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 in the game.

Halloween
Between October 20 and November 3, bats can spawn at a light level of 6 or less instead of the normal light level 3 or less.

On October 31, zombies, zombie villagers, husks, drowned, skeletons, strays, zombified piglins, and wither skeletons may sometimes 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 every Halloween thereafter.

Also, the only splash text shown is "OOoooOOOoooo! Spooky!"

Christmas
From December 24–26, chests, large chests, and trapped chests have their textures changed to Christmas chests that resemble wrapped Christmas presents. This was added in Java Edition 1.4.6 for Christmas 2012. A texture file called "skis.png" was also added in Java Edition 1.4.6 in the same folder as the Christmas chests, but it was 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!" and repeated in every Christmas since.

The change doesn't apply to chests inside boats.

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, and is unable to be seen again in-game even if you go back to 1.14.2-pre2 and change the time of the device to May 17-20 of 2019.

Thing banner pattern
A "Thing" pattern can be crafted using an enchanted golden apple and paper. When put on a banner, it displays Mojang Studios' old logo in whatever color dye was used. It is labeled "Thing" in the inventory. The Swedish word "mojäng" means gadget or thing.

Withers on blocks
The wither can be spotted in two blocks. A 2×2 painting shows the soulsand T-shape and the three wither skeleton skulls. The chiseled red sandstone block depicts the wither on the edges of the block.

Textures
Some textures have hidden things in space unused by the game. Some of these are accessible by unzipping client.jar found in the versions folder.

Guardian
Before the Texture Update, in the guardian and elder guardian textures, there was an unused area saying "jeb".

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. In the bottom left, the word "Jappa" can be seen. This is likely another signature, this time from the texture artist, Jappa, who was in charge of the Texture Update.

Zombie pigman
Before the Texture Update, in an unused area for the zombie pigman texture, the words "THX XAPHOBIA" could be seen. This was written by Notch to give credit and thanks to the original creator of the texture, XaPhobia.

Creeper
The first released texture of the creeper. The old leaf texture is overlaying a lighter version of the pig test texture with some green added. Areas for arms and long legs are seen, which were never used.

Textures hidden in transparency
Some of the textures have pixels set to 0 opacity, which makes them appear transparent when viewed with most image viewers. However, the color information of these pixels is still present and can be retrieved by disabling the alpha channel. Most of these textures are probably leftovers from the creation of the texture, that the editing program didn't erase but instead simply set the opacity to 0. Textures listed here had their alpha channel disabled to reveal unused/hidden pixels in the texture. Most of the invisible pixels are from development of the texture or already existing texture has been used as a template during development.

Mobs
There are hidden pixels in these mobs. As of 1.19.2, all except the ocelot still have them.

Alex
In version 1.8, Alex was added to the game. Invisible pixels include Alex's face with glasses, a reference to Jeb, a Mojang developer, as well as an unfinished arm texture similar to Steve's used texture.

Silverfish
The silverfish was added in Beta 1.8, but the texture already exists in Beta 1.7. Invisible pixels consist of a few different colored regions around the "hair" textures.

Endermite
The snapshot texture of the endermite is seen underneath the new one.

Bat
An unused face texture can be seen and the spider head texture is seen under the wing. The spider texture was used as a template for the bat.

Ocelot and cat
The ocelot and the cat variants were added in version 1.2.1. The ocelot's hidden pixels contain an extra head texture, and all the cat textures feature an orange texture with black lines across it. After the 1.14 update, the ocelot texture no longer contains hidden pixels. Most of the new cat textures are edited from the old ones, as indicated by the similar hidden patterns. The textures also appear to have been cropped, since a large part of the old hidden texture is missing, with the exception of the red cat texture, which appears to be unchanged.

Wolf
The wolf was added in Beta 1.4. All four wolf texture files feature similar hidden textures, which suggests, that they were created by modifying the same file. The most extreme is the collar texture, which originally contains only the collar, but there is an entire wolf texture hidden in transparency.

Blaze
The blaze has a hidden body texture.

Magma cube
A second pair of eyes are visible.

Wither
The Wither's Armor texture was based on creeper's charged armor. In the Wither textures, there is a copy of the main head under the smaller one. The light blue color is visible without removing transparency.

Guardians
It seems that a template texture was used for designing the guardians.

Vex
The vex head is bigger and there seems to be leftover wing design.

Zombies
The zombie textures have a villager zombie head hidden in its texture.

Capes
Some cape textures have a secret on the underside where it is not very visible.

Languages
There are five joke languages available at the language menu: Pirate Speak, LOLCAT, Shakespearean English, Anglish (puristic English), and ɥsᴉlƃuƎ (ɯopᵷuᴉʞ pǝʇᴉu∩) (upside-down English).

Minecraft is also translated into tlhIngan Hol, the Klingon language from Star Trek; Quenya, one of the Elvish languages from Lord of the Rings; Lojban, a conlang made by the LLC (Logical Language Group); and Esperanto, a conlang created by L.L. Zamenhof.

If a player types "excitedze" into the search bar in the recipe book, their language is automatically switched to Pirate Speak. "ExcitedZe" is the username of Maria Lemón, a former Mojang Studios staff member.

Naming mobs
Several mobs can be renamed by using a name tag to create an effect.

Upside-down mobs


As of Java Edition 1.6, any mob (with the exception of the ender dragon, squid and glow squid) named "Dinnerbone" or "Grumm" (case sensitive) through name tags, commands, or any other method, cause it to render upside-down. The mob's behavior does not change.

This also applies to players, allowing Dinnerbone and Grumm's avatars to be rendered upside-down. This can be toggled using the "Show cape" button from "Skin Settings". $$, if the player names themselves Dinnerbone or Grumm, they are rendered upside-down. This works only if the player did not sign into Xbox Live.

Rainbow sheep


Naming a sheep "jeb_" using a name tag or a renamed spawn egg causes it to continually cycle through all colors a sheep can be dyed. When sheared using shears, however, the sheep drop wool of the original color of the sheep rather than the color that currently appears on the sheep. $$, if a sheep is named jeb_, and then sheared, the leftover wool on its skin continues to cycle through all the colors.

"Toast the Bunny"
When Ryan Holtz was developing rabbits, user xyzen420 asked him to make a skin that would look like his girlfriend's lost rabbit, Toast. Now, naming a rabbit with a name tag or a rabbit spawn egg called "Toast" causes the rabbit's skin pattern to look like Toast as a memorial. This also works if the player attempts to name The Killer Bunny; although while the rabbit's appearance uses the Toast skin, it can still attack as it would without the given name. When the player is killed by the renamed Killer Bunny, the death message says " was slain by Toast". "Toast" is re-textured to have black spots on its fur.

"Johnny"
If a vindicator is named "Johnny" or has its  tag set to , it attacks any nearby mobs except other illagers and ghasts. This references the movie The Shining. Zoglins also behave in this manner.

deadmau5's ears


With the addition of the cape, 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 deadmau5's skin.

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

Notch's death
When Notch died in-game, he dropped an additional apple along with his inventory. At a certain time in-game, these were unobtainable. However, this was removed

Never displayed splash
Within the "texts" folder, there is a text file named. The text file contains all the splashes that appear on the title screen. One of them is "This message will never appear on the splash screen, isn't that weird?" As its text implies, the splash is never displayed. However in Legacy Console Edition it does display, but it has never been confirmed if it is a bug or an intentional feature.

missingno Splash
In older versions, if one were to delete the file splashes.txt without also deleting the META-INF folder, the splash text on the title screen would appear as "missingno". This is a reference to the infamous glitch Pokémon found in the first generation of Pokémon games. This was later changed to a, which is displayed with Minecraft's Unicode font as a box with the letters "ZWNBSP" within it.

The splash was added in Java Edition Alpha v1.0.12 and it's the only vanilla version with this splash by default since splashes.txt was not added yet.

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

This splash was removed in Java Edition 1.8.5, since Notch no longer works for Mojang.

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

Coronavirus
Special splashes are displaying due to the COVID-19 pandemic. They include "Wash your hands!" and "Support elderly relatives and friends!"

Tributes to Technoblade
Following the announcement on June 30, 2022 that popular Minecraft YouTuber Technoblade passed away from stage 4 cancer, Mojang added his skin’s crown to the pig on the Java Edition art in memory of him. A splash text in his honor was also added in 1.19.1. The launcher art was later changed to reflect The Wild Update, removing the pig and the crown from the launcher.

Removed Easter eggs
Several Easter eggs have been removed from Minecraft.

Command blocks
Command blocks have various Easter eggs with messages being added to the previous output.

Searge
Running "Searge" as the command in the command block without a preceding " " now sets the previous output to "#itzlipofutzli". This Easter egg is case insensitive.

Searge says
If the command is run via command block, it gives various messages prefixed with "Searge says: " as the previous output when activated. The following messages exist:
 * "Yolo"
 * "/achievement take achievement.understandCommands @p"
 * "Ask for help on twitter"
 * "/deop @p"
 * "Scoreboard deleted, commands blocked"
 * "Contact helpdesk for help"
 * "/testfornoob @p"
 * "/trigger warning"
 * "Oh my god, it's full of stats"
 * "/kill @p[name=!Searge]"
 * "Have you tried turning it off and on again?"
 * "Sorry, no help today".

This no longer works in 1.13 or above ; instead the command now runs normally, but the previous output gives only the last line ("/xp -> experience") due to there being space for just one line.

Java Edition launcher


Before the release of the Java Edition launcher version 2.1.497x, the launcher contained multiple Easter eggs. If the player hovered their cursor over the "Play" button for a few seconds, a random mob would appear in the bottom right corner of the launcher. In the top left corner of the launcher, the player could see a translucent creeper face. There was about a $1/11$ chance of the creeper face being replaced with a shrugging emoticon, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. When the player clicked on either of these, they turned solid white. Clicking them again would return them to their translucent state. In addition, if the player pressed, the experience orb pickup sound plays. These can no longer work because the launcher has since been updated.

Tower of Pimps
In the old Legacy Console Edition TU12-TU13 Tutorial World, on the top floor of the sandstone pyramid, there are four blocks of gold on top of a block of obsidian. This is the "Tower of Pimps". It 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 Xbox 360 Edition and Java Edition.

Stampylonghead reference
In the Legacy Console Edition TU19/CU7/1.12 Tutorial World, there was an island in the northeast side of the world and it had a remake of Stampy's house along with his boat, the S.S. Stumpy.

Additionally, the boat was seen in the trailer for Legacy Console Edition TU19/CU7.

Portal
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
The achievement for traveling a significant amount of distance by minecart is called “On A Rail”, which is most likely a reference to Half-Life Chapter 8, in which the protagonist, Gordon Freeman must navigate a complex railway while fighting marines and aliens.

Super Mario
Elytra's behavior, Tommaso tweets, "is like Mario 64" in reference to the wing cap from Super Mario 64.

One of the paintings is a reference to Donkey Kong.

Star Fox
The achievement for using a trident enchanted with Riptide is called "Do a Barrel Roll!" in reference to the popular phrase said by Peppy Hare in Star Fox 64 and Star Fox Zero, telling the player to execute an aerial maneuver called a barrel roll.

2001: A Space Odyssey
Before 1.13, using in a command block displays one of a few joke messages, one of which is "Oh my god, it's full of stats", a reference to a quote from the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey. In the witty comments of a crash report, there are two other quotes, "I'm sorry, Dave." and "Quite honestly, I wouldn't worry myself about that."

Age of Empires
If an evoker sees a blue sheep, it turns the sheep into a red sheep while uttering "wololo". This is a reference to the Priest unit from the Age of Empires real-time strategy game series, which would utter "wololo" while converting enemy units to their side, changing their color. The evoker specifically uses the sound sample from the 1999 title Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings.

Terraria
The summoning mechanism for the wither boss, according to Jens, was inspired by the summoning mechanisms for bosses in Terraria. The game is also directly referenced in a splash text, "Also try Terraria!".

Counter Strike 1.6
Three of the paintings in the game are of stages in Counter Strike 1.6, de_aztec 1 & 2 and Target successfully bombed.

Grim Fandango
The painting 'Mortal Coil' is a reference to the character Bruno Martinez from Grim Fandango

Project Zomboid
One of the games splash texts recommends the game Project Zomboid. "Also try Project Zomboid!"

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

"Someone is closing me!"


After a crash, the second-to-last line of text on the game output launcher tab says "Someone is closing me!"

Enchanting symbols


The enchanting symbols shown on the enchantment selection contain random words using the standard galactic alphabet from Commander Keen games, but the words in enchanting tables are randomized and do not correlate with any enchantments. This language shows up in the 10th anniversary of Minecraft, as a puzzle.

Disc 11
When the ogg for music 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 C418.

Cave sound 14


When ambient sound 14 is put into a spectrogram, it appears to be a creeper face.

Crimson Forest ambience
Many of the sounds were created using balloons.

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. It can be spawned only by using commands, and only $$.

"Super Secret" settings
In snapshot 13w36a for Java Edition 1.7.2, Dinnerbone added a Super Secret Settings button, which could be viewed in the options screen. Clicking it would blare a random game sound with a lower pitch and change the shader of the screen. These effects would not necessarily work on computers without a graphics card that supported OpenGL 2.1. This was removed in snapshot 15w31a for 1.9.

Crash screens
When the game runs into a fatal error and crashes, the crash log includes a message such as "Who set us up the TNT?" or "Hi. I'm Minecraft, and I'm a crashaholic."

Debug profile results
Debug profile results (triggered via ) contain witty comments at the top, much like with crash reports.


 * Shiny numbers!
 * Am I not running fast enough? :(
 * I'm working as hard as I can!
 * Will I ever be good enough for you? :(
 * Speedy. Zooooom!
 * Hello world
 * 40% better than a crash report.
 * Now with extra numbers
 * Now with fewer numbers
 * Now with the same numbers
 * You should add flames to things, it makes them go faster!
 * Do you feel the need for... optimization?
 * *cracks redstone whip*
 * Maybe if you treated it better then it'll have more motivation to work faster! Poor server.

Item and block NBT tags
If one were to use to give themselves an item that can mine a non-existent block ID (any block ID that is not in the game), the text simply displays "missingno". This is a reference to the infamous glitch Pokémon MissingNo., which can be found in the first generation of Pokémon games.

Scottish Steve and Swedish Alex
$$, in the default skin pack or the legacy skin pack, the Scottish Steve and Swedish Alex skins are references to the locations of the companies developing the game. 4J Studios is located in Scotland, and Mojang is located in Sweden. These both can be used in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate as color/skin swaps for Steve.

Item models
Several items when worn on the head (using ) have unique placements. The end rod and spyglass protrude from the head like a horn, the lightning rod sits at the side like a snorkel, fish look like an ear and mic piece, banners display similar to how pillager captains wear them, fence gates are worn like glasses, bones are held in the mouth like a dog, leads go around the eye like a monocle, and feathers stick up at the back of the head.

Command blocks
In the language files for the key for the command block’s “Always Active” feature “advMode.mode.autoexec.bat”. A tribute to DOS based operating systems that made use of “AUTOEXEC.BAT” to run commands on startup of the system.