What does this death message mean?

I was playing on a survival multiplayer server, when suddenly the following message appeared:

The player seemed to be very confused (and mad), saying that he has no idea what killed him.

Just the phrase "fell out of the water" makes no sense. I've looked up the death messages on the Wiki, but all I found was the death message being listed in death messages caused by falling, which also makes no sense, since the player said he was in the ocean at the moment.

What could've caused this death?

Edit:

The player who this happened to said they were not even inside a boat, but swimming down to a ship wreck instead, when suddenly they lost all their HP.

3 Answers

This death message is a very rare one, that can be triggered by using a Trident with the "Riptide" enchantment. It is caused by riptiding (from under the ocean) to a high altitude, then riptiding downwards while falling back into the ocean. But he said that he was swimming down to a shipwreck, right? Which means that either there is another way to trigger this death message, or that he is lying.

This is the "official" way to recreate this death message:

Make sure you are fully submerged in the ocean and it is raining.
Using your Trident with the Riptide enchantment, riptide upwards.
Keep riptiding until you reach an extremely high altitude (like 5000 or 6000 blocks)
Then, while you fall back into the ocean, riptide downwards back into the ocean.
When you hit the ocean floor, this death message should appear.

Another theory is that a server glitch, or a troller, teleported him to a high altitude. Then as he fell, he riptided downwards and hit the ocean floor.

Or maybe the server intended it to show this death message upon doing something.

There are a lot of ways this death message can appear. These are just my theories.

Hope I helped...

What it means is when your surver is lagging but it doesn't seem like it is and you fall off of a cliff but don't take that damage until later when you are swimming around you take the damage that you would of took when you fell later in the water. Don't really know what is the cause if it is that makes this happen sorry.

Hope that is helpful.

This has happened to me too. ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ 1: It happens when you die from fall damage, but right before you die you fall in the water because the server had low tps and you lagged forward and slipped off the block into the water and then died in the water. Which gives you the death message "Player fell out of the water". That's how I died. ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ 2: Also maybe the player died from fall damage but their ping was too high, or the server tps was too low and it gave him a minute delay, and when he was swimming down to the shipwreck he finally took the damage from when he was supposed to die from a tall height, and died. ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ 3: And he couldn't have died from falling out of a boat when he hit the land, because boats would only break up till update 1.7.2 and you could take damage from that. He didn't die that way because he said he was swimming to a shipwreck which was added in 1.14 which was after 1.7.2 and boats don't break after they hit land beyond 1.7.2. ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ 4: Also you can die from the riptide enchantment when you go up into the air and then back down which will give you fall damage. But it was not that, because he said he was swimming to a shipwreck and not playing around with a trident.