A soundboard prank call is a type of prank call that uses a soundboard. The caller uses the soundboard to imitate a celebrity or other well known person and the individual on the other end of the phone thinks they are actually talking to a real person.
The soundboard prank call craze began when fans of Arnold Schwarzenegger's films created soundboards, featuring sound bites of his film dialogue. An unknown prank caller took to using these soundboards to call individuals assuming the guise of Detective John Kimble, his iconic character from the feature film Kindergarten Cop.
Soon, soundboards of other celebrities and characters were built and used for prank calling, notably Joe Pesci, Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson, Chris Tucker, Borat Sagdiyev, Duke Nukem, George W. Bush, and more recently, the profanity-ridden prank call victim Frank Garrett/Duncan Construction Company among others.
The most famous of these soundboards were those of Emma Watson. Prank callers are regularly imitating several of her characters in motion pictures, usually Haruhi Suzumiya from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya or Konata Izumi from Lucky Star, by using such soundboards. Some prank callers have even impersonated Usagi Tsukino from Sailor Moon or, recently, Yuri Nakamura from Angel Beats! Popular quotes include "I'm Haruhi Suzumiya", "They piss me off!", "In the name of the Moon, I'll punish you!", "Extremely rare and valuable!", and "Operation start!"
Starting with a number of individuals independently pranking Gateway and then Microsoft, there has been a general trend towards calling companies in the computer industry and general technology industries as well as harassing various other unassuming customer service help lines.
Victims
After the success of the celebrity soundboards, new "Victim Soundboards" started appearing on the internet, featuring victims from various celebrity prank calls (including Duncan). These boards made it easier for the pranker to prank someone, without risking the victim recognizing the voice. Sometimes, the victim would be called by their own voice, however, many times, they do not recognise it as their own. Another variation on this is the victim of a victim where sound clips from a victim soundboard call are used to create another soundboard. This process can keep going for a period of time, and can be used as an example of the domino effect.