These Twins Pulled The Ultimate Time Travel Prank

If you’re a fan of the film Looper, pranks, or general awesomeness, you will enjoy this time travel subway prank from Improv Everywhere. Honestly, I don’t want to spoil how this prank goes down, so I recommend that you skip down to the bottom of this post, watch the video, and then come back up here to get the deets. I’ll wait.

OK! This video starts with a man on a subway train, asking for money to fund his time machine. Before long, an identical man appears, telling onlookers that they should definitely not fund his time machine. “I am from the future,” he says. “And I can tell you, it is bleak.” Before long, three other “future versions” of subway passengers appear, all declaring that funding this guy’s time travel machine is a very bad idea indeed. Tragically, this situation is not, in fact, the result of time travel technology. But the key is (almost) as cool: Identical twins!

Creator and director Charlie Todd recruited four pairs of twins to make this sci-fi-esque prank, dressing them similarly to suggest that they are different versions of the same person. In a blog post about the prank, he explains that the group rehearsed the scene the day of the prank in a “mock subway car,” before acting it out five different times on the N train in New York. “We took a break in between each staging so the crowd on the car would turn over,” he writes, adding,

The audience for this [video] was particularly small. Unlike other subway pranks that might get an entire car involved, this one was hyper-focused on the people who happened to be sitting and standing around our playing space. In most performances, it felt like a surprise for just ten people. I love creating something so ridiculously elaborate (four pairs of twins, perfectly timed staggered entrances on the train) for the benefit of so few people.

This isn’t the first time that Improv Everywhere has used identical twins to create uncanny situations. Previous twin-outings include a reenactment of Back To the Future and a “Human Mirror” prank that involved eight sets of twins perfectly mirroring each other on the subway.

Watch the video below — you’ll find yourself wishing you had an identical twin of your own, if only for the endless prank possibilities.

Images: YouTube (3)