Easter Eggs are hidden messages or inside jokes that are usually difficult for a player to find. There are several Easter eggs hidden in the game.
April Fools[]
2011[]
The Locked Chest Easter Egg was a naturally generated block that was used for the 2011 edition of the annual April Fools Joke by Notch. If a player attempted to open the chest, they would get a message stating that a key from the Steve Co. was needed.
The Minecraft Store was also modified on April 1, 2011. If one were to go to the site, they would also find many easter eggs such as the following:
- Clicking "Proceed to Checkout" would trigger a screamer followed by a dinosaur from Jurassic Park to begin to fly across the screen.
- Entering items at a value of over $10,000 would send a pop-up message asking if one were prone to seizures. If a player would say yes, the screen would start to flash.
- If one accessed the script to the Dinosaur easter egg, a reference to the Konami Code would appear.
2013[]
The Minecraft 2.0 update was announced on April Fool’s Day 2013.
It was shown as a joke later.
Minecraft 2.0 has added new features into the game, and the full list is:
Gameplay[]
- Added new Super Hostile game mode, for a much more challenging Survival experience.
- Difficulty setting is now per-world and may never be changed once set.
- Added new graphics setting “Ultra-Realistic” with new patent-pending experimental 4D-rendering.
- Added new chase-style 3D camera perspective.
Animals[]
- Added new realistic food/hunger system to animals.
- Overfeeding animals may have a negative effect on gameplay.
- Added a new "Horse" animal, with two different breeds to choose from.
- Each animal now has a gender and personality, introducing new farming mechanics.
- Added a new rare breed of chicken known as a "Diamond Chicken".
- May lay diamonds or lapis instead of laying eggs.
- May also blow up from too much pressure. Handle with care.
- Added new friendly Pink Wither, which is the complete opposite of a normal wither.
- Shoots out Love, which heals the nearby land and causes things to grow faster.
- Known bug: Having both a pink wither and a wither in one's world at the same time may cause up to a 200% increase in frame-rate. Will be fixed for launch.
- All animals may be fed golden apples to unleash their hidden magical properties (see new Magic section).
- Chickens are now classified as a hostile mob and are no longer passive.
Monsters[]
- Chickens do not appreciate being looked at and may get upset.
- Attacking a lone chicken may summon additional chickens to its defense.
- Zombie pigmen now spawn with "battlesigns" and no longer use swords.
- Fixed a bug causing Skeletons to miss their targets on occasion.
- Added new Redstone Bug monster (see Redstone section).
Blocks[]
- Furnaces have a new “heat” mechanic.
- Heat needs to be regulated in furnaces or they will blow up.
- Torches now burn out after a period of time but can be relit with flint and steel.
- Added new TNT slab, known as an "Etho Slab".
- Renamed droppers to floppers, by popular community demand.
- Droppers were deemed too powerful and go against our original vision of the game.
- Floppers now turn everything that passes through them into raw fish (see Fishing section).
- Added six (6) new decoration blocks:
- Mud
- Hay bales
- Lapis Lazuli
- Slime blocks
- Added new compressed storage blocks for commonly mined ores:
- Coal Block
- Lapis Lazuli Block
- Redstone Block
- Lapis may now be used for new Lapis furniture.
- Added dyed glass.
- Walking over many blocks will gradually wear them down, creating many new block variants such as Cracked Stone and Muddy Grass.
Redstone[]
- Removed all BUD behavior, and added safeguards so that it may never come back.
- Made redstone bugs spawn actual Redstone Bugs to assist with debugging.
- Added new Quantum Entangled redstone, obtained by mixing 1 redstone, 1 diamond, and 3 lapis.
- One entangled redstone dust will connect to another pair elsewhere.
- No current way of specifying the connection, may in fact connect to another player’s world.
- Added new BUD blocks.
Magic[]
- Added new Magic and Luck levels per player.
- Finding a Rainbow after rain passes will be the primary way of obtaining magic.
- Finding a green-tinted horse will be the primary way of obtaining luck.
- Added new spell system, costing magic to perform a spell.
- Spells may backfire, depending on luck.
- Examples of new spells include:
- Turn any item into fish.
- Turn current biome into another biome (bug: currently only turns into ocean).
- Ability to remove gravity from other creatures/players in the world.
Fishing[]
- Overhauled fishing mechanics.
- New special types of fish may be found in various different biomes.
- Fish may become scared if too much noise is made nearby.
- Added 28 new achievements for fishing.
- Rare chance for extra items to drop when fishing, such as armor and maps.
- Removed fishing.
- Having a fish in one's possession will drain one's health by 1 each second, to help phase out fishing.
Combat[]
- Removed crossbows.
- To deter cheating players on PvP servers, the PvP system has been completely redesigned.
- Players may no longer attack other players directly but must recruit an army of Monsters and Animals.
- Each monster/animal has different strengths, weaknesses and abilities whilst attacking or defending in PvP combat.
- New turn-based combat system will help create epic battles that may last hours at a time.
World generation & terrain[]
- Added many new mysterious adventuring locations.
- Added 6 new biomes.
- Reimplemented the Farlands.
- Going near the farlands will forcefully enable 3d anaglyph.
- Known bug: Teleporting towards the farlands may send one halfway in the opposite direction.
- Added dozens of new village building templates.
Music Discs[]
The mysterious number in Disc 11
When the ogg for disc 11 is converted to wave and run through a spectrogram, an image is created. Several theories for this image exist, but the most popular is that the image depicts the default player head and C418's autograph. C is the hexadecimal of 12, so 12418 is actually C418.
Trivia[]
- The chickens coming to the injured chickens defense is a reference to Legend of Zelda, as when a player attacks a hen, they will swarm them.
Videos[]
For an added sense of authenticity, Mojang gave a copy of Minecraft 2.0 to Youtubers including:
- YOGSCAST Martyn (Minecraft 2.0 EARLY ACCESS!! w/ SoTotallyToby)
- SethBling (MindCrack SMP — Ep 1: MineCraft 2.0 Pre-Release Review)
- PaulSoaresJr (Minecraft 2.0 – Mindcrack EXCLUSIVE SNEAK PEEK!)
- Vechs (Ep01 Minecraft 2.0 LP – A Fresh Start)
- BlameTheController (Minecraft 2.0 Beta Ep 1: Multiplayer Dungeon World first);
- Guude (Minecraft MindCrack – S4E1 – Minecraft 2.0)
- Xisumavoid (Minecraft 2.0 Update Preview);
- Keralis (Wife vs. Minecraft – Episode 30: Minecraft 2.0!)
- Biffa2001 (Minecraft 2.0 One Life – “Death By Blue Chickens”)
- Docm77 (Minecraft 2.0 Closed Beta – Exclusive First Look)
- W92Baj (Minecraft 2.0 – You wont believe what has been added – Mindcrack prelease overview.)
- Mhykol (Mhykol Mines – Mindcrack – Episode 259 – Minecraft 2.0)
- Generikb (Minecraft 2.0 FIRST LOOK!)
2014[]
A post was added to the Mojang blog[1] that stated:
“The long-nosed villagers introduced in Minecraft beta 1.9 have become sentient. They have taken over our skin servers and content delivery networks (CDN), so, unfortunately, you will not be able to change your skins until we fix the problem. We are desperately trying our best to pull the plugs, but we should prepare ourselves to serve under our new villager overlords. Singularity may be upon us.„
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In-game, however, villagers still acted the same with their programmed AI; however, they did make different sounds.
Every player's skin was replaced by a villager skin, complete with a trademark long nose. Not all players had the villager skin and skins varied by player. Non-villager parts of the game also included villager noises. All noises were replaced with the sound effects of Element Animation's "T.E.A.V.S.R.P" (The Element Animation Villager Sound Resource Pack). In-game villager music was also added. The title screen music contained a parody of the Game of Thrones theme, due to the new series starting in early April and also because it was included the original trailer for "T.E.A.V.S.R.P.".
The skins were reverted to normal on April 2, 2014.
Grumm released the villager skins on Reddit on April 1, 2014. There were seven variants.
An updated version of TEAVSRP, complete with the new music, was released by Element Animation on April 2, 2014.
2015[]
- Main article: Java Edition 15w14a
15w14a, dubbed as a snapshot for the "Love and Hugs Update",[2] was released as an April Fools' joke for version "1.10", when the next update was supposed to be 1.9. There was also a QR code written in the snow that generated in a superflat world that, when scanned, reads "Java Edition 1.9: The Combat Update".[3]
2016[]
- Main article: Java Edition 1.RV-Pre1
1.RV-pre1 was released as an April Fools' joke for the 1.RV update. This "Update" was called the Trendy Update.[4]
2017[]
The Mine & Craft Digital Leisure Device, a "games console" resembling a Game & Watch, was announced on the Minecraft website.[5]
2018[]
The new default texture pack was released for Java Edition 1.12 and 1.13. It was announced that all editions of Minecraft will get the new texture pack. The new textures are the original texture using 8-bit color, leading to a drastic reduction in detail. The ability to change to actually good textures through the use of resource packs was also removed.[6]
2019[]
- Main article: Java Edition 3D Shareware v1.34
3D Shareware v1.34 was released as an April Fools' joke. Officially called Minecraft 3D, this version was supposedly an "old version" of Minecraft released on April 1, 1994, of which only "a handful of copies were ever made", one of which was discovered "amongst all the rubble" lying in the basement of Mojang's old offices. It was said to be "a masterpiece of its all time" featuring "cutting-edge technology" which won many awards.[7]
Among the new additions include Red, Blue, and Yellow Keys; a 3D item that, according to its lore, is "tasty"; some codes that activate cheats via typing (not necessarily in chat); and an "Obligatory nightmare mode" that kills the player upon loading the game.
Some changes include randomly-generated barrels with 2D billboard models throughout the world; random pop-ups appearing randomly that say "Next disc required"; a new loading screen that resembles a command prompt; all sounds having been converted to sound more "8-bit"; and a revamped HUD.
The blog post regarding this version can be found here. An official video from the Minecraft team can be viewed here.
2020[]
- Main article: Java Edition 20w14∞
On April 1, 2020, Mojang released 20w14infinite, adding 231-1 dimensions that can be accessed by throwing a specifically customized Written Book into a Nether Portal.[8]
Halloween[]
Between October 20 and November 3, bats can spawn at light levels of 6 or less instead of the normal light level of 3 or less.
On October 31, Zombies, Zombie Villagers, Husks, Drowned, Skeletons, Strays, Zombie Pigmen, and Wither Skeleton may on occasion wear carved pumpkins or Jack o' Lanterns on their heads. These mobs would drop these blocks if killed using a tool enchanted with Looting. This feature was added in Java Edition 1.4.2 for Halloween 2012 and has been a feature every Halloween thereafter.
Furthermore, the only splash text shown is "OOoooOOOoooo! Spooky!".
Christmas[]
Since 2012, between December 24–26, all chests in-game have the appearance of wrapped presents. An unusable skis texture was also temporarily added to the game files in both 2012 and 2013 as a joke. There is also a "Merry X-Mas!" splash text that can appear.
Items[]
"10 Years" cake[]
In 1.14.2-pre2 and for the occasion of the 10 years of Minecraft's release on May 17, 2019, the cake had a big "10" placed like candles, and the only splash text that appeared was "Turning 10 years old!". This was reverted to the way they were before on May 20, 2019.
Thing Banner[]
A "Thing" pattern can be crafted using an enchanted golden apple and paper. When put on a banner, it displays Mojang's logo in whatever color dye was used. It is labeled "Thing" in the inventory.
Minecraft.jar[]
Guardian[]
When opening the 1.8 .jar file in the entities folder, both guardian textures say "jeb" in an unused space.
Zombified Piglin[]
In an unused and unseen portion of the Zombified Piglin's Original Texture, one can see "THX XAPHOBIA". This was written by Notch to give credit and thanks to the original creator of the texture, XaPhobia.
Armor Stand[]
In the texture file for the armor stand, in an unused area, the word "Searge" can be seen in a black box. This is presumably a signature by Searge, the developer that implemented armor stands.
Splashes[]
If a player were to delete the file splashes.txt
without deleting META-INF, the text on the screen will appear as "missingno". This is a reference to the infamous glitch Pokémon "MissingNo" found in the first generation of Pokémon games.
Another easter egg to be found in the splashes.txt
is a line stating "This message will never appear on the splash screen, isn't that weird?"
The line, in fact, will never be shown whenever the game is opened.
Menu Screen[]
Minceraft[]
This is a one in 10,000 chance that the title screen will display "Minceraft" instead of the normal "Minecraft". There is also a splash text that says: "You should try our sister game, Minceraft!"
Splashes[]
There are several Easter egg splash texts:
- This message will never appear on the splash screen, isn't that weird? – as the name implies, this splash text is never displayed on the menu screen.
- Happy Birthday, Notch! – this splash text appeared on June 1, or Notch's birthday. This is no longer the case as of Java Edition 1.8.5 due to Notch no longer working for Mojang.
- COVID-19 Splashes – special splash texts during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic have appeared in 1.15 and snapshots of 1.16. Some of the splashes include "Wash your hands!" and "Support elderly relatives and friends!".
- Holiday Splashes – various splashes appear all day on many holidays, such as "Happy New Year!" on January 1, and "Merry X-mas!" on Christmas Day.
- Happy birthday, sp614x! - This splash text was shown each 13th of August to celebrate sp614x's birthday.
- This splash text is hard to read in default resolution but in 1080p it's just fine! - It's the longest splash text ever. It may occasionally show at the beginning.
Console Edition Exclusives[]
Nether Portal[]
If one were to find a way up the Minecraft Logo in the Tutorial World, they will have an opportunity to enter it. Once inside the logo, after doing a little walking, a player will come across a Nether portal. In the new Xbox 360 title update, the floating logo is now empty as there is a separate building housing the Nether portal.
Tower of Pimps[]
In the Title Update 12 Tutorial World, if a player were to enter the sandstone pyramid, go to the top floor where the hidden music disc is. There will then be four blocks of Gold on top of a single block of Obsidian. It resembles the Tower of Pimps that was created by Gavin Free of Achievement Hunter. In their video "Let's Play Minecraft Part 2- On A Rail!" Gavin first created the structure while drunk by using materials they needed to get the On A Rail achievement. The Tower of Pimps has now become one of the many things that are featured in the majority of their Minecraft videos. Currently is no longer an Xbox 360 exclusive as it also appears on the PS3 and PS4 versions
Stampy's House[]
In Title Update 19, 4J Studios built a replica of the popular Minecraft YouTuber StampyLongHead's house that he made in his Minecraft Xbox series.
Gallery[]
References[]
- ↑ Minecraft is Experiencing Some Problems (Mojang Blog) – April 1, 2014
- ↑ Minecraft snapshot 15w14a - The Love and Hugs Update (Mojang Blog) – April 1, 2015
- ↑ Dinnerbone on 15w14a and the QR Code (Twitter) – April 2, 2015
- ↑ Minecraft 1.RV - the Trendy Update Pre-release 1 (Mojang Blog) – March 31, 2016
- ↑ Introducing: The Mine & Craft Digital Leisure Device (Minecraft.net) – April 1, 2017
- ↑ Java Edition Textures Finally Perfected (Minecraft.net) – April 1, 2018
- ↑ MINECRAFT 3D REDISCOVERED (Minecraft.net) – April 1, 2019
- ↑ Every Update Imaginable Coming to Minecraft (Minecraft.net) – April 1, 2020