Game Theory: The Tragic Story of Minecraft's Zombie Pigmen (Piglins)

so plus minecraft theory had me doing a lot of tree punching and have no doubt that me teaching you how to punch down a tree like you do in Minecraft inspired tens of thousands of you loyal theorists out there to try it for yourself mowing down saplings faster than an overeager lumberjack why today I want to start the episode by make some men's theorists it's time to stop the punching and start the planting my friend Jimmy yep may have heard of him he runs a channel called mr. beast is a youtuber that's looking to make a difference yes they know that mr. beast alongside another friend of mine the incredibly smart mark Rober are currently working to raise twenty million dollars in order to plant 20 million trees by 2020 it's a very numerically sound thing anyway it's in honor of Jimmy hitting 20 million subscribers which you know good for him not jealous of that or anything but anyway I'll let Jimmy and Mark explain for themselves we went through a bunch of different options on how to pull this off and eventually settled with working with the Arbor Day Foundation they're the largest most well-respected nonprofit for planting trees and we got them to agree that for every $1 we raise they would plant one tree that literally means if someone donates $3 three more trees will exist in the world than if they didn't it's pretty incredible right so if you would like to be a part of this massive movement to make the world just a little bit greener a donation link to the fund is in the top line of the description a hundred percent of your donation goes directly to the Arbor Day fund and every dollar is one more tree in the ground if everyone who watches this video gives a dollar well I don't know how many people will watch this video but you know it's not a hard math problem to solve it is literally multiplying by one so I trust you to be able to do the math in your head anyway with that being said and us making a man for all the trees that we punch down it's time to talk zombie pigs hello Internet welcome to game theory we're gotta be honest I'm still icing my knuckles after last week today we're continuing our deep dive exploration into the lost lore of Minecraft by looking at what is in my opinion the strangest part of the universe the zombie pigmen and for me to call him out as the strangest is saying a lot considering this is also a world full of living snowmen and laser shooting pufferfish maybe it wouldn't be so strange if this was a mob that was only a bipedal Pig creature that lived in a double toothpicks but no it has to be a zombified bipedal Pig living in a double toothpicks that also carries around a butter sword for reasons and also also has no non zombified versions of itself left anywhere on the planet now that is a weird collection of attributes and if we're being 100% honest it's probably because their origins are pretty bizarre tall human-like pigs have been kicking around as an unused idea in Minecraft since the very beginning a Minecraft user first came up with the idea for Pigman way back in 2010 and the game's creator notch almost used them as the game's villagers a year later it didn't happen and in 2012 not revealed in the documentary minecraft the story of mojang that the games signature creature the creeper was also born out of awkwardly tall pig monsters well I mean the creepers were a mistake I don't have any modeling programs to do the models and I accidentally made an toll instead of log so it was like a total thing with four little feet and that's became the creeper what's supposed to be a pig so if I were to guess the zombie pigmen exists and are connected to creepers villagers and normal pigs purely because of a sequence of happy accidents coding errors and scrapped ideas that got eventually made into cannon but that's the real story for why zombie pigman are probably in this game what we are interested in is the fictional story how can these creatures possibly fit into the shockingly deep and surprisingly cohesive lore of Minecraft that we've been building over the last couple of episodes how do you fit undead pigs from eg double hockey sticks into a tale about an ancient civilization of long-lost builders gotta be honest this one started as a I have no idea how we're gonna explain this but by the end of my research pretty solid case here friends to start piecing together the lore of the zombie pigmen we first have to look at their in-game behavior for clues now obviously these creatures are most commonly associated with nether but they can on very rare occasions appear in the overworld when lightning strikes within four blocks of a pig a zombie pigman will suddenly spawn that immediately tells us that these two creatures are in some way connected that the Pigman at least at one point in their history were related to normal everyday pigs we also know that the Pigman share some form of psychic link no that might seem absurd to say but their hostile behavior patterns confirm it attack one zombie pigman and somehow all the others within a massive radius will become aggressive and converge on Steve and it's not because they're hearing their attacks friend since the sounds they make are relatively quiet and everyone is still aggressive even if that attack happens in a completely sealed off closed box that should deaden the sound to any outside listeners the immediacy and aggression of their attack can only mean that they're linked in some way and lastly it's also important to note that they don't begin as hostile they only turn hostile when they've been attacked so under normal circumstances they technically have nothing against Steve it's only one Steve becomes aggressive that they suddenly have a reason to defend themselves this admittedly gives us a lot to work with but it's still just a bunch of loose threads without something to tie it all together any theory that I would craft to try and explain it all would be missing that linchpin of evidence that anchors the narrative but then came this year's mine come the Mojang team's annual interactive livestream all about the Minecraft franchise complete with discussions about upcoming features big world premiere announcements and lots of other stuff this is gonna look weird but you can't hit hello gotta juice that sweet sweet watch time and this year between gooey hands and whatever this was we received a ton of new information about what changes are rolling out into the Minecraft world over the next couple of months these honey blocks target blocks but of all the new content it was the changes coming in minecraft one point the nether update that really caught my attention specifically the new pig Lin civilization zombie pigman are no more pig Lin's and zombie pig Lin's are here to stay pig Lin is actually what we called the pig man now the pig Ling is almost like a new civilization you know that we add to the nether but there was one detail about this mob in particular that caught my attention they are actually hostile towards the player they also don't like wither skeletons they don't like wither skeletons from writing all of these episodes I gotta say that so much of piecing together this game's story relies on picking apart spawn conditions and hostile behavioral patterns like in any good story those sorts of details are telling you the relationships between our main characters as it were and so hearing Jeb call out the hostility towards one particular mob really stood out to me especially since as we established during our episode on the wither the wither skeletons are most likely the remains of the ancient builder there are plenty of reasons as to why but I'm not gonna rehash them here you've just watched that video if you're interested but for the pig Lin's to act violently towards wither skeletons aka the ancient builders that was the last detail that I needed there's hostility between these two groups something happened long ago between these two civilizations and it hasn't been forgotten even long after our old civilizations have largely died off so let's start putting all these pieces together shall we we know that the ancient builders started in the overworld and at some point they created a nether portal and started to explore down there we know this based on the chests and the fortresses that exist down in the nether that could really have only been built by them now here is where the piglet is coming at some point the builders brought their pigs with them into this hostile environment again we know this based on that lightning strike evidence pigs and zombie pig lines are connected and yet there are no pigs in the nether meaning that they must get started in the overworld now there's two possible reasons for the builders to do this the first one is simple food the nether up until the announcement of the new piglet beasts mob also coming with update 1.6 has it had a reliable source for food but it's also the food sourcing that are actually so when you get your food you can't just have like it pretty the farm instead you need to find this scary aggressive pickling beast and get the food from there as such any explorers looking to make a long journey to explore and forage in the area would need to bring a dedicated food source like say their stable of pigs bring them down to the nether leave them there and boom you suddenly have pig like creatures in a place where they have no business being option two for why the pigs would be down there is honestly a bit darker it could very well explain the hostility that exists between these two groups consider for a second if you had opened a portal to somewhere some other dimension you don't really know are you just gonna hop through of course you're not you're gonna test it most likely you're gonna test it on some sort of animal and believe it or not but pigs are often the ones being used as human standings for large-scale scientific experiments because of their similar organ size and decay rates so to see whether things on the other side of that portal or safe maybe the ancient builders dropped their pigs on through sacrificing a few of them in the name of science either way pigs are brought to the nether and I don't know about you but that would definitely give me a reason to hold a grudge against the people who brought me there be they human or their undead wither skeleton forms it also helps explain the wishy-washy aggressive feelings they have toward Steve zombie pigmen aren't aggressive towards Steve because he's not the one who brought them there on the other hand pig Lin's are now aggressive towards Steve because hey he's a descendant of that ancient race of builders so that explains how a pig like species would get into this hostile supernatural environment and why they might be mad at the wither skeletons but obviously it's skimming over a few teeny tiny details that might also need to be explained like how they became locking sword wielding psychic warrior zombies that's a pretty big logical leap to make their rights yeah but believe it or not it's one that can be completely explained via netherwart remember what I said about the nether not having much food well that's gonna be true for the animals down here too I mean really what would a pig eat down there crops require water it's simply not possible to place water down in the nether as such the only thing that they're gonna be able to eat down there is nether wart but if that were truly what the builders were feeding their primary food source you would expect them to harvest it right swell would you know it but if you look at the essential elements of another fortress those places that were constructed by the ancient builders as their home away from home as they explore the hostile underworld you see bridges a lava well room and surprisingly nether wart Gardens Gardens placed there to harvest the only crop that could be grown in such a hostile landscape so we know that the builders were indeed harvesting the stuff but then why is nether warts so important here well we also know that the Minecraft universe is one where you quite literally are what you eat in our Enderman video I linked the ancient builders being forced to eat the ends native crop of Korus fruit with them slowly obtaining the plants teleportation abilities and well yes that was admittedly just speculation we don't even have to go into the realm of Furies to prove this one ladies and gentlemen I present to you the mushroom a cow mushroom hybrid that only spawns in mushroom field biomes aka places where cows are consuming a diet primarily filled with mushrooms their milk is mushroom stew their bodies are covered with the stuff but we know at their core they began as regular cows since when you shear them clean it drops its mushrooms and transforms back into a normal bovine again so if pigs in the nether were indeed subsisting off a diet entirely made of nether wart there's a likelihood we could see some of that plants traits carry over into this animal now here's the thing about nether wart even though I just called it a plant it looks and acts very much like a fungus nether work grows through four stages with the middle two stages looking nearly identical it's a process that very closely resembles the life cycle of a typical mushroom netherwart is known as nether stalk in the code just like many fungi are composed of the fruit body on top and the stalk underneath it doesn't need sunlight to grow and instead thrives in the warm dark environment of the nether just like a real-world fungus in fact many of the Minecraft wiki's equate nether wart to the real-world puffball fungus which although different in color does indeed match in terms of design and reproductive behavior and all of this matters because a diet of nether wart would explain how the zombie pigmen all share a psychic connection you see when we think of a fungus we immediately think of the mushroom that's on top but in reality most of a fungus body is made up of super thin threads known as mycelium and the crazy thing is that these threads can go for dozens upon dozens of feet connecting up with a bunch of other plants and fungi so much so that researchers are now calling this an underground Internet of sorts a literal fungal Network that sharing information across plants root to root extending for miles a wood wide web if you will fungus expert hall statements calls it Earth's natural Internet in a 2008 TED talk and that fungal connection could very easily carry over into our pigs just like we see with mushrooms eating that nether wart fungus could slowly transform our overworld pigs into an interconnected network of big fungus hybrids and that's not all fungal networks also boost their host plants immune systems simply plugging into the mycelial Network makes plants more resistant to diseases now look at the nether wart it's the essential ingredient for awkward potions the base for over 90% of the game's magical abilities you know what else is a key ingredient in potions glowstone dust which is also found down in the nether potions mind you that bestow the drinker all sorts of magical properties from greater defenses to create our swiftness to most importantly fire resistance fire resistance just like we see with the zombi piglets were immune to fire and lava damage in fact this theory may even explain why we only see zombified versions of the Pigman and not normal style Pigman the new Pigman race excluded obviously the ancient race of builders came to the nether a long time ago and when their society collapsed so did the coming and going from the overworld as such no new pigs were being brought into the nether meaning that everyone we see down here has been down there for centuries at least that my friends is some old rancid pork so how could a pig survive for that long again the nether warts magical properties one of its key uses is making potions of healing it could be that the Pigman literally cannot die from natural causes or just like the wither skeletons won't walk back to life with the strange soul saving properties that exist in the nether heck this theory may even explain why they only carry gold swords look at the types of loot that spawn inside the nether fortress chests the ones containing supplies brought into the nether by the ancient builders the only weapons that we ever see spawn in those chests are golden swords that's it that's what they brought in and stored in those chests and since these are pigs at heart with no crafting ability all the items that you find in there like iron ingots and diamonds are completely useless to them the only thing that they can use to defend themselves is just what they found laying around in their natural environment left behind by their former masters the ancient abandoned golden swords so just look at all the questions this theory answers it explains how pigs got into the nether why they'd be hostile to wither skeletons and have complicated feelings towards us as a descendant of the builders it explains why we see nether wart purposely grown in the nether fortresses and how a diet of nether wart could produce a psychic link of sorts between all the pigment in the region that nether wart combined with the local glowstone because let's face it pigs elite or at least try anything could also explain their fire resistance there's zombification and we even have ourselves an answer as to why they would all have golden butter swords and only golden swords honestly the only question I can answer about this mob is why they stand on two legs not a hundred percent sure could be evolution Higgs learning to walk upright to use their hands to defend themselves in the violent nether while also wanting fewer body parts touching the hot netherrack possible but I do think that we're onto something with this theory something that I suspect Mojang might just want to be cluing us in on because if we go back to more of that mind confluence as they reveal the new biomes for the nether one they spend a good amount of time on is the nether wart the forest and what do they explicitly show us wandering around and they're the only mob mind you that they show us in this preview a zombie pigmen wandering through the woods and home amongst the food and landscape that helped to make him what he is he's a pig ripped from his comfortable life in the overworld and brought down into the depths of hack to be used for the slaughter of the ancient people but through random chance and a whole lot of fungus becoming the start to a rival civilization bound for greatness and then turning into zombies but hey that's just a theory Oh game theory thanks for watching just a reminder to wave your diamond pickaxe over that subscribe button we got more minecraft theories on the way next time hopefully about the villagers and illah Jers though underwater fortresses are really interesting to me right now I'll see you all for something different next week

Channel: The Game Theorists

Views: 9,303,535

Rating: 4.9440551 out of 5

Keywords: minecraft, zombie pigmen, pigmen, piglins, piglin, zombie piglins, minecraft lore, minecraft zombie pigmen, minecraft piglin, minecraft pigmen, minecraft zombie piglin, minecraft update, nether update, piglin beasts, minecraft 1.16, minecraft nether update, minecraft ending, minecraft science, minecraft theory, minecraft steve, minecraft building, minecraft on my mind, game theorists, game theory, matpat, game theory minecraft, matpat minecraft

Id: jxU0UalndcI

Length: 18min 7sec (1087 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 26 2019

Reddit Comments

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[u/LeviLemon69]

Hello,

First time posting here. After watching the video forth mentioned I wondered if the answer to why the pigmen became bipedal was not extremely simple.

As you have researched, and mentioned, the fungus-like Netherwarts have their own plant information network. Therefore any knowledge gained by one could be shared by the rest.

If they were really growing in their optimal environment then they would be absorbing nutrients. The nutrients that give the warts the magical powers could all be the same thing that powers the Wither Skeletons and the Pigmen and the same thing that brought them back to life.

The souls of the dead builders. If the warts are absorbing the souls from the Soulsand and the Pigs are eating the warts and gaining power from them then it's possible that the information for walking on two legs, as well as the knowledge of the golden swords and the know how to use them, was absorbed too.

The Pigmen could have been the inspiration to try and revive the builders into Wither Skeletons or, like you pointed out, the test for this experiment. If they were the pigs brought in to test the revival properties of Netherwarts and Soulsand then it would explain the new piglings hostility and why the pigmen only attack when attacked themselves.

Piglings are those that absorbed more intelligence from the Netherwarts and evolved to hate the builders because of it.

Pigmen are those who were experiments of the builders, set free by their evolved kin.

TDL: Pigmen absorbed the souls of the builders when brought back to life, granting knowledge and ability.

[u/Miss_Vanilly]

I've gotta say, this theory disappointed me a bit. You ignored a lot about the Piglins and the Piglin beasts for most of the video. I wouldn't mind seeing an updated theory (Or a diet theory) on this about all the new information when the update comes out.

Some examples of interesting questions relating to Piglins and their mechanics, and a flaw or two in this theory theory:

-Lightning also turns villagers into witches and red mooshrooms into brown mooshrooms

-The new Piglins and Piglin beasts look way differently than normal pigs. I don't believe we know yet if the Zombified Piglins will get a new makeover, but I'm guessing they will. The bit of evidence you took from the Mobestiary about Endermen having human-like features was a strong point! The Endermen DO resemble the player character a bit once you really look. Obviously skeletons and all the zombie variants have an uncanny resemblance to Steve. If you really just take a moment to examine the Piglin mobs and normal pigs, they don't have any similar features at all other than just being pigs.

-Why do the new Piglins love gold? Gold isn't found in the nether, and I don't think normal pigs can be connected to gold... But wait a minute... golden carrots...

-Why aren't there versions of the piglins for cows? Sheep? Chickens? If you think that piglins evolved from normal pigs, you have to rule out the other mobs. Surely they brought other mobs into the nether at some point, right?

-The Wither ignores them! Is there a good reason why?

(Edit: I just learned that the Piglin Beasts are now being called Hoglins!)

[u/hawker101]

I think something that could cause the pigs to evolve into bipedal humanoids is from eating the builders. MatPat said it himself: you are what you eat. If the piglins got their fire resistance, immortality and psychic connection from eating stuff in the nether, what would they get from eating the builders? Since pigs can and do eat everything, it's plausible to assume that they could eat a builder and gain bipedal movement.

[u/balthaharis]

I've just seen tgis video and i have a question: Why would the ancient builders only take to tge nether golden swords and not take diamond/ iron or even stone sword?

[u/DoboiZA]

Ok the theory was good but what about the piglin beast aka the hoglin?

Because if the pigmen ate nether warts to survive and that turned them in to what they are now.

But what made the piglin beast what it is?

[u/coolTCY]

As you have researched, and mentioned, the fungus-like Netherwarts have their own plant information network. Therefore any knowledge gained by one could be shared by the rest.

If they were really growing in their optimal environment then they would be absorbing nutrients. The nutrients that give the warts the magical powers could all be the same thing that powers the Wither Skeletons and the Pigmen and the same thing that brought them back to life.

The souls of the dead builders. If the warts are absorbing the souls from the Soulsand and the Pigs are eating the warts and gaining power from them then it's possible that the information for walking on two legs, as well as the knowledge of the golden swords and the know how to use them, was absorbed too.

The Pigmen could have been the inspiration to try and revive the builders into Wither Skeletons or, like you pointed out, the test for this experiment. If they were the pigs brought in to test the revival properties of Netherwarts and Soulsand then it would explain why the pigmen only attack when attacked themselves as they see those who would hurt them as those who used them.

TDL: Pigmen absorbed the souls of the builders when brought back to life, granting knowledge and ability.

In regards to the new Piglings: Either the same could be said that they were the successful attempt to raise the dead but some deteriorated into the less harmful Pigmen. This could suggest why they were willing to try and raise the dead builders as they had success but ended up creating wither skeletons.

Or

The Pigmen were the result of an experiment on the Piglings. An attempt to raise the dead but only succeeded in making peaceful zombies. In this version the success of the Pigmen made them wonder if they could make friendly normal zombies but curiousity and the advancement of dark experiments led to the Wither itself.

[u/Azure-Strawberry]

I believed, before this theory. That the wither that was summoned created a Virus. The people of the nether tried their best to cure it and they experimented on a being that was already inhabiting the nether, the Piglins. Most of the Piglins were turned into Zombie Pigmen and years later, they remember what the Ancient builders did and even with the Ancient Builders turned into wither skeletons (as stated in the history of the wither) They still remember what they did and they hunt down the wither skeletons in packs and kill them.

Most of this was based on the History of the Wither Video btw, also sorry if the wording was doo doo at fortnite.

[u/GoodTimesWithJangler]

I have my theory here:

The ancient race of builders created the wither as you said in the wither video but they modeled it after the iron golem. Some of the builders created monuments underwater and lived in them, slowly the blocks turned into prismarine and they turned into fish-like creatures. They lay eggs in egg rooms, the eggs are sponges. They put them in dedicated rooms and similar to the ender dragon the elder guardian drops it on death. Some of the other builders went underground. In the past, you could move freely between the overworld and the end which is a reverse overworld with more people (the enderman) they speak English but backwards. The builders underground created the portal to seal the end from the wither and then summoned a dragon to kill the wither if it could get past the seal. I say they summoned it because the circular position of the towers seems like a ritual and the player can use end crystals to summon the dragon after killing it. This is why beating the dragon is freeing the end. This explains why there are some enderman stranded in the overworld. The builders in the end built cities and got teleportation properties from the fruit and evolved into shulkers.

I think the nether is below the overworld. And the piglins got their human characteristics from eating the netherwart which grew from soul sand which has the builders souls. I think any more nether stuff will have to wait until after 1.16 to be more secure.

I think that pillagers and illagers and witches are a group of villagers who were ostracized as shown by the minecraft dungeons cinematic. They set up base in woodland mansions in the roofed forest except for witches who went to the swamp. They set up outposts near villages. When you kill a leader they follow you to the village to strike.