This April Fool's Day, thanks to some brands - the joke's on us...

Strange products, pranks and weird new services - this April Fool's Day, pranks were quite rampant, as usual. Most of them were routine; a glance at the date was enough to guess that it was a ruse. But some brands went the extra mile leaving us quite confused and, in some cases, hopeful; nonetheless, we had a good laugh in the end.

Here's a roundup of some of the brands that had us fooled:-

1. Netflix India and Sacred Games 2

Ever since Netflix India released season 1 of the series, they've been tight-lipped about season 2's release. However, on March 19, they put out a tweet that got the fans quite excited.

Further, they also put out an Instagram post with a mysterious set of Mandalas and Sanskrit-sounding names that were similar to those from season 1's episodes.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BvgAg37AwsP/

Alas! It was all a prank. At around 9.00 AM on April 1, they released this video -

It wasn't just a prank though; the video was also their way of announcing that the popular American TV show - Friends - is now streaming on their platform.

2. Ola Restrooms

Popular ride-hailing service, Ola, came up with an innovative solution to a commonly faced problem because, after all, when you have to go, you have to go. They released a video on March 29 advertising a mobile restroom service that would've been available on the Ola app on call. They even went the extra mile, promising to offer a clean and hygienic restroom experience.

When users guessed it was a prank, they had some rather interesting questions for the company -

3. Ixigo's Flight Catching Contest

Ixigo announced a contest where the winner would get to fly to a domestic destination under Rs 5000 if they were able to take a screenshot of the plane over the outline.

The video had the plane flying a little too fast on purpose to prank users. That didn't stop people from giving it their best shot!

4. Razorpay's Non-Aadmi Party

Razorpay is a payment gateway that announced their foray into politics, ahead of the upcoming general elections. In a world where Big Brother is always watching, this made us sit up and take notice because they announced the first ever political party powered entirely by artificial intelligence.

The Non-Aadmi Party positioned itself as a political startup and they even had their own manifesto (hyperlink to: https://razorpay.com/non-aadmi-party/)!

The manifesto included instant cashback on income tax payments, citizen reviews of cabinets on Glassdoor and cooler names for cities.

5. McDonald's and a glow in the dark burger

For a while there it looked like McDonald's had indeed come up with a solution to eating in the dark. They posted a photograph of a fluorescent burger with what looked like a beetroot patty. They didn't have to mention that it was an April Fool's prank - the radioactive-looking burger was definitely too weird to be true.

6. ICC reimagined #CricketNotAsYouKnowIt

ICC announced a hilarious new set of rules to make the game more appealing to younger generations.

7. Google let users play Snake and clean your phone from the inside

The tech giant is notorious for coming up with innovative April Fool's pranks. Last year, they introduced a "Where's Waldo" game within its map interface where users could use the map to search for the titular character.

This year, Google did something similar, allowing users to play a game of snake on apps, navigating through different cities around the world and picking up passengers along the way.

Google let users play the iconic snake game through Google Maps

These were some of the cities that users could choose from

The more passengers you picked up, the higher your score.

Picking up passengers helped you score points

Then there was the phone cleaner claimed to have smudge detection properties that allowed the app to clean smudges on the outside your phone too... from inside the screen. Quite a wild claim, even for Google!

8. Snapdeal's colour-changing shirts

Snapdeal announced the introduction of colour-changing shirts. The e-commerce site that shirts would originally come in white and with the help of an app, you could change its colour within 30 seconds.

Snapdeal even crafted a web page that allowed users to pre-book the shirt, but once you entered your details, it took you to a page that wished users a happy April Fool's day.

ALSO READ: April 1: The Day That Was For Brands