The Most Unexpected Real-Life Easter Eggs

From secret codes to throwbacks, references, and inside jokes, Easter eggs are a great way to reward video game, movie, and TV fans for paying close attention and watching carefully for the unexpected. But did you know that you can also find Easter eggs in the world around you? That's right — architects, artists, and regular people have been secreting their own Easter eggs in the wilds of real life, as a reward for people who keep their eyes on their surroundings, instead of on their phones. Are you ready to level up your Easter egg game? Here's a few options you can start with!

During the 1920s, the U.S. Postal Service created the first airmail system, called the Transcontinental Airway System. This allowed pilots to navigate across the country in an era before radio guidance and radar were common. Every few miles, beacon towers were built to guide the way for intrepid airmail pilots, including a 50-foot tall lighthouse-style tower with a rotating 1000 watt light. In cases of poor visibility, however, the beacons included dummy-proof backup: brightly painted yellow concrete arrows—up to 70 feet in length—which pointed the pilot directly to the next beacon, and which were visible from up to 10 miles in the air.

By the 1930s, radar navigation had become the common method used by airmail pilots, and the beacon towers began to fall into disrepair. Similarly, many of the arrows were torn up to prevent enemy pilots from using them to navigate across the country. But many remain. Cracked, chipped, and faded, few look like what they did in their heyday, but they're still there for any intrepid explorer who wants to check them out in person.

If you'd like to check them out yourself, a few aviation buffs (and arrow-lovers) have compiled lists and maps of the original beacon locations. There's even a project to catalog and visit the beacon locations to determine if they're still there, so check that out if you want something to do on your next cross-country trip, besides eat and be lost.

In China, one video game company CEO decided that a standard boxy office building was too bland for his growing team of developers. So when they needed a new location, he enlisted an architect to create the ultimate work environment—an office building that resembles the USS Enterprise from Star Trek. From the warp drive engines to a separate saucer section, this building is such a dead ringer for the fictional spacecraft, its generated its own tourist trade as an attraction for local and world-traveling Trekkies.

This isn't the only architectural Easter egg, either—many other buildings around the world have been cleverly designed to resemble something else from the air. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's main building, for example, is a glass pyramid, but when viewed from the air, you realize the courtyard in front of the museum was constructed to look like a giant record player. Then there's southern California, where one building on a Naval base looks like a swastika from the air. This might be offensive, until you realize that neighboring buildings resemble WWII-era bomber planes, which are pointed directly at the Nazi symbol, as if they were attacking it. The Navy claims the design was an accident, and actually spent more than $600,000 to hide the shape which, awesome bomber PR or no, was probably the right movie.

Architects, ride engineers and interior designers of Disney parks have been sneaking America's favorite mouse (and his best buddies) into all sorts of unexpected places. It's become something of an obsession among Disney fanatics to locate all the hidden Mickeys, Donalds and Goofys—which can be seen on rides, in the walls, and even woven into the carpet. There are multiple fan websites dedicated to finding and listing every single hidden character—which now number more than a thousand.

There's one other Disney Easter egg that is equally fun—but you may have a hard time spotting it if you aren't a child. A sculpture of Cinderella at Disney World has a hidden design on the wall behind her. If you're an adult, you may not notice it at first, but if you're a child—or if you give the princess a proper, deep-enough curtsy—a crown in the wall's design is perfectly placed above the lovely Cinderella's brow.

All across the city of Ann Arbor, MI, an observant visitor may begin to notice tiny doors in very strange places. These Fairy Doors—part of an art installation gone rogue—can be found all over the college town. The first public fairy door was spotted in 2005 outside Sweetwater's Coffee and Tea, and more soon began popping up all over town. As befitting something magical and mysterious, the doors may disappear for a time, only to reappear later, or appear in a different location. Want to take a tour of Ann Arbor's fairy doors? We've got you covered.

Back in the 1980s, residents of Philadelphia, Boston, and other towns in the Northeast began to notice interesting plaques glued to their city's roads and crosswalks. The plaques—which have since become known as "Toynbee Tiles"—contain cryptic messages about British historian Arnold Toynbee, the planet Jupiter, resurrecting the dead, and Stanley Kubrick's movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Since then, the tiles—which are made from linoleum, asphalt glue, and tar paper—have been spotted in cities all over the country and even in other countries, presumably placed by copycat artists.

What does the inscription, "TOYNBEE IDEA IN MOViE `2001 RESURRECT DEAD ON PLANET JUPITER" mean? Who makes these tiles, these Easter eggs? Writer Justin Duerr and director Jon Foy explored the mystery surrounding the Toynbee Tiles, and give some tantalizing clues about their creator in the 2011 film, Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles. Spoiler alert: they dunno, but it sure is fun to guess.