Minecraft offers players perhaps the most mind-blowing open world to explore due to its infinitely generating design. There's a massive variety of different biomes to traverse, structures to plunder, and mobs to encounter while exploring the overworld alone, which doesn't even count the game's alternate dimensions like the Nether or the End.
As a consequence of it sheer size and sandbox nature, Minecraft has a number of incredibly rare phenomena that can happen at any time during one's playthrough. These rare events can occur naturally at any point, and given the endless size of Minecraft's randomly generating worlds, this means that it really only a matter of "when" something rare happens. Here are some of the rarest naturally occurring phenomena in Minecraft.
8 Spider Jockey
A spider jockey is probably one of the more "common" out of all the rare occurrences in Minecraft, oddly enough. They have a 1% chance to spawn but given the sheer size of the world and the frequency at which skeletons and spiders spawn it's pretty much a guarantee that the player will see at least one in their world at some point.
In Java Edition, a spider jockey will consist of a regular skeleton on top of a spider, but wither skeletons and strays are also capable of riding both regular spiders and cave spiders in Bedrock Edition.
7 Getting Struck By Lightning
Everyone knows how rare getting struck by lightning is in real life, which of course carries over into Minecraft. Lightning itself in Minecraft isn't as common as one would think as not every rainstorm is a thunderstorm. If lighting does strike (and the player doesn't have a lightning rod built), the odds of lighting striking near or directly on the player changes depending on how many chunks are loaded.
The more chunks loaded, the lower the chance the player will get hit. This goes for other mobs as well, making overworld zombie pigmen and super creepers absurdly rare.
6 Brown Mooshroom
Mushroom biomes aren't exactly common in Minecraft, but once found they're always accompanied by the standard red mooshroom mob. Very rarely, however, a regular mooshroom will get struck by lightning, at which point it will turn into a brown mooshroom. Mooshrooms are not the old mob to change when struck by lightning, but they are probably the least likely to get struck in the first place given the rarity of the biome in general.
Unlike a red mooshroom, feeding a brown one a flower and then using a bowl on them will give the player suspicious stew, which, if consumed will give the player a random status effect for a few seconds.
5 Modified Jungle Edge Biome
Minecraft's biome system can get a little wonky sometimes due to the procedural generation system. Biomes can spawn next to each other in ways that don't always make sense, sometimes in uncommon ways. A great example of this is the modified jungle edge biome, which is technically the rarest biome in all of Minecraft as it only spawn when a modified jungle spawn next to a swamp hills biome.
This biome is characterized by its hilly or mountainous terrain but sparse jungle tree coverage, as well as their relatively small size. It comprises 0.0001% of the overworld.
4 Chicken Jockey
Much like spider jockeys, a chicken jockey is essentially the same thing but with baby versions of zombies, zombie piglins, zombie villagers and husks riding on top of a chicken. Unlike spider jockeys, however, chicken jockeys have multiple types of riders, and their rarity depends on which type it is (piglin variants are actually more common than their overworld counterparts).
Their behavior also depends on the rider. For example, baby zombie jockeys are hostile while zombie piglin jockeys are neutral unless attacked, though they won't actively chase the player if they are.
3 Skeleton Trap Horse
Skeleton horses are a rare treat in Minecraft due to their ability to breath and run underwater. Unfortunately, acquiring one can be quite the task as they are a pretty rare sight. Skeleton horses only spawn during thunderstorms, which aren't exactly common on their own. On top of this, if one does spawn it will despawn after fifteen minutes, so the player could theoretically miss one.
Assuming the player does find one, however, approaching one will result in several skeleton horsemen immediately spawning to battle the player. Talk about walking into the wrong neighborhood!
2 Charged Creeper
Regular creepers can be troublesome enough, but when one has been struck by lightning that's when it's really time to start panicking. Any time a creeper is within four blocks of a lightning bolt it will instantly be supercharged. This gives the creeper a distinctive blue aura, and a far more powerful explosion capable of killing even a fully armored player with ease.
It also leaves a much larger crater and other hostile mobs caught in the explosion will drop their heads as items. Natural charged creepers are among the rarest things the player can encounter in the whole game.
1 Pink Sheep
Generally when sheep spawn in Minecraft they have a chance to have a number of different colored wool. The most common is white but brown, black and grey are also possible. The rarest colored sheep by far, however, is the pink sheep, which has a .1558% chance of spawning in the wild.
This is just the adult sheep, baby pink sheep are even rarer, having a .0082% chance to spawn in the wild. A player can play Minecraft for years and never see a naturally spawning pink sheep, making it one of the rarest things they will ever see in the game if they do.
Minecraft is currently available on Mobile, PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One, and legacy platforms.