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 any other form of media. Minecraft features several Easter eggs hidden in the game.

On October 31, zombies, zombie villagers, husks, drowned, skeletons, strays, bogged, parched, zombified piglins, and wither skeletons have a 22.5% chance to wear carved pumpkins and a 2.5% chance to wear jack o'lanterns on their heads. This feature was added in Java Edition 1.4.2 for Halloween 2012 onward, and to Legacy Console Edition sometime after.​^{[more information needed]}

The only splash text shown on October 31 is "OOoooOOOoooo! Spooky!"

• 
  A zombie with a carved pumpkin on its head.
• 
  A spider jockey with a carved pumpkin.
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  A wither skeleton with a jack o'lantern.
• 
  A baby zombified piglin with a jack o'lantern.
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  A zombie and a skeleton wearing a jack o'lantern and a pumpkin respectively.
• 
  A wither skeleton wearing a jack o'lantern in the Nether.
• 
  "OOoooOOOoooo! Spooky!" splash.

From December 24–26, chests, large chests, trapped chests and minecarts with chest 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 the same folder as the Christmas chests, but it was added by Dinnerbone as a red herring. This was re-added for Christmas 2013,^[1] along with a new "rain feature"—pigs riding chickens, not planned to be 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 boats with chests.^[2]

• 
  "Merry X-mas!" splash.
• 
  skis.png
• 
  Normal chests.
• 
  Large chests.

The only splash that can be seen on January 1 is "Happy new year!".

• 
  "Happy new year!" splash.

A thing banner 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.

Many chiseled blocks have mobs or references to mobs on them.

• Chiseled cinnabar has a cave spider.
• Chiseled nether bricks has a wither skeleton face.
• Chiseled polished blackstone has a piglin's snout.
• Chiseled red sandstone has a wither.
• Chiseled resin bricks has a creaking face.
• Chiseled sandstone has a creeper face.
• Chiseled sulfur has a sulfur cube face.
• Chiseled tuff has a wind-like pattern from the wind charge shot by a breeze.

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.

In the texture for the armor stand, in an unused area in the bottom right, the name "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 name "Jappa" can be seen. This is likely another signature, this time from the texture artist, Jappa, who was in charge of the Texture Update. Another name was by Chiwi, who updated the Smooth Stone base plate texture.

• 
  Armor stand texture before the Texture Update
• 
  Armor stand texture before 1.18
• 
  Current armor stand texture

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

• 
  The Translator cape has a big pink T on its underside.
• 
  The Chinese Translator cape has a small pixelated Chinese flag on its underside.
• 
  cheapsh0t's cape has a small pixelated Japanese flag on its underside.
• 
  The Prismarine cape has a dark prismarine block texture on its underside.
• 
  The Scrolls Champion cape has a big yellow S on its underside.
• 
  The Turtle cape has a turtle's belly on its underside.
• 
  The Birthday cape has a big yellow star on its underside, similar to that of the Millionth Customer cape.
• 
  The 15th Anniversary cape has the number 15 on its underside because it was released on Minecraft's 15th birthday.

The cloud texture has a creeper face in it, which can be occasionally visible in-game in the sky.

• 
  The clouds texture with a black background for visibility.

There are five joke languages available at the language menu: Pirate Speak, LOLCAT, Shakespearean English, Anglish (puristic English), and ɥsᴉlƃuƎ (uʍoᗡ ǝpᴉsd∩) (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 created by the Logical Language Group; toki pona, a conlang created by Sonja Lang; 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.^[3]

Several mobs can be renamed by using a name tag to create an effect. These names are all case sensitive.

Any mob (with the exception of the ender dragon, squid and glow squid) named "Dinnerbone" or "Grumm" through name tags, commands, or any other method, is rendered 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 "Cape" button from the "Skin Customization" menu.^[4] In Bedrock Edition, if the player names themselves "Dinnerbone" or "Grumm", they are rendered upside-down. This works only if the player is not signed-in into Xbox Live.^[verify]

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 drops 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.

When Ryan Holtz was developing rabbits, user xyzen420 asked him to make a skin that would look like his girlfriend's lost rabbit, Toast.^[5] 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 "<playername> was slain by Toast". "Toast" is re-textured to have black spots on its fur.

If a vindicator is named "Johnny" or has its Johnny tag set to 1b, it attacks any nearby mobs except other illagers, agents‌^{[BE & edu only]}, and ghasts. It will also try to attack creakings while also running away from them. This references the movie The Shining, where the character Jack Torrance utters the line "here's Johnny," itself a reference to The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.

With the addition of capes, Notch also added ears for deadmau5. The ears are additional geometry attached to the player's head, with the texture contained within deadmau5's skin file. deadmau5 cannot disable his ears; erasing the ear texture from the skin file would still render them with a solid black color. deadmau5's 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.

Within the "texts" folder, there is a text file named splashes.txt. 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?" If the text file is modified to only contain this string of text, no splash is displayed. As the text implies, the splash is never displayed. However, in Legacy Console Edition, it does display, though it has never been confirmed if this is a bug or an intentional feature.

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

Following the announcement on June 30, 2022 that popular Minecraft YouTuber Technoblade passed away from stage 4 metastatic sarcoma, a rare form of cancer, Mojang added his skin's crown to the pig on the Java Edition art in memory of him. A splash text "Technoblade never dies!" was also added in his honor in Java Edition 1.19.1 and Bedrock Edition 1.19.10. The launcher art was later changed to reflect The Wild Update, removing the pig and the crown from the launcher.

A Technoblade pig also appears in A Minecraft Movie. Henry asks, "Is he some kind of king?", to which Steve responds, "No, that’s a legend."

Portal

• In Bedrock Edition, the achievement for crafting a cake is called The Lie, likely in reference to the phrase "the cake is a lie" from the video game Portal.
• The April Fools snapshot 24w14potato contains the splash "Oh hi! So, how are you holding up? BECAUSE I'M A POTATO!", a line said by GLaDOS in the video game Portal 2.

Half-Life

• In Bedrock Edition, the achievement for traveling 500 meters by minecart is called "On A Rail", likely in reference to the chapter of the same name in the video game Half-Life.

Team Fortress 2

• Java Edition Beta 1.4, released for April Fools' Day 2011, introduced the locked chest which when opened displayed the name "Steve Co. Supply Crate", a reference to the Mann Co. Supply Crates found in the video game Team Fortress 2.
• The splash text "The creeper is a spy!" is a reference to the Spy class in Team Fortress 2, and the various voice lines that other characters say to alert others of his presence.

Counter-Strike

• Three of the paintings in the game are of stages in Counter-Strike 1.6: de_aztec 1 & 2 and Target successfully bombed.^[6]

Super Mario

• One of the paintings is a reference to the Donkey Kong arcade game.^[7]

  

The Shining

• If a vindicator is named "Johnny", it behaves like a zoglin, attacking every mob except agents, ghasts, illagers and themselves. It cycles between attacking creakings and running away from them. This references the scene "Here's Johnny" from the movie The Shining.^[8]

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 its retellings, telling the player to execute an aerial maneuver called a barrel roll.

2001: A Space Odyssey

• Before 1.13, using /help 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.^[9]

Grim Fandango

• The painting 'Mortal Coil' is partly a reference to the character Bruno Martinez from Grim Fandango.^[10]

Terraria

• One of the games splash texts recommends the game Terraria. "Also try Terraria!"

Project Zomboid

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

Pokémon

• The translation key in Bedrock Edition for invalid structures is feature.missingno, likely a reference to the famous glitched Pokémon known as MissingNo. in the first generation of Pokémon games.
  • The term "missingno" is also used in Java Edition internally for the resource locations of the missing texture and missing model. It was also previously used for splash texts when none could be loaded, as well as items with invalid entries in CanDestroy/CanPlaceOn NBT tags.

Quake

• The "Quake Pro" FOV option is likely a reference to the Quake series of first-person shooter games, specifically the fact that pro players often use an extremely high FOV to see as much around them as possible.

Doctor Who

• The name of the Regeneration effect when the LOLCAT: Kingdom of Cats language option is selected is "Time Lordz Buffeh", a likely reference to the television series Doctor Who, particularly the fact that the race of Time Lords can regenerate into a new body.

World of Goo

• One of the games splash texts recommends the game World of Goo. "Also try World Of Goo!"

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!".

• 
  Minceraft in the crash logs.
• 
  Minceraft in-game.

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

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 10 Years of Minecraft as a puzzle.

When ambient sound 14 is put into a spectrogram, a creeper face can be seen. Samuel Åberg said that he made this sound with a spectrogram program.^[11]

• 
  The creeper face in the ambient sound 14 spectrogram

If ambient sound 21 is listened to closely or put in a spectrogram, it spells out Morse code: "-... . .... .. -. -.." , which translates to "behind". When Samuel Åberg was asked about this, he responded with "Creepy 👀".^[12]

• 
  "BEHIND" being spelt in Morse code in the ambient sound 21 spectrogram

Many of the sounds were created using balloons.^[13]

If the .ogg file for "11" is turned into a spectrogram in an audio editor, the static at the end displays an image of Steve's face and the numbers 12418. The numbers are a visual signature, where "C" is hexadecimal for "12", and combined with "418" creates "C418".

• 
  The static at the end of Disc 11 viewed in a spectrogram. Steve's face can be seen here as well as the numbers 12418.
• 
  The numbers 12418

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 in Java Edition.

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 (triggered via /debug) contain witty comments at the top, much like with crash reports.

• I'd Rather Be Surfing
• 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. Zoooooom!
• Hello world
• 40% better than a crash report.
• Now with extra numbers
• Now with less 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.

Several items when worn on the head (using /item replace) 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 raid 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, feathers stick up at the back of the head, and shelf mushrooms are held in front of the head like a beak.

• 
  Steve wearing end rod
• 
  Alex wearing end rod
• 
  Steve wearing raw cod
• 
  Alex wearing raw cod
• 
  Steve wearing white banner
• 
  Alex wearing white banner
• 
  Steve wearing bone
• 
  Alex wearing bone
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  Steve wearing lead
• 
  Alex wearing lead
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  Steve wearing feather
• 
  Alex wearing feather
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  Steve wearing oak fence gate
• 
  Alex wearing oak fence gate
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  Steve wearing shelf mushroom
• 
  Alex wearing shelf mushroom
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  Steve wearing spyglass
• 
  Alex wearing spyglass
• 
  Steve wearing lightning rod
• 
  Alex wearing lightning rod

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

In the language files, the key for the command block’s “Always Active” feature is advMode.mode.autoexec.bat, a tribute to DOS-based operating systems that made use of the file "AUTOEXEC.BAT" to run commands upon startup of the system.

Several Easter eggs have been removed from Minecraft.

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

If the command /help is run via a command block, it gave various messages prefixed with "Searge says: " as the previous output when activated. The following messages existed:

• "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 (MC-124295); instead the /help command now runs normally, but the previous output gives only the last line ("/xp -> experience") due to there being space for just one line.

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 ctrl+b, the experience orb pickup sound plays. These no longer work since the launcher has since been updated.

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.^[14]

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 several buildings from Minecraft YouTuber Stampylonghead, including his house along with his boat, the S.S. Stumpy, not to be confused with the S.S. Stampy.^[15]

Additionally, the boat was seen in the trailer for Legacy Console Edition TU19/CU7.^[16]

A world based on the map, containing all of his creations, would later be released by 4J Studios on the Marketplace in 2024 as "Stampy's Lovely World".^[17]

In July 29, 2010, after Minecraft got over 1000 sales in 24 hours, Notch decided to celebrate by reuploading Alpha v1.0.13_01 with the Minecraft logo being replaced by "1K IN 24h".

It was since been removed in Alpha v1.0.14 by reverting it to the previous version.

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.

When the account Notch died in-game, he dropped an additional apple along with his inventory. However, this feature never worked in multiplayer due to a bug.^{[citation needed]} From Infdev 20100327 until snapshot 11w48a, this was the only way to legitimately obtain apples.^[18] This feature no longer occurs.^[19][20]

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.

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 glitched Pokémon MissingNo. found in the first generation of Pokémon games. This was later changed to a zero-width no-break space, which was originally displayed in 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 all splashes were temporarily removed.

• 
  Splash in Alpha v1.0.12.
• 
  The missingno splash in 1.13.2.
• 
  The missingno splash in 19w12b.
• 
  The missingno splash since 1.14 (19w13a).

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!"^[21] This was reverted to the way they were before on May 20, 2019, and is unable to be seen again in-game even when going back to 1.14.2-pre2 and changing the time of the device to May 17–20 of 2019.

Models
Full cake
1 slice eaten
2 slices eaten
3 slices eaten

Before the Texture Update, in the guardian and elder guardian textures, there was an unused area saying "jeb," marking Jens Bergensten as the designer of the texture.

• 
  Elder guardian.
• 
  Normal guardian.

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.^[22][23]

• 
  Zombie pigman texture