On April Fool’s Day this year, a man took pranks to a whole new level by illuminating the night sky with a giant QR code, leaving a city full of people saucer-eyed. 

On April 1, drone display company Sky Elements collaborated with content creator Jared Guynes to feature a large QR code made of 300 drones floating over Dallas. The view captivated thousands, who documented the event on their phones and scanned the code. Some thought that the code would help them avail prizes and exciting offers. However, the city folks landed on a YouTube video of Rick Astley’s track, ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’.

The track is popular for getting people ‘rickrolled’, an internet joke that involves trolling people by using a hyperlink that leads them to the music video. 

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“How I rickrolled an entire CITY using next-generation technology! Last night around 8:45 pm, a giant, glowing, mysterious and unannounced QR code appeared in the sky above Dallas, near Reunion Tower. The QR code hung in the sky for some time before disappearing. If you scanned it with your phone, it actually worked,” Guynes said in a post on Facebook. 

According to Preston Ward, the chief pilot and general counsel for Sky Elements Drone Shows, the idea was brainstormed by Guynes. 

“We were thinking about something we could do for April Fools, and we were talking to Jared,” Ward said, according to Dallas Observer. 

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“We just did a QR code on the [Halo series for Paramount+] at South By Southwest in Austin and he suggested we Rick roll everybody,” he added. 

“When I realized that drone technology had progressed to the point where they had enough to make a scannable QR code in the sky, it sort of came to me all at once that it would be possible to program QR code to literally Rick roll somebody from the air,” Guynes said.