Who wouldn't want to be neighbors with Emily Blunt and John Krasinski?
The actors live across the street from Jimmy Kimmel and Molly McNearney in California, and for the past three years, the couples have been pranking each other at Christmastime. It all started when Blunt and Krasinski broke into their friends' house and set up a Santa Claus and snowman light display. Kimmel retaliated by purchasing a neon insurance sign on Craigslist and installing it on the front wall of his pals' driveway. In 2012, Blunt and Krasinki planted a zombie in their neighbors' garden. Kimmel and his wife then put a 26-foot tall inflatable reindeer—"complete with non-inflatable reindeer poop"—in their driveway.
"Last year I decided to end this once and for all by taking it to an entirely different level," Kimmel said. "While John and Emily were out, we gift-wrapped their house. I sent the whole staff over to their house and we really went to town. We had toys, candy canes and snow. We wrapped all their doors and windows, and then John came home from work and he was surprised...We had carolers."
"You can't go beyond that," he added. "Once you giftwrap somebody's house, it can't be topped."
Or so he thought.
"Last week...I was with some friends leaving the show going to dinner, and I walked out to my car, as I do every night, and little did I know that my car had been wrapped from headlight to tailgate," he said.
Cut to the footage of Kimmel seeing his friends' handiwork in the parking lot. "Oh, no! What did John Krasinski do to me? It has to be him!" he said. "When I walked out, I was like, 'I hope that's not my car.'"
After unwrapping the car, he said, "The whole car is filled with baubles!"
When he opened the car doors, hundreds of Christmas ornaments flooded the lot. "Wow! That is impressive. I have to hand it to you, that is very impressive," the talk show host said. "Son of a bitch."
Kimmel thought that was the end of it—until he returned to the Jimmy Kimmel Live! lot the next night. "Eventually one of us is gonna have to move," he joked, adding, "I wonder if I can have Emily deported."
Blunt, who was on Monday's show to promote her Into the Woods, said she and her husband wanted payback. "We went through a couple of options and just decided to do all of them," she told Kimmel. The two then viewed footage of Kimmel returning to his car to discover that it had been giftwrapped a second time. "Oh, no! Again? I feel like this happened already," the comedian marveled. "Unbelievable."
Moments later, carolers appeared and performed a medley of "Deck the Halls," "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" and "We Wish You a Merry Christmas." One of the singers arrived with a reindeer in tow.
"That one was better than the ornaments," Kimmel told Blunt. The actress laughed and said, "Not only were you terrified—and I love that you flinched, because that was the best bit ever—but it is your nightmare, people singing at you." Kimmel admitted, "When I saw the reindeer, to be honest, I wasn't entirely sure they exist, so I inspected it to see if you attached horns to some other kind of a deer."
"It turned out no, there are such things as reindeers," he said, "so that was pretty big."
The pranks didn't end there, though.
"I don't think we can stop at that, so I just want to take a quick look—live—at your car," Blunt said.
The camera then showed the Office alum, dressed in a Santa Claus suit, standing next to Kimmel's giftwrapped car. "Do the side view, babe, so we can see your tummy," Blunt instructed her husband.
"I'm going to take this for a spin because I need a sleigh to give away all your stuff," Krasinski, who held Kimmel's computer and clarinet hostage, warned his friend. "You're freaking out right now and I love it."
Blunt then informed Kimmel, "He's giving away your actual stuff."
"John, do whatever you want to my clarinet," Kimmel said. "Do not give away my [computer]!"
The actress then told Kimmel that McNearney "helped" them pull off the third prank. "We raided your house and we took a lot of your stuff," Blunt said. "We're going to give it away to the kids of America."
Krasinski then drove Kimmel's car forward and smashed into a light post. When he put it in reverse, he damaged another parked car. "What is going on out there?" Kimmel asked as a piano fell on his vehicle.
"How much money did that cost?" he asked Blunt.
"So much money!" she said, laughing. "It's pretty much the best prank ever. I don't know where we stop, though. I don't know how we ever put a cap on this. We're going to keep doing this until we're dead."
A worried Kimmel asked, "Is anything else going to happen?"
"No!" Blunt assured him. "You have to now top that."
"Merry Christmas to you," he told the Golden Globe nominee. "May God help you next year."