Herobrine

"Only God can help you now."

- Herobrine's famous quote.

Herobrine Persson, better known as Herobrine, is a widely popular Creepypasta and urban legend originating from the sandbox video game Minecraft. Following official descriptions, this entity could be Notch's dead brother, somehow embedded into Minecraft, and appears as an omnipotent and malevolent entity - although Notch stated that he never had a brother.

Herobrine has become somewhat of an icon in the Minecraft community: despite having no appearance in Minecraft, Herobrine has appeared in many forms of fan-made media such as songs, mods, reviews and videos. He is also the main protagonist or antagonist of countless maps, mods and fanfics.

Story
Herobrine first appeared in a single image detailing an encounter. It was posted on the 4chan 's /v/ board, 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 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 here (at 20:45). 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 a website named [http://ghostinthestream.net/him.html. GhostInTheStream]. 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."

- A cryptic message about Herobine.

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 onward. 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.

Behavior
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 user's 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.

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 is able to build and destroy in Minecraft. The original image states the player found long 2x2 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 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 is not always evil and often just neutral, watching (and sometimes stalking) the player from such a high.

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 symptoms of a Creative player in the game.

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

Impact
Notch has tweeted that he does not have a brother (besides an estranged half-brother). However, the Mojang members have constantly teased the community by adding "Removed Herobrine" every time they make an update, fueling the fire more so. Herobrine also has his own Mod, where he usually torments the player with blood-curling screams and making them seem delusional by ordering chickens and other usually friendly mobs to attack the player. In this mod, he also makes giant, Glowstone "E"s on occasion. Herobrine is also added as plug-ins for some multiplayer servers, making other players believe that he is actually real. 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 is not anything to do with Herobrine. WatchMojo ranked Herobrine as #7 on their Top 10 Video Game Urban Legends list.

Personality
In most depictions, Herobrine appears as an evil-minded, cold, patient, treacherous, smart, cunning, hurtful individual, which is partially hidden by his falsely friendliness and weird mischievous behavior, whose goals appears unclear at first, until he frostily reveals them. Herobrine shows no remorse to his victims, he enjoys watching them cower in fear before his horrific crimes and killing them after they're done panicking from being in the entity's presence.

The most well-known and most common rendition of the rumor is that a gamer while in single player mode found an NPC with the default skin - but with "empty eyes". Following the encounter, strange occurrences start happening in his game, such as man-made objects appearing that he never created, such as trees missing their leaves, perfect 2x2 tunnels underground lit with redstone torches, and pyramids of sand in the ocean.

He states he posted the topic on the forum where it is removed. A user by the name of Herobrine sends him a message telling him to "stop". The player is contacted by an administrative person, claiming him alongside other players have encountered a pseudo player. Upon further research, Herobrine is discovered to be Notch's brother. The player personally emails Notch asking if he had a brother. After some time, Notch responded with this short message: "I did, but he is no longer with us".

Appearance
Herobrine is a human entity, who shares the exactly same characteristics and the same skin as "Steve". However Herobrine has bright white eyes that glow in the darkness, as if they are a light source; thus, Herobrine's eyes act as a light source in the dark.

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. But with Minecraft's abandoned mine shafts 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 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.

Powers and Abilities
On every testimonials, Herobrine is described as a vastly powerful and competent entity, which make him, by far, the worst threat that a player can encounter. Herobrine seems to be totally unbeatable, as he cannot take physical wounds nor cannot be cleared with commands (even with the /kill cheat-code, which can kill any entity in an instant), and often rely on brainwashed vessels instead of engaging in a direct fight. Which is strange, considering that he has an enormous strength. As an invulnerable human, he seems to have access to every Steve's abilities from the Creative mode, such as flying, running, crafting, invisibility, access to every blocks from the game, and so on. He also seems to move in directions without physically moving, like a ghost, which make him the first noncorporeal mob from the game.

Plus, he has many other unusual powers for Minecraft's entities such as being able to teleport anywhere in an instant, crafting nearly anything instantly, the capacity of destroying vast areas in a seconds, electrokinesis, and so on. As shown below, he can also possess other entities or, in an extent, brainwash entire communities of mobs to do his willings.

In fact, he is unmatchable, as he seems to know perfectly the position of each players he stalks, can blind players for a few seconds, is totally immune to potion's effects or curses and can pass every traps without being detected. Without a doubt, he is the strongest entity from Minecraft; next to him, game bosses such as the Ender Dragon or the Wither appear as considerably easier and utterly futile opponents.

Worst, as a demonic creature (or perhaps something even worse), Herobrine has the ability of traveling into different worlds and games from different players through totally unknown and paranormal means.

Neverthless, in spite of his vast array of competences, he is not all-powerful and has some flaws. Namely, he is unable to enter other in-game realms such as the Nether and the Enderworld. In addition, it is totally unknown if Herobrine can swim, use minecarts, boats or Nether portals - but this is likely not a problem, since Herobrine fly and can teleport himself anywhere. Like most ghosts, it is likely he simply has no use for most methods of transportation.

No players who have ever witnessed him or crossed his path has ever beat or killed him, even in Creative mode. Grouped efforts seem also totally pointless as Herobrine know the position of every players at each instant and, as such, can adapt his strategy or just turn invisible.

It seems that the only way to get rid of him is to exiting the game simply and deleting the infested world, which put an end to his mere presence. Also, as stated above, going into the Nether or the Enderworld turns Herobrine harmless, as he cannot penetrate into these realms.

Fictional Origin
Despite many knowing the story of Herobrine, many question just who the entity is. It's very rarely to suggest suggest that Herobrine is an otherworldly entity from another dimension that has somehow manifested itself into Minecraft. Others suggest that Herobrine is a virus or glitch that somehow found its way into Minecraft and started wreaking havoc, its also possible that Herobrine was once a mob or boss in the game that was removed for unknown reasons.

Because of Notch's rejection of Herobrine's existence and the many people that still claim to see him, its possible that Herobrine is a figment of the players imagination, and that all the players who have 'seen' him are just imagining Herobrine haunting their game. Another theory is that Herobrine is somehow related to Steve, the protagonist of the game, which makes sense, as Herobrine is a carbon copy of Steve with white eyes, possibly hinting at Steve being the real brother of Herobrine, and not Notch.

The most likely answer to Herobrine's existence and the answer that makes the most sense is that Herobrine is a ghost, many people assume that before Herobrine passed away he used to be a miner who died and was mysteriously brought back to life and haunts not only Minecraft, but also the abandoned mineshafts where he presumably worked at when he was alive.

Despite all the theories, Herobrine's enigmatic existence allows for many interpretations of the character, either portraying him as an insecure entity with misunderstood intentions, or an entity that wants to see the world burn and bring everyone in Minecraft down to his knees. Furthermore, several versions of Herobrine have portrayed him as a very tragic character, rather than a terrifying horror. In fact, Herobrine's backstory is and will presumably remain surrounded by mysteries.

Despite being around for almost eight years, Herobrine's creator is still unknown.

Herobrine's Quotes
"Stop."

- A post from the original Creepypasta.

"Wake up."

- Herobrine

"Where is your God now?"

- Herobrine

Mojang Quotes
Mojang has occasionally shared their views on Herobrine. Here are some of them:

"I did, but he is no longer with us."

- Notch

"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."

- Notch

"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

"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

"Also herobrine is not real please stop asking argh"

- Notch

"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

"Yes..but he is watching me!"

- Kappische

"I don't always have an opinion about Herobrine, but when I do, it tends to end up on a wiki."

- Carnalizer

"I don't have an opinion."

- Carnalizer

Trivia

 * Herobrine is one of the most popular Creepypasta to this day.
 * He is one of the most powerful and vile Minecraft's villain.
 * Herobrine can be considered the closest thing the Minecraft's mythos will ever get to a Big Bad so far.
 * For instance, he is the true main antagonist of Animation VS Minecraft, the 5th entry in the Animator VS Animation series by Alan Becker, where Herobrine possesses the red stick figure and is eventually defeated when Minecraft is deleted, and is forced out of Red's body.