The bug
The death message "death.fell.accident.water" and its localization is missing. It is about getting fall damage in water.
How to reproduce
Summon a water area using the following command.
/fill ~1 ~-1 ~1 ~-1 ~-1 ~-1 minecraft:water
Standing in the water, execute the following command provided below.
/damage @s 100 fall
→ ❌ When you die, the death message shown is
death.fell.accident.water
.
Note that there are also some edge cases where this death message is shown without using commands, though these are more difficult to reproduce.
Linked issues
is duplicated by
Attachments
Comments


It's really hard to replicate, but it involves combined damage from fall and from water in a short period of time. I can see that in some older versions it had a string "%s fell out of water" but that's currently missing in assets\minecraft\lang\en_us.json". The string has even been in Crowdin for at least 2 years, but for some reason it's not used now, while it's still possible to get this message.

This is caused by, well falling out of water and dying from a high place.

Probably caused by the fix to MC-173487

I just reported the accident and describe the occurrence. Here is where my bug report is: MC-197393
Here's the image attached:
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This bug happened to the twitch streamer NiceTwiceYT as well. He had debug info visible when this bug happened, maybe this helps to find the root cause of the weird death:
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@unknown don't use optifine when reproducing bugs. modded games are not supported

I might figure out some coding to implement this correctly, as it is strange for an untranslated string.

Still works in 1.16.2
How to reproduce: build a structure like the one on the screenshot in the air and leave the hole at the end of rail track (right part of the structure). In the same Y coordinate as that hole put water at the ground level and surround it with blocks. Then go in survival, put a minecart on the rails and sit in it. Go in the direction of the hole until you stop moving. Then break the last rail and the block below it, that way the minecart will be between two blocks falling down with the player in it, it should land in the water and on the solid block. It result in that death message.

I've seen this happen before as well. My friend was on a horse and simply walked into water and died a moment after with the same message.
What's worse is that only the horses saddle and armor dropped and none of my friends items did. All their gear and armor was lost, just like that.
I was playing on 1.16.1 on a server as well. I hope this gets fixed because it's extremely upsetting and unfair.

The fact that the items were not dropped is a different issue. If you find a way to reproduce it in 1.16.2 you should create a ticket about it (unless you can find a ticket that already describes the issue)

It says that I hit the ground too hard not death.fell.accident.water

Affects 1.16.3.

@SunCat In version 1.10.2 at least, the en_US.lang file contained "<username> fell out of the water" for this death message. Somewhere between then and now (1.16.*) it was removed (probably when the ".lang" files were switched to ".json" files). Because this bug doesn't seem to be very frequently observed it must be tricky to "fall out of the water" and why the message was removed.
This was recently observed live on Twitch and clipped here. If I had to guess as to the cause in this particular clip, swimming is considered the same as flying in terms of accumulating "time falling". But when the swimmer touches a block not normally in the water (like the crying obsidian of the broken portal structure) the fall damage is calculated and applied to the player – killing them. (I suggest the Crying Obsidian as this doesn't seem to be caused when swimming against blocks like sand, gravel, etc. and C.O. is a relatively new block)
However, in the logic of selecting which death message to display - "death.fell.accident.<cause>", one of the checks is "Was the player underwater?" setting the cause as "water", resolving to "death.fell.accident.water" which incorrectly requests the removed death message from the localization files. In the OP's case, this removed message is likely chosen by checking the player's head location after animating the player falling over from fall damage.

happened to me in 1.16.4, jumped into flowing water walked for about 15 seconds and then instantly died with this message
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Affecting 20w45a

The same thing happened to me, it's really weird! My only guess is that it has something to do with lag because the server I was playing on was really laggy.
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How do i do that? Reproduce to step please?

I could reproduce by falling onto a waterlogged slab while riding a minecart

thanks

Affects any snapshot here:
20w46a
20w48a
20w49a
20w51a

@unknown Only current releases and snapshots are accepted so past snapshots won't be added to this report.

I found that another way to reproduce this is to jump into water from a high place (I did from a mountain) and sprint swim in the direction you were heading, when you hit the bottom it says death.fell.accident.water
Attached is a picture of the message along with where I jumped and where the ocean is.
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thanks a lot for reproduce this screenshot/or video, this is like rare to dive into ground while you're in server as survival, when there's no additional rare death message like; (Name) fell from a water.
also it confirms in 21w07a.
Can confirm in 21w08b.

I can't reproduce this issue, I did everything as the images above in the latest version, but it said "Player hit the ground too hard" instead of "death.fell.accident.water".

I also checked en_US.lang and "death.fell.accident.water" doesn't exist in the text file.
I can still confirm in 21w08b! I've found a video that provides a method to reproduce this issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rQKIIks0VY. In my tests, this allowed the issue to be reproduced every time.

"death.fell.accident.water" doesn't appear in en_US.lang for 1.16.5

We don't need to discuss whether there is this kind of death in Minecraft, because there is no doubt about it. But instead of a nice localized message, the game only displays a technical name of the string. Why? Because it's missing in the /assets/minecraft/lang/ json files. That's the whole issue. This death is not a new one, it's been in the game for a long time. And several major versions ago, the death message was displayed correctly, because it was in the lang jsons. It's even in Crowdin and it has been for at least 8 years (see attached picture 1). The only issue here is that this specific string somehow fell out of the localization process and even the original EN_US string is missing. A simple fix would be to make sure that it's included in the lang jsons. I made a mockup of what that should look like (picture 2).
Picture 1: The string has been introduced a long time ago and it even has translations
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Picture 2: This single string simply didn't make it into the lang files
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Can confirm for 1.16.5 vanilla
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I failed to try, but I was doing it correctly, my version are 1.16.3 and 1.16.5. When I die using this method, the death message came out: "%1$s hit the ground too hard". So, maybe the glitch isn't coming out in each case.
p.s.: I think I successed! https://youtu.be/Ei_0NwjxfKc

Just tested and still works in 1.17!

Confirmed in 1.17 Pre-release 1

Confirmed in 1.17 Pre-release 2

Confirmed in 1.17 RC1

Can confirm in 1.17.1 Release Candidate 2.

Confirmed in release 1.17.1.

Not confirmed in 1.16.1,20w29a and 1.16.2

@XX BEAST REPORTER, these versions are no longer supported. Please only report about the current release of the game, 1.17.1.

Confirmed in 21w39a

Looking at the previous translation file, it seems that death.fell.accident.water has been deleted from 1.16.

It was removed in 20w12a due to the fix of MC-173487, which caused this bug.

Confirmed in 1.18

Can still confirm in 1.18!

Confirmed in 1.18.1

Still confirmed in 1.19

Another way to reproduce: Dig 30 blocks down and replace the bottom block with water. Then, use this command:
/give @p minecraft:trident{Enchantments:[{id:riptide,lvl:32767}]} 1
Next, aim your trident up into the sky, then release.
Do nothing else.
Here is a demonstration: https://youtu.be/SNnJ_4DuaiU

Can confirm in 23w03a

Can confirm in 23w05a. I died this way in a hardcore world somehow

Can confirm in 23w06a. The release of /damage
making it extremely easy to reproduce, simply standing in water and run "/damage @s 100 fall
", then "death.fell.accident.water
" appears.

Version 1.19.4-pre3 confirmed to be affected

still an issue in 23w12a

1.20.1. In fact I think this issue can be solved by operating a resource pack in local. I've uploaded a screenshot of it; yet the official hasn't provide this source string (death.fell.accident.water) on Crowdin.
And I just checked the "en_us.json{}" in 1.20.1.jar and tried to search "death.fell.accident.water," but no results.

Can confirm in 23w31a.

Another way to reproduce: swim inside some water, then throw an ender pearl so you teleport somewhere high up and fall to your death.

@Kenny Zhang Could not reproduce. Could you explain in further detail?

Can confirm in 1.20.5 Pre-release 2.

Affects 1.20.5 pre-release 3.

Can confirm in 1.20.6

Can confirm in 1.21 Pre-Release 2.

Can confirm in 1.21.

As of 1.21,
I can only recreate this glitch naturally with a minecart at heights 21, 25, 28, 31, 34, and 37. It seems to only be within this range at multiples of 3 for some reason.

This missing lang file entry is highlighted in Joe Hills' YouTube video as of today, existing under 1.21.5


This Bug can be easily fixed by Mojang by simply adding a en_us.json
entry named death.fell.accident.water
– Maybe make it a funny message like Player failed to land gently in water
?
What exactly was the player doing at the time? The chat does indicate use of server mods, can this be reproduced with no mods at all?