Herobrine

Herobrine is the subject of a community-made "creepy-pasta". He is a human entity, but with white eyes.

The story behind Herobrine
Herobrine is often stated to be a ghost in Minecraft. He creates random constructions, such as pyramids and long 2-block-high tunnels. he also burns down, or cut off leaves from trees, and creates cobblestone-complexes underground, much like dungeons, lit with redstone torches. He often appears in fog, in a tiny render distance.

Variations
There are many variations of Herobrine's supposed behaviour, but they usually fall under two categories.

The stalker version of Herobrine usually states that he is Notch's brother, and that he stalks the player, dissapearing if approached.

The miner version usually states that Herobrine is a vengeful miner that 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 variations of this particular version says he breaks the player's creations, and steals their items.

Origins and popularity
Herobrine first appeared in a single image detailing an encounter. It was posted on a thread in the forums, and gained very little attention. It stated how Herobrine had appeared in someone's single-player game, littering the map with various pyramids and tunnels.

It was only later that Herobrine grew in popularity, when the Brocast staff staged a hoax in one of their live-streams. Herobrine was introduced to the stream here (at 20:45).

Later on, there was another video showing herobrine in a user-made lava field. The livestream went down after the player ran and saved, only to resume [http://www.livestream.com/minecrafterryday/video?clipId=pla_7c528f18-2c03-4cb2-9e14-9ee8e4e7d312&utm_source=lslibrary&utm_medium=ui-thumb ten minutes later, where Herobrine had dissapeared.

During this stream, the player can be heard talking to his wife, stating he was trolling, getting flooded reactions in the livestream chat. The player then fakes a game crash.

During this crash, all watchers were redirected to another page, featuring Herobrine's face, but with real, frantically rolling eyes in the place of his block eyes, modified to be completly black.

When viewing the page's source, there were a jumble of characters and letters. after removing all non-alphabet characters, the following message was revealed.

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".

It is widely believed all of his appearences in the stream are retextured paintings or iron doors.

Since then, there has been a huge increase in his popularity, propelling Herobrine to meme-status, making moderators of the wiki and forums take extra steps to stem the flow of user-made spam.

Future update
Notch posted on twitter about the subject of Herobrine, early in his popularity boost.

This confirmed there was no herobrine, but suggested Notch planned to add him at a later date.

At Minecraftcon 2010, Notch confirmed Herobrine will be in the game, probably in a "seecret friday update".

Due to increased drama surrounding the Herobrine page, a wiki moderator asked notch over IRC if herobrine would be added:

This shows notch has decided against adding Herobrine. However, the fact that "as is" suggested that something like Herobrine will be added

References in changelogs
Herobrine was stated to have been removed in Minecraft Beta v1.6.6. This was a joke, referring to Notch removing the Human mob.

He was also stated to have been removed in 1.7, as well as 1.7_01, this time with no reason apparent.