5 disturbing Minecraft lore theories

Minecraft allows players to make their own stories and memories. One of the ways the game accomplishes this is by keeping a lot of the world's history shrouded in mystery and implication. This drives a portion of the Minecraft community to theorize how the different pieces of lore fit together coherently.

While some of these theories drift into the absurd, some delve into the disturbing and horrifying, the five creepiest of which are detailed below.

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5 most disturbing Minecraft fan theories

1) The origins of ocean monuments

An underwater ocean monument (Image via Mojang)

There are only a handful of entities in Minecraft capable of breaking, moving, and placing blocks. Out of these, including villagers, illagers, endermen, and players, none of them inhabit the ocean. So, who built the game's ocean monuments, and where can players find these formidable guardians?

This creepy and disturbing Minecraft fan theory answers this question by stating that ocean monuments were built by villagers, illagers, or a third unknown mob before being abandoned to rising seas, a classic Atlantis-style tale.

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2) Sculk is an infection

This theory, initially contrived by MatPat from The Game Theorists, posits that sculk is an interdimensional sentient hivemind that can convert the souls of those that die near it, normally represented by experience orbs, into more of itself. This is a horrifying implication. The warden acts as both a spear used to spread itself and a shield to protect the existing sculk from harm.

A lot of this conjecture is directly backed up by Minecraft's environmental storytelling, as covered by MatPat's theory. For example, wardens drop sculk catalysts, which makes sense if they are meant to keep sculk from going extinct. There is also a reference in the game's code to the large portal in the center of ancient cities being connected to a different dimension.

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3) Piglins are not from the nether

A piglin burning in lava (Image via Mojang)

Every Minecraft mob natural to the nether is immune to lava and fire damage, except for piglins, which can be found within the nether's rare and loot-filled bastions. This implies that piglins are not native to the nether but instead hail from a different dimension.

This theory states that piglins were brought to the nether, where they were enslaved within bastions and used for labor, being abandoned in the dimension and left for dead. Given the ruined portals found throughout the overworld, perhaps a previous player built the bastions and enslaved piglins.

This might be why they attack on sight unless the player is disguised with gold armor.

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4) The Player is not human

Steve? in Minecraft is a superhuman...or, something like that. byu/nameless88 inFanTheories

Since Steve, Alex, and all of the other premade characters are supposed to look human, the implication that they might be something else is creepy, to say the least. These characters can jump higher and farther than most humans, as well as have super-strength, with one of the community's oldest questions pondering the strength of Minecraft's characters.

So why do they so closely resemble mankind? This theory posits a few different ideas, ranging from characters being synthetic androids meant to replicate human life to them being skinwalker-type entities that resemble humans but are just strange and otherworldly.

Whatever interpretation the player buys into, one thing is for certain: The idea that Minecraft characters are pretending to be human comes with bone-chilling implications.

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5) Survival is a nightmare

Minecraft is a dream or a nightmare (Image via Mojang)

Since sleeping in a bed is how the player sets their spawn and avoids the hostile enemy-filled night hours, it would be fair to assume that they are awake. However, this particularly disturbing theory posits the opposite. The player is asleep and having a nightmare.

The hostile mobs are dream-like entities trying to kill the player. Background music is literally music playing in the backdrop, while ominous cave sounds are part of the dreamscape itself. Creative mode even falls into this theory, representing more lucid dreams, where the player has total control in the form of commands and the creative inventory.

This theory even has some evidence in the game itself. There are a plethora of lines in the credit poem that players experience after slaying the Minecraft ender dragon that references both needing to wake up and the game as a "short dream," with the real world being a "long dream."