[8] In October 2022, two amateur improvisational actors played a media prank, pretending to be newly fired Twitter employees "Rahul Ligma" and "Daniel Johnson" on the eve of Elon Musk's takeover of the company, and multiple major media outlets reported the incident as actual news.
"[9] On April 13, 2003, James Scott of the Charleston, South Carolina newspaper The Post and Courier reported that "Heywood Jablome" (a pun for "Hey, would you blow me?
[10] He subsequently admitted to his being "duped" by the protester, who was in reality a morning disc jockey for a regional FM radio station.
In 2007, a BBC radio presenter was reprimanded after tricking a fellow disc jockey into reading out a fake request for a listener named Connie Lingus ("cunnilingus") from Ivan R. Don ("I've an hardon").
[14] In July 2013, KTVU in San Francisco aired fake names of the Asiana Airlines Flight 214 pilots: "Captain Sum Ting Wong" ("Captain, something wrong"), "Wi Tu Lo" ("we too low"), "Ho Lee Fuk" ("holy fuck"), and "Bang Ding Ow" (onomatopoeia possibly involved with a crash), a false report which had been incorrectly confirmed by an NTSB intern acting "outside the scope of his authority," who, according to an NTSB spokesperson, had been "acting in good faith and trying to be helpful."
[17] In January 2017, U.K. sports broadcaster Sky Sports inadvertently reported that Aberdeen had signed a Turkish footballer called "Yerdas Selzavon" (phonetically "your da (father) sells Avon", a reference to the direct-selling cosmetics company) after falling for a gag name on a fake Twitter account.
[20] In 2021, British politician Nigel Farage, who for a fee would upload personalised videos for fans on the Cameo website, was tricked into posting birthday greetings for "Hugh Janus" (huge anus).
The name Nate Higgers is a spoonerism of "hate niggers", and the hoax is believed to be a satirical reference to allegations of racial discrimination against Google.
"[24] London Zoo has to employ a telephone screening service on April Fools' Day, because they are deluged with calls from people tricked into asking for gag names such as Sue Keeper (zoo keeper), Ali Gaiter (alligator), Ben Gwinn (penguin) or Jim Panzie (chimpanzee).
[25] The series of James Bond books and films often use double entendres for the names of Bond girls, such as "Honey Ryder" from Dr. No, "Bibi Dahl" (baby doll) from For Your Eyes Only, "Holly Goodhead" from Moonraker, "Xenia Onatopp" from GoldenEye, "Chu Mei" (chew me) from The Man with the Golden Gun, "Plenty O'Toole" from Diamonds Are Forever, and, most famously, "Pussy Galore" from Goldfinger.
[28] Gag names have appeared prominently in several adult-oriented American animated series, including Beavis and Butt-Head, South Park, and most notably The Simpsons, where Bart Simpson frequently calls Moe's Tavern asking for nonexistent patrons with gag names, prompting bartender Moe Szyslak to call out for the person.
These gag names include, "Mike Rotch" (my crotch), "Seymour Butz" (see more butts), "Oliver Klozoff" (all of her clothes off), "Amanda Hugginkiss" (a man to hug and kiss), "Ollie Tabooger" (I'll eat a booger), and "Homer Sexual" (homosexual).
The 2005 South Korean television series Hello My Teacher was criticised for its inclusion of a character with the gag name "Nam Sung-ki".
[31] Ghil'ad Zuckermann suggests that at the end of the twentieth century there was a wave of jocular Israeli gag names, most of them based on rebracketing.