How to force derived class to call super method? (Like Android does)

This is added in the support annotation library:

dependencies {
    compile 'com.android.support:support-annotations:22.2.0'
}

http://tools.android.com/tech-docs/support-annotations

@CallSuper

If you want to force subclasses to execute the parent class' logic, a common pattern is something like the following:

public abstract class SuperClass implements SomeInterface
{
    // This is the implementation of the interface method
    // Note it's final so it can't be overridden
    public final Object onCreate()
    {
        // Hence any logic right here always gets run
        // INSERT LOGIC

        return doOnCreate();

        // If you wanted you could instead create a reference to the
        // object returned from the subclass, and then do some
        // post-processing logic here
    }

    protected abstract Object doOnCreate();
}

public class Concrete extends SuperClass
{
    @Override
    protected Object doOnCreate()
    {
        // Here's where the concrete class gets to actually do
        // its onCreate() logic, but it can't stop the parent
        // class' bit from running first

        return "Hi";
    }
}

This doesn't actually answer your question about what prompts Eclipse to automatically insert a superclass call into the implementation; but then I don't think that's the way to go anyway as this can always be deleted.

You can't actually enforce that a method must call the superclass' version with a Java keyword, or anything like that. I suspect that your exceptions simply came from some code in the parent class checking expected invariants, or something, that were invalidated by your approach. Note that this is subtly different from throwing an exception because you failed to call super.onCreate().

Here's the source of Activity#onCreate() - it is almost all comments (original - see line ~800):

/**
 * Called when the activity is starting.  This is where most initialization
 * should go: calling {@link #setContentView(int)} to inflate the
 * activity's UI, using {@link #findViewById} to programmatically interact
 * with widgets in the UI, calling
 * {@link #managedQuery(android.net.Uri , String[], String, String[], String)} to retrieve
 * cursors for data being displayed, etc.
 *
 * <p>You can call {@link #finish} from within this function, in
 * which case onDestroy() will be immediately called without any of the rest
 * of the activity lifecycle ({@link #onStart}, {@link #onResume},
 * {@link #onPause}, etc) executing.
 *
 * <p><em>Derived classes must call through to the super class's
 * implementation of this method.  If they do not, an exception will be
 * thrown.</em></p>
 *
 * @param savedInstanceState If the activity is being re-initialized after
 *     previously being shut down then this Bundle contains the data it most
 *     recently supplied in {@link #onSaveInstanceState}.  <b><i>Note: Otherwise it is null.</i></b>
 *
 * @see #onStart
 * @see #onSaveInstanceState
 * @see #onRestoreInstanceState
 * @see #onPostCreate
 */
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    mVisibleFromClient = !mWindow.getWindowStyle().getBoolean(
            com.android.internal.R.styleable.Window_windowNoDisplay, false);
    mCalled = true;
}

so, my guess would be that the ADT Eclipse plugin is what's auto-adding that call to super.onCreate() for you. It's a total guess, though.