Prankster

Mel Gibson is known for his sense of humor on the set of his movies. He has a reputation for practical jokes, puns, Stooge-inspired physical comedy, and doing outrageous things to shock people. Gibson is fond of drawing caricatures and hiring high school marching bands to pay tribute to his coworkers. As a director he sometimes breaks the tension on set by having his actors perform serious scenes wearing a red clown nose.Helena Bonham Carter, who appeared alongside him in Hamlet, said of him, "He has a very basic sense of humor. It's a bit lavatorial and not very sophisticated." On the set of Maverick Gibson played a joke on costar Jodie Foster's birthday by secretly rewriting the script to give her character all corny dialogue. Foster returned the favor by hiring a bagpiper in full Scottish regalia to follow Mel around at the Vanity Fair Oscar party after he won for Braveheart. On the set of Ransom, Gibson presented Ron Howard and Brian Grazer with a mock Braveheart For Your Consideration ad when both Braveheart and Apollo 13 were nominated for Best Picture. The ad was for “Best Moon Shot,” and featured a picture of Braveheart's Scottish army mooning the English. While filming Conspiracy Theory, he and co-star Julia Roberts played a series of pranks on each other, beginning with Gibson welcoming Roberts to the set with a gift-wrapped freeze-dried rat.. In addition to inserting several homages to the Three Stooges in his Lethal Weapon movies, Gibson produced a television movie on the comedy group in 2000. As a gag, Gibson inserted a single subliminal frame of himself smoking a cigarette into the 2005 teaser trailer of Apocalypto