Map All Along

It's just a pretty engraving, a random doodle, a painting, a jumble of papers strewn about, or even a set of cooking or dancing instructions - something seemingly irrelevant, meaningless, or it just doesn't make sense to anyone. That is, until someone makes the connection, squints at it the right way, aligns it somehow, to finally exclaim - it's a map! (Though one may be tempted to pronounce it with Admiral Ackbar's voice.)

Naturally, cue excitedly matching features (if this is Afferton, then this... this would be Beeley!), perhaps overlaying parchments or digital outlines over a real map.

Maps are not necessarily drawings of streets and landmarks, though. A map by any other name, right? Some can be merely a set of instructions, or a pair of coordinates, a picture of a landmark, in a pinch even a malfunctioning or misunderstood GPS device - what this trope needs is an object that is initially misunderstood or not understood at all, but once brilliantly deciphered, it leads the adventurers to a location.

What's not this trope: an obvious map hidden in something. If the map is found behind a photo or a painting, it's probably Framed Clue. If it simply shows under specific circumstances, it's likely Invisible Writing. If the secret container is just accidentally opened, or it's a device that is switched on, it's Chance Activation.

This is a natural Sub-Trope of Hidden in Plain Sight, and belongs in Map Tropes. Usually it's a Treasure Map, of course.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• One And Yet the Town Moves chapter follows Hotori and friends investigating the mystery of a treasure hidden in a small town out in the countryside. Their only clues are what the townsfolk themselves say and a small inkbrush painting of a blossoming cherry tree, which had a riddle relevant to the mystery. Hotori eventually figures out that the painting is, in fact, a map of all the bodies of water surrounding the town, and the only branch with a blossom is where the treasure resides.
• Revolutionary Girl Utena: In the first chapter of the manga, Utena has been receiving anon postcards. When they are joined together, they form a photo of the Ohtori Academy. She believes that it was her prince who sent her the postcards and that he is waiting her there.

Asian Animation

• Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Jollie's picture of a screwdriver, a nut, and a screw in Great War in the Bizarre World. It's passed off by him as a map, and it's implied that Jollie just handed the goats and wolves a photo and is claiming that it's a map thanks to his non-existent knowledge, with the wolves rightfully questioning his logic when they use it, but it later turns out to be a really good approximation of where everything is in the Bizarre World - the river is shaped like a screwdriver, a nut-shaped castle wall is located close to it on the right, and a mushroom-like growth with a screw shape is to the left.

Films — Animation

• In Curious George (2006), Ted^note formerly known as the Man with the Yellow Hat sets out an expedition to Africa to find a legendary gigantic idol for his failing museum. Unfortunately, when he reaches the idol's last known location, all he finds is a dingy little version of it, making him think the legends exaggerated a bit. In the end, after he and George reconcile, they discover that when light filters through the stone, it projects a map, which Ted realizes leads to the actual idol, which they find.
• In The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Disney), Quasimodo studies the talisman which Esmeralda has given him and realizes that it's a map of Paris. He recognizes the pattern of streets and buildings as seen from above (which is the only way he's ever seen them), and understands that the talisman shows the way through the city to the Court of Miracles.
• Titan A.E.: Cale's tattoo turns out to be a holographic map leading to the location of the Titan, which is humanity's last hope to create a new home for itself.

Films — Live-Action

• In Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Roy becomes obsessed with a certain shape - up to building its model out of mashed potatoes - until it's revealed it's the Devil's Tower mountain the aliens picked for their landing pad.
• The Golden Voyage of Sinbad: The titular protagonist discovers, upon putting two pieces of the golden tablets together, that their shadow projected onto a wall by the flames of a torch reveals a nautical chart to the mystical island of Lemuria, which may offer a way to heal the Vizier's scarred face and defeat the Big Bad Prince Koura.
  Sinbad: It's a chart, Vizier! A nautical chart!
  Vizier: And you are a sea captain... Allah be praised!
• In Hellboy II: The Golden Army, the true map is engraved on the cylindrical container of the decoy map.
• In Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Indy is trying to talk to Oxley in the Soviet camp in the Amazon jungle about how he got a hold of the crystal skull, which made him insane and talking in riddles. When he keeps moving his hand and saying "To lay their just hands on that Golden Key... That ope's the Palace of Eternity. Through eyes that last I saw in tears... here in death's dream kingdom... eyes! That last I saw in- tears-? Indy tries to reason with him, when he notices Oxly's hand movements, and when he's given a pen and paper, Oxley draws a series of symbols that Indy can decipher as directions to the skull's origin.
• In the Mouth of Madness: When beginning his search for missing author Sutter Cane, Trent notices apparently random red lines drawn into all of Cane's book cover illustrations. When aligned correctly, the lines become a map of New Hampshire with coordinates to Hobb's End, the supposedly fictional town Cane wrote about.
• Inverted in Iron Man 2 when Tony comes to the realization that a model map of the Stark Expo left by his father Howard turned out to be an atomic diagram of a brand new element, that could perfectly replace the palladium in his Arc Reactor (that was slowly poisoning him) as its energy source.
• In Vin Diesel's movie The Pacifier, the panda lullaby contains instructions to avoid traps in a trap room.

Literature

• In The Cheyne Mystery by Freeman Wills Crofts, one of the clues is a mysterious diagram drawn on a piece of linen, covered with irregularly-placed circles containing numbers, letters and wavy lines, and the phrase "England expects every man to do his duty". Inspector French and his officers eventually realise that it should be superimposed on a map of England, with the wavy lines matching the coastline; then the numbered circles indicate particular towns. In turn, the names of the towns produce a textual message, which describes a location in the Atlantic.
• Erebos: The world of the eponymous, fictional video game contains elements that the protagonist finds out are meant to be the map of London Underground, with objects in the colours that lines are drawn on the tube map and certain objects being named after stations.
• In The Key by Isaac Asimov, Jennings hides a Mind Control device on The Moon before dying, and then puts clues on a paper, directing the reader to first go to Wendell Urth, before listing various locations on the planet.
• In Nettle & Bone, a secret map leads to the climax in the nick of time: Marra identifies directions through the palace crypts in the weave of the tapestry the Godmother gave her. Justified because the Godmother's oaths to the Kingdom barred her from aiding Marra, so she couldn't explain the tapestry's significance herself.
• The Third Policeman: Sergeant Pluck points out to the narrator the cracks in the ceiling of the cell at the police station, which somehow have formed a perfect map of the area — with the exception of one road which the narrator does not recognize. This, he is told, is the way to Eternity.

Live-Action TV

• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: The second season has a plot arc in which a group of people exposed to an alien technology develop an obsession with drawing, painting, engraving, or otherwise depicting a seemingly abstract pattern of circles and lines. After one of them finally produces a satisfactory rendition of the pattern — which is actually in three dimensions, hence the earlier two-dimensional attempts failing — it's recognized as a map to the aliens' lost city.
• In Alice in Borderland, the scrap of paper found on one of the gunmen in the Tag game, which just looks like a lot of overlapping lines, turns out to be a map to one of the dealers' bases in the subway.
• CSI: NY:
  • In "Some Buried Bones", the carvings in an absinthe spoon found embedded in a victim's neck turn out to be a map of how to exit the hedge maze in which he died.
  • In "The Cost of Living", a creased piece of paper with lots of lines on it is found in a victim's pocket. When Adam figures out that folding it along the creases in a certain order creates a paper airplane, a map of a section of the NYC subway system appears on its wings. This leads the team to an abandoned area the victim had been exploring for artifacts going back to FDR's administration.
• Grimm: In the pilot, Nick's terminally-ill aunt gives him a strange object, telling him to "guard it with his life." The object opens out to reveal a key, but Nick has no idea what it opens. The sides are engraved with a seemingly-random pattern, but when Nick accidentally spills ink, he realises the engravings show part of a map. He later learns that the key is one of seven, and all seven maps together show the location of a mysterious treasure found and hidden by seven knights after the Fourth Crusade.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Galadriel discovers in Numenor that Sauron's mark that he left on Finrod's body and in fortress of the Northern Wastelands, is a map of the Southlands.
• In Murdoch Mysteries episode "All that Glitters", a paper belonging to the victim is discovered to be a map of various ore depots in a Native reservation.
• One episode of Resident Alien sees Harry and Astra traveling to New York City to find "Goliath", a member of Harry's species who's been working as a graffiti artist. After mapping all of Goliath's paintings in the hopes of finding a clue to his whereabouts, they're stumped, until Harry looks more closely at the locations of the paintings on the map and realizes that they mimic a constellation from his galaxy. With that knowledge, he's able to figure out where Goliath's gallery is.
• In Star Trek: Voyager episode "Cathexis", Chakotay's medicine wheel is used as a map to get the ship out of trouble: Chakotay's soul inhabits Neelix, who rearranges the stones on the medicine wheel to make a pattern that Paris recognizes as a map of landmarks in the nebula that helps the ship escape.
• In season two of Stranger Things, Will's obsessive drawings that turn the entire house into a Room Full of Crazy stump the family, until Bob realizes that it's a map of the tunnels under Hawkins and its immediate surroundings.

Tabletop Games

• EXIT: The Game will hide maps in parts of the packaging, such as the box itself, or in parts of the game, like in the decoder disk or other items that players initially believe are not relevant to the riddle. Cue excited (or exasperated) cheering when players do discover the map.

Toys

• BIONICLE: When Berix gives Mata Nui a coin with an engraving of his former body, he realizes the engraving on the back of it matches the one on the Skralls' shields and believes it's a map to some kind of maze.

Video Games

• In Gabriel Knight 3, Grace analyses famous paintings, discovering geometric clues hidden within and pinpointing geographical features.
• Monkey Island:
  • In The Secret of Monkey Island, a map is disguised as dancing steps.
  • In Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, Guybrush has a dream where his parents sing a garbled version of "Dem Bones." The bone arrangements suggested by the song correspond to the markings on the right sequence of doors to pass through LeChuck's fortress.
• In Nancy Drew: Danger on Deception Island, messages in bottles continually wash up on shore, but the townsfolk have been ignoring them because all they say are a few letters and numbers. Nancy is (somewhat inexplicably) the first person to realize the messages are GPS coordinates.
• There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension has an inversion of the trope at the end of Chapter 4, where you can go around the world to fill out a map. After the map is fully filled out and completed, the shape formed by the paths of the map becomes something you need to finish the chapter: A key.

Western Animation

• The Amazing World of Gumball: In "The Treasure", the Watterson kids find a doodled-on receipt, and they follow the receipt's address, disappointed to find only a mailbox. Gumball holds up the receipt to throw it, but Anais notices via Lightning Reveal that the mailbox appears on the doodle along with several nearby landmarks, as well as "X" Marks the Spot for the treasure they seek.
• In the Camp Lazlo episode "Lumpy Treasure", a series of mosquito bites on Raj's butt is discovered to be a map to the treasure of Three-eyed Fred.
• DuckTales (1987): In the episode "Don't Give Up the Ship" (the first part of the Five-Episode Pilot, "Treasure of the Golden Suns") El Capitán hires the Beagle Boys to steal an antique model of a sailing ship from Scrooge McDuck's money bin; he tells them that it leads to a hoard of gold, but does not explain how. It's up to Donald's nephews to discover that the ship's name is a pair of lat/long coordinates.
• Gravity Falls: In the episode "Irrational Treasure", Dipper and Mabel are on the hunt for proof that the supposed town founder, Nathaniel Northwest, was a fraud, with their only clue being a piece of paper covered in markings that Dipper believes to be a secret code. It's not until Mabel folds the paper into a hat that Dipper realizes the markings form a map pointing to the location of the next clue.