Minecraft wiki entry for Wither, associated text: According to Jeb, the wither was inspired by Terraria, which has a summonable boss mechanic. The name itself is inspired by a poison spell in another game made by Jeb called Whispers in Akarra.[5]
There is a painting showing the soul sand and wither skeleton skull formation needed to spawn a wither.
If the wither is damaged by the Void, it frantically attempts to fire blue skulls.
Above half health, the wither always attempts to stay a few blocks above the mob it is targeting. This means that attempting to build or climb up to hit the wither using a sword is essentially impossible.
If the wither is after a blaze and the blaze tries to fly up to it, the wither attempts to keep rising above the blaze, thus making both of them rise higher until they hit a ceiling or until the blaze despawns or dies.
Although the wither is 3.5 blocks tall, 3 blocks wide, and 1 block thick, its hitbox is only 3.5 blocks tall, 1 block wide, and 1 block thick.
The true dimensions of the wither are: 2.844 blocks tall (varies), 3 blocks wide, and 1.719 blocks long (also varies).
The wither appears on the four sides of chiseled red sandstone.
The wither's smaller heads shoot targets slightly slower than the main head. The interval for smaller heads is 2–3 seconds, while the main head's always 2.
An enemy called the wither storm appears in Minecraft: Story Mode. It was created by replacing the center block of soul sand with a command block.
Despite not having visible feet, withers are still capable of making footstep sounds.[6]
In Java Edition 3D Shareware v1.34, withers drop red keys.
According to Quinn Richter, Marketplace Partner Manager, the wither's name is "Simmons?", similar to the ender dragon's name being "Jean?".[7]
Wither skulls spawned through /summon do 5 magic damage upon a direct hit, as opposed to the usual 8 mob attack damage.
A wither skull can be deflected by shooting an arrow at it.‌[Bedrock Edition only] If a deflected wither skull hits the wither, the wither takes damage.‌[Bedrock Edition only]
A wither and an ender dragon can engage in combat, but neither one damages the other.
The wither has the most durable and has the highest health, even more than the ender dragon. The wither has a health of 600 maximum.