"Tonight, we are gonna stay up late to study the phantom" Literally for me who just noticed this as he was going to bed. I hope they dont attack me.

Fun fact: Phantoms were originally going to spawn in the end, they removed this because you cant sleep in the end.

This is probably Mojang saying, "Stop playing and get some good night sleep."

Another mechanic that cats have is that when you go to sleep if a cat is standing and you go to sleep, they will curl on top of you to cuddle you :D

“There’s only three mobs who sleep” Foxes napping in the forests: am I joke to you?

Wake up babe, new Minecraft Deep Dive Video

Imagine stumbling upon a phantom hive, a cave filled with hundreds of them

Before I watch the video, I’ll make a prediction/hypothesis of my own: Phantoms don’t only spawn when the player doesn’t sleep. Rather, they show up whenever the player DOES sleep, and has some sort of symbiotic relationship with them. Probably commensalism, as sleeping doesn’t seem to affect the player positively or negatively at all. The Phantoms somehow gain something from interacting with a sleeping player. Evidence that they do show up while the player is sleeping is that whenever you have a cat sleeping with you, it has a chance to bring you Phantom Membrane when you wake up. This implies that your cat hunted and killed a Phantom that approached you while you slept. The reason they begin to attack you after 3 days without sleeping is because they begin to get ‘hungry’ for whatever it is you provide them when you sleep(dreams, perhaps?). At first only the hungriest Phantoms come to try to collect from you, but every day you don’t sleep, more and more Phantoms run out of patience waiting for you to sleep on your own. If we aren’t assuming that enemies just ‘spawn’ and that’s just for gameplay purposes, perhaps Phantoms live somewhere high above the build limit? If they come down from way up in the atmosphere whenever you’re asleep, this would explain why they can’t just spawn in the Nether or the End whenever you’re there and haven’t slept for a while. This also may explain how they survive in the day with out burning. Maybe the exist outside of the Minecraft Earth’s atmosphere, and there aren’t enough particles to reflect the amount of sunlight needed to burn them. What do you guys think?

You forgot the foxes, they also curl up to sleep sometimes

"we have 3 mobs that can sleep. Illagers, Villagers and the player" *sad fox noises*

"we have three mobs that sleep" foxes napping and cats sleeping with the player: "are we a joke to you?"

“We don’t know where undead mobs go during the day.” During the day, they spawn in dark places, like caves. So, during the day zombies, etc. Retreat to the caves. I think you could speculate that for phantoms except for the fact that they don’t spawn at all during the day, which I see as a gameplay mechanic decision and not as lore.

I have bestowed you with the highest honour I can give, eating my food while watching your video

Technically , bees sleep at night when they go back into their hives

4:22 ''we can make a russian sleep experiment with a villager''

Aside from the evidence against a hallucination with cats and drops, other players can also see your phantoms, so they cannot be your own hallucination

"we can force villagers to do a Russian sleep experiment"

To that person who said they've bestowed the highest honour of eating their meal while watching this video, I raise you to: i purposefully went to get food to watch this video. I've been waiting for someone to cover the phantom! Great work.

Sleeping is a time machine to breakfast.

Due to the bones we can see and the membrane... I think the Phantom is either a Bat or a Lizard, not a Bird

6:43 “They’re the only overworld hostile mob that can fly...” Vex: “Am I a joke to you?”

i like to imagine before he records the video he rants all this to his wife in the kitchen at 3AM

They’re just watching after your mental health! Such sweet phantoms 💖

I have an idea! During the day, Phantoms go high into the atmosphere where it's colder so they don't burn and skeletons go deep down being unable to swim while zombies go to water thinking they're safe but since they can't swim they turn into drowned. Just a quick idea that popped into mind!

I love how Minecraft is similar to SCP in a way when it comes to "lore", there isn't really much true base lore. The players/writers create their own lore as they see fit, and that's okay.

The phantom was sent by Steve’s mom because he stayed up too late.

6:25 yes, we know that sleep is important... *nodding my head at 2:00 AM*

Love how he included can subscribe in the abilities of the player.

Me: Goes 3 days without sleeping The 16 phantoms overhead: allow us to introduce ourselves

Phantoms attack people who don't sleep. Me watching this video at 2AM : I'm in danger.

I like to think the reason they're undead is that they're vampiric beings, and are naturally undead as a result. This would explain their condition of spawning at night and burning during the day, as well as their bat like appearance.

Phantoms are this: Parents yelling at their children to go to bed mystery solved

It's interesting to note, the phantoms have an anatomy like that of a manta ray. Maybe the original animal was similar, sleeping and swimming in the oceans during the day.

Dogs are physical protectors, while cats are spiritual protectors. Phantoms are spiritual apparations feeding on the unrest of your mind after not sleeping. They are invisible to the other mobs. Cats are the only mobs who can sense the spiritual threat, and they can protect you from it. For all the people commenting that creepers are also scared of cats, I believe it was to give cats a purpose before phantoms were added in. It is probably a gameplay feature and not related to the story

i feel like the elytra could still come from the phantoms, considering it is only found in an item frame which requires stick and wool which only come from the overworld

Small correction: Cats sleep as well. And phantoms are also afraid of them.

"We can force villages to do the russian sleep experiment,.." Lmao

My personal headcanon is that the Phantoms have never been alive, but are born undead. They were created by someone to find you.

“Screaming beasts that only attack when you’ve slept to little” just like parents.

I thought that the phantoms were just illusions in the players mind do to a lack of sleep. So I guess not but it was a quite realistic theory

Based on their physiology and appearance, I would NOT call the Phantoms “birds”. Rather more like rays. (I actually thought they were supposed to be water-borne mobs when they were introduced in Update Aquatic.)

Phantoms, actually did spawn in the end during the snapshots which they were added in, however they were removed for whatever reason.

i love how even something as scary as a Phantom can be bested by a cat, natures purrfect hunter.

Not sure how this plays into the phantom theories, but I think you should look at thunderstorms and lightning as part of the "cataclysmic event" that made the ancient builders undead. Not a direct cause, but possibly a leftover side effect of whatever happened. Lightning can change a villager into a witch, a pig into a zombified piglin, and can spawn undead horses and skeletons. Also, the drowned can spawn with tridents which can be enchanted with channeling, harnessing this power in a portable form. Ancient inhabitants still using their weapons that helped create the cataclysm perhaps?

I find the word "phantom" interesting. It suggests that in contrast to the other undead mobs, the Phantom is a ghost. So I believe it may have been some horrible creation, combining the soul (ghost) and a pile of bones, to make a creature that hunts down week beings to pick them off.

"We have 3 mobs that can sleep; Villager, Illager, Player" Fox: am i a joke to you?

The song choices match so well, it's perfect.

Fun fact: The only 2 mobs that attack only the player are BOTH AFRAID OF CATS Phantoms and creepers Maybe I'm missing some mobs or is there a lore factor in it?

On the list of things only a player can do, I saw “dye sheep”. Well technically Vindicators can dye sheep, but only a specific sheep.

what if the reason there are no live phantoms is because they've been hunted to extinction by the precursor builders after they realized they could make foolproof wings out of the phantoms' parts? That could explain why there seems to be an endless amount of elytras the player can find.

At first phantoms were intented to be the living mobs in the End, had brighter skin, no visible skeletons. Later in development Mojang converted them to undead and put in Overworld instead.

My theor is that there's only one world. Each player comes in at a different point in time unless they come in together. All of the undead builders are actually former players who stagnated and gave up m on their works

Eventually The End dialogue will be mentioned in this series, and I feel like the Phantoms could somehow be tied to that, since the two beings speaking mention dreaming and sleep, and then at the end of the dialogue say "wake up". Then again I'm not really sure how strongly connected it would be with just the sleep factor.

RGN. Making lore about phantom Me: Most annoying mobs ever added in minecraft

I think that underneath the bedrock is the Nether. It's not hard to imagine since there is a bedrock roof at the top of the Nether but just like the void in the overworld there's just a void in The Nether above the roof. Nether literally means below. Below the overworld.

And, congratulations for hitting 200k Subscribers!

Last time I was this early endermen had green eyes

About the elytra thing with phantom membranes being used to repair elytra, phantoms used to live in the end. This could be a connection, but probably is just game design because that was just in the snapshots and they changed it.

There are only 3 mobs that sleep The cat sleeping with you: I EXIST TOO

Big fan of the deepdive series! i currently watch it as the 'tv show' at the end of the day to unwind

See my theory actually includes the snapshot and pre-release content as part of my theory. The Enderman had green eyes in the pre-release, but then their eyes became purple. The Ender Dragon has purples eyes as well, I take this as evidence of the Ender Dragon's corruption or influence. The Phantoms all have green eyes, and they were able to spawn in the End back in their first appearance in Snapshot 18w07a. I think this is a sign they both came from the End, that End creatures for the most part had green eyes, and that when the Ender Dragon showed up it started to influence the Endermen, so the Phantoms (being actually more intelligent than we might think at first) united from across the End to escape the dimension before the Ender Dragon could close the portal between the Overworld and the End. The Piglins and Zoglins transform into zombies due to exposure to the airborne zombie plague when they cross over, so the same could've happened to the entire Phantom race when they did. This leaves thousands or millions of undead Phantoms roaming the Overworld, and none in the End since they all fled before the Ender Dragon could make the Phantoms part of their domain. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

I was playing Minecraft a few days ago when my friend spawned a wither. I play with subtitles on, and noticed that it says “wither released.” This could be another point to back up your theory about soul sand.

With the phantoms. Have you considered the old primer model from there introduction to the Minecraft community as the living version of the phantom? Wonder why the developers changed the design in the first place.

I just realized, the phantoms have green eyes. Maybe they're attracted to the fact that the player can gain experience (orbs) which are green? I hope he sees this! 🙏

Phantoms are actually just your parents telling you to sleep.

hey can you make a deep dive on ghasts. I know you kinda talked about them in the iceberg video but i would love to listen to you talking about their backstories. keep up the good work.

I'm making this comment before you've even gotten into the video properly. I'm new to your stuff, and am currently blasting through it. Can I just say, I love how '1950's Sci-fi/Horror Bmovie your intro music is. I keep expecting a posh British accent to boldly pronounce "Today, PHANTOMS... And the NIIIIIGHTMARES they bring, only on... DEEEEEEP DIIIIIIVES" and seeing the text spin onto the screen. As a huge fan of that style & era of film, its a win.

All of your videos make soo much sense. So god damn good.

When he finishes all of the animals and theories, he should put them all together into one video.

I just now noticed you use the business Enderman skin, the very same I use pretty much exclusively XD That aside thanks for the thought food about phantoms, all your vids are very intriguing and I love your theories

I can’t believe i watch these videos for free- like honestly this is a whole documentary

My theory, phantoms are shulkers that are grown up, shulkers are in the form of the baby in their chrysalis just like bugs, they have a hard shell to protect them from attacks until they grow up. Phantoms are the dead versions of the live phantoms that live in the end. We don't see live phantoms in the end because they either live low under the islands or they live high above the islands. Here's another reason why I think phantoms are the dead versions of the live phantoms that were once shulkers, the shulkers projectiles. The Shulkers projectiles when hitting a mob makes the mob float, this is a self defense mechanic that shulkers use when they are a baby, and have no form of attack. The projectile also leaves a trail of what seems to be some kind of smoke or dots, similar to the phantoms trails when they fly. This doesn't explain why phantoms attack players or why they spawn in the conditions they do but this is just a theory I came up with, also love and support to RetroGamingNow for making this video.

Are we going to ignore the word phantom? It means ghost, which might have something to do with the lore

6:56 I love how its this deep, intriguing, intellectual dive into game lore, and then there's a random meme reference.

would have liked a bit of warning for the beetle pic but otherwise great video and interesting theory! Phantoms are one of my favorite mobs so it's cool to see someone speculate about them :)

I love when he puts up the human brain picture

I like how he actually uploaded this late at night It’s a nice touch

Some of the best Minecraft content on the platform

The music is something out of a 1990s detective film, and I'm LOVING it..

Developer: Let's add phantoms they are cool. This guy: But why? Why would you do that?

Make a piglin theory, i loved this one!

So, the phantoms were added as result of a mob vote This means the mobs were probably added with little thought to the lore This makes me want to see lore explanations for the other mobs that weren’t voted into the game

I love these videos because even if ik these are theories it feels like he's telling the story of Minecraft

“The beings behind their rescue became the dagger of their escape. Ironic. They could save the builders, but not themselves”-Palpatine I think

The phantom as a concept was always interesting. It's just the execution is very annoying, and that takes away the scare factor it's trying to give. Also, Phantoms just find you by not sleeping. You can sleep and then spawn in a phantom using commands or creative mode and they'll still attack you, it is just the locating part that's linked to sleep.

New subscriber and holy crap your theorist are so believeble

These videos make a lot of cense and d just like to say that I love them

First I was thinking that you're actually hurting yourself in a hallucinational state But then I learned the cat one

I find your lack of sleep disturbing.

*Almost* Every house; there's a decent amount of houses in a village that *don't* have beds so theoretically that factor limits the village's overall population

you know how you can spectate ender men and see the world from they’re perspective, have you tried spectating the phantom to see where they go when the sun comes out or to see where they are when the player has been sleeping well

A blaze theory would be amazing. There's so much untapped lore with them from their potential mechanical nature to the power of their blaze rods

remember me when you’re at 1 mil

I had a thought that the phantoms could be (at least one of) the creatures that make up the giant underground skeletons (I'd imagine one of the ribcages) while no natural phantoms are that big they are one of three mobs (slimes, magma cubes and phantoms) that can be spawned with different sizes via commands. Haven't had the time to properly compare there bodies to the fossils but I do feel this could work as really what else could those fossils be. (And yes I am aware that even then there are some fossils that clearly aren't and even some in the nether but still it's certainly food for thought) Also yes I get command exclusives are odd to argue to be cannon but really the only possibilities we know of that could be those fossils are giants, big phantoms (both command exclusives) and dragons of which we only see one in a completely different dimension. Why I picked phantoms over the other two is because it's the only one I've never seen anyone talk about. Also loved the video and the explanation of why they only hunt down the player 9/10

Honestly, I think the reason why the phantoms are undead is probably because during the night, the ancient people would shoot arrows at them for their membranes so that they can fix their elytron. And when the bodies of the phantoms were lifeless on the ground, the zombie virus was spreading around, affecting the phantoms as well. It’s also another reason why they only come at night and when you wake up and go outside, you can sometime see them burn and die. That’s my little theory on why I think they are undead and stuff.

I’ve been looking forward to this

Another theory: phantoms are evolved bats, and they have heightened senses that enabled them to sense insomnia in humans. The phantoms might smell pheromones of insomnia that nothing else can, they use the weakness of humans for prey, similar to vultures. It might look like I’m explaining things more twice, but I’m not. I’m trying to make my typing very grammatical.

Here's my theory; a phatom is an undead Enderdragon egg baby AND they (Phantom and the Enderdragon) are a type of vulture as they fly in a circle formation waiting for weak and tired prey. They hatch from all of the other eggs that were accidentally lost by the ancient players. Now you may be wondering, "Well why don't you find eggs just in the middle of nowhere!?", well it's from The End, if you were to ask me that, I would say that they go invisible until hatched using magic.

I have one world where I live in the nether, and I basically haven't slept since making it to the nether so I always have to deal with phantoms when I visit the overworld in the night

Side theory, phantoms never attack villagers because they are under feline protection, that's why there are so many stray cats wandering around in every village. When a cat sits down on your bed, it's not sleeping on you, it's guarding you, and the gifts they bring you every morning are the haul from their nightly hunts, willingly becoming insomniacs just to lure out the phantom menace and destroy them