One interesting thing about the way that technology has brought us together is that we have more of an opportunity than ever to build our own worlds of sorts. This can exist in the form of an indie video game for those with the programming know how, or even a Dungeons & Dragons campaign that you decide the general atmosphere of.
And when such an opportunity presents itself, we can get engrossed enough in the act of creating it that we start throwing in little details that were largely made to amuse ourselves, but can also serve as surprise rewards to the people looking closely enough to discover them. These surprises are known as “Easter eggs.”
RELATED STORIES
And as we’re about to see, it turns out that you don’t have to create your own world to make these Easter eggs. It turns out that they can be just as fun to hide in real life.
If you explore Chicago’s WNDR museum enough, you might come across this sign commemorating an insignificant event.
While I suppose it was nice to hear about the unidentified woman try to help the man as he tripped over, it’s definitely a surreal experience to read an official-looking plaque that expresses disbelief that you’re bothering to give it your attention.
Strangely enough, this isn’t the only clothing tag that cops an attitude with us but this one gets right to the heart of the matter.
And indeed, the messages those symbols convey turn out to be pretty important. For example, that third one means you’re not supposed to tumble dry it.
Personally, if I have to get a clothesline for just one article of clothing, I don’t care how good it would look on me. It’s staying on the rack.
Depending on where you look on this tourist map in Washington state, it’ll seem informative but otherwise unremarkable.
However, if the route you’re planning takes you near Mount St. Helens, you’ll notice that it looks a little different on the map than the other mountains in the area.
I guess when a volcano is pretty famous for the way it blew its top, it seems like a missed opportunity not to do something like this.
When the sun is in the right position, the brilliance of this piece of street art reveals itself.
It’s a little hard to tell what it’s supposed to be at the wrong time of day but somebody obviously thought the top of this fence looked a lot like a roller coaster track.
It may be pretty easy but it’s still possible to lose this game of Limbo.
As one EMS worker pointed out in the comments, it’s apparently not hard to underestimate just how tall an ambulance is.
I guess that’s something they have in common with 18-wheelers.
If this seems like an aerial view of a rough neighborhood, look a little bit closer.
It may not take long to notice that somebody painted a curb to look like slums, but that doesn’t make the job they did any less detailed or impressive.
If this pond ends up drying up, this sign will become completely unreadable.
At the same time, since its only purpose is to signify the pond in the first place, I guess there won’t be much reason to read it if that does happen.
This isn’t such a surprising Easter egg yet but it will be soon enough.
Apparently, the staff here are about to get some new counter tops installed so the uploader left a little surprise for whoever ends up having to replace them somewhere down the line.
That’s some long-term thinking there.
This person took apart an Xbox Elite Series 2 controller only to discover this image of a honey badger inside.
Presumably, they put it there because they like how fierce and unafraid the honey badger is to completely throw caution to the wind.
Because if there’s another reason, I don’t know it.
While most of these real life Easter eggs were probably put in place for fun, this one has a much more important purpose.
I think it’s a pretty safe bet that somebody forced the hands of the staff at this IKEA by using this display toilet exactly how you’d imagine.
That’s certainly not a mistake I’d want to deal with more than once.
This piece of curb art is a lot easier to miss than the one we saw earlier but it’s a little more mysterious when you do spot it.
We can see that it’s depicting a rat but I can’t help but wonder why it’s shown in such an unusual position.
I don’t think we usually ask the same detailed questions about graffiti that we would at an art gallery but here we are.
I imagine it would be pretty hard not to look over your shoulders if this suddenly popped up in your book.
Apparently, the uploader got this one used and the original owner wanted to leave a little message from the past.
It’s certainly more pleasant than the time I noticed the copy of Romeo and Juliet I read in school had the words “true love” crossed out. I hope whoever did that is doing OK now because that was kind of sad.
Sometimes it’s a little hard to tell the difference between a real life Easter egg and an accident.
Like, did someone want Obi-Wan Kenobi to greet anyone who looked over at this plant or is some kid out there wondering what happened to their toy?
I’d be willing to bet that there were a lot of people who didn’t notice this image on their microphone box and just as many who saw it, but didn’t recognize it.
For those who aren’t sure what we’re looking at, it’s ASCII art of a guy angrily flipping a table over.
I guess whoever made this anticipated a lot of angry gamers in their customer base?
This alley in downtown Chicago features a cute example of an interesting practice called “yarn bombing.”
It’s sort of like graffiti except instead of spray paint, it involves people stitching their knitted works around random fixtures out in the wild.
It makes everything look a little cozier, I suppose.
From the looks of it, real life Easter eggs are not only older than all of us, but older than entire civilizations.
Apparently, this fellow peeking out of the Abbey of Sainte Foy in France comes to us from as far back as the year 1050.
Talk about commitment to the bit.
Some folks would probably look at this and think it’s just a really intense warning to watch out for pedestrians, but the rest of us know what’s up.
I guess that regardless of whether you’re referring to “walkers” in real life or the zombies in The Walking Dead , this is still pretty good advice.
One one hand, it’s hard to call this bridge design an Easter egg considering how much it stands out in this German street.
But on the other hand, it’s not like we make a habit of checking under bridges to see if their designs were inspired by Lego before we cross them.
It’s a matter of perspective, I suppose.
_Futurama_ fans know that the show’s creators loved changing the “20th Century Fox” logo to say “30th Century Fox,” but they may not realize how much they committed to the bit.
If you look the spines on the show’s DVDs, you’ll see that Fox’s little space on them also reflects the futuristic update.
It’s one of those things we can walk by 100 times and never notice.
Apparently, this is just one of many secret messages you can find under this brand’s body wash bottles.
And from the looks of things, this company has the same scrub policy that TLC does and resents the implication that you’d describe them that way.
Good to know, I guess.
