Not to mention the granddaddy of link pranks, Goatse. This excerpt from Wikipedia gives a nice little window info how the web operated back then:
The goatse.cx image has been used by website authors to discourage other sites from hot-linking to them. By replacing the hot-linked image with an embarrassing image when hot-linking has been discovered, an unsubtle message is sent to the offending website's operators, visible to all who view the web page in question. In 2007, Wired.com hot-linked to another site in an article about the "sexiest geeks of 2007"; the site subsequently swapped the hot-linked image with one from goatse.cx.
It wasn't that early but early enough that a) a major news site hotlinked an image from some random website and b) that website redirected the image to point at a sexually explicit shock image without anyone panicking.
That still has early Internet energy to it. Not quite Mahir Çağrı energy but still markedly different from today's relatively sanitized interactions.
I remember before it was called rotten.com, it was originally called thecreepingeyemorgue.com. That doesn't exactly roll off the tongue very well though..