What started out as a cleverly thought-out prank has just earned these two students a whopping sum of £25,000 ($19,100). Each.

When Jevh Marvilla and friend Christian Toledo were eating in McDonald's one day, they suddenly realised something was missing. None of the restaurant's posters had anything to represent the Asian community.

"We were eating McDonald's one day and we looked around and saw there posters around that didn't have any Asians," said Jevh, who is of Filipino heritage. "They had other races but no Asians so we felt like it was our duty to put ourselves up there."

Credit: Twitter/@Jevholution

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Spotting a blank wall just begging to be filled, the two friends devised a cunning plan.

They decided they would smuggle a huge poster of themselves into the restaurant.

And so, Jevh and Christian headed to their local events centre and posed outside, casually enjoying a hamburger and a portion of McDonald's fries.

Making sure the poster would be as legit as possible, Jevh and Christian made sure to edit in the same dotted circle design featured on all the other posters inside the fast-food joint.

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Then, on 13th July, with the help of some close friends, the prankster pair snuck into the restaurant to complete their mission.

Credit: Twitter/@Jevholution

Donning an old McDonald's worker shirt, Jevh, under a code name of 'Jeff Bergara, Regional Interior Coordinator' managed to hang the poster on the wall while nobody was looking.

The sneaky operation was a success, and they left the restaurant without so much as a squeak from McDonald's staff members.

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Suspecting the poster would eventually be noticed, the duo used adhesive tape to so that it could be taken down without a fuss.

However, over a month later, the poster had still not been noticed by staff.

Finding the situation pretty funny, Jevh decided to tweet about his prank, posting a picture of the poster with a caption that read:

"I noticed there was a blank wall at McDonald's so I decided to make this fake poster of me and my friend. It's now been 51 days since I hung it up."

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Credit: Twitter/@Jevholution

After going viral almost instantly, Jevh's post has received over one million likes and has been retweeted over 250,000 times.

In fact, it garnered so much attention, that Ellen DeGeneres invited them to come on to her show.

On Monday, Ellen presented the pair with a surprise sum of $25,000 each, courtesy of McDonald's as a thank you for their appearance in an upcoming marketing campaign showing commitment to diversity.

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The pair told NBC News that they're unsure what they'll do with their winnings, but are just happy that they could make a difference.

"The whole world is a melting pot of different cultures, and it's about time for the media to mirror that," said Jevh.