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);

2013

Main article: Minecraft 2.0

During 2013, Mojang released a pre-release for a fake future version to various youtubers.

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 2, 2014.

Grum released the villager skins on reddit on April 1, 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 2, 2014.

Soon afterward; Element animation released "this video".

Halloween

On October 31, zombies, skeletons, zombie pigmen and wither skeletons may sometimes wear pumpkins or jack o'lanterns on their heads. These mobs will drop these blocks if killed using a tool enchanted with Looting. This feature was added in version 1.4.2 for Halloween 2012, Halloween 2013 and Halloween 2014.

• 

  Zombies during Halloween.

• 

  A spider jockey with a pumpkin on its head.

• 

  Skeletons wearing pumpkins and jack o'lanterns.

Christmas

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

From December 24 – 26, chests and large chests 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). This also happened again in 2014 with a new splash reading, "Merry X-Mas".

• 2014Xmas.png

  Christmas Splash

• Skis.png

  skis.png

• Xmas chest.png

  Normal chests

• Xmas large chest.png

  Large chests

Textures

Some textures have hidden things in space unused by the game.

Guardian

When you open the 1.8 .jar in the Entities Folder, both guardian textures (in an unused space) say "jeb".

• Guardian elder.png

  Elder guardian

• Guardian model.png

  Normal guardian

Armor stand

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 armor stands.

• Armor stand texture.png

  Armor stand texture

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 and thanks to the original creator of the texture, XaPhobia.

• Pigzombie.png

  Zombie pigman texture

Splashes

Main article: Special 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 June 1, Notch's Birthday, the only splash that is displayed is "Happy Birthday, Notch!"

Holidays

Various splashes will appear all day on many holidays, like "Happy New Year!" on January 1st, and "Merry X-mas!" on Christmas Day. They may change slightly every year.

Names

Easter eggs related to names of mobs or players.

Notch's death

When Notch dies in-game, he drops an additional 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 can be done by summoning a mob named "Dinnerbone" or "Grumm".

This also allows Dinnerbone and Grumm's avatars to be rendered upside-down, which can be toggled using the "Show cape" button from "Skin Settings". This feature is intended.

Jeb sheep

Naming a sheep "jeb_" (must have underscore) 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. This easter egg is currently not present in the console versions of the game.

"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.

deadmau5's ears

With the capes addition, Notch also added ears for the player deadmau5. The ears are "vanity items and are worn in addition to the player's skin", with the texture contained within his deadmau5's skin.

deadmau5 cannot disable his ears, as translucent part of a skin is automatically converted into a black color. His name tag is also programmed to render ten pixels higher to render above the ears.

The ears are set to show up based on the username, rather than the UUID of the player, meaning that if deadmau5 were to change his name, he would not keep his ears. They also remain visible when the player is invisible similar to armor, where as capes are not rendered at all if the holder is under this effect, as stated in the pseudo-code below:

IF (username == "deadmau5" AND onlineSkin == true)
  THEN {
    (render ears)
  }

IF (capeDownloaded == true AND capeDisabled == false AND invisiblePlayer == false)
  THEN {
    (render cape)
  }

Console tutorial world

Tower of Pimps

Main article: Xbox 360 Tutorial Mode

In the old Console Edition TU12-TU13 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.

Stampy's house

In the console tutorial world, youtuber stampylonghead's house can be found with minor changes, such as the love garden was replaced with 4J Studios Love Garden.

.minecraft

"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.

Enchanting symbols

The enchanting symbols shown on the enchantment selection contain random words using the standard galactic alphabet.

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.

The Killer Bunny

The Killer Bunny is a variant of the rabbit that is hostile to all players. This is a reference to The Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

"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. These effect may not work on computers without a recent graphics card as OpenGL 2.1 is required.

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.

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.

Mario reference

"Achievement get!" is a reference to the Japanese video game Super Mario Sunshine. When mistranslated into English, the collecting of a "shine" would be proclaimed with the words "Shine get!"