Kilian Foth's answer is excellent.  I'd just like to add the canonical example ([loosely taken from Odersky/Spoon/Venners][1]) of why this is a problem.  Imagine an integer Point class:

<!-- language-all: lang-java -->

    class Point2D {
        public int x;
        public int y;

        // constructor
        public Point2D(int theX, int theY) { x = theX; y = theY; }

        public int hashCode() { return x + y; }

        public boolean equals(Object o) {
            if (this == o) { return true; }
            if ( !(o instanceof Point2D) ) { return false; }

            Point2D that = (Point2D) o;

            return (x == that.x) &&
                   (y == that.y);
        }
    }

Now let's sub-class it to be a 3D point:

    class Point3D extends Point2D {
        public int x;
        public int y;
        public int z;

        // constructor
        public Point3D(int theX, int theY, int theZ) {
            x = theX; y = theY; z = theZ;
        }

        public int hashCode() { return x + y + z; }

        public boolean equals(Object o) {
            if (this == o) { return true; }
            if ( !(o instanceof Point3D) ) { return false; }

            Point3D that = (Point3D) o;

            return (x == that.x) &&
                   (y == that.y) &&
                   (z == that.z);
        }
    }

Super simple!  Let's use our points:

    Point2D p2a = new Point2D(3, 5);
    Point2D p2b = new Point2D(3, 5);
    Point2D p2c = new Point2D(3, 7);

    p2a.equals(p2b); // true
    p2b.equals(p2a); // true
    p2a.equals(p2c); // false

    Point3D p3a = new Point3D(3, 5, 7);
    Point3D p3b = new Point3D(3, 5, 7);
    Point3D p3c = new Point3D(3, 7, 11);

    p3a.equals(p3b); // true
    p3b.equals(p3a); // true
    p3a.equals(p3c); // false

You are probably wondering why I'm posting such an easy example.  Here's the catch:

    p2a.equals(p3a); // true
    p3a.equals(p2a); // FALSE!

When we compare the 2D point to the equivalent 3D point, we get true, but when we reverse the comparason, we get false (because p2a fails `instanceof Point3D`).

There are two morals of this story.

1. It is usually possible to implement a method in a subclass in such a way  that it's no-longer compatible with how the super-class expects it to work.

2. It is generally impossible to implement equals() on a significantly different subclass in a way that is compatible with it's parent class.

When you write a class that you intend to allow people to subclass, it's a really good idea to write out a *contract* for how each method should behave.  Even better would be a set of unit tests people could run against their implementations of overridden methods to prove that they do not violate the contract.  Almost nobody does that because it's too much work.  But if you care, that's the thing to do.

A great example of a well-spelled out contract is [Comparator][2].  Just ignore what it says about `.equals()` for the reasons described above.  For additional details, see Josh Bloch's "Effective Java" Item 8.

#Bonus
Comparator is also interesting because it works around the issue of inheritance and breaking the contracts of inherited methods.  It is an example of the Strategy design pattern.  The Typeclasses that Haskell and Scala people get excited about are also the Strategy pattern.  Using a Comparator doesn't have any of the problems that equals() has, because you can always swap one Comparator for another.  Inheritance isn't bad or wrong, it's just tricky.  For further reading, check out Philip Wadler's paper [How to make ad-hoc polymorphism less ad hoc][3]


  [1]: http://www.artima.com/pins1ed/object-equality.html
  [2]: https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/java/util/Comparator.html
  [3]: http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/users/karkare/courses/2010/cs653/Papers/ad-hoc-polymorphism.pdf