Easter eggs

An easter egg is an intentional hidden message, inside joke, or feature in a work such as a computer program, web page, video game, television program, movie, book, or crossword. Minecraft features several easter eggs hidden within the game.

Holidays

April Fools 2011

Main article: Locked Chest

The Minecraft "store" in seizure mode.

The Locked Chest was a naturally generated block used as the premise of Notch's 2011 April Fool's Day joke. Upon attempting to open the chest, a message would appear stating that a Steve Co. Supply Crate Key is needed, and that one could be purchased at the Minecraft store.

This concept is a reference to the Team Fortress 2 item drop system, where you can pick up an item while playing. One of the receivable items is called Mann Co. Supply Crate, which required a key purchased from the Mann Co. Store, a microtransaction system integrated into the Steam client. The font used in the GUI is also the same as the one used in Team Fortress 2.

Within the Minecraft store, there were many easter eggs:

• Clicking on the proceed to checkout button triggers a screamer in which a Velociraptor from the film Jurassic Park will growl loudly and fly across the screen. Once clicked, the Proceed button also changes its display name to 'Fiddlesticks!!!1.
• Entering items totaling over $10,000 into the cart causes a window pop-up asking if you are prone to seizures. Clicking OK makes the screen start flashing.
  • Later, the window pop-up said: "If you are prone to seizures, click cancel.". This was done likely to avoid lawsuits because of the rapidly changing color flashes.
• The script that causes the Velociraptor to appear has a reference to the Konami Code in it:

		//Determine Entrance
		if(options.enterOn == 'timer') {
			setTimeout(init, options.delayTime);
		} else if(options.enterOn == 'click') {
			_this.bind('click', function(e) {
				e.preventDefault();
				if(!locked) {
					init();
				}
			})
		} else if(options.enterOn == 'konami-code'){
		    var kkeys = [], konami = "38,38,40,40,37,39,37,39,66,65";
		    $(window).bind("keydown.raptorz", function(e){
		        kkeys.push( e.keyCode );
		        if ( kkeys.toString().indexOf( konami ) >= 0 ) {
		        	init();
		        	$(window).unbind('keydown.raptorz');
		        }
		    }, true);

Halloween

On October 31, Zombies, Skeletons, and other mobs may sometimes wear Pumpkins or Jack 'o' Lanterns on their heads. They will occasionally drop these blocks if killed. This feature was added in version 1.4.2 for Halloween 2012 and Halloween 2013.

• 

  Zombies during Halloween.

• 

  A Spider Jockey with a pumpkin head.

Christmas

Main articles: Chest § History and Unimplemented features § Joke features

From December 24–26, Chests and their larger counterpart have their textures changed to Xmas Chests. This was added in version 1.4.6 for Christmas 2012. Trapped Chests, however, aren't affected. A texture known in the game files as "skis.png", was also added in 1.4.6 in the same folder as the Xmas Chests, however these textures were added by Dinnerbone as a red herring. This was re-added for Christmas 2013, along with a new 'rain'-feature - pigs riding chickens (this is not planned to be fully implemented).

• Skis.png

  skis.png

• Xmas chest.png

  Normal chests

• Xmas large chest.png

  Large chests

April Fools 2013

Main article: Minecraft 2.0

April Fools 2014

One of the Villager skins. (The unimplemented Generic Villager)

A post was added to Mojang's blog for the joke.

“	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.	„
	— The Minecraft Team

In-game, villagers still acted the same, (with their programmed AI) but they made different sounds. Every player's skin was replaced by a villager skin, complete with the trademark nose. Not all players had the villager skin. Skins varied by player. Other villager noises were implemented in non-villager parts of the game. All noises were replaced with the sound effects of Element Animation's "TEAVSRP" (The Element Animation Villager Sounds Resource Pack). Mojang also added in-game villager music. The title screen music contains a parody of the Game of Thrones theme, due to the new series starting in early April and also because of its being included in the original trailer for "TEAVSRP." Jeb also claimed the villager got his twitter account.

The skins were reverted to the way they were before on April 2nd, 2014.

Grum released the villager skins on reddit on April 1st, 2014. There were seven variants, including a base skin.

An updated version of the TEAVSRP resource pack, complete with the new music, was released by Element Animation on April 2nd, 2014.

Soon afterward; Element animation released this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmM1wl2XQiE&list=UU0AE_22J0kAo30yjasaeFqw

.minecraft & minecraft.jar

Guardian Texture

When you open the 1.8 .jar in the Entities Folder both Guardian textures (in an unused space) it says Jeb.

• Guardian elder.png

  Elder Guardian

• Derp!.png

  Normal Guardian

Armor Stand Texture

In the texture for the Armor Stand, in an unused area in the bottom right, the word "Searge" can be seen in a black box. This is presumably put there as a signature by Searge, the developer that implemented the Armor Stands.

• Armor stand texture.png

  Armor Stand Texture

Pirate Speak

Under languages you can select Pirate speak as a language. This will change everything to "Pirate Speak"

Zombie pigman

In an unused area for the zombie pigman texture, the words "THX XAPHOBIA" can be seen. This was written by Notch to give credit to the original creator of the texture, XaPhobia.

• Pigzombie.png

  Zombie pigman texture

Splashes

Never displayed splash

Within the "texts" folder, there will be a document labeled "splashes". The document contains all the splashes you see on the title screen. One of them is "This message will never appear on the splash screen, isn't that weird?" If this splash is the only splash in the splashes folder the game will get stuck in an infinite loop. This splash message displays normally in the Xbox360 version.

missingno

If one were to delete the file splash.txt without deleting the META-INF folder first, the splash text on the title screen would switch to missingno. This is a reference to the infamous glitch Pokémon found in the first generation of Pokémon games, MissingNo.

• 

  Old missingno

• 

  missingno as of 1.4.7.

Notch's Birthday

On 1st June, Notch's Birthday, the only splash that is displayed is "Happy Birthday, Notch!"

"Important" message

In the .minecraft/assets/virtual/legacy folder, there is a file named READ_ME_I_AM_VERY_IMPORTANT with the following message:

 _    _  ___  ______ _   _ _____ _   _ _____ 
| |  | |/ _ \ | ___ \ \ | |_   _| \ | |  __ \
| |  | / /_\ \| |_/ /  \| | | | |  \| | |  \/
| |/\| |  _  ||    /| . ` | | | | . ` | | __ 
\  /\  / | | || |\ \| |\  |_| |_| |\  | |_\ \
 \/  \/\_| |_/\_| \_\_| \_/\___/\_| \_/\____/

(Sorry about the cheesy 90s ASCII art.)

Everything in this folder that does not belong here will be deleted.
This folder will be kept sync with the Launcher at every run.
If you wish to modify assets/resources in any way, use Resource Packs.


Ta,
Dinnerbone of Mojang

If you do end up putting anything in the folder, it will be deleted.

debug-profile results

The 'profile-results' in the 'debug' folder's first two lines say this:

---- Minecraft Profiler Results ----
// *cracks redstone whip*

Other

Minceraft

Main article: Menu screen § Minceraft

There is a 0.01% chance that the title screen will display "Minceraft" instead of "Minecraft". The beginning of crash logs can have the phrase "You should try our sister game, Minceraft!", too.

• 

  Minceraft easter egg in 1.2.3.

Notch's Death

When Notch dies in-game, he drops an additional Red Apple along with his inventory. This, however, no longer works.

Upside-down mobs

As of 1.6, naming any mob "Dinnerbone" or "Grumm" (first letter must be capitalized) using a name tag or a renamed spawn egg will cause it to turn upside-down. This also allows Dinnerbone and Grumm's avatars to be rendered upside-down. This is actually an intended feature.

Disco sheep

Naming a sheep jeb_ using a name tag or a renamed spawn egg will cause it to appear to constantly fade through all colors. When shaved using shears, however, the sheep will bear wool of the original color of the sheep and not the color of the wool that the sheep appears to be. For example, when a blue sheep is named jeb_ and then changes to the color red, if shaved it will still drop blue wool.

"Toast the Bunny"

When Ryan Holtz was developing Rabbits, user xyzen420 requested Ryan skin a rabbit like his girlfriend's lost rabbit, Toast. Now, naming a Rabbit with a name tag or a Rabbit Spawn Egg called "Toast" will spawn/switch the rabbit's skin to look like Toast as a memorial.

The Killer Bunny

There is a 1/1000 chance that a rabbit will spawn as the Killer Bunny. This is a reference to The Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Tower of Pimps

Main article: Xbox 360 Tutorial Mode

In the Console Edition Tutorial World, at the Sandstone Pyramid, go to the top floor. There are four blocks of gold on top of a block of Obsidian, which is the "Tower of Pimps". The "Tower of Pimps" was created by Gavin Free of Achievement Hunter in their video "Let's Play Minecraft Part 2 - On a Rail!" and has become a symbol of the group's Let's Play Minecraft series, mainly as a trophy of their competitions in their Achievement City world within the Xbox 360 Edition and the PC version.

Disc 11

When the ogg for record 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. There's rumors about the face shown in the spectrogram; some people say that this "face" is that of Herobrine. C is the hexadecimal of 12, so 12418 is actually C418.

• 

  A portion of disc 11 when run through a spectrogram. Some features have been distinguished.

• 

  Another image of disc 11.

References to other franchises

Portal Reference

The achievement for crafting a cake is called "The Lie" in reference to the phrase "The cake is a lie!" from the popular Valve game Portal.

Half-Life Reference

The achievement for riding a rail for 1km on a minecart is called "On a rail!", a reference to a chapter in Valve's game Half-Life.

Inception Reference

The achievement for building a portal is called "We need to go deeper!", a reference to the film Inception.

Mario Reference

"Achievement get" is a Japanese Mario reference.

Launcher

"Super Secret" settings

In 13w36a, Dinnerbone added a Super Secret Settings button, which can be viewed in the options screen. Clicking it will blare a random sound with a lower pitch, add a filter into your game, and change the shader of the screen.

Crash Screens

Main article: Crash § Witty comments

When the game runs into a fatal error and crashes the crash log will also include a "message" such as "Hi. I'm Minecraft, and I'm a crashaholic." or "You should try our sister game, Minceraft!". The latter references another easter egg.

Item NBT Tags

If one were to use /give to give themselves an item that can mine a non-existent block ID (Any invalid block ID that isn't in the game) the text will simply display "missingno". This is a reference to the infamous glitch Pokémon of the same name found in the first generation of Pokémon games.

• 

  The "missingno" data tag on an Iron Pickaxe.