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.

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. (The 1 is a reference to the ! key being the same as the 1 key, and that sometimes people may accidentally leave the shift key while typing exclamation marks)
• 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 radpidly 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 31st, 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.

• 

  Zombies during Halloween.

• 

  A Spider Jockey with a pumpkin head.

Christmas

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

From December 24th-26th, 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.

• Skis.png

  skis.png

• Xmas chest.png

  Normal chests

• Xmas large chest.png

  Large chests

April Fools 2013

Main article: Minecraft 2.0

Minecraft.jar

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 Pokémon Red, Blue, Green and Yellow, MissingNo..

• 

  Old missingno

• 

  missingno as of 1.4.7.

Other

Minceraft

Main article: Menu screen § Minceraft

There is a .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.

Dinnerbone's death

Dinnerbone was slain in the first episode of Mindcrack UHC Season 11 by the user Docm77. In response to this, Dinnerbone hinted at the defeat in Minecraft by adding a new splash text, "What's up, Doc?", in the 13w23a snapshot. In the blogpost for the snapshot, he also placed a fake fixed bug inbetween other legitimate bug fixes:

[BUG MC-84211] – Remove ‘docm77′ mob as it is not working as intended

Instead of linking to the issue tracker, the bug linked to Docm77's "reenacted" scene on YouTube. The cover photo of the blogpost shows Docm77's head and Dinnerbone's head in a scene similar to the one where Dinnerbone was killed.

Upside-down mobs

Naming any mob "Dinnerbone" or "Grumm" (first letter must be capital) using a name tag or a renamed spawn egg will cause it to turn upside-down. This also causes 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 constantly change color.

Tower of Pimps

Main article: Xbox 360 Tutorial Mode

In the Xbox 360 Edition Tutorial World, at the Sandstone Pyramid, go to the top floor where the hidden Music Disc is. 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.

Launcher

Herobrine "bug fix"

In the Update News, many updates end the list of additions and changes with '- Removed Herobrine'. This is a running gag in the update news and also shows on the Mojang website.

"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.