As the majority of A Minecraft Movie is set in a strange cubic world known as the Overworld, which almost exactly mimics the Minecraft world gamers will be all too familiar with, it's no surprise that one of this year’s best video game movies is packed full of Easter eggs and references from the game.
There are hundreds of nods to the game, and the movie does a good job in explaining a lot of basic actions, such as how a player picks up blocks and places them, or how a crafting table works. But rather than listing every block, character, and action from Mojang Studios’ Minecraft game, we have picked out around 75 of the more niche references you may have missed, whether you are a die hard Minecraft gamer or new to the world of blocks.
Are you ready to switch on survival mode and brush up on all of the winks, nods, and gags included in the film? Then keep reading on for every Minecraft movie Easter egg, reference, and cameo you need to know, listed in chronological order as they appear in the movie.
Warning, this article contains spoilers for A Minecraft Movie, so if you haven't watched the new Jared Hess flick, turn back now. But before you do, check out our A Minecraft Movie review first.
A Minecraft Movie Easter Eggs
Building a new world, and the opening of the movie
The first Minecraft Easter egg reveals itself almost as soon as the film begins when we see the words ‘Building Terrain…’ appear on the screen. This is a direct nod to when players first create their world in the Minecraft game. This appears on your screens when Minecraft is loading your new world, just as the Overworld in the movie is building itself for Steve.
When Steve makes himself at home in the Overworld, he takes on his first build, which is, of course, a house made of dirt. This is because, when you first enter the game, you have very little time to gather resources before day turns to night. From this we can see that the movie is exploring the world in Survival Mode, rather than Creative Mode, as Steve actually has to gather any materials he needs instead of having them to hand already.
As touched on in the movie, Minecraft days only last about 20 minutes, meaning that you have no other choice than to start digging down to protect yourself from what happens at night, which is when the things that can kill you, such as zombies, skeletons with bows and arrows, and spiders, that spawn in the dark to kill you.
When the sun rises, Steve explores the Overworld, soon learning how to craft certain objects and what happens when you combine flint and steel. Spoiler, it's fire. Then it's time for Steve to make a friend in Denis the dog, who started off as an angry wolf. taming wolves happens when you give a wolf a bone, and a red collar appears around its neck, turning it into your pet dog. However, differing from the movie, in the game it can take multiple bones to tame a wolf, and wolves can get hurt, so players should feed their packs meat to keep up their health status.
Portals, Piglins, and the Nether
However, life in the Overworld doesn't stay so sweet for long, as Steve soon opens a portal to a hellish underworld known as The Nether. In the game, players can use obsidian, flint and steel, and fire charge to construct a portal. However, you cannot open a portal to and from the real world sadly, that only exists in the movie. As for The Nether, the movie shows just one location: The Nether Wastes, full of lava and bedrock. However, in the game, The Nether consists of dark forests, monster-ridden beaches, and a dark magma ocean. This location can be found in the Java and Bedrock Editions of the original Minecraft game, as well as Minecraft Dungeons: Flames of the Nether and Minecraft Legends.
The Nether in the movie contains some rather fearsome creatures from the game too, including walking pigs known as the Piglins, or rather Piglin Brutes, who live underground, wielding gold axes, ready to attack players who enter the Nether.
However, although Malgosha is not taken directly from the games, she resembles both The Beast and The Great Hog from Minecraft Legends. Both of these in-game characters act as leaders to the Piglins and have glowing eyes. In the movie, however, the Great Hog which Malgosha uses as a weapon is not a leader, but rather resembles a more animal-like Hoglin with much less agency.
Welcome to the Overworld
When Henry, Natalie, Garrett the Garbage Man, and Dawn get pulled into the Overworld, the Easter eggs just keep on coming. The first interesting thing the team spots is a pink sheep, which is quite ironic as these brightly colored animals are actually quite rare in the game, with the most common of sheep having white fur. The same goes for the llama, as we usually see these animals walking around with a trader.
Then when night falls, the humans run for their lives with Garrett falling into a mine shaft. These holes leading to vast corridors through intricate mining systems are quite common in the game, and when you find them you are sure to find treasure too. After being rescued by Steve, the group experiences what happens to monsters when the sun rises, which causes zombies, skeletons, and spiders to set on fire and die, kind of like vampires.
Meeting the Villagers, Nitwits, and Iron Golems
In order to find the Orb’s Earth shell, Steve takes the group to a nearby Minecraft village. In the game, villages are placed randomly throughout a world where players can freely look through the houses and belongings of placid NPC characters known as the villagers. However, just like in the game, the group cannot hurt the villagers, or the huge village protector known as the Iron Golem will kill the players. Elsewhere in the village, Steve shows the group how he cooks food, more specifically chicken. In the game, you have to eat to keep your health status up or else you die.
Speaking of villagers, each village dweller has a job to do, but there are a few stragglers known as Nitwits who have no purpose and just wander the world aimlessly. A Nitwit appears in the movie, who wanders a little too far and ends up entering the real world, where he is hit by Vice Principal Marlene’s car. We know he is a Nitwit as he is wearing green.
The village hosts a few more key characters, too, such as cartographer villagers, whom Dawn and Natalie try to purchase a map from. We also see a few traders walking around, as well as a pig wearing a crown. The crown-wearing pig is a tribute to the late YouTube gaming legend TechnoBlade, who memorably had an illustration of a Minecraft pig donning a crown as his profile picture. Technoblade sadly passed away in 2022.
Diamonds and Creepers
The Piglins, who can now explore the Overworld thanks to a Nether Wart potion, track down the group and chase them out of the village. In the game, Nether wart is a fungus harvested from crops. Minecraft boasts many kinds of potions from poisonous ones to brews that allow you to see more clearly at night. However, Steve, Henry, and Garrett escape the Piglins thanks to Elytra wings, which allow players to glide through the air and are found in end ships. The Piglins chase the three by riding on ghost-like blocks known as Ghasts, which are floating mobs from The Nether that shoot explosive fireballs at players.
Once the trio land safely, they make their way to Steve’s mine, where he has a huge hoard of the most valuable stone in the game, diamonds. This appears to be a diamond farm – which has been debunked in the game, but could well be possible in the movie. When the Piglins chase the group further into the mine, they jump on an iron wheeled mine cart in order to escape. The cart is pushed along by powered rails which use redstone as a source of electricity of sorts to power the rail, just like a modern train.
However, the rail pushes the team right into Steve’s Creeper farm. A Creeper is a common monster that silently approaches players and then explodes. In the game, players can deliberately spawn creepers in a dark room and create a Creeper Farm so that they can kill them later and harvest the gunpowder they leave behind.
The Woodland Mansion, Vindicators, and the chicken jockey
Soon, Steve, Henry, and Garret arrive at The Woodland Mansion, a place taken straight from the games usually found in dark forests. The mansion is a key place to find rare artefacts such as the Totem of Undying. However, the trio soon find out that the house is crawling with Illagers and Vindicators, who are kind of like evil villagers that attack you. Steve also mentions Evokers who are spell casting Illagers. The list of evil beings in the mansion goes on as soon as Garrett is forced to fight a baby zombie riding a chicken, known as a chicken jockey. Although this is rare to see, chicken jockeys do appear in the game and can take the form of a baby zombie, a baby zombified Piglin, a baby zombie villager, or even a baby husk, riding a chicken.
While the chicken fight is happening downstairs, upstairs Henry finds the Mansion’s hidden treasure. Henry finds artefacts from the game in many chests such as a golden apple, stacks of hay, and a chest full of rotten flesh which gamers will know all too well as it is very easy to fill a chest full of practically worthless rotten flesh after killing a hoard of zombies. Then Henry faces one of the game's most formidable mini-bosses, the Enderman. The tall dark figure can teleport from place to place, and although it is usually neutral, it attacks those who harm it or look directly at its face. However, when Henry defeats the Enderman, he is rewarded with an Enderman Pearl which allows players to teleport wherever they throw the pearl to.
Upon escape, the trio faces the Piglins who plan to blow up the bridge outside of the mansion with TNT – an explosive block that blows up its surroundings when lit. Garrett is caught in the explosion but uses a bucket and water to create a soft landing.
Steve’s Inventory and preparing for war
While preparing for the battle against the Piglins, we get a sneak peek at Steve’s inventory which is full of firework rockets, golden carrots, a pumpkin, a Fireball, a leather helmet, a diamond helmet, gold armour, a lectern, and much more (see the image above). However, in the middle of the shelves are The Boots of Swiftness, an artifact that can be found in Minecraft Dungeons. The boots provide a short speed boost to players wearing them.
In preparation, we see Natalie crafting a diamond sword, and Steve later wearing diamond armour. Minecraft players will know that diamond is the most impenetrable material and provides the most protection when fighting hostile mobs.
The final battle, beacons, and that post credits scene
When the group faces the Piglins in the end they can see a Beacon has been constructed using the orb which has inflicted eternal night onto the Overworld. Usually, a Beacon is used by players to mark a certain location, but it looks like the Beacon in the movie is Night Beacon from Minecraft Legends, aka a Piglin Base.
Things start to look pretty bleak for the humans when Henry is struck from the Beacon and starts to fall to his death – an act that can kill players in the game unless you have a soft landing using water buckets or a Slime Block used by Steve earlier in the movie. However, Garrett saves him via a Ridable Ghast – a function that has recently been introduced in the games.
At the end of the movie we are treated to a hilarious post credits scene that sees Jennifer Cooldiges’ Marlene and her Nitwit villager boyfriend profess their love for one another, and when they do, red love hearts start to form around their heads. This happens in the game when two animals are close to each other which often produces a baby animal. For a full breakdown on the finale, see our guide on A Minecraft Movie ending explained.
Pop culture references
In addition to a whole boatload of gaming Easter eggs, the movie also includes some rather funny references to other movies and modern popular culture. At the beginning of the film, Natalie makes Henry a Tater Tot pizza, and later Henry uses the Tots to shoot at the Piglins. Tater Tots were a big part of A Minecraft Movie director Jared Hess’s most popular film, Napoleon Dynamite. Speaking of Hess's past works, we can’t help but wonder if the whole Garrett vs the Baby Zombie fight was a call back to Nacho Libre. That's not all, as other films are linked to. Later in the movie, Steve calls Henry their little Frodo, in reference to Elijah Wood’s character in The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, due to him being small with dark curly hair and leading the group on a mission to find the lost ring, I mean, Orb.
Jason Momoa’s past role in Game of Thrones seems to be referenced as well when Steve is seen riding Garrett like a dragon. Similarly, when the Iron Golem puts on The Boots of Swiftness, the Golem looks a lot like Optimus Prime in Transformers.
However, the most on-the-nose reference has to be Beetlejuice as we see a poster for the Tim Burton movie as plain as day in the window of Garrett’s shop. It's not only movies that are nodded at, though, as the very reason for Malgosha’s villain arc is when she is laughed off stage at Nether’s Got Talent, seemingly parodying the very real TV show America’s Got Talent.
Cameos
Jens Bergensten
In the scene where Marlene and the Nitwit villager are on a date at a restaurant in the real world, if you look closely you will see that the person serving them is actually Minecraft co-creator Jens Bergensten! Best known as the lead designer of Minecraft, Bergensten is the chief creative officer of Mojang Studios. We already knew the video game developer was involved in the movie as a consultant, but we didn't expect to see him in the flesh.
Torfi Frans Olafsson
Similarly, Mojang Studios’ Senior Creative Director Torfi Frans Olafsson also makes an appearance in the movie. At the end of the film when Natalaie’s is seen putting her Piglin fighting to use in her newly opened self defence class, we can see Olafsson sitting at the front of the class. Olafsson also serves as one of the producers on A Minecraft Movie
Matt Berry
What We Do in The Shadows fans will have automatically recognised who voices the Nitwit Villager in the movie’s hilarious post credits scene where the villager finally speaks, professing his love for Marlene. You can read our guide on the Minecraft Movie post-credits scene explained for more on that. It is of course none other than British comedy legend Matt Berry in the post-credits. When the movie first announced its cast list, it was rumoured that Berry would be a part of the project, but we never heard anything else of the matter, until now.
A Minecraft Movie is out now. For more, keep up with upcoming video game movies and upcoming movies heading your way.
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