic had an audio part. Thus making it a recurring Fools' theme, and also making these two comics the, at that time, only comics with audio. Although in Instructions the sounds was a vital part of the joke, which was not the case the year before. (Also both comics had a mute button, that could toggle the sound on and off. But the two comics similar buttons worked in reverse, so the mute button had muted sound in the first, but the audio on in the second of the two comics...)

In 2023 2757: Towed Message was released on Friday March 31st. The next comic, 2758: My Favorite Things, was released on the normal schedule on Monday April 3rd. Although the first of these has a potential joke, it would only be as per the normal nature of the comic, and not clearly an April Fools' kind of joke of the extent, complexity or meta-nature from other years, on top of being released a day too soon (in Randall's usual timezone). It therefore seems like this will be the second year Randall refrained from releasing an April Fools' joke, since 2011. The only other year that he missed, across this range of thirteen April 1sts, was 2017.

In 2024, 2914: Eclipse Coolness appeared, appearing to have no April Fool content. Instead, it probably solely references the upcoming Solar eclipse of April 8, 2024.

Randall discusses several April Fools' comics in his talk at Øredev 2013.

Release Weekday

• Here is a list of the day of the week the "real" April 1st comic was released.
  • Those not on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, have been moved to hit April 1st.
    • Example with the first to do so 1037: Umwelt.
    • It was planned for release on Monday April 2nd but came out Sunday April 1st 2012.
    • The next comic 1038: Fountain skipped Monday and came out as normal Wednesday April 4th.

1. 2008 Tuesday April 1st:
   • 404: Not Found
   • This was technically not a comic, but it did specifically "not come out" on April 1st.
   • But it DID not come out, between the normal Monday and Wednesday release making it "not" an extra comic that week.
2. 2011 Friday April 1st:
   • 880: Headache
3. 2012 Sunday April 1st:
   • 1037: Umwelt
   • The next release was not Monday but Wednesday, so it replaced the Monday release.
4. 2013 Monday April 1st:
   • 1193: Externalities
5. 2014 Tuesday April 1st:
   • 1350: Lorenz
   • This was the first Tuesday release, but the other two releases that week fell normally on Monday and Friday, thus it replaced Wednesdays release.
6. 2015 Wednesday April 1st:
   • 1506: xkcloud
7. 2016 Monday April 4th:
   • 1663: Garden
   • This comic was supposed to be released Friday April 1st but had technical problems and ended up being released on Monday April 4th.
   • There where thus only two comics in the week before. See the link above.
   • There was no doubt that this was supposed to be the April Fools' day comic.
8. There was No April Fools' Day comic in 2017!
9. 2018 Sunday April 1st:
   • 1975: Right Click
   • The next release was not Monday but Wednesday, so it replaced the Monday release.
10. 2019 Monday April 1st:
    • 2131: Emojidome
11. 2020 Friday April 3rd:
    • 2288: Collector's Edition
    • This comic was supposed to be released Wednesday April 1st but had technical problems and ended up being released on Friday April 3rd.
    • The original planned Friday comic, 2289: Scenario 4, was then released on Saturday April 4th
12. 2021 Thursday April 1st:
    • 2445: Checkbox
    • The next release was not Friday but Monday, so it replaced the Friday release.
13. 2022 Friday April 1st:
    • 2601: Instructions
14. There was no April fools' Day comic in 2023! 2757: Towed Message was released on Friday March 31st, and the next comic was relased on normal schedule as well on Monday April 3rd, 2758: My Favorite Things.