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 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/, around August 19 of 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.

On August 30, 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 numerous mods, animations, pieces of artwork and constructions of Herobrine that have been created.

Canonical
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.

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.

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.

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
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.

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 involve cobblestone placing, dungeon building, using redstone torches and setting traps. He exhibits all the behaviors of a Creative player in the game.

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

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.)

Modded versions
Many user-created modifications have been made to add Herobrine into Minecraft. The earliest known Herobrine mod was a server plugin created on December 10 2010 by the user tkelly. In the mod, Herobrine can be summoned by building an altar made of gold and netherrack and igniting the netherrack on top. The mod’s version of Herobrine exhibits behaviors similar to those in the original creepypasta and livestreams, as well as new behaviors, such as placing redstone torches, building underground dungeons, teleporting behind players, and luring players into traps. Updated versions of this plugin that have been modified by other users still exist on the internet, but the original plugin from the original creator is currently lost.

Later, on July 29 2011, a more popular Herobrine mod was created by the user burnner. This mod also lets players summon Herobrine with an altar made of gold and netherrack, though the arrangement of blocks is different. This mod’s version of Herobrine retains many of his abilities from the canon sources and original mod while gaining many new ones, such as flying, placing signs, possessing animals, and spawning undead mobs. Herobrine is much more hostile in this mod and will regularly directly attack players, unlike in the original mod where Herobrine is more rarely encountered and less directly hostile.

Many subsequent Herobrine mods have been made since, many of them employing many concepts that originated in these early examples. The use of these mods on servers and in videos likely accounts for a substantial percentage of reported Herobrine "sightings", since they are the only way Herobrine can actually exist in the game. As a result, many of Herobrine’s characteristics and abilities in these mods have become established in the community as part of the character.

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.

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."

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 2011 header, where, yet again, Herobrine was just behind Notch.

Herobrine also appeared in the the official MINECON 2011 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 2011. He was on the board, behind the Xbox stations. During MINECON 2011'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.

Herobrine also appeared in the instruction booklets of the first LEGO Minecraft sets, among other Minecraft characters.

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. After that, the Minecraft update changelog included the entry "Removed Herobrine" at least once every update cycle as a running gag, with some exceptions such as Java Edition 1.1 and Java Edition 1.16, up until Java Edition 1.16.2, which was the last update to have this message hidden within the changelogs.

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 (Xbox 360 Edition TU3), 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 skin pack 1, released on the Legacy Console Editions. Because of this skin addition, "sightings" rose 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. However, this has since been removed from the FAQ.

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


 * C418

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

Recreation
A recreation made in collaboration with Copeland of the Herobrine scene from the stream can be found below:

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 events 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.
 * 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 . 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, with the player's position at x=5.06, y=71, z=-298.54. The screenshot was made using Alpha 1.0.16_02.
 * The seed for the world used in the original livestream is . The livestream was made using Alpha 1.0.17_04.
 * Copeland eventually rediscovered the original world in which he had filmed the original Herobrine livestream, and made the world available to download here.
 * The original creepypasta states that the author heard back from their informant about a month after taking a screenshot of Herobrine. However, while the creepypasta was posted to 4chan on August 19 at the latest, the screenshot was taken in the version Java Edition Alpha v1.0.16 02, which was released on August 13, making it impossible for that much time to have elapsed.