30+ Hilarious Fake Signs Someone Posted All Over the London Underground

London is famous for unidentified people committing mysterious goings-on. In the 1880s, For example, anonymous graffiti artist Banksy decorated the capital with spray cans and stencils. Now, The Phantom Tube Sticker Changer of Old London Town is leaving its mark on the London Underground.

Mostly haunting the Central Line, they add stickers all over tube trains. They’ve changed stations like Shepherd’s Bush to an old English family dinnertime favorite – Shepherd’s Pie.

We absolutely love this sign! As you can see, it instructs passengers to pull a lever to pour gravy onto the train driver’s sausages. The English love sausages, mashed potatoes, and gravy almost as much as they love fish ‘n chips and cups of tea. However, they would call this meal Bangers and Mash.

The sign doesn’t state if this gravy-pouring machine is only for emergencies or if it’s for when the driver gets a bit peckish.

Guido Fawkes became a folk hero (or anti-hero), and Brits celebrate him on Bonfire Night by burning effigies called “Guys” atop bonfires.

You may know the rhyme, “Remember, remember, the fifth of November.” Modern-day rebels say he was the last man to enter certain establishments with honorable intentions!

To catch the express train to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, you must go to Platform 9¾ at King’s Cross railway station. However, if you’re not brave enough to run through a brick wall between platforms 9 and 10, you can find out which Hogwarts House you belong to by sitting in The Sorting Seat on any regular tube train.

Just look for the blue sign with the wizard’s hat, and you’ll be told whether you belong to the house of Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, or Slytherin.

The idea of a first-class seat on the London Underground is preposterous. In the same way that nothing escapes a black hole––not even light or gravity––the tube sucks in everything, including the British class system. On the plus side, everyone is equal. Everyone is in the same boat. Well, the same train car.

The Brits aren’t exactly known for riots and revolutions, but if first-class seats really were introduced, there’d be riots on the streets.

This great sticker shows a slightly surreal warning. Passengers are told to “Always press this button.” In 2022, passengers took 1.026 billion tube rides. Regular commuters will smile and take no notice of this fun sign, but some foreign tourists might end up pressing it.

We love “Always” instructions, like “Always read the label.” We can’t always read the label as we have much more important things to do, like going to work, crossing the street, or reading listicles.

London and New York are both vibrant, bustling cities, but people say they are the two loneliest cities on earth. And nowhere is that more evident than when riding the metro. Add in the famous ultra-reserved English stiff-upper-lip attitude, and commuters on the London Underground simply don’t make eye contact. Never. Ever.

However, this fun warning takes things further by suggesting those who catch a glimpse into another passenger’s eyes will be fined £200. That’s around $250 in USD.

Not all Brits are stereotypically shy, reserved, and stoical. Some are brash, energetic, loud, outgoing, and funny – until they get on the tube (or step into an elevator,) where they all become, you guessed it, shy, reserved, and stoical. This notice also pokes fun at the unwritten rule that Londoners must not look at each other while riding the train.

If two commuters do accidentally make eye contact for more than a split-second, one of two things happens. They either get into a fight, or they end up getting married.

This green fake sign is one of the most relevant you might see on your commute to the office. The Brits tend to be a very apologetic tribe, and tube notices and announcements say sorry for a million things. But, as this sign so succinctly points out, all of the London Underground’s apologies are shallow and meaningless.

However, if they didn’t make those shallow and meaningless missives, British people’s brains would explode, and the whole country would grind to a halt.

The Central Line is the London Underground’s longest. It stretches 46 miles above and below the nation’s capital and features 49 stations. So, that’s roughly one station per mile, right? Well, not quite, because the center of town needs more stops. For example, the Piccadilly Line’s Leicester Square and Covent Garden are separated by just 260 yards and a 20-second tube journey.

However, the Central Line’s outer stations are so far apart that hairy male morning commuters might need a second shave between Woodford and Buckhurst Hill.

Metro announcements often tell passengers to stand clear of closing doors and “If you see something, say something.” Since that last phrase is so ill-defined, we once reported a woman for eating a Snickers on the New York Metro. Anyway, the London Underground’s most oft-used announcement is to “mind the gap” between the train and the platform.

However, the graffiti artist created an actual gap on the Central Line, again between Woodford and Buckhurst Hill. If the authorities want to catch this sticker trickster (Strickster?), that’s where they should start looking.

This sign is so subtle and so genuine-looking that some unsuspecting tourists and even the odd hardy, journeyed commuter must have fallen for it. It simply reads two words, “No Sitting,” followed by the warning of a $244 fine. So many people clamor for a seat during rush hour that finding one on the tube is almost impossible.

But even we might think twice after being threatened with a fine. After all, we just paid £6.70 for a 20-second, 260-yard journey!

This equally convincing sign could be another real cost-cutting measure from the London Underground. London’s famous red double-decker buses have two tiers, so maybe Transport for London copied the idea by having tube passengers bunk up on each other’s laps. Although in reality, it’d never happen.

The idea of random English commuters sitting on one another’s laps is pie-in-the-sky, cloud cuckoo land, so 99.9% of people would know it was a joke. But that still leaves 0.1% who might not!

We’re not sure what’s going on here other than some very un-English chaos. As Britain’s most famous 1970s punk rockers sang, this is “Anarchy in the UK!” The kids are partying in Notting Hill and rioting at Lancaster Gate and Oxford Street and have demolished Marble Arch.

One young rioter is even single-handedly holding back the tube line between Bond Street and Oxford Circus. In addition to the London Underground’s rats, dogs are running riot on the tracks. Expect long delays.

Judging from the fact that this fake sign doesn’t use the same font as the London Underground, it could be someone else’s handy work. However, the sticker has two meanings. The first suggests that passengers are packed in like cows and are traveling Cattle Class.

The second option suggests that this train has a cart for cattle, just like old steam trains that featured cattle wagons in the old cowboy times of the Wild West.

This sticker is great! Next to the wording, there’s a balloon with a face painted on it. This is your Emergency Travel Companion in case there’s a disaster. Anyone who’s seen Tom Hanks washed up on a desert island will know that modern-day Robinson Crusoes need an inatimate object to talk to so they don’t go crazy.

In Castaway, Tom Hanks had Wilson the volleyball. But since this is the London Underground, budget cuts mean they can only afford one balloon per train car.

Most of the fake stickers show up on the Central Line, and this is no exception. Hanger Lane station has a slightly horrific name, so the underground guerilla artist has given it an 18 certificate, like a scary horror movie.

Hanger Lane is on Hanger Hill, first recorded in 1393 as Le Hangrewode, meaning ‘Wooded Hill.’ Today, that’s the site of the Central Line’s Marble Arch station.

This brilliant sticker turns Oxford Circus into Nightmare on Elm Street. The station is one of the tube’s busiest, delivering millions of passengers and tourists smack-bang onto the middle of Britain’s number one shopping destination, Oxford Street. But that’s not the only change the prankster has made.

You can also swap trains for Heaven or Hell at Oxford Street. However, if your Final Destination is the limbo state of Purgatory, you’ll need to change at Bond Street.

This notice board has two instructions for the price of one. The first reads, “For the sake of flip, stand on the right.” At least, we think it says “flip.” Londoners, you see, must stand on the right when going up escalators.

This leaves the left-hand side of the electric stairway free for those crazed maniacs who run up escalators like their home is on fire. The second rule is for those lunatics who try to trampoline on the tube. It’s a bigger problem than you might think.

This sign starts off by grabbing the attention of its target audience of parents with children. It ends with a simple instruction, “Walk on the Left.” However, somewhere in between, the sign gets all passive-aggressive and disses posh mothers for taking children with names like Hugo to the Natural History Museum to see the dinosaurs.

Hugo and the Natural History Museum are just two examples. Allegra, Felix, Ralph, Jago, and Cosmo are just as likely to get in your way on their way to the British Museum or National Portrait Gallery.

Returning to the idea that the British dislike making eye contact, this first sign suggests they play with their iPods. We don’t know how old the sign is, but it must be at least 15 years old to be from before smartphones came out. If you don’t have an iPod, reading a newspaper does the same job.

The second notice suggests pretending to be asleep so you don’t have to give up your seat. We wonder how many people have tried that one in the 160 years since London’s first tube line opened.

Anarchic, underground guerilla artists aren’t the only ones who prank tube passengers with fake signs. London Underground staff are famous for doing it, too. Sometimes, they turn information update flip boards into lovely, uplifting quotes and inspirational thoughts for the day. Other times, they can become quite sarcastic.

This acerbic signage takes aim at Apple IoS6.0 users, suggesting that their operating system is so trashy and out-of-date that they’re better off using a traditional, old-school, paper-based map.

This new fake sticker uses the same priority seat notice sign but contains a funnier message. Of course, the original design indicated that seats should be given up to pregnant ladies, women carrying young children, and the elderly with walking sticks.

However, the prankster has once again shown off his or her observational comedy skills and added a little surrealism by hilariously reinterpreting these three figures to be overweight, conjoined twins, and snake charmers!

The Phantom Tube Sticker Changer of Old London Town strikes again! This time, they’ve not only added a funny, non-sensical sign, but they’ve also taken a swipe at London Underground operators Transport for London. First, the new sign causes chaos, confusion, comedy, and consternation by making no sense whatsoever.

However, more profoundly, it points out the tube’s budget cuts and treatment of less-abled passengers. The Phantom Sticker Changer is slowly showing their social activism and revealing their inner Banksy.

Here’s one of those funny quotes of the day from a Transport for London staff member. But instead of being a reflective, uplifting self-help thought, it’s just a single line from the chorus of Guns’ n Roses’ 1991 hit single “November Rain”. The quote, of course, is attributed to lead singer Axl Rose.

Written on Monday, the 11th of November 2013, it’s a very appropriate quote since Great Britain’s inclement weather sees rain from the end of September to the beginning of May.

This isn’t from The Phantom Fake Tube Sticker Changer of Old London Town, but it’s still funny. Jessie J was a British pop star in the early 2000s, and this person obviously got a bit fed up with her always playing Wembley Stadium and her hoards of screaming teen fans blocking his way home.

So, in a moment of frustration, he wrote out a classified advert putting Wembley Stadium up for sale on the condition that the new owner evict Jessie J.

This is one of The Strickster’s most realistic stickers. When tube stations often close for refurbishment, passengers have to get off their train and go to street level up the escalator (standing on the right) to get a bus replacement service to the next station before descending back into the dark abyss to continue their journey.

But this sign suggests a taxi replacement service at Holland Park near Notting Hill, which is totally realistic for such a posh, upmarket part of town.

In the 14th century, Italian writer Dante Alighieri wrote an epic poem called The Divine Comedy. In the first part of the poem, Virgil guides Dante through the nine circles of the underworld. These levels are Limbo, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Anger, Heresy, Violence, Fraud, and Treachery. Fast forward 700 years, and you’ll see all of these on every tube trip.

The London Underground’s ninth level of Hell is the Circle Line. It’s a circular loop you could get stuck on for eternity with museum moms, screaming toddlers, noisy eaters, and cellphone shouters.

Speaking of deadly sins, this slothful sign takes a dig at the tube’s inefficiency. The London Underground is notorious for unexpected delays, stations closing at weekends for refurbishment, and the dreaded bus replacement service. This sign correctly points out that your journey would be quicker if you were dragged to your destination by the world’s slowest-moving creature -the sloth.

And not just any old sloth, but a spaced-out sloth in a coma. These snail-paced animals would also provide more accurate, up-to-date information than current ticket clerks.

When veteran American comedian Joan Rivers passed away a few years ago, those cheeky London Underground staff members paid a mocking tribute. The legendary comedian and talk show host was almost as famous for having loads of cosmetic surgery as for her comedy.

Over the decades, her face changed more times than commuters swapping trains at Oxford Circus. So, this sign informed passengers that parts of the station would be gradually replaced over the next 40 years in homage to Joan!

This sign comes from before Queen Elizabeth II passed away in September 2022. It hilariously suggests that one priority seat is reserved for Her Majesty’s bottom. We’re unsure which line the sticker appears on, but we hope it’s on the Elizabeth Line. The Queen opened the new line in May 2022, during her Platinum Jubilee and final year.

Although trains mostly travel overground, they also use the tube system. Naturally, the Elizabeth line is a royal purple color on tube maps.

This isn’t a sign, but it’s so fun we just had to show you. 1% of the population suffers from a condition called synaesthesia. Sufferers’ senses get mixed up, so they can hear colors or see sounds. So, James Wannerton created an olfactory London tube map. His five-decade labor of love saw him assign a smell to every tube station.

James’ smells include English chocolate bars like Curly Wurlys but also less tasty smells like Spam Fritters, Sprouts, and hairspray!

Glance up at the line map to see how many stops you are from your destination, and you won’t only see the list of stations, but you’ll also see the connecting stations. So, in this example, you can connect to the Victoria and Bakerloo lines at Oxford Circus.

But in yet another realistic-looking sticker change, The Phantom has added a new connection at Tottenham Court Road. Yes, folks, you too can now catch a submarine from TCR to Somalia – via submarine!

Fare-dodging is a huge problem, so some bright employees devised a novel way to try to stop it. This sign threatened to tell fare-dodgers the ending of the latest Star Wars film. We don’t know if it deterred anyone, but it might have made a few of them have a bad feeling about this.

Incidentally, when the sign says traveling without a valid ticket or oyster, they don’t mean a real oyster. Discount cards are called Oyster Cards since the world is your oyster on the tube!

Pop quiz question for Londoners! Which station lies between St Paul’s and Liverpool Street? If you said Bank, home of The Bank of England, you’d be wrong. The new station has been named Stop Staring, just in case you weren’t already aware of tube etiquette.

Do you think it worked? Do you think anyone took any notice of this new sticker? If anything, they’re more likely to stare at the new sticker to figure out what on earth is going on.

You know how some people are allowed to take their emotional support animal on flights? Well, in case you don’t have a pet to see you through your stressful tube journey, this sticker suggests you snap the stress twig in case of inevitable train delays.

Ideally, the stress twig would be behind glass with a sign saying “In case of emergency, smash the glass.” That said, smashing the glass would probably be more stress-relieving than snapping a twig.

London’s tube cars don’t have restrooms, unlike regular, overground trains. So The Phantom created a sign for a toilet seat with extra-absorbent fabric reserved for those with explosive situations. If you think this scenario sounds unlikely, you’ve obviously never traveled the tube at midnight on a Friday or Saturday night!

As London’s parties, clubs, and curry houses close, tens of thousands of worse-for-wear Londoners, office workers, parties, and rowdy spots hooligans literally spill out into the London Underground.

Here, the phantom sticker plasterer has covered up Holborn station with a sign more usually spoken by airline pilots. As you can see, it informs passengers to expect turbulence and to remain seated.

Unfortunately, London Underground tube cars don’t come with sick bags, so if there really was turbulence and passengers fell ill, there are no motion sickness bags like they have on planes. With added turbulence, now every tube journey can be like a regular Friday or Saturday night!

Tesco is one of the United Kingdom’s most popular supermarkets, and this sticker seems to be taking aim at its dominance over small local stores. So, once again, The Strickster isn’t just making a joke but is channeling their inner Banksy by making a social commentary about the state of the world.

Tesco by no means monopolizes the UK supermarket market, but there were riots when they tried to open a Tesco Express in Banksy’s hometown of Bristol.

The English often say they’re “spending a penny” as an idiom for using the restroom. That’s because one penny is how much it used to cost back in the old days. But if you were caught short on the tube, it cost 50 pence (60 US cents) to use some London train station’s restrooms.

So, in the old days, 50p would have bought you 50 trips to the restroom. However, in recent years, many London train stations have ditched the charge, meaning you can use the restroom for free.

This sign initially meant that the priority seat was reserved for pregnant ladies. And not just women who are about to pop, but any lady in her first, second, or third trimester. However, in yet another joke/social commentary, The Phantom has changed the wording to suggest passengers give their seats up to people who are overweight, obese, or morbidly obese.

While this sign is light-hearted and not aimed at anyone, in 2015, authorities investigated a group called Overweight Haters Ltd., which handed out fat-shaming cards to passengers.

With so many stickers appearing around these parts, we believe The Phantom lives way out east on the Central Line. But since 260 million passengers use the London Underground’s busiest line every year, it’d be almost impossible to catch them.

This random sticker has turned the Central Line’s Hainault Loop into a giant spider’s web. Maybe they’re taunting the authorities and tube staff with a hint about their whereabouts. Or perhaps they simply like spiders.

This fun sign is a reserved sign like you might find in a restaurant. It reserves a window set for three dining passengers. So any regular passengers would have to vacate these seats at 8.30 pm. Not that London’s commuters would take any notice of the sign.

Food isn’t served on the tube, so someone has to pull the lever to pour gravy onto the driver’s sausages. Then, he’ll deliver a plate of piping hot food to this reserved table.

While fare-dodgers might have the latest Star Wars film ruined by tube staff, this sign goes a step too far. It dictates that naughty passengers will be crushed. We don’t know what it is about the London Underground, but it does bring out the worst in people. It’s probably the stress of the rat race.

Or perhaps the issue is subterranean commuting places folks who should never mingle together in an enclosed space like rats running through tunnels.

In the words of Jim Morrison, “This is the end, beautiful friend. This is the end, my only friend.” Francis Ford Coppola famously used The Doors song in his movie, Apocalypse Now. And if you travel all the way from Epping, Essex, to West Ruislip in west London, you’ll feel like you’ve lived through the film!

Passengers who successfully travel all 46 miles of the Central Line should be awarded a medal for all the horrors they’ve seen. So, we’ve reached the end of the line. This train terminates here. Please mind the doors!