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.

2011


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

2014


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

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 "T.E.A.V.S.R.P" (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 "T.E.A.V.S.R.P" 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 TEAVSRP, complete with the new music, [ was released by Element Animation] on April 2, 2014.

Soon afterward; Element animation released.

2015


15w14a was released as a April Fools' joke for the version “1.10,” when the next update was supposed to be 1.9. This "Update" is called the Love and Hugs Update. There was also a QR code written in the snow that when scanned reads '1.9 The Combat Update'

Halloween
On October 31, zombies, skeletons, zombie pigmen, Creepers 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, Halloween 2014 and Halloween 2015.

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 Xmas chests. This was added in version 1.4.6 for Christmas 2012. 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".

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".

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.

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.

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 console versions.

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.

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



This splash was removed as of the 1.8.5 update.

Holiday Splashes
Various splashes will appear all day on many holidays, like "Happy New Year!" on January 1, 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.

"Toast the Bunny"
When Ryan Holtz was developing rabbits, user xyZenTV 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" 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 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.

Tower of Pimps


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.

Stampylonghead reference
In the new Console Edition TU19/CU7/1.12 Tutorial World there is an island in the north east side of the world and it has an old version of stampylonghead's house along with his boat, the S.S. Stumpy.

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

debug-profile results
The 'profile-results' in the 'debug' folder's first two lines say this: Minecraft Profiler Results // *cracks redstone whip*

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.

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



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. 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.

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 only be spawned using commands.

"Super Secret" settings
In snapshot 13w36a for 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 will also include a "message" such as "Hi. I'm Minecraft, and I'm a crashaholic.", "Somebody set us up the TNT.", or "You should try our sister game, Minceraft!". The latter references another easter egg.

Item and Block 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 is not 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.

Mojang Banner
A Mojang Banner can be crafted using an enchanted golden apple, a banner, and any dye (optional). It has the Mojang symbol on the front of the banner.

Scottish Steve and Swedish Alex
In Minecraft Console Edition, in the Default 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.

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

Searge
As of 1.9,, running "Searge" as the command in the command block without a preceding " " will now set the previous output to "#itzlipofutzli". This Easter egg is case insensitive.

Searge says
As of 1.9, 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".

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.

Super Mario 64 reference
The Elytra's behaviour, Tommaso tweets, "is like super mario 64" in reference to the wing cap. This, however, was unlikely intentional.