Herobrine



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 image/story ever posted about Herobrine, as well as the Brocraft stream, are regarded as canonical. Things posted after these two events are considered fan-made adaptions/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 creepy-pasta, 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. It was posted on the 4chan's /v/ board, and gained little attention. It stated how Herobrine had appeared in someone's single-player game, littering the map with various pyramids and tunnels. 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:

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. The wiki asked Copeland several questions regarding the event, which are located here.

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.

What Herobrine is
Herobrine is Notch's dead brother, somehow embedded into Minecraft. While this is the "canon", this is also completely false in reality, as Notch has no brother.
 * Canonical

Ghost aside, there are two plausible canon theories remaining.

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. Perhaps also hacking into Notch's email and Twitter to reply on his own existence. Or, Herobrine is simply a figment of the users imagination. All users the user talked to, including Notch's email reply, could simply be the creation of the player's mind. This would also explain Notch's rejection of the canon, as showing the story is all in the user's head.

Herobrine is near-certainly inspired by Slenderman, who is also the inspiration behind Endermen.

The most popular theories among users is that Herobrine is a ghost. Other theories can involve him being a higher being, a demon, a bad omen, or the suggestions in the canonical explanation. However, most of these are written as if Minecraft itself is reality, rather than from the player controlling the avatar within the game. Herobrine canonically has not appeared in real life, and remains confined to technology.
 * Community

Appearance
Herobrine is a human entity, with the player skin as Steve. In Copeland's livestream, he has a beard, differentiating his original beardless appearance. Herobrine has bright white eyes that glow in the darkness, as if they are a light source (compare with the eyes of endermen, spiders and cave spiders; which appear brighter than their surroundings without actually emitting light).
 * Canonical

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.
 * Community

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. But with Minecraft's abandoned 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.

Movement
Herobrine is said to have the ability to run in Minecraft. This is indicated by the original source. The Brocraft stream portrays him as almost always stood up straight, with arms to his sides, watching the player. He is not seen to physically move within the Brocraft stream, but he moves location during the stream. It is unknown if Herobrine can swim, use minecarts, boats or Nether portals. Like most ghosts, it is likely he simply has no use for most methods of transportation.
 * Canonical

Much like angered Endermen, Herobrine is widely believed to move via teleportation. Nearly all of the community actually reject the canon, describing him as running.
 * Community

Herobrine cannot fly, and no variation states this as "canonical". However, he appears to be able to glide. Which is to say, moving in directions without physically moving, while not moving upwards. This is usually evident in retreating back into fog.

Herobrine is often portrayed with his head crooked or twitching. This is likely due to him being seen moreso as a virus/creepy entity in Minecraft, rather than a ghost.

Interaction within Minecraft
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.
 * Canonical

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.

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

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 symptoms 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 interpritation, while the other, based on the canon.

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

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.
 * Community

Future update
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".

At MINECON 2010, Notch confirmed Herobrine would be in the game, possibly in a Seecret Friday update.

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.

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

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.

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.

Xbox 360 changelogs
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.

Herobrine is part of a skin pack, released on the Legacy Console Editions. See Screenshot Here. 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 Minecraft Earth FAQ site, Herobrine is mentioned in one of the frequently asked questions about Minecraft Earth. This mention has since been removed from the FAQ.

The question is "Is Herobrine in this game too?" and the answer is " "

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


 * Ezchili


 * Kappische

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


 * Mollstam


 * JahKob


 * Carnalizer


 * EvilSeph

Trivia

 * When asked about audio player implementation in the wiki, and limits of what could be uploaded, C418 replied to Herobrine claims relating to disc 11. He stated that he cannot say a lot about 11, but that it has nothing to do with Herobrine.
 * There is a user called Herobrine registered on Minecraft servers. The account is a full account (meaning they have bought Minecraft after registering). They don't appear to have visited any MINECON using the Herobrine username, due to their lack of a cape texture. The owner is possibly a friend of ex-Mojang Andreas Jörgensen.
 * In September of 2013, Marc from Mojang 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 . 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 of 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 first photo of Herobrine's first canonical sighting was posted on a channel on 4chan called /paranormal in August 2010, but the post was deleted.

Livestream reference
The Herobrine livesteam was located here. That livestream has since been deleted and no backups are available.