Paul Rudd has been playing a 15 year private joke

A good prank can last a lifetime and that's certainly something Paul Rudd believes in.

As a star of Ant-Man, Anchorman and The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Rudd does a lot of TV appearances and interviews to promote his movies.

Most of these are fun but pretty standard affairs but whenever he swings by to meet his friend Conan O'Brien he has a little trick up his sleeve.

For some reason, Rudd is obsessed with the 1988 McDonald's sponsored ET rip-off Mac and Me, which is regarded as one of the worst movies ever made.

One scene in this truly dreadful film involves the main character, a young boy in a wheelchair careering down a mountainside and falling into a lake.

Here is the infamous scene from movie history for your own pleasure:

Now, whenever Rudd has appeared on one of Conan's shows he has managed to sneak in this specific clip when he is supposed to be presenting a clip from a new movie.

Here he is "promoting" Anchorman 2.

He even gets creative at times such as the inventive way he sneaked the scene into a clip from Ant-Man.

The prank has been consistently happening ever since Rudd first appeared on O'Brien's show, around 15 years ago.

In an interview for BBC 5 Live's Kermode and Mayo Show, he explained how it first became a thing.

I set up a clip - you know, they cut to a clip - so I set up the clip, and then I just showed the clip from Mac and Me with the kid going off the cliff in the wheelchair.

And then I went back again to promote something else - like the last episode of Friends and I said I actually have some footage from the show, and they set it up very seriously, and then just showed that Mac and Me clip.

The long-running joke has now become so well known that it's not just Rudd who has managed to insert the clip into segments on the show.

Paralympian Alana Nichols also pulled the same prank in 2014.

HT Lad Bible

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