Game Theory - Minecraft's Lore Got SOLVED in the Movie?

Episode Date: June 5, 2025

Join Game Theory host Tom as he breaks down The Minecraft Movie and how it gave us clues to solving some of the biggest mysteries left in the Minecraft universe!

The Minecraft movie solves the law of the Minecraft game. That's right, you may think this is just a movie about Jack Black saying Minecraft words funny. This is a crafting table. Enderperl. The Nether. But in reality, this fever dream holds the key to solving some of Minecraft's unanswered mysteries. Hello, internet. Welcome to Game Theory.

The show where first we game, then we theory. And if you thought that was cheesy, you should have heard the mix of groans and cheers that that erupted from the movie theatre when Jack Black gave a similar line during the most successful video game movie of all time. A Minecraft movie. Yes, really, this thing has had the most successful opening weekend of any video game movie ever. Although, are we really surprised? The title holder before this was the Mario movie, and you know what they share? Jack Black going way too hard on random musical numbers.

cinema. But while most people were in the theatres whispering about how ridiculous the movie was or yelling at the screen, I was sitting there taking notes in the dark like the little Minecraft nerd that I am. Looking for the tiniest details to help solve the law. Don't worry Lee, I'm not trying to solve the law of the movie. I'll leave that to you over on film theory. I'm talking about using the movie to help solve the law of the game. Block by block, we've been putting together a complete timeline of the series. builders from another world came to save the overworld from the piglin. But in doing so, accidentally caused the destruction of the overworld and their own race. Normally, we're left to figure all of this out by scraping together clues from in-game locations, items, and spawning

habits. However, occasionally, Mojang descends from the heavens and blesses us with something incredible. A story-driven piece of content. Sometimes it's a spin-off game like Minecraft Legends, sometimes it's a book, and now it's a movie. And just like Minecraft Legends, before it, this thing shines a light on three big mysteries that have been plaguing our theories for a while now. But can the movie even be used for law? It's called a Minecraft movie because it's just one of many possible stories, so it might not even be canon. And that's true. But just like we've been doing with FNAF full years at this point, just because something isn't directly canon doesn't mean it can't help inform us how the rules of this canon world work. Plus, this is

also the company that said, we're not saying that that's exactly what happened, but maybe it did. has proven to be essential to the Minecraft world and its law. So, I'm not gonna look a gift skeleton horse in the mouth. After all, the lore of this game has always been about putting together blocks that initially don't seem like they go together. But when you take a step back, create a beautiful and intricate masterpiece. So friends, grab your flint and steel! Because we gotta go to the Nether to explore our first mini theory.

Netherwart is more than just a fungus. In case you don't know, Netherwort is a red mushroom-like substance that grows on sole soil, and Solzand in the Nether. It's been around since version 1.0. This stuff is a core part of the Minecraft world. And yet, it's only now, 14 years after its inclusion, we're finally getting some information about what it truly is. In a Minecraft movie, the Piglins are about to enter the Overworld to chase down our heroes.

But they need to find a way to enter the Overworld without turning into Zumbified Piglin. They have accomplished this before in the game's timeline. Nether spreaders, the pollution they create makes the air breathable for the piglin. In Minecraft legends, the piglins create a structure that pollutes the air and makes it breathable, stopping them from becoming zumbified piglins. Kind of like, reverse Last of Us. The movie actually borrows a lot of elements directly from legends, like giant nether portals being powered by a purple cube,

heroes being teleported from another world, and Malgosha, the leader of the piglands, basically just being a movie version of the Sear. With that, I expected them to take a similar approach when it came to this zumbifying problem, but they didn't. Instead, Malgosha surprised me by handing general, General Chungis, sorry, that name gets me every time. Anyway, Balgoshahans General Chungis a potion bottle and tells him to drink the netherwart.

If netherwort is being used to stop the zomifying process, then it's more than just some fungus that grows in the hellish environment of the nether. It's essentially acting as a vaccine. Vaccines work by exposing your body to a harmless version of a virus or bacteria to trigger your immune system into recognizing that type of disease, allowing it to fight off the real thing when the type of comes. Whatever it is that converts the piglin into zombie piglin, maybe an airborne zombie virus like we've talked about in previous theories, it exists in an inactive state inside the Netherwart. So when they consume it, their bodies learn to fight it off, stopping the zombeifying process. Both bacteria and viruses also need to be kept in ideal conditions in order to survive and multiply. Anything too cold or too hot could kill them, which is actually why

you get a fever when you're sick. It's your body trying to raise the temperature and kill off the sickness. And the nether, as we all know, is a very hot place. So the virus is unable to spread. Hence the piglin aren't zomberifying all the time and so it lies dormant, inactive, inside the Netherwart, making it perfect for use as a vaccine. What you might be thinking isn't so perfect is the method of which they take the vaccine. Normally for a vaccine, you go to your doctor and you get a shot. This allows the vaccine to enter via your bloodstream and directly begin its work immunizing you. But these piglin aren't getting shots. They're ingesting the vaccine. Typically, ingesting a vaccine isn't an effective method because your stomach acids can break down and

destroy the vaccine before it gets a chance to be absorbed into your bloodstream. Now, there are some vaccines that are ingested orally. The rotavirus vaccine is taken in liquid form and the typhoid vaccine can be taken as a capsule, just to name a couple. But those are very specific cases that operate differently to most other vaccines. Although that hasn't stopped scientists trying to make all vaccines edible. In fact, in 2021, scientists at UC Riverside began work to create lettuce plants that contained the COVID-19 vaccine. What they discovered is that it basically just becomes a balancing act of how much vaccine the food needs to contain. Some of the vaccine would be destroyed by the stomach acid. But if it has a surplus amount of vaccine within it,

then you would still be able to absorb the correct amount. Scientists saw, are also working on breathable versions of those same vaccines, which might be what we're seeing from the nether spreaders in Minecraft Legends. It's just a gaseous version of Netherwort spreading through their cumbersome machines. So with them being easily destroyable, I can see why they changed to passing the bottle around. But the best part about both of these methods is that they can be stored at much higher temperatures, unlike normal vaccines that are usually required to be kept around 2 to 8 degrees Celsius or 36 to 46 degrees Fahrenheit. Which when you live in, in a fiery, lava-filled hex-space like the Nether, is gonna be pretty useful.

But this not only reveals what Netherwart is and how it affects Piglins, it also shines a light on another key part of the Minecraft world, potions. An important detail you may have noticed is that in the movie, the Netherwart is specifically consumed from a potion bottle. When you mix a water bottle and Netherwort in Minecraft, you get an awkward potion, which is the foundational ingredient to almost every potion in the game. Once you have an awkward potion,

you can add other ingredients to give them effects like night vision, underwater breathing and fire resistance. But if these awkward potions are acting as a vaccine, that might give a more logical explanation for what exactly these potions really are. They aren't magical items giving you superpowers. They are vaccines designed to heal us and restore us to base levels. There are hundreds and hundreds of vaccines in the world today. And they can help treat a myriad of diseases. Some can stop your lungs from failing, lowering their general capacity. Others can be helped to suppress proteins like myostatin that cause your skeletal muscles to not fully grow.

And vaccines like the MMR vaccine reduce the risk of things like corneal scarring and glaucoma, which all affect eyesight. Having a non-compromised lung capacity would allow you to hold your breath for longer, like we see with underwater breathing. Having non-compromised skeletal muscles would make you stronger and faster, like we are when we consume potions of haste, swiftness and leaping. Having non-compromised eyesight naturally makes your eyesight at night better. like Night Vision. Clearly, there's more than just a zombie virus we have to contend with in the overworld. This place is full of bacteria and viruses that are causing us to essentially be working at a deficit the entire time we're playing.

When we take a potion, we're not boosting our powers. We're restoring them back to base levels thanks to the immunising properties of the Netherwart vaccine. But of course, just like we see with real vaccines, the effects are only temporary. Because these viruses can evolve in a way that your body isn't equipped to handle anymore. Which is why you can be offered top-up boosters to help keep you fighting fits. Theory number two, Steve is NOT a descendant of the ancient builders. I know, I know, sacrilege.

So many of our theories, especially in the early days, came from the idea that Steve was a modern-day descendant of the ancient builder race that once existed in Minecraft. You see, one of the many tricks we've used when deciphering the law is mob behaviours. Where do they spawn? How do they interact with other mobs? The interaction we paid most attention to was how these mobs interacted with Steve, using it as a sign that there is a shared history between these mobs and the ancient builders. Steve is just the latest in a long line of builders, and so the mobs are reminded of the ancient builders when they see him, causing them to, in most cases, attack him.

The only trouble is we've never really been able to explain the how of it all. When we go through our timelines, we focus a lot on the history of the ancient builders and how they all died out or disappeared into the end dimension. And then it's just time passes and suddenly Steve. But a Minecraft movie finally offers us an explanation. We see Steve find a portal inside a mineshaft and that is how he goes from his world to the world of Minecraft. It seems relatively simple, right? But this is almost exactly what we see at the beginning of Minecraft legends. A character is busy mining away in the mines only to be drawn in by a magical blue portal

and then end up in the ancient Minecraft world as the first of the ancient builders. builders. With this, as well as all the references I mentioned earlier, I was wondering whether this movie was supposed to be Minecraft legends retold. But after watching this movie more times than I get to admit, I'm not so sure that's the case. Firstly, there's the Illegers who, well, exist. And they only came into existence after they chose violence, which they learned from the ancient builders in Minecraft legends. Plus, in the movie, they're in woodland mansions, which weren't built until around the time the ancient builders disappeared. Much later in the timeline. Steve also also, speaks of The Darkening in this movie, an event where the piglin put the overworld into eternal night. He mentions the name as if it's a legend, like it was something that happened before, like it happened previously in the time of Minecraft legends and is now happening again. And of course, there's the obvious point that the lead character is called Steve, and if the inevitable sequel and five spin-offs get greenlit, we'll have Alex two. Both of whom are the original two characters from the modern part of the Minecraft timeline that we play as. All of this

to say that the movie is clearly supposed to be about the modern part of the Minecraft timeline. And that's an important detail to clarify because it means that Steve coming to this world isn't a retelling of Minecraft legends. It's showing us that the same thing is happening again. When the overworld was in danger, the heroes of legend from other worlds were summoned in order to save it. Now in the modern part of the Minecraft timeline, Steve has been summoned to the Minecraft world in order to once again save it from the threats that surround it. He's not a descendant of the ancient builders, per se. He's just a builder from another world brought here like they were.

That's why all the mobs react to him like he's an ancient builder. He may not share their blood, but he shares their same drive to create, to build, to craft. All these mobs can see that he has the same ambition. And so they wish to stop him because they remember what happened the last time someone like him showed up. And finally, theory number three, the Minecraft timeline is doomed to repeat itself. This ties into what we were just talking about with the timeline placement of this movie. With this movie showing us things about the modern parts of the timeline, there's one big red flag that hit me like a creeper explosion. And it all has to do with the orb of dominance.

This McGuffin is one of, if not the, most important item in the series law. In Minecraft legends, it's used by the sear to corrupt beacons, empower nether portals, and control the piglin leaders. At some point, the orb of dominance is stolen away from the sear, likely by the ancient builders, and locked away in a cave in the overworld, only to be able to be able to, then be found by an outcast Illiger who uses it to try and take over the world in Minecraft Dungeons. Oh and did I mention it's completely sentient? Yeah, this orb isn't really just an orb. It has a voice and it manifests itself as a creature known as the heart of Ender. At the very end of the Echoes of the Void DLC, it becomes this giant centipede, Enderman hybrid thing and it's our job to defeat it. But that's the kicker. We do defeat it. And unlike an earlier part of the story where the orb shatters

into pieces that can then be put back together later. Once the heart of Ender is defeated, it evaporates into dust, never to be seen again. Until a Minecraft movie, that is, where the orb of dominance pulls a palpidine and was just like, loll, JK, and shows up in a random cave in the real world to kick off the events of the entire movie. Although, thankfully, I don't think this is actually a, we thought it was dead, but really it wasn't situation. That would be awful storytelling, right, Mojang? That would be awful storytelling. What I think is more likely here is something that Minecraft seems to have been hinting at more and more,

that there was never just one orb of dominance. Think about it. At this point in the timeline, the orb of dominance is already destroyed. Malgosha, the seer, seems to know what the orb of dominance is when it first arrives. And the Illegers already have the second half of it, the earth crystal, built and ready to go in the Woodland Mansion. Because they've already experienced its power before, during the time. time of Minecraft legends. Now in the modern day, we're seeing Steve start out not in the Minecraft world, but in the real world. It's there that he finds the orb of dominance and from

that point gets sent to the Minecraft world, meaning this orb is a new orb. Characters are being drawn in from other Minecraft worlds like we see in legends and now like we suspect was Steve. Those worlds have their own history, their own law and potentially their own orbs. Our Steve being dragged from his world into this one means that there is a an orb of dominance from his world that could also make its way into the main Minecraft timeline, causing problems like we see in the Minecraft movie. Though, the repeating of the Piglin uprising isn't actually the thing for us to be concerned about. The movie shows us that once again, we are well equipped to overcome it.

No, what we need to be worried about is the other group the movie shows us is trying to get their hands on the orb of dominance, the Illegers. We've talked for a long time about the Illegers' backstory and how they felt betrayed by the ancient builders. They were taught how to fight by them. They helped create the trial chambers underground to combat the wither, but eventually the ancient builders fled to the end and left them behind. They tried desperately to bring them back, building ender portals out of wool, creating monsters like the zombies, ravages and phantoms to try and entice them into returning. The movie then adds to this idea by forcing our heroes to go and collect the earth crystal in order to open their portal home. And where is this earthstone located?

The woodland mansions, the Illiger's Home, amongst all of their tests and trials. to bring the ancient builders back, they were creating items that they saw the ancient builders using to activate their portals and bring them home. But it never worked. The ancient builders didn't come back. They left the Illegers to die. And so now, the Illegers still have the piece to the puzzle needed to control the awe of dominance. And with them being not so keen on us builders, who's to say history isn't going to repeat itself again? Just like we saw a Minecraft movie mirror Minecraft legends in modern times, the next big threat is going to be a repeat of Minecraft dungeons, with Illegers wielding the orb of dominance. Only this time, it won't be some

random rogue Illiger outcast we have to fight off. It's going to be the entire Illiger army. They are going to use the orb to dominate this world, wipe us out, and maybe even go back to our original world to rid the multiverse of the ancient builders that betrayed them. But hey, that's just a theory. A-gating! Theory thanks for watching