We all know the famous sandbox game Minecraft. If you never played it, chances are your 10-year-old little brother or sister did. While the game was (and still is) hugely popular among kids, there’s no denying adults enjoy it too. Whether it’s building incredible constructions (like this breathtaking recreation of Hogwarts or these 29 creations), completing challenges and playing on PvP maps with your friends, or simply heading out for a solo adventure in Survival mode, there’s something about Minecraft that’ll keep you playing for hours on end.
The game focuses on mining, which allows you to find resources that range from earth and sands to diamonds and emeralds, and crafting, which allows you to make pretty much anything. Of course, we’re aware that Minecraft isn’t a realistic game, and in many ways, it wouldn’t be nearly as much fun if it was. Some aspects of the game, however, don’t make a lot of sense.
Thing is, as great as Minecraft is, there’s definitely a lot of things that are weird or sometimes just plain wrong in the game… and we just ignore them. From strange glitches to creepy-pasta, nonsensical physics and odd monsters, there’s a lot that might cause some raised eyebrows. Here are 25 things that are wrong in Minecraft, and that everyone chooses to ignore. Just like with any video game, it’s fun to stop and think about these elements of the game that are really quite odd, when you pay attention to them.
25 Chopping Wood With Your Bare Hands
It’s very likely the first thing you will do in-game. To survive in Minecraft, you need weapons and tools. To craft weapons and tools, you need resources, so you can make a craft table—in other words, you need wood.
But since you start the game with nothing in hand, you’ll find yourself looking for a tree to punch in order to get that wood.
We’re so used to starting the game like this, no one really questions it anymore, but when you think about it, either the player character is insanely strong, or something is wrong here.
24 Baby Animals In The Game
There’s a lot of things wrong with the animals in Minecraft—more on that later. If you want to start a farm, you’ll have to build a fence and lure animals in, and then you’ll have to get them to reproduce. That in itself is actually quite easy: just give two of the animals the right food, hearts will appear, and a baby cow, chicken, pig, etc. will pop up. When you think about it, however, there’s no denying the whole process is a bit weird.
23 Everything About Creepers
Creepers are an iconic part of Minecraft, and perhaps one of the first monsters you’ll encounter in the game. First-time players found this out the hard way: attack them too quickly and they’ll blow up, taking a chunk out of the terrain and a few of your health points with them.
Creepers are so integral to the game that we tend to ignore how weird they are.
Visualize a creeper though: everything about them, from their tiny legs to the way they explode, is really weird when you think about it.
22 “You May Not Rest Now, There Are Monsters Nearby”
Players who put their bed too close to a mob will remember this somewhat annoying message. Sure, if you’re placing your bed outside right next to a zombie, then it’s probably a good thing the game doesn’t let you sleep in it. But when your bed is in a house or a shelter and you need to go outside to get rid of the monster outside your door, it’s more than a bit annoying. After all, who wants to get out of bed to go deal with a giant spider in the middle of the night?
21 The Different Biomes
Minecraft has randomly generated worlds, which is great in many ways because it allows you to explore a rich, diverse pixelated universe. Feel like attempting survival in a desert? No problem! Want to go explore a jungle? Go right ahead. The thing that’s a bit wrong with this, however, that most players just ignore, is that sometimes these biomes will be juxtaposed in odd ways. For instance, you could have a desert right next to a tundra: snow on one side and scorching sand on the other. Only in Minecraft…
20 The Villagers Are Honestly Creepy
Explore your world a bit more, and you’ll encounter villagers as well as monsters. The word “villager” might sound non-threatening, charming even, but these NPC have a decidedly creepy vibe. From their perpetually crossed arms to their staring eyes, there’s something a bit off about these seemingly innocent characters. And of course, there’s the whole business with “illagers,” hostile villagers who will attack both the player and regular villagers. Whether we encounter the hostile kind or not, we can’t shake the feeling that there’s something wrong with the villagers, even though most players ignore it.
19 Enchanting Stuff
Mining: got it. Crafting: sure. Creating weapons and fighting with them: so far, so good. But then, for some reason, you get the opportunity to craft an enchanting table, which will let you cast spells on your weapons and tools.
You can make your favorite diamond sword sharper, your helmet more durable, etc.
This is useful as you meet more powerful monsters and grants you a definite advantage in PvP combat, but when you stop to think about it, this feature seems very weird in a game where the two main features are mining and crafting.
18 Giant Spiders
Minecraft isn’t a particularly scary game. Unless you’re an arachnophobe, that is. Zombies and creepers and skeletons, we can deal with, but why the giant spiders?
Not only are these critters huge, they also make the scariest hissing noise.
And their red eyes… How many eyes do these things even have? We’re not sure, but we’d rather not get too close. Players all over the world have admitted to being scared by the spiders in Minecraft. Why does a kid’s game have these things?
17 The Whole Deal With Herobrine
This Minecraft legend shows just how popular the game is: it has its own creepy-pasta. Herobrine’s legend was born after a player posted a story about game creator Notch’s long-gone brother.
He’s meant to be a ghost who reincarnated as a mysterious white-eyed character in the game.
Depending on which story you read, Herobrine either follows you around, writing threatening messages, or attempts to end you, trap you, or rob you. All in all, there’s something very weird about that story—and it doesn’t help that someone created a Herobrine mod.
16 Internet Legends/Creepypasta In The Game
Talking about creepy-pasta, Minecraft references another popular one with one of its monsters. You guessed it, I’m talking about Endermen. These creepy monsters, who have eerie similarities the popular internet character Slendermen mostly leave the player alone, but look straight at them, and they’ll begin to chase and hunt you. Much like the spiders mentioned earlier, there’s something very unsettling about these monsters and the sounds that they make. Did you know that Endermen’s “language” is actually backwards English? That’s exactly as spooky as that sounds.
15 Ladders Block Lava
In-game lava is, obviously, dangerous for your character. Nothing wrong so far, that seems logical. But are we all going to ignore the fact that you can block the lava with a ladder? In fact, this trick works for any in-game liquid, meaning you can stop a waterfall’s flow with a ladder if you wish to do so. How does this even make sense? Well, the game recognizes ladders as a full block, meaning you can stack things on them—including lava, because they’re apparently not flammable. Not only does this seem kind of wrong, we definitely recommend you don’t try this at home.
14 Ocelots Are Incredibly Useful
Why? Because with a lot of patience, you can domesticate ocelots and have a cat (more on this later). Aw, adorable. And as it turns out, incredibly useful.
The cats in Minecraft may not seem like they do much at first, but they do have a rather intriguing power: Creepers are afraid of them.
Why? Nobody knows, we just all kind of go with it. Are they allergic? Are the cats magical? Are creepers dog people (or dog monsters, actually)? This particular feature of the game may not make much sense, but to be fair, it is pretty cool.
13 Torches Can Hold Anything You Put On Them
Even the most unexperimented of players are familiar with torches, as you need them to see where you’re mining and to keep monsters away. Turns out, much like ladders can “hold” water or lava, torches can “hold” blocks that would normally fall down, like sand or gravel. Weird as this is, it means you can create some pretty cool-looking constructions seemingly supported by torches. Careful with this trick though: if you drop your block of sand or gravel instead of placing it above the torch, it will be destroyed.
12 Some Crafting Recipes Are Really Weird
Crafting is an essential part of Minecraft, as the name might have given away. The essential things you’ll need to craft are weapons such as swords and tools such as pickaxes, and the crafting recipes for those pretty much make sense.
Other recipes, though, had us scratching our heads in confusion.
For instance, melons in the game are square blocks, from which you can make melon slices. Surround that melon slice with golden nuggets, and you’ll have a glistering melon slice, which isn’t edible, but can be used for potions. And that’s just one example among many.
11 Wolves And Ocelots To Cats And Dogs: The Pet System
First of all: why ocelots? As adorable as these pixelated creatures are in the game, an ocelot is hardly the first animal that comes to mind when you think of a feline or cat-like creature. It seems like a rather eccentric choice, but no matter, Minecraft isn’t a realistic game anyway. But the whole taming system for wolves, pigs, chicken, cows, horses and ocelots is a bit weird. To give just one of the many reasons, cats (domesticated ocelots, then) often look nothing like ocelots. You can go from a wild feline to a Siamese just by giving it fish!
10 All Cows Give Milk, Yet Can Still Reproduce?
All cows in Minecraft can be milked, indicating that they are female. And yet, if you feed two cows, the usual hearts will appear, and you’ll soon have a baby calf. Most players don’t stop to think about this, but it is fairly strange, biologically speaking. Even though the idea of these tpyes of cows is pretty cool, we’re not too sure how they manage to reproduce—or if some of these cows are indeed bulls, how they manage to produce milk.
9 The Game Was Used As An Educational Tool In Sweden
This isn’t an in-game feature, but rather a way the game was used. You’d think a game as addictive as Minecraft would be a teacher’s worst nightmare.
That’s not true as far as the teachers of a Swedish school are concerned.
The Viktor Rydberg School in Stockholm actually made the game mandatory for its students, using it as an educational tool to teach students about development and city planning, among other things. Weird as it sounds, this educational strategy is being adopted by more and more schools, so maybe there is something to it.
8 Not-So-Infinite Maps: Go Too Far And Be Confronted With Buggy Terrain
Minecraft has randomly generated, seemingly endless maps. I say seemingly, because if a player attempts to go too far, the map will get extremely buggy. This makes sense in a way, as a computer can only handle so much of a virtual world, but it also begs the question: why not make the maps finite, if going too far only results in a glitched-out world? Not to mention, the frequent glitches you get if you attempt to stray too far from where you spawned have an eerie effect that some describe as the game looking haunted.
7 Physics Only Work For Gravel And Sand
I’ve mentioned this a bit earlier, but gravel and sand blocks will fall down if they’re not supported. This seems sensible enough—but they’re the only blocks that do. Sure, lava and water will flow in a mostly normal manner, unless there happens to be a ladder in the way. Any block other than gravel and sand though? They completely ignore the laws of physics, and we, in turn, ignore this odd aspect of the game. It’s not uncommon to see floating wooden blocks remaining from a half-chopped tree, for instance. Again, only in Minecraft.
6 Falling To Your Doom? Just Add Water!
The player character is definitely sensitive to gravity: fall too far and you will get fall damage, which might make you lose all your hearts in some case. However, if you land in water, you’ll be completely fine. Surviving a terrible fall by landing in the water a trope common to many games, but Minecraft takes it a step further, as you can survive a fall simply by carrying a bucket of water with you and dropping it under your feet at the last minute, provided there’s a hole for the water to go into.