It was a pretty unique idea for a game, purposely rendered in low-quality graphics, giving the virtual world a very original feel (especially for a game in 2011). And they would have really been on to something different and new if only Donald Duck hadn't done it all first back in 1949.

Disney
Actually, never mind, the smoke's not square, this is bullshit.

Donald discovered a Minecraft-like world in a story called Lost in the Andes! Donald and his nephews stumbled upon an isolated city called Plain Awful, where, like Minecraft, absolutely everything is made of blocks, including buildings, rocks, animals, and hills. Even the people are blocky and have managed to create clothes that are almost completely square, meaning that in terms of aerodynamics, they are the slowest people on Earth.

Disney
"For the love of God, move me faster; I'm literally going to shit a brick."

It's not just that things are square, though; there are weird similarities between the culture of the Donald Duck square-world and Minecraft. For example, one of the main activities in Minecraft is, well, mining, which, sure, is a little on the nose, but it's also the main pastime of the folks in Plain Awful, and where they sentence Scrooge to do hard labor after he brings a circular object into their city.

Disney
"Congratulations, you just devoted 200 hours of your life to a digital activity
that is considered a punishment in both real and Scrooge McDuck life."

Also like in Minecraft, the main source of food in Plain Awful is chickens, which are square and lay square eggs (but apparently are different enough from "ducks" that Donald and family aren't worried about being barbecued for supper). Despite the importance of chickens as a food source in both worlds, neither one feels the need to pen up the hundreds and hundreds of birds they depend on for survival, as it seems free range is just that much more delicious.

Disney
At least we hope they're only eating them ...

To be clear, we can't state conclusively that Minecraft stole this idea from the cartoon ducks that have basically invented American art culture, but we also can't come up with a single alternative. We're assuming either that Minecraft borrowed the idea or that literally everything that is going to happen was already prophesied by those fucking ducks. If you're looking to cash in on the next big idea, the smart money is that it was already written about in a Donald Duck comic. Just pick a strip at random and invent whatever Scrooge is talking about. Seriously.

The invention started out as an "electronic handcuff" but eventually morphed into the ankle monitor we know, love, and claw at today. Goss ended up leaving his job and starting the National Incarceration Monitoring and Control Services (NIMCOS), and in less than four years, 21 states were using the devices to track criminals on parole. Today we use them across the country to track pedophiles, parolees, and immigrants. Meanwhile, Judge Love, who could have said he thought of the idea all by himself, chose to let everyone know that he stole it from a children's newspaper strip. But he also got to be the first to sentence a person to electronic monitoring as punishment, nicely enforcing the classic Spider-Man motto: "With great power comes great responsibility to not leave your house and murder people."

Comstock/Comstock/Getty Images
"Now if you'll excuse me, I have to finish writing my legal romance novel, Serving 30-to-Love."

The King started reading Captain Marvel Jr. as a teenager, dooming himself to a lifetime of fabulousness at a young age. His childhood home in Memphis even has a copy of one of Junior's comic books on Elvis' nightstand. Elvis biographers credit Captain Marvel Jr. with inspiring pretty much every unique thing about Elvis, like the memorable front curl and general look of his hairstyle, for starters.

DC Comics, Shooting Star

Cap Jr. is also kind of responsible for making the King obsessed with lightning bolts. As any nerd knows, Captain Marvel Sr. and Jr. transform into their alter egos via magic lightning bolt:

DC Comics

Inspired by Cap, Elvis used the same symbol when he created his own personal logo. Adopting the humble style that Elvis was known for, the logo was basically a yellow Captain Marvel lightning bolt, sometimes through the letters "TCB," standing for the unrelated but awesome catchphrase "taking care of business." During his later years, Elvis would end up painting the lightning bolt logo on his walls in Graceland ...

scoutingny.com

... having it emblazoned on his personal jet, the Lisa Marie ...

elvisblog.net

... and putting it on jewelry that he gave away as presents, which we imagine was similar to getting something made by a 6-year-old during arts and crafts that you then have to pretend is just the tops.

elvisblog.net
"No, Elvis, I love them ... It's just that they're so beautiful that I'm only going to wear them on special occasions."

But easily the biggest influence this C-list hero had on Elvis was inspiring the entire look of his glam-rock phase, including the one-piece bodysuits and the short capes.

clubelvis.org, DC Comics, elvisinfonet.com
You know you've gone too far when you're also making jumpsuits based on the alter ego.

The only noticeable difference between the two looks is that Elvis decided Captain Marvel Jr. wasn't flashy enough for his tastes and pulled out his BeDazzler for his own costumes. DC Comics has even winked at the fact that Captain Marvel Jr. did all this for Elvis by flipping the story and having the most recent version of him be a huge Elvis fan.

DC Comics
Which subsequently makes him sound like kind of an idiot.

So a celebrated and successful musician was doing nerd cosplay for a bunch of screaming women his whole life. That might seem like the weirdest thing about this situation, but Elvis' love for Junior wasn't just about the look; his interest in being a superhero goes much deeper than just the superficial stuff. Elvis wrote a letter to then-president Richard Nixon. He claimed to want to help Nixon in the war on drugs and hippies, and Nixon agreed to meet with him, because it's not uncommon for famous people to meet with presidents. Then Elvis the Wannabe Superhero showed up at the White House wearing a cape, because it's not uncommon for superheroes to do that. He then asked President Nixon to deputize him as a Federal Agent at Large because he wanted to help fight crime, and Nixon did it. He gave Elvis a badge and everything. He dresses like a glittering circus freak, he has a license from the president to stop bad guys, and he's got a hard-on for justice.

Elvis Presley sang and charmed his way into being an official crime fighter. It's good to be the King.

The name distinction is important, as it led to one of the few leads in the case when the FBI learned that Dan Cooper is also the name of the main character in a French comic book that was popular in Europe around the time of the hijacking. It even turns out that the fictional Dan Cooper is a French-speaking air force pilot (he's French-Canadian, though, so think less surrendering and more Wolverine flying a jet while chugging maple syrup out of the bottle). The cover of one Dan Cooper comic released around the same time even showed Cooper parachuting out of a plane, and another had a ransom delivered by knapsack, just like the real-life robbery.

Media-Participations
"I like the idea of this, but with money. And bitches."

This connection is actually more substantial than it first seems, if this is in fact where Cooper got his alias. The Dan Cooper comics were never published in the U.S., which means Cooper the hijacker must either be from Europe or have spent enough time there to fall in love with the local air force pilot literature. This hasn't managed to solve the case or anything, but it certainly narrows things down from "anybody" to "anybody who was in Europe for a while in the '70s."

Media-Participations
And had a thing for fictitious pilots with strikingly beautiful eyes.

Oh, and we know we mentioned that there are a lot of nuts out there still trying to solve the Cooper mystery, but for the record, this isn't just some crazy Internet conspiracy we're sharing: This is the official theory of the FBI. And since we're on the topic of Cooper and comic books, we've got a little theory of our own about what D.B.'s been up to all this time, as it's pretty obvious he changed his name and went into a different comic-book-inspired career.

fbi.gov, Marvel Studios
We may have just revealed the plot twist for The Avengers 2.