Java Edition removed features

Over the coarse of Minecraft's development, many major features have been removed.

Brick pyramid


For a brief time, brick pyramids were large structures that generated far away from the spawn point. These pyramids were completely solid; they had no interior rooms. A strange quality about these pyramids is that if one dug under it, a layer of dirt and stone extended under the pyramid. This suggests it spawned right on top of the terrain instead of being a complete pyramid with the bottom underground (such as desert temples). Pyramids were removed in later versions of Infdev.

Horse saddle


Horse saddles were items that were added along with horses that worked just like regular saddles, but for horses instead of pigs. The horse saddle was craftable during the time.

Crafting recipe:

Horse saddle items were later removed from the game, and normal saddles are now used for both pigs and horses.

Obsidian wall
Obsidian walls were used in Infdev to mark the positions of the cardinal directions. This created two intersecting planes extending just above the surface of the solid material that surrounds them. This has long since been removed.

Crying Obsidian


Crying Obsidian was a texture for a planned feature for setting a new spawn point. This has been replaced with beds, as sleeping in one will set your spawn point beside it.

Furniture


In Indev's terrain.png were two textures which might be interpreted as a chair (side and front). The actual purpose of those textures is unknown. The 2nd texture might be the side view of a table. On Word of Notch, furniture, and more specifically chairs, is mentioned a few times.

Gear


Gears were supposed to be added in Indev but never were, though (when hacked into the inventory) they did nothing when placed on a block, however, there would be an "invisible" block that would be able to be stood upon. They were later renamed to "Cog". They were effectively removed from the game when Redstone took its data value and its sprite was removed from the game.

Purple arrow
Purple arrows were shot by Skeletons in Survival Test and acted the same as regular Arrows, but the texture is not currently in use.



Skis


A texture known in the game files as "skis.png", was added in the Christmas/New Year update. Its textures were added by Dinnerbone as a red herring. The texture was removed in the Horse Update.

Studded armor


Studded armor existed as a series of sprites in the items.png file, between leather and chainmail armor, and in place of gold/diamond armor.