Tired of looking for that rare ore that you can't find? Were you looking forward to PvPing only for your friends to not appear? Or did you get killed by a Creeper while you were distracted mining or creating something?
Do not worry. Here at TV Tropes, you're safe from everything. Sit down, grab some popcorn, and treat yourself to some memes before you go back to your world.
Please add entries in the following format:- The meme. [[labelnote:Explanation]]The explanation behind the meme.[[/labelnote]] ExampleLike this.
- Wake up on an island. Punch trees. Get wood. ExplanationOne of the first things the player must do when starting up a new game is finding wood. The character in the game is capable of punching a tree until it separates into wood blocks. Don't ask how it's possible.
- Creepers:
- Creepers don't want to kill you, they just want to be held. ExplanationA joking explanation for the Creepers' aggressiveness, likely as a form of Shmuck Bait to trick new players.
- Creepers also happen to go oink. ExplanationCreepers were based off of a failed pig model.
- That'sssss a very nice [X] you have there. It would be a ssssshame if sssssomething happened to it... ExplanationCreepers often sneak up on players, briefly hiss, and then blow up the surrounding area, potentially costing the player precious time, resources, and even their life. As a result, this already existing meme was adapted into the Creeper due to their destructive nature.
- See man wake up on island. Ruin his life. ExplanationThis is considered to be a Creeper's purpose in life.
- Creeper? Aww man. ExplanationTaken from the very catchy Minecraft fan parody
of Usher's "DJ Got Us Fallin' In Love" by CaptainSparklez. It's become a chatroom challenge for someone to start with these two lines, followed by everyone trying to sing the rest of the song properly, restarting if they slip up. - I'm Mining ExplanationTaken from this parody of "Drowning" by A Boogie wit da Hoodie, which many of the commenters admit, at least jokingly, is better than the original song.
- Around the early 2010s, it was popular to draw girls wearing hoodies with the pattern of a Creeper, which is known as "Creeparka". These drawings are usually Animesque or Moe.
- Everything related to Rana. ExplanationRana is a removed female character who wears a frog hat.
- Thomas the Sheep. ExplanationSomeone wrote a story about them building a machine designed to suck mobs into an underwater basin and drown them. He caught a Sheep, and it looked at him as if he was saying "How could you?" right before being sucked in. He made a memorial and named it Thomas; he quickly became a prophet to the community. Shortly after, Notch added Cows which are both annoying and had a case of pushing someone into a lava pit. Someone called their god "Mooch", and it quickly became a religious war with Sheep vs. Cows.
- From the game over screen: Game Over! Score: &e0 ExplanationThe &e0 part was a botched coding in displaying your score upon death where the &e is supposed to be the code to make the text yellow. This was remedied by the full release of the game, which now has an actual score system. (And changed the 'Game Over!' text to 'You Died!', except in Hardcore mode.)
- Herobrine ExplanationA popular creepypasta claiming that Notch's dead little brother haunts the game as a blank-eyed Steve clone named Herobrine.
- "- Removed Herobrine." ExplanationMojang adds this line to most updates, and has been doing so to this day.
- Testificle: A mutation based on the odd placeholder name of the villagers in Minecraft, "TESTIFICATE." Cue people misreading it as "testicle" and running with it.
- A YouTube meme related to Minecraft goes like this: after a person shows off their amazing superstructure...
- "You broke the rules!" ExplanationA video by YouTuber UberHaxorNava where he rages at another player, Sp00n, for cheating in the game. The video quickly grew popular after its release, and many people look back at it with fond memories.
- Rule #1: Don't dig straight down. Rule #2: Don't dig straight up. ExplanationPlayers have crowned these as the two central rules of Minecraft. Do the former and you risk digging into a cave for fall damage or a quick death by mobs, or worse, a drop into lava. Do the latter and you risk not only lava, but also suffocation by falling blocks.
- "Minecraft YouTubers" ExplanationSarcastic remarks about Minecraft YouTubers supposedly being smarter, more powerful in society, or otherwise better than average people.
- MINEEEEEEEEEE DIIIIIIIIIIIAAAAAAMOOOOOONDS!!! ExplanationA Canadian YouTuber by the name of "MineCraft Awesome Parodys" AKA Hayden McNulty, who was 11 when first starting out his channel, became memetically famous for his So Bad, It's Good Minecraft-themed song parodies that often border on Ear Rape (as a result of a poor mike, high-pitched voice, and Hollywood Tone-Deaf singing), which are all accompanied by poorly-made MS Paint drawings of Steve. His most popular video is a parody of "Take On Me" by A Ha called “Mine Diamonds”. Watchers jokingly comment about much talent he has, compare his voice to that of an angel, and refer to him as a god. McNulty himself has even embraced his own meme status, continuing to make music even well into his teen years and currently aiming for a serious career as an indie rock musician.
- Grotesque Steve/Creepy Steve Explanation A 3D model of Steve created by an anonymous 4Chan user, depicting the character with exaggeratedly human features. The image is commonly posted on the site's /v/ (video games) board with the intent of getting a rise out of others, with the character typically being portrayed belittling (or in some cases literally raping) other popular video game characters such as Banjo or Princess Kumatora or otherwise acting condescending towards the viewer. The character has since become infamous among older Minecraft fans and especially Know Your Meme users, with the latter's distaste stemming from one user's apparent dedication to posting as many images of Grotesque Steve as possible, to the point of visible excess. The meme received a revival upon the announcement of Steve being added to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
- Well, anything about Grandayy.
- Speaking of Grandayy, Note blocksExplanationWhile creating music through scripted command note blocks is already a thing before Grandayy came along, he's pretty much the one starting the trend to memetic levels.
- Changing the sounds of the (most common) mobs with memes, including Will Smith's voice clip from the 2018 Youtube Rewind.
- Recreating the new Sonic Movie trailer in Minecraft.
- Crafting a working Air-pods.
- Inserting PewDiePie into Minecraft.
- ...and many more.
- I love building brown bricks in Minecrap. Explanation Sometime in 2012, Mike Matei uploaded a skit video named "Minecraft With Gadget" which features him playing through Minecraft with Inspector Gadget, meant as a direct parody of YouTube channels like The Annoying Orange. The video was since widely mocked online, and in late 2016, the video became a recurring joke on the music parody channel SiIvaGunner. Phrases such as "I love building brown bricks in Minecrap" spoken by Inspector Gadget in the video have since become popular.
- Cursed Minecraft ExplanationA series of images (or videos) containing many instances of what shouldn't have happened in Minecraft's current physical laws and rules, including being able to mine Diamonds using only fists, drinking Lava, or the existence of a circular/spherical object in general (through command block). Taken to an extreme with the release of Minecraft NoCubes mod that removes almost every trace of cubical models in the landscape and replaced it with smoother terrain, complete with collisions.
- Who made this game? ExplanationAfter leaving Mojang in 2014, Notch became infamous for inflammatory statements on social media, leading to much of the fanbase disowning his involvement in the game's creation, facetiously claiming it "came from space" or was made by Hatsune Miku — that latter eventually leading to some fans replacing the common noun "notch" with "Miku". Ascended in snapshot 19w13a where mentions of Notch were removed and snapshot 19w14a with the addition of the splash "It came from space!"
- Fortnite Bad, Minecraft Good ExplanationStarting around early 2019, fellow video game Fortnite had reached such massive levels of popularity that a lot of people were getting tired of it. Around the same time, most of the younger children that made playing Minecraft an absolute joke had moved onto the more popular Fortnite. With that in consideration, as well as nostalgia among teenagers that grew up playing Minecraft, the game had received a noticeable resurgence. Because of said resurgence, most of these people tend to say that Fortnite is terrible, just because they can. It's gotten to enough of a point that comments that say this phrase on Reddit have become mocked due to overexposure.
- (events of video here) in Minecraft ExplanationRelating to the resurgence above, a lot of Minecraft videos after that point were titled as such (though it has been used somewhat often before the resurgence).
- Cave update ExplanationAt some point, a segment of the community decided that the game's caves have become dull, and needed a thematic update to fix them. Any time some other update to the game is announced, you were bound to find people in the comments asking when they'll get a cave update. And on October 3rd 2020, it finally got announced.
- The snow is snowier than before. ExplanationThe plug for the potential upgrade to mountain biomes said that snow would be "snowier than before" (i.e. deeper). Most of the comments quoted this line to make fun of how goofy it sounds. This meme was likely the main reason why mountains ended up winning the vote, and sometimes reappears with "snow" replaced with something else, like "the lava is lavaier than before" for the Nether update.
- Wholesome Parrots Dancing became a meme for its sugary randomness.
- Oof! ExplanationPrior to version 1.0.0, the player would make a deep masculine "Oof!" sound when taking damage. This was changed in 1.0.0 to a non-vocal sound effect because it didn't fit with female character skins, and it wouldn't have fit with Alex, who is a girl, either. Fans like adding this sound to videos of people being injured in some capacity, often with the standard HUD added in post.
- "So, I did some mining off camera..."{ExplanationAlthough the exact origin is unknown, it's become a popular phrase to mock Minecraft YouTubers who blatantly cheat in items through creative mode when they aren't recording. It's to the point where the very phrase itself is synonymous with 'I used creative mode to cheat'. It is also occasionally used non-ironically when referring to players legitimately digging giant holes in the ground.
- Broken cobblestone generatorsExplanationAn integral first step of playing the popular Skyblock map is to take the ice and lava from the chest and build a cobblestone generator with them... but if the player accidentally and irreversibly creates Obsidian by letting the water touch the lava source, the game becomes softlocked. Fans have spoofed it to use any number of other characters, like Doom, Super Mario Galaxy◊, and Team Fortress 2.
- Aether Portals of DisappointmentExplanationDuring the earlier days of Minecraft, most players' first taste of modding was through screenshots of the Aether mod's portals, constructed using Glowstone with water in the middle... only for them to not realize it was a mod and try constructing a portal in the vanilla game, which does absolutely nothing except cause the water to spill out in every direction, making a mess.
- Steve for Smash.ExplanationSince Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U and its Fighter's Ballot, Steve has been a commonly requested character to be included, ranking high among various fan polls. Though, due to being a Base-Breaking Character by nature due to Hype Backlash towards Minecraft, as well as the intense Fandom Rivalry between Banjo-Kazooie fans stirred by the infamous Grotesque Steve meme back then, Steve is generally regarded in the eyes of detractors as a meme in the same vein as Sans, simply a character request never taken seriously. Those that requested them in an ironic or sarcastic way would find their wish granted, when it was revealed that Steve would be a DLC character for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, which leads to...
- Steve broke the Internet. ExplanationImmediately following the reveal of Steve as a Smash fighter, Twitter went down for several minutes due to the sheer volume of people reacting to the announcement, something which Masahiro Sakurai even acknowledged. It's worth noting that the last time a crash of this scale happened was Michael Jackson's death in 2009.
- "hey shitass" ExplanationParodying the competitive PvP and speedrunning scene (especially YouTubers like Dream), these memes follow a specific format: the player character addressing another player named "shitass" with "hey shitass, wanna see me [action]?", the player character then doing that action with bass-boosted blowing into the mic and loud Button Mashing (and usually at a low skill level or with outside assistance), before shitass outdoes the player in ludicrous ways.
- Jeb's board game collection.ExplanationDuring the Minecon Live stream that revealed the Moobloom (one of the three possible mobs for the 2020 mob vote), Jeb joked that they were there to talk about his board game collection. Needless to say, he never actually talks about it and the fans have been clamoring to hear about it, both ironically and unironically, since.
- "I did (something illegal)... in Minecraft."ExplanationOn many platforms, saying you have done, are doing, or will do certain things (from drugs to threats) is against the terms of service and will get your account in trouble. Many people have thus taken to adding the "Just Joking" Justification "in Minecraft" to such statements as a means of Getting Crap Past the Radar.
- Minecraft Guy◊ ExplanationAn Advice Animal-style meme of Steve's head set to a background featuring various Minecraft blocks, with a caption below that relates to Minecraft.
- It's a moss block with lichen on top. ExplanationAfter the Caves & Cliffs snapshots began coming out and the various new blocks were introduced, there was a trend on the Minecraft subreddit to create color gradients using the various colors of blocks. One famous example used a moss block with glow lichen on it as part of the gradient, which most of the other users were unable to identify, leading to most of the comments being filled with questions as to what it was, to which the simple reply of "It's a moss block with lichen on top." became memetically popular, to the point of having entire comment chains consisting of people posting the phrase repeatedly.
- Jeb's Big "NO!" in one of the Minecraft Live 2021 videos didn't go unnoticed, and soon its potential was explored. Became an Ascended Meme with one of the new splashes for Version 1.19.
- Starter Pokémon in Minecraft.ExplanationTo hype up the the Minecraft Live 2021 stream, Mojang released a video every day of the three new Mobs the players could vote for: Glare, Allay, and Copper Golem in that order. Because their main color scheme was Green, Blue, and Red respectively, many players have compared them to the Starter Pokémon in every generation of Pokémon games, and associated secondary types to them as well. Examples include Grass/Ghost for the Glare, Water/Fairy for the Allay, and Fire/Steel for the Copper Golem.
- Crewmate in the bookshelfExplanationThe texture for the bookshelf◊ has books that resemble the crewmate from Among Us, which hasn't gone unnoticed given the popularity of the "things that resemble Among Us crewmates" trend.
- BumboExplanationA sombrero-wearing cactus with a mustache who was created by YouTuber Iskall85 and is a recurring character in the fandom, with numerous people building their own version of him.
- AVOCADOS FROM MEXICO! ExplanationThere is an odd trend in videos on sites like YouTube where a Minecraft player would hear a knock on the door, and, upon opening it, be gifted avocados from a character while the "Avocados from Mexico" jingle played. Then, the player would hear another knock, and when the door is opened, another character appears, with the jingle having a low pitch this time (sometimes played loudly), and the player would be damaged or killed.
- "Steve? You've gotta help me, I'm stuck!" ExplanationThough it's difficult to determine the exact origin of the meme, this is a video meme involving Alex, who's stuck in a fence, saying the above line, after which Steve would do something besides helping, such as staring at her ass, though Alex does get helped in a few variations.
- "No swearing in my Christian Minecraft server!"/ "Sorry sir this is a Christian server so no swearing"ExplanationA phrase poking fun at strict family-friendly communities that forbid swearing, generally used as a joking response to swearing in general or paired with an image indicating Disproportionate Retribution.
- Removing features due to being dangerous to frogs ExplanationIn a very controversial move, Mojang announced that the previously announced firefly mob was not going to be added, as fireflies are poisonous to frogs (Another mob they had planned for 1.19), and they didn't want to encourage kids to feed fireflies to real life frogs. As a result, people jokingly suggested to remove EVERYTHING that harms frogs, up to and including the player itself.
- Two pixel mob ExplanationMany people like to point out after their removal that the firefly is merely two pixels in design, either to mock Mojang for supposedly not being able to add it, or to mock detractors for getting outraged over the firefly getting removed.
- Cubes of magma are fine for frogs, though. ExplanationIn the video explaining the removal of fireflies, they stated as a questionable compromise that they would now eat Slime and Magma Cubes. Many have joked that fireflies would be too dangerous to frogs, but beings made of literal magma aren't any danger to them. Jokes have also been made about people feeding magma to frogs in real life, with expected consequences.
- Caves & Cliffs: Part 3 ExplanationAfter the removal of fireflies and the birch forest updates, the Wild Update has been seen as much less wild, seemingly focusing much more on the cavernous Deep Dark biome. As such, fans have taken to mockingly refer to the Wild update as the third Caves & Cliffs update.
- The Mild Update.ExplanationA play on the Wild Update's name to decry its many promised, but undelivered features, making it a much smaller (hence, mild) update than advertised.
- Lazy Mojang ExplanationRelated to the two memes above as well as Caves & Cliffs needing to be split into two parts, Mojang seemingly being unable to release a content update that adds as many things as a single Game Mod could has given them the image that they are too lazy to add more than one block/mob/etc. a year. In reality, a lot of the resources that could go into free content updates are actually being invested into premium DLC for the Bedrock Edition, but Java players are less likely to know about them.
- Eye Of the Spider ExplanationA Minecraft-themed parody of Survivor's "Eye Of the Tiger" from 2012 that was rediscovered years later, resulting in it becoming memetic. People have shown appreciation for the song, either ironically for the So Bad, It's Good nature of the video, or sincerely for being a charming product of its time and/or for the fact that the video's creator could do green screen effects at a young age.
- Destroying CPUs with Minecraft ExampleMinecraft isn't too demanding when it comes to CPU usage, but the most popular way to crash a computer is by igniting large quantities of TNT blocks. Other methods include high-quality textures, very realistic lighting and shaders, and advanced and/or multiple mods or plugins. The meme has spawned numerous mutations, a notable example is using it to overheat a computer and kill insects that have gotten inside.
- Clay is balanced. ExplanationPertains to modded versions of the game. A modpack developer made the decision to remove the Quark mod's underground clay veins, under the very questionable reasoning that clay is used to balance many mods due to being difficult to automate. This was widely mocked, and it soon became joked that anything is balanced so long as clay is used.
- The children yearn for the mines. ExplanationA quote that jokingly uses Minecraft's popularity with children as proof that child labor laws should've never been a thing.
- BLYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT!!! 😰 ой мама пришла (Oh, mom's here.) ExplanationA staged video by Russian YouTuber Сллада (Sllada) showing a guy with OP privileges punishing a young player (he was a griefer) by deleting his house. The kid then unleashed a loud Atomic F-Bomb ("BLYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT!!!"), which caused his mother to show up at his room and berate him (using profanities herself). Said scream was edited into many videos and utilized in various remixes and mashups. The house in the video has also become memetic, spawning memes showing the house before it was removed, with the joke being that if you know the context, you know what will happen to it - and the reaction that follows.
- what if I.. put my Minecraft bed... next to yours .. aha ha, just kidding.. unless..? ExplanationA Twitter post parodying suggestive messages that became a popular copypasta, and also led to many Twitter posts where the copypasta or one of its variations is coupled with two side-by-side images of a character, with the second image looking more suggestive than the first.
- Many jokes were made around the time of the Buzzy Bees update that Mojang released an update mainly focused on bees, which not many people expected, rather than the much-requested cave updates. These were usually in the form of players asking for a cave update, only for Mojang to respond with something related to bees.
- The language used in Minecraft's enchantment/enchanting tables note actually the Standard Galactic Alphabet from Commander Keen, though memes almost exclusively use it in the context of Minecraft due to most people being familiar with it from the latter game has been used in memes that poke fun at unintelligble writing.
- "What the FUCK was that damage, my guy!?" ExplanationA viral video of Twitch streamer spiffykun getting his hearts nearly depleted by an Enderman to which he yells this and screams as he notices the Enderman still chasing him. It received many edits on YouTube, some of which edit the Enderman to say something that provokes spiffykun to scream or generally mess with the video.
- "Hello, young lady!" ExplanationA clip from "Minecraft In Real Life Pranks - Part 1", where a man dressed up as Steve says the aforementioned line to a girl and gets kicked in the groin by her almost immediately afterwards, causing him to scream in agony. It went viral and spawned various fan animations.
- Loading terrain... ExplanationWhenever a world loads, a screen pops up that indicates that the assets of the world are loading. This screen has been used in memes related to people processing information or being unable to see.
- Rocket Jumping in Minecraft ExplanationVersion 1.21 will add the wind charge, which when used on the ground, launches the player into the air. People have thus compared it to Soldier's ability to rocket jump in Team Fortress 2. These comparisons only went further when the devs also announced the mace to go with it, which deals extra damage when airborne. The Market Gardener, an equippable melee weapon for the Soldier, essentially does the same thing.
- Cursed Chests Explanation Around 2019 a common "cursed image" format found on places like Reddit involving bizarre chests like triple chests, and Tetris piece shaped chests.
