Published 5 hours ago

It's been dubbed the 'rarest death' in the game

The true story behind one of Minecraft's most bizarre viral clips

Image: Mojang Studios via Polygon

The year is 2013. Minecraft is still in its infancy. I was 17 years old, regularly joining multiplayer servers for a niche community and game mode called "ultra hardcore" (UHC), and having a great time on TeamSpeak with friends I'd made all over the world.

Since the Minecraft of more than a decade ago can't do nearly as much as it can do now — or should I say, what can be done on it — UHC servers were run with all manner of third-party plugins, and eventually evolved into using command blocks in-game. As a result, when someone died in a UHC match, they were allowed to spectate by essentially becoming invisible, invulnerable, and able to fly. But their character model still existed in-game, so they were told by whoever was running any given UHC match to watch fights from afar and not block anybody still alive.

I was playing in a doubles UHC match in June 2013 with a friend, and one of the gimmicks of it was that you didn't spawn near your teammate, so you needed to find each other in the world. I made a nether portal early on, as resources such as blaze rods and nether wart were essential for making potions, a vital combat resource for the late game. As I was waiting for my pal to arrive, kerblam: I died. I had no clue what happened.

Little did I know, I'd just encountered the "rarest death in Minecraft," if the content creators who have reshared my clip on YouTube are to believe. You can see my original clip below.

What happened was a spectator — someone who had previously died, but was still "in" the game — traveled through a portal in the nether. Rather than connecting to my existing portal, because I hadn't actually lit it yet, it spawned a new one. Right where I was standing. And since I only had 1.5 hearts, and the core rule in UHC is that you cannot automatically regenerate health, I died instantaneously.

When I originally uploaded that clip, I clearly knew it was rare, as I titled the video "First ever death by portal in Minecraft?" but I didn't expect it to garner the attention it has in the years since. You may think I'm bonkers for claiming that given it only has roughly 77,000 views right now, but the virality comes from the creators who have repurposed my original clip, such as last year's video from "Pitcch" with 11.7 million views.

There are a couple more examples of creators using my video for the same purpose — shout-outs to "amcobalt" (who is also the only one to link back to my original video and channel!) and "PrismBlock" with 6.5 million and 5.4 million views respectively — but there's one running theme throughout them all: they don’t have the full context behind the video.

Seeing my 12-year-old video, on a channel I no longer use or pay any attention to, suddenly receive an influx of comments due to the bigger creators reusing my footage, has been baffling but amusing at the same time. Some standout comments include: "everyone in this vid is probably married with kids now, that's nuts." Another one claimed I was "pretending to be dead" because I hadn't uploaded or replied to any comments. Spoiler alert: I'm not dead, I'm alive and well, my YouTube career just never took off. But if you, dear reader, see any other creators repurposing my original video, feel free to point them to this article for more details.