Break out your tin foil hats and prepare to dive into the world of alien abduction. Country bumpkins aren’t the only ones who can come up with spectacular and amazing tales to explain the weird and inexplicable. Gamers are notorious for their tenacity when it comes to theories. Heck, there are entire YouTube channels solely devoted to this subject. Gamers can create theories on just about every game in existence. We’ve even done lists covering entire gaming franchises such as Pokémon, Resident Evil, Sonic the Hedgehog, and more. Some of these theories are enough to completely ruin games, are creepy AF, or are so crazy they might as well be true. Now, it’s Minecraft’s turn.

Minecraft exploded into popularity long before it exited its beta stage. Gamers flocked to the open world sandbox and went absolutely crazy. Many used the game as an excuse to create giant versions of genitalia or their favorite memes. Others lovingly recreated their favorite video game characters or entire worlds like Harry Potter. Some have made architecture that could rival the masters while others figured out how to create a working computer the size of a city. Meanwhile, the less creative portion of the population was satisfied with just trying to survive the night. No matter what though, Minecraft had something for you.

Of course, as with any other popular game, Minecraft has had its fair share of fan theories. Some are way out there while others have grounded themselves in science. Warning, there are spoilers for what little Minecraft has. Granted, these spoilers are six years old at this point, but you have been warned.

15 Substance Abuse, Depression, And Mental Health

via planetminecraft.com

Most people assume that Minecraft is about well… crafting. It’s a sandbox game where you’re supposed to build and explore. Youtuber Roley figured that there was more to Minecraft and dived into the game to find its true meaning. Roley argues that the game is a giant allegory for depression, mental health, and substance abuse.

The game has an incredibly relaxing atmosphere with soft, comforting music. In peaceful mode, you’re free to explore without worrying about mobs. However, when you’re ready, you can turn survival mode on and face the monsters within. Bats and spiders represent the unknown and creatures that don’t behave in predictable ways. Skeletons are the mistakes that you made that continue to haunt you. Zombies are the hostile crowds that can’t understand you or empathize with your issues. Meanwhile, Creepers a physical representation of depression. They sneak up on you and blow your entire world apart almost without warning. Navigating the dangerous mobs is about overcoming these obstacles while you chase after the Ender Dragon (representing drugs). The lengths you go to in order to get to the Nether represents the real damage you can cause in the pursuit of a fix.

14 The Origin Story

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Everything has an origin. Golbolco suggested a few possibilities for how the creatures in Minecraft could have evolved. The zombies were either from a long lost civilization or explorers that caught a deadly virus and mutated their corpses into what we see today. The villagers are either immune to the virus or the virus is inert. Either way, the hoards still wander Minecraft. If you kill a zombie, they just come back as a skeleton. Creepers are an evolved form of the zombie virus that no longer needs a host. When they explode, they send spores that eventually grow into new Creepers. The Giant Spiders, on the other hand, are actually the smaller descendants of much larger spiders. Some of the skeletons learned to domesticate these spiders and became Spider Jockeys. Finally, the squids are an offshoot of the ancient spiders that became aquatic and lost their eyes. Their legs became tentacles and their poison sacs evolved into ink sacs.

13 Herobrine

via: technicpack.net

Although Herobrine started out as a simple Creepypasta, it has grown into a monumental conspiracy that looms over the Minecraft community. The story of Herobrine is rather straightforward. A player came across another Steve while wandering around in the game’s single player mode. However, the strange Steve had empty eyes and appeared in the mist or randomly in pyramids and tunnels. They also found strange areas like 2x2 tunnels, trees without leaves, or small sand pyramids in the ocean. The internet dubbed this ghostly creature Herobrine. Shortly after the story made its first rounds, a couple of let's players photoshopped Herobrine into their videos and dramatically freaked out on camera. Since then, numerous players have claimed to have seen Herobrine despite the developers explicitly stating Herobrine doesn’t exist. In fact, many of the theories on this list had an alternate version where Herobrine was involved.

12 The End Of The World

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“Once upon a time everyone died in the world and only one person remained, Steve. Now he must start to rebuild and survive on his own.” Congratulations TeamCarbon, you’ve unlocked the Apocalypse achievement.

TeamCarbon’s short apocalypse theory is one of many similar theories. It is also the shortest one. Another theory states that Minecraft’s Survival Mode starts shortly after the Ender Dragon and its minions invaded the world. Although the invasion ultimately failed, it scared the planet. A curse or disease spread and wiped out nearly everyone on the planet, only to reanimate the corpses as zombies or skeletons. The titular hero, Steve, might be the last person on the planet as far as he knows. However, it’s up to him to defeat the Ender Dragon and break the curse.

11 Creepers Are Pigs

via YouTube.com (ADHDcraft)

Supposedly, Creepers are pigs and not just in the glutton for punishment kind of way. The theory is based on a true story. Notch, during the development of the game, was messing with the pig model and accidentally distorted it to be incredibly tall and very thin. Instead of deleting the mistake, Notch decided to make it into a new mob because he liked it so much. The theory expands on that story by claiming that Creepers are a new species of pig. One that just happens to enjoy explosions. The height of the Creeper evolved when it moved deeper into the forest and needed to reach the food in the trees. The Creeper’s green hue is simply camouflage. However, Creepers recently started moving into caves because of the darkness and supply of edible mushrooms. Additionally, Creepers are highly territorial and only live in tiny herds with two or three individuals. When the herd is threatened, a Creeper will sacrifice itself for the sake of the herd and blow itself up to eliminate the threat.

10 Diamond Armor Sucks

via MinerStuff.com

Diamond armor is easily the most sought after and valuable item in the game. It is durable and can help you survive almost any encounter. However, it might not be that great of an idea. The amount of diamond you need in order to create the armor is ridiculous. In game, it takes 24 diamonds. However, in real life, you’d need 1160lbs or 526.5kgs. MatPat estimated that it would cost $88,188,750,000.98 to buy a full set of Minecraft grade diamond armor. Even if you could afford it or actually wear it, the armor still wouldn’t protect you. As he pointed out, “hardness and toughness are two different things.” Yes, diamonds are the hardest natural mineral in the world. However, they have what’s known as a cleavage plane. These are places where you can easily cut through the diamond. What’s more, diamonds have a ton of cleavage planes. Since the Minecraft armor is squared, all of the cleavage planes would be perpendicular or parallel to the ground. All it takes is a good cut from above or the side and you can say goodbye to your glittery diamond armor and a chunk of your body.

9 Black Star

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The Dead Sun theory follows a similar vein to the apocalyptic, dead world theories that circulate the internet. However, this one takes a very different turn. Spumwack introduced his theory on youtube and goes into great detail. The long and the short of it is that Minecraft takes place far into the future where our Sun has met its entropic death. The Sun went cold and with it, all chance for life in our solar system. So, in a last ditched effort to save themselves, humanity abandoned Earth and sacrificed it to create a new Sun. They then settled on the dead star and terraformed it into the blocky planet we all know and love. The colonists imported stone, soil, and various life forms to help populate the new planet. It is why the planet is so dense and has a rock layer only a few feet below the soil.

8 The Meaning Of Life, The Universe, And Everything

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Minecraft’s ending is somewhat controversial. The alpha and beta versions of the game had no plot or story whatsoever. Yet, when the completed game was finally released, it had a strange and abrupt ending. After you defeat the Ender Dragon, you have to sit through ten minutes of text. It’s a conversation between two powerful and godlike figures as they discuss you and the game in an uncomfortably meta and philosophical way. Most players interpreted the long scroll to mean the usual 'get off the computer and get a life' message we see over and over again. However, MatPat felt slightly different. In his Game Theory video, he argues that the true message of the game is about “waking up to important and powerful you are in crafting the world.” It doesn’t matter if you’re running around outside or gathering materials in a game. What you do matters. As the game states: “Everything is within you… You are never alone… You are stronger than you know.” Minecraft is about showing the player their own agency and giving them the tools to bring their imagination to life in the game and in reality.

7 Wake Up Steve

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The ending to Minecraft repeats one key phrase: “Wake up.” It refers to the game as a “short dream” and everything else as a “long dream.” Reddit user Gudic argues that this means everything is Steve’s dream. You start out in survival mode where everything is out to kill you and it’s your job to survive. However, as the game progresses and you learn more about it, you get a little control. This builds up until you hit Creative Mode, the supposed 'sequel' to Survival Mode. Creative Mode is the lucid side of the more nightmarish Survival Mode. The odd background noises are the distorted representations of the outside world. The two speakers in the ending poem are parts of Steve. One is Steve’s enlightened side. The other is Steve’s fears. No matter what, he needs to wake up.

6 Mr. Robot

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Most people assume that Steve is human. Reddit user Nameless88 thinks otherwise. In fact, they went so far as to declare that Steve is, in fact, an android. No one can argue that Steve is capable of inhuman feats. He’s fairly tall for a human at over six feet tall, can run at a startling speed of 5.2 m/s, and can jump 13 feet into the air. Steve can break the trunk of a tree with his bare hands and not injure himself. He’s a master at multiple professions including blacksmithing, mining, crafting, and engineering. What’s more, Steve can down an entire cooked chicken in seven bites. Additionally, he can carry and astounding 44,564,800kg! That’s 2304 cubic meters of material. The only reason why Steve isn’t a robot is because there are some biological functions he needs to monitor and seems to be covered in flesh.

5 Homo Neanderthalensis

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Minecraft seems to incite the worst in people’s imaginations. Many theorists favor one version of the apocalypse or another and Reddit user Wulfruna is no different. However, Wulfruna has a rather interesting take on the trend. According to them, the villagers in Minecraft are all Neanderthals. Their facial features (i.e. the large nose and unibrow) are reminiscent of humanity’s sister species. Steve, on the other hand, is the last remaining human. The other humans all succumbed to a plague that turned them into zombies. In an effort to avoid the plague, Steve fled underground and confronted the Ender Dragon. He used the Ender Dragon’s egg to try and bring humanity back to life. Instead of creating an infinite number of Steve clones on one planet, it created an infinite number of planets, each with their own Steve clone. So each Steve has eight years to try and defeat the Ender Dragon on their respective world and restart humanity once more.

4 Who Let the Jews Out?

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Gaijin Goomba on The Game Theorists channel believes that the Villagers in Minecraft are Jewish. He’s not just basing this on the stereotype that Jews have large noses. The way the Villagers dress is reminiscent of ancient Jewish garb. The Villagers all wear long robes that extend down to their ankles with a second, longer piece of clothing underneath. They also tuck their hands into their sleeves. Additionally, there is no difference between male and female clothing. This is all very reminiscent of how the ancient Hebrew people would dress and the strict rules of modesty that they followed. The theory doesn’t stop there. The square buildings in the desert regions of Minecraft bear a striking resemblance to the houses in Jerusalem's lower city. Even the desert temples bare more than a passing resemblance to Moorish Revival Synagogues. They have two pointed towers and a triangular main building between said towers. However, the strongest piece of evidence lies in the Golems. Golems actually hail from Jewish mythology; although they were made of clay, not iron or snow. Even so, both the Jewish golems and the Golems in Minecraft were built to protect people and their villages.

3 Everything Revolves Around You

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We’ve known for a long time that the Earth is not the center of the universe, despite what Plato and Aristotle said. The Earth orbits around a star that floats in the arm of a spinning galaxy that travels through the infinite void of space. Things on planet Minecraft are a very different story.

The geocentric model of the universe described the Earth as a stationary body in the center of the universe. Everything revolves around the Earth. While this doesn’t apply to our planet, it does apply to the planet in Minecraft. MatPat points out that the stars rotate around the planet at the same speed as the Moon and the Sun. If the planet was moving, the stars would shift positions relative to the Moon. Thus, placing you at the literal center of the universe.

2 The Great Pigman-Testificate War

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The Villagers, aka the Testificate’s, might not be as peaceful as they seem. SporeTheSaiyan proposes that they were involved in a fierce and bloody war with the Pigmen. “Long ago, there were 2 great empires that inhabited the Minecraft land: The Pigmen and the Testificates.” SporeTheSaiyan wrote. The two empires clashed and the Villagers came out on top, driving the Pigmen underground. However, that wasn’t enough and the Villagers pursued the Pigmen until they found a meager shelter in the unwelcoming Nether. Even then, the Villagers continued their quest to wipe the Pigmen out. They sent a zombie into the Nether. It didn’t take long for all of the Pigmen to fall prey to the disease. Although the Testificate’s have since renounced their weapons and violent ways, the Pigmen don’t forget or forgive.

1 Secretly Religious

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Minecraft is pretty straightforward. It’s a game about digging holes and trying not to get blown up by exploding green monsters. However, some fans believe that Mojang’s Minecraft is actually a Christian themed video game. What’s more, they claim that it is specifically tailored to teach Christian values to atheist gamers. The theory states that Minecraft’s world is reminiscent to the how the world was after people left the garden of Eden. It is beautiful and free of “human contamination,” but it is also filled with monsters that try to kill you at night. Supposedly, the game hides lessons about Jesus through its crafting mechanics and progression. Each monster in the game represents something from the bible. The Ender Dragon is Satan. The Nether is Hell. Monsters are corrupt individuals who want to tempt you away from Christ. The villagers are disciples and sheep are the lamb of God. Basically, the game is just one giant allegory. This theory has a lot of holes and doesn’t take into account literally any other worldview besides Christians and atheists. That and Notch himself has explicitly stated he’s an atheist.