In its ten-plus years of development, Minecraft has been host to a variety of easter eggs, joke updates, fake announcements, and references to other pieces of pop culture. While many of these can be found across the different versions of the game, several remain exclusive to Minecraft Java Edition.
While seasoned Minecraft players may be familiar with easter eggs like the rainbow sheep named Jeb_ or Herobrine’s consistent mention in the game’s changelogs, many of the game’s easter eggs likely remain unseen by most players. This may be because they have been removed, they require the use of commands to access, or because they only appear in the Java version of the game. For players who want to know every easter egg they may have missed, here is every Minecraft easter egg that only appeared in Minecraft Java Edition.
Many of Minecraft’s easter eggs have come in the form of updates or announcements released on April 1 as part of an April Fools’ prank. While some of these have been fake announcements or joke websites, others have been updates for the Java version of Minecraft. While these updates add new, funny additions to the game, most or all of their features would be quickly removed.
Fake Minecraft Updates
The first of these updates came in 2013 when Mojang Studios released a pre-release for a fake future update called “Java Edition 2.0”. This update included many joke additions such as TNT Slabs, a friendly pink Wither, Chickens that lay diamonds instead of eggs, and Silverfish-like Redstone Bugs. Although this update was not available to most players via the Minecraft launcher, it was distributed to several Minecraft YouTubers.
2014 saw the first April Fools’ update available to all Java players in which every Minecraft player’s skin was replaced with one of several villager skins. The update also included new villager sounds from a resource pack created by “Element Animation”, a YouTube channel that releases villager-centered Minecraft animations. In 2015, Mojang released “The Love and Hugs Update” with additions like a Love meter that unlocks a Minesweeper-like minigame once full, as well as Potions of Caring and the removal of health and hunger.
The 2016 April Fools’ update, called the “Trendy Update” added some tech-based features like Smarter Watches, a USB Charger Block, and Reality Vision glasses. Additionally, when looking at a sign while wearing the Reality Vision glasses, players would see the word “Obey” — a reference to John Carpenter’s 1988 science-fiction film They Live. For April Fools’ Day 2018, Mojang replaced the in-game textures with new textures that used 8-bit color. This change, although creating a retro-feel, also resulted in a huge reduction in clarity.
The “Minecraft 3D” update was released in 2019 and included several references to 1990s videogames including an “Obligatory nightmare mode” difficulty and a plethora of in-game cheat codes. Mojang followed the 2019 April Fools’ update with the 2020 release of the “20w14infinite” snapshot — an update that added procedurally generated dimensions with random and unique elements.
Minecraft Easter Eggs For The Holidays
While many of Minecraft’s easter eggs have come through Mojang’s April Fools’ updates, they are by no means the only easter eggs to appear solely in the Java version of the game. For instance, several holiday-specific features only appear in Minecraft: Java Edition. To celebrate Halloween in Minecraft, bats are more likely to spawn between October 20 and November 3 as the maximum light level at which they can spawn is raised from 3 to 6. Additionally, several mobs including zombies and skeletons may spawn with a jack o’lantern on their head on October 31. For Christmas, chests have their default textures changed to resemble presents from December 24 to 26. Granted, Bedrock Edition players can access these textures; however, they may only do so through a texture pack and not in the same date-based fashion as Java players.
There are a few other texture-based easter eggs that have only appeared in the Java version of Minecraft. These include a special cake texture which added a large “10” on top of the item from May 17 to 20, 2019 as a way to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Minecraft’s original release. Additionally, several exclusive capes have secret designs hidden on their underside, making them difficult to see while playing. For example, the translator cape given to some of those who helped to localize Minecraft into several languages has a large pink “T” on its underside, and the turtle cape given to the player “billyK_” for suggesting turtles be added to the game includes a turtle’s belly on its underside.
Unique Features For Minecraft Java Edition Users
Java players with these capes are not the only users to have unique features on their in-game characters. The DJ and producer deadmau5 is the only player to have a skin with large ears, a reference to the mouse masks the musician frequently wears. While no one else can get these ears, Java players can add unique headgear to their character by using the /item replace command to wear certain items on their heads. Doing so with an endrod makes the user appear to have a horn, bones are held in the mouth, leads wrap around the face like a monocle, and banners display like pillagers hold them, just to name a few.
Special item models are not the only easter eggs that can only be accessed through commands. Players can use commands to spawn in a variant of the rabbit mob called “the killer bunny” which remains aggressive to all players. This mob is a reference to the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog from the 1975 comedy film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Command-based easter eggs also include a reference to the glitch Pokémon MissingNo. When players use the /give command to give themselves an item and then try to make this item capable of mining blocks with a block ID that is not in the game, the resulting item includes the text “Can Break: missingno”. Additionally, when Java players generate Debug profile results using the /debug command, witty comments appear at the top of the report. These include messages like “Will I ever be good enough for you? :(” and “You should add flames to things, it makes them go faster!”
Similarly, when a crash report is generated following the game encountering a fatal error, the resulting log includes clever messages, many of which include references to movies and other video games. For instance, the messages “I'm sorry, Dave.” and “Daisy, daisy…” are lines uttered by Hal 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey. There are also references to Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek: The Next Generation, WarGames, Terraria, and Zero Wing in these crash log messages.
The Java version of Minecraft is also the only iteration of the game in which the language can be changed to one of twelve constructed languages. Four of these are joke languages and include LOLCAT, a version of English meant to sound like cat memes; Shakespearean English, which emulates the writing style of The Bard; Pirate Speak, a language that reads like pirates talk; and Upside down English, which is, surprisingly, English but upside down. The language selection in Java Edition also includes Klingon from Star Trek and Quenya, one of the several Elvish languages used by J.R.R. Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings.
Some Minecraft Easter Eggs Have Been Removed
There are also a few more Java-exclusive easter eggs that have since been removed. One such easter egg is the “Super Secret Settings” button in the options screen which would change the shader of the player’s screen after playing a random, pitched-down game sound. Additionally, the Minecraft Java Edition launcher used to contain easter eggs before its 2019 update. There was a small chance that the creeper face in the upper-left corner would be replaced with a shrugging emoticon and pressing “Ctrl + b” would play the experience orb pick-up sound. Finally, when Notch’s player character would die in-game, he used to drop an apple along with the rest of the inventory.
The easter eggs of Minecraft: Java Edition not only cover a wide breadth of references but also appear in several different ways throughout the game. For this reason, many long-time Minecraft players may have missed these fun additions. And while some easter eggs are no longer available, players can rest assured that there is more to come, as Mojang is consistently adding hidden references and secret features to Minecraft.