A right click on the screen will just show properties of one of the shortcut icons if you click on an icon. Some icons have fairly large borders that capture the icon even if it looks like you're on a blank space between them.
If you click where a program is displayed, of course you only get properties for the program.
If you click (right click) in a blank part of the screen the options you see may depend partly on the graphics card and driver you have installed.
A fairly typical window when you right click on a blank place will show a "view" section. Among common "office" pranks, at the View location you can uncheck the "show icons" to make all of a victims desktop icons disappear.
Most of the popup windows that you get when you right click in a blank part of the screen will show a "graphic properties" and a "graphic options." In graphic options there is likely to be a "rotation" choice where you can choose which way to flop the desktop.
Separately, at "graphic options," you may have a choice for "hot keys" or something similar. The default for many graphics drivers is to have hot keys enabled, and that probably is required to have the Ctl-Alt-Arrow keys work to flip the desktop view around. If you uncheck the "hot keys" option before using the "rotation" to flip someone's screen, the Ctl-Alt-up arrow likely will fail to return things to normal.
Only a TDP (truly despicable prankster) would turn off all the icons and disable hot keys before rotating the screen on someone else's computer. Such a person would deserve to sit in a puddle of molasses in his/her chair, and to find salt in his/her coffeee and a dead mouse in a top left desk drawer. (...the documentable retaliations thus far seen ...)
Unfortunately, a TDP personality is seldom reformed by even the most deserved of responses.