We at Speak Geeky To Me decided to skip the traditional trickery played out on this fun day here in 2013. Sure, we thought about informing you that Superman: Red Son was being made into DC’s next live action movie or that Angelina Jolie had signed on to play Grace in Aspen MLT’s upcoming Soulfire film. We considered posting about Orson Scott Card being hired at Marvel to write an on-going series involving a gay Hyperion or even mentioning George Lucas’ agreement with Bob Iger to make Star Wars Land in Des Moines, Iowa. But in the end, we just didn’t want to fool everyone to the degree so many other companies and sites did today. On that note, however, here are some of the best Geeky April Fools pranks posted online today.

Google Maps wanted to turn us all into pirates by creating a pirate themed style layer for their popular map program and website. They claim the layer was based off maps from legendary pirate, Captain William Kidd, found during a recent expedition in the Indian Ocean. Check out their fun video below to learn more and play with the map here by clicking treasure.

 

 

Did you know YouTube was just a contest? In fact, the website was created in 2005 to find the best video ever and that contest ends tonight at midnight! Atleast, that is what YouTube stated on their blog today, as they described how the site would disappear tonight and not reemerge until 2023 in an elaborate and hilarious YouTube April Fools’ prank. Check out the video below and the blog here.

 

 

HBO Watch had a perfectly timed piece about Game of Thrones, which recently premiered its third season. Apparently the beloved character of Tyrion Lannister, aka The Imp, will no longer be played by Peter Dinklage. Now the part goes to another popular actor of similar height, Warwick Davis, a man you might best know for his roles in Star Wars, Harry Potter, and Willow. Warwick was said to take over as Tyrion in 2014′s fourth season of Game of Thrones. A hilarious surprise that seemed to fool many people, the website had to update their blog shortly after so people didn’t take the news too seriously.

Speaking of taking things too seriously, Bryan Singer made an April Fools tweet today on Twitter that managed to fool thousands and even make its way into popular Hollywood trade news paper, Variety (though the article is now removed). Bryan Singer, who is directing the upcoming X-Men: Days of Future Past, tweeted that he had cast Lady Gaga to play the classic disco comic character, Dazzler. The casting seemed plausible and fitting, so many fans and news sites ran with it. Eventually this meant they had to retract their news stories after realizing the prank. Variety had a notable response via twitter.

What The Flashpoint? Bleeding Cool had a rather great and yet somewhat subtle April Fools’ bit of gossip. Running a story that apparently came from “the wife of a [fan] at WonderCon, at the DC booth by someone signing autographs”, word was that the F in DC’s WTF month stood for Flashpoint. The greater bit is that Booster Gold would remember Flashpoint and start traveling around the DC universe to fix this. It’s almost a pity this is a prank, because that actually sounds quite great!

Finally, perhaps my favorite of the April fools’ articles to pop up today has to do with the first casting for Star Wars episode VII. Did you know that Justin Bieber was a huge Star Wars fan or that JJ Abrams was a huge Bieber fever fanatic? It apparently must be true as Bieber himself was cast as Han Solo’s son in the upcoming film, much to the dismay of Read Junk. The humorously angry response in this article certainly makes it appear slightly more realistic and likely caught a few readers good enough to cause a fair amount of moaning and groaning.

A pretty fun April Fools this year for Geeks of all genres and mediums. But while we let you all off for 2013, don’t think we’ll be so kind next year. Enjoy the new month, everyone!