Now that’s a name I haven’t heard in years

ehm *inhale*

herobrine is the subject of a community-made creepypasta. He is one of the major community icons of Minecraft, yet Herobrine has not been present in any version of Minecraft.

The first story and image ever posted about Herobrine, as well as the Brocraft stream, are regarded as canonical. Things posted after these two events are considered fan-made adaptations and variations.

Existence

Herobrine is not in unmodded Minecraft, and never has been. There are no references to him at all in the source code, and there is no code to allow for any entity to act like Herobrine. It is not possible for Herobrine to have ever existed in any unmodded clients or servers. Any appearances of Herobrine are caused by either mods being installed or because of another player using the skin.

Origins and popularity

From the original creepypasta, Herobrine creates random constructions, such as sand pyramids in oceans and long 2×2 tunnels. He also cuts off all the leaves from trees.

Herobrine first appeared in a single image detailing an encounter. The first photo of Herobrine's first canonical sighting was posted on 4chan's paranormal board, /x/, in August 2010, but gained little attention. It stated how Herobrine had appeared in someone's single-player game, littering the map with various pyramids and tunnels. The post has since been deleted. It is the first media to name him as Herobrine.

It was only later that Herobrine grew in popularity, when the Brocraft streamer "Copeland" photoshopped Herobrine into several screenshots to show to his chat. He had recently taken a liking to the story, and wished to be a part of it. After getting largely good reactions, he decided to stage a hoax. He has explained exactly how that took place in an email.

Copeland had played through the world as a normal lets-player would, deliberately avoiding the work-in-progress room he had set up for the hoax. Herobrine was introduced to the stream 20 minutes and 45 seconds in. He is confirmed to be a retextured painting. Copeland then screamed and ran out of the room, promptly ending the stream.

Copeland pretended to be shaken up in the chat, and later posted a message onto the forums, linking to the video to spread it around, in the hope to get similar reactions.

After a while, Copeland removed the painting and reverted to normal textures. He proceeded to stream further, pretending to be scared. He announced that he would delete the world to never meet Herobrine again

Later on, Patimuss made a video showing Herobrine in a user-made lava field. This Herobrine was free-standing, unlike the previous video. Due to this, it is likely he was a retextured door. The livestream went down after Patimuss ran away and saved his game, only to resume ten minutes later, where Herobrine had disappeared.

Later on, during the second stream, Patimuss can be heard talking to his wife, stating he was trolling. This flooded the livestream chat with outrage. He then faked a game crash. Copeland disliked that Patimuss outed Herobrine as a fake.

It is unknown when exactly it happened in relation to Patimuss's video, but Copeland then posted links in chat, leading to http://ghostinthestream.net/him.html (archive). This is likely where the nickname "Him" originated from. The page features Steve's face, but with real, frantically rolling eyes in the place of his block eyes, modified to be completely black.

Below the face, there are a jumble of characters and letters. After removing all non-alphabet characters, the following message is revealed:

It has been reported that some victims of torture, during the act, would retreat into a fantasy world from which they could not WAKE UP. In this catatonic state, the victim lived in a world just like their normal one, except they weren't being tortured. The only way that they realized they needed to WAKE UP was a note they found in their fantasy world. It would tell them about their condition, and tell them to WAKE UP. Even then, it would often take months until they were ready to discard their fantasy world and PLEASE WAKE UP.

The message keeps telling the viewer to "wake up", implying they're living in a fantasy world, and this text hidden in the page is their "note". The above text is from another creepypasta, entitled "Wake Up".

The stream proceeded later with no further Herobrine sightings. Copeland continued to adamantly state Herobrine was real for about a year onwards.

Since the stream, there has been a huge increase in his popularity, propelling Herobrine to meme status, and making him an icon of the community. There are several mods, animations, pieces of artwork and constructions of Herobrine that have been created.

Description

Biography
Herobrine is said to be Notch's dead brother, somehow embedded into Minecraft. However, this is also completely false in reality, as Notch never had a brother.

Appearance

Canonical

Herobrine is a human entity, with the player skin of Steve. Unlike Steve, his eyes are completely white, with no visible irises or pupils. In Copeland's livestream, he had the beard seen in Steve's original design. In the original Herobrine image, however, the beard appears to be absent.

Community
Herobrine can sometimes be seen holding tools, such as pickaxes. This stems from the widespread community belief that Herobrine was a miner. Usually, his hands are empty.

Herobrine is often portrayed by the community as a dead miner, killed long before the player's arrival. His appearance, however, does not suggest either of these are the case. However, with Minecraft's mineshafts and strongholds, as well as mining being a large part of the game, the game itself has shaped public perception of the character to suit this persona.

Interaction within Minecraft
Canonical
Herobrine is able to build and destroy in Minecraft. The original image states the player found long 2×2 tunnels, small pyramids in the middle of the ocean and trees with no leaves. The full extent of Herobrine's building capacity is unknown, but the given examples indicate Herobrine has awareness of shape, and can differentiate materials from each other.

Herobrine shows a lot of characteristics of being a form of virus, such as manipulating game worlds, deleting threads and sending messages through the Minecraft Forums.

Herobrine seems to solely target human players. He did not seem to interact with any other mobs nearby in the Brocraft stream, some of which were spiders and zombies. His canonical relation to further mobs added since he appeared is a complete mystery. His interactions with other mobs is not mentioned in the original image. While there is a chicken present in the image, Herobrine does not seem interested in it at all, and is solely focused on the player.

Community
Herobrine has, on occasion, interacted with other mobs. He is sometimes able to take control of passive animals, and revive/spawn undead mobs.

Herobrine seems able to drastically change his environments with no viable source of resources to do so. Most expansions to his abilities involves cobblestone placing, dungeon building, using redstone torches and setting traps. He exhibits all the behaviors of a Creative player in the game.

Herobrine seems unable to enter the Nether, or the End.

Variations
Herobrine's intentions vary, but they usually fall under two categories. One variation is based on pure community interpretation, while the other, based on the canon.

Canonical
In the Stalker variation, he stalks the player, disappearing if approached. This variation is derived from his origins.

Community
In the Vengeful variation, he tries to ensnare the player in traps, presumably to steal their items. He waits for people to enter his dungeons, then either seals them inside, or teleports behind them, presumably killing them. Some rarer variations of this particular version says he breaks the player's creations, and steals their items from chests. This variation is likely inspired by griefers and trolls.

Spawning
Canonical
In both the original creepypasta and the brocraft streams, Herobrine appears in the world without any apparent cause, and his presence is not implied to be due to a player’s actions. In the creepypasta he seems to avoid the player and appears to only be active in unexplored areas, whereas in the streams he seems to intentionally get close to players and appears mainly near player constructions.

Community

A typical Herobrine shrine.

A popular idea in the community is that Herobrine can be "summoned" through the use of a special arrangement of blocks, such as a "Herobrine shrine" or "Herobrine altar", a 3×3 horizontal square of gold blocks, with a block of netherrack placed on top and 4 redstone torches placed upright on each side. The block beneath the netherrack varies between versions, with common choices being mossy cobblestone, soul sand, more netherrack or more gold. Igniting the netherrack is supposed to "activate" the structure, which then supposedly summons Herobrine into the world.

Building any structures claimed to be able to summon Herobrine in vanilla Minecraft does not actually summon Herobrine.

Addition to Minecraft
Notch posted on Twitter about the subject of Herobrine, early in his popularity boost. In reply to a tweet asking if Herobrine was a real entity in-game, Notch replied saying that he was not, but that there "might be soon". This confirmed there was no Herobrine, but suggested "Notch planned to add him at a later date".

Due to increased drama surrounding the Herobrine page, a wiki administrator asked Notch over IRC if Herobrine would ever be added, to which Notch replied "i [sic] have no plans of adding herobrine as is, but I do like the rumors, haha".

This shows Notch has decided against adding Herobrine. However, the fact that "as is" suggested that something like Herobrine may be added, fueling beliefs he will be added even further. So, once again, the same user asked for clarification, saying that the Minecraft community was "getting frustrated by the hero-spam", to which Notch replied that he had no plans for adding Herobrine into the game.[7]

Current stance on Herobrine
As Minecraft passed on from Notch to Jeb, the chance of Herobrine appearing in an update was unclear. On 22 August 2012, Dinnerbone, current joint developer of Minecraft, tweeted "We have no plans at all to add herobrine. I doubt this will ever change."[8]

This confirms that Herobrine will never see an official release in Minecraft, and that any claims of "finding" Herobrine in vanilla Minecraft in future updates are completely unfounded.

Cameos

Mojang media appearances

Herobrine has appeared in official Mojang images as an in-joke.

His first appearance in official Mojang images started with the Wedding Weekend, in which he was just behind Notch's Minecraft character. His second appearance was in the MINECON header, where, yet again, Herobrine was just behind Notch.

Herobrine also appeared in the the official MINECON trailer, created by Hatfilms, at 3:11. However, as users were asked to submit their skins to appear in the trailer, this is likely not intentional.

Herobrine was also spotted at the Xbox section of MINECON. He was on the board, behind the Xbox stations. During MINECON's closing, a user named Zaralith won the Herobrine statue by answering the give-away question "How many Fable games are there?" correctly.

Some users point to this as proof of his future addition. However, there is no proof he is being portrayed for anything other than baiting fans.

Herobrine also appeared in Minecraft's Facebook page, the image being the Cover Photo. It is notable to state the image was created by the fan for a competition, with the theme of "summer picnic", hence his inclusion may not be fully intentional.

Changelogs
Herobrine was first stated to have been removed in Beta 1.6.6. This was a joke, referring to Notch partially removing the human mob's essential code, making it unspawnable within Minecraft. An ulterior motive was to troll the community, as this was around the time Herobrine had gained memetic status within the community. Ever since, the Minecraft update changelog included the entry "Removed Herobrine" at least once every update cycle as a running gag, with the sole exception of Java Edition 1.1.

Launcher changelog
In the changelog of Minecraft Launcher version 2.2.176x, the developers say that they "removed Herobrine from Java Alpha 1.0.16_02".

Xbox 360 changelog
In an update for Xbox 360 on July 13, 2012, Herobrine was removed from the Xbox 360 Edition of Minecraft for the first time.

Legacy Console Edition
On the Legacy Console Editions, Herobrine is mentioned on one of the splash messages.[9]

Herobrine is part of a skin pack, released on the Legacy Console Editions. Because of this skin addition, "sightings" have risen drastically. However, all Herobrines on the Xbox are simply players using the Herobrine skin. Herobrine then made another appearance in the 3rd skin pack for the Xbox version, where a "Zombie Herobrine" skin is available.

Scrolls
In the latest update for the game Scrolls, 0.103.0, Herobrine being removed was in the change log miscellaneous section.

Minecraft Earth
On the Minecraft Earth FAQ site, Herobrine used to be mentioned in one of the frequently asked questions about Minecraft Earth.[11] However, this has since been removed from the FAQ.

The question was "Is Herobrine in this game too?" and the answer given is "<REDACTED>"

Mojang reactions
Mojang has, albeit rarely, shared their views on Herobrine. Their reactions have varied from plainly stating that he does not exist to Notch saying he appears only when players ask him.

Notch


Fine, Herobrine is real, and he gains spooky vengeance haunting power whenever you remind me of him. Only way to stop him is to ignore him.

„
— Notch on Herobrine[12]

Getting loads of tweets and emails about Herobrine again. I don't have a dead brother, and he never was in the game. Not real. Never was.

„
— Notch on Herobrine[13]

The Herobrine stuff is awesome and kind of scary at the same time. It really shows how little control a content producer has over the content.

I've publicly told people there's never been any such thing as Herobrine, and that I don't have any dead brothers, and that letting too many animals die in lava is a fool proof way to summon him but that you don't need to be afraid of him. He only means well, he's looking out for you, trying to warn you of the dangers you can't see. There certainly are NO physical manifestations of Herobrine that will sneak out of your computer if you leave Minecraft running at night, looming over you as you sleep with his pale eyes inches away from your face, as he tries to shout at you to wake up. Sometimes you wake up with a jolt, and he's gone, and all that lingers is the memory and faint echo of his wordless screaming. Of course it was just a dream. There's no way a morally dubious ghost with a god complex could at any point decide to haunt the children who play my game "for their own good", as there is NO SUCH THING. etc etc

„
— Notch on Herobrine[


Every single thing in the game gets found out within minutes. People are decompiling the code, and there are even automated tools to do so. It should be obvious to everyone that there isn't a hidden herobrine in there, or it would've been found years ago.

Despite this, people keep spreading the rumor, posting fake stories and screenshots, and generally hyping it, so it seems to be something people WANT the game to contain. But the truth he certainly had never ever been in the game when I was working on it, and I absolutely, positively don't have a dead brother. But if people want to pretend it's true, who am I to stop them?

tl;dr: sure, why not

„
— Notch on Herobrine

Ezchili

It was fun to see the brocraft stream with herobrine back in the day, was well done. But then it's been overused & worn out.

„
— Ezchili on Herobrine
Kappische


Ok ok. To be honest, there has never existed a Herobrine. It was just a rumor started by some douche and then someone probably created a mod.

„
— Kappische on Herobrine

When asked if he would like to update his stance, Kappische replied:

yes..but he is watching me!

„
— Kappische on Herobrine
Mollstam


Herobrine has, and always will be, our friend.

„
— Mollstam on Herobrine
JahKob


He has never existed.. Quote me if you want..

Carnalizer

I don't always have an opinion

— Carnalizer on Herobrine
EvilSeph

EvilSeph

I can't comment on that, he might be watching...

„
— EvilSeph on Herobrine (Via IRC)

Trivia

There is a user called Herobrine registered on Minecraft servers. The account is a full account (meaning they have bought Minecraft after registering). They do not appear to have visited any MINECON using the Herobrine username, due to their lack of a cape. Ex-Mojang Andrea Jörgensen stated that a friend of hers owns the Herobrine account.[23]
In September 2013, Marc Watson created a series of skins for the head model. These skins were made to ensure a stable skin for various official entities could be used without fear that the skin could change. Herobrine was one of the skins that could be obtained through this system by using the command /give @s player_head{SkullOwner:MHF_Herobrine}. The skin used to show Herobrine without a beard, which was not canon to Herobrine's origins in both the the creepypasta and the Copeland stream, as well as official promotional materials Mojang often use. The skin was originally taken from the Herobrine account, whose skin is different to the originating materials. This mistake was corrected in December 2017 to reflect Herobrine's original canon design, using the same beard that the Steve and human mob had before the release of Survival Test.
"Removing Herobrine" is an episode in the Java Edition 3D Shareware v1.34 April Fools' update.
The seed for the world used in the original screenshot is 478868574082066804, with the player's position at x=5.06, y=71, z=-298.54. The screenshot was made using Alpha 1.0.16_02.[24]
Copeland eventually rediscovered the original world in which he had filmed the original Herobrine livestream, and made the world available to download

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