Herobrine

Herobrine is an urban legend and creepypasta from the video game Minecraft, originating from an anonymous post on the imageboard website 4chan in 2010. He is depicted as a version of the Minecraft character Steve, but with solid white eyes that lack pupils. In numerous iterations, Herobrine has possessed several different unnatural abilities, from constructing unusual structures to possessing animals such as sheep. Other claims about Herobrine include those that describe him to be the deceased brother of Notch, the creator of Minecraft. After the original sightings were published on 4chan, livestreamers Copeland and Patimuss created their own takes on the story, staging sightings and the former creating a webpage oriented around the character.

After the livestreams, interest in the character rose tremendously. Herobrine became a popular part of the Minecraft community, with interest in the character sparking numerous people to create their own alleged sightings of the character, as well as creating Minecraft mods that add him to the game. Interest in the character continued into the 2020s, leading to the rediscovery of media related to the original sightings. Herobrine has been considered one of the most notable legends in video games, with his popularity leading to him ranking on a poll for the best video game villains despite never existing. The character has effectively become an internet meme.

Origins
In 2010, during Minecraft alpha stage of development, an anonymous post was made on 4chan's /v/ board, where the author claimed to encounter a mysterious entity while playing Minecraft. The post claimed that shortly after starting a new world in Minecraft, the author saw what they believed to be a cow in the distance, which they approached in order to kill it. Upon approaching it, they instead saw a second player character with solid white eyes staring at them from the fog, before vanishing. After the encounter, the author noticed numerous strange structures they did not create. When trying to contact other players about the event, the author found their posts removed, eventually receiving a message from a user named "Herobrine" that simply said "stop." The anonymous post went on to claim that other players informed him that Herobrine was the alias of the brother of Notch, the creator of Minecraft. The 4chan post claimed that Notch said, in response to queries about whether he had a brother, that "I did, but he is no longer with us."

Around the same time, another anonymous post on 4chan wrote about another entity the author claimed to encounter in a cave after listening to the in-game music disc "13," which also had white eyes that lurked in the fog. This encounter was simply named "White Eyes", and was believed to be related to Herobrine. Shortly after the original stories were published, livestreamers Copeland and Patimuss, the former of which saw and liked the original posts, staged Herobrine encounters of their own. In Copeland's stream, he played in a survival world with a custom texture pack for around two hours while working on a house. After entering a room he was planning on furnishing, he saw Herobrine staring at him and he quickly left the area, traveling a long distance before falling into lava while Herobrine watched him burn to death. This encounter was created by Copeland modifying in-game textures to make Herobrine appear. Afterwards, viewers of the livestream were redirected to a GIF depicting Herobrine with moving, realistic eyes. In Patimuss' stream, he encountered Herobrine walking on lava while playing the game, before promptly shutting the game down.

After Copeland's stream, it was claimed that his computer crashed when trying to go live again afterwards. He additionally shared a webpage with the title "him.html". The page featured a gif of Steve, the default skin of Minecraft, with his pixelated eyes replaced with realistic, moving ones, as well as text at the bottom that wrote about how the reader was "living in a fantasy world inside their mind" and needed to "wake up." This granted Herobrine the additional nickname "HIM." After these streams, the popularity of Herobrine spread across the Minecraft community, with people creating their own alleged sightings to this day, as well as developing Minecraft mods to add the character to the game themselves. Most claimed sightings of Herobrine are accompanied by red text annotations and eerie music.

Design and characteristics
Herobrine is characterized as looking nearly identical to Minecraft 's default skin, Steve, but with solid white eyes that lack pupils. Sometimes, the character is depicted as just white eyes with no other physical form, or is even depicted as possessing other mobs in the game such as sheep. Throughout stories and mods that feature Herobrine, he is depicted as having numerous traits, such as constructing abnormal structures, digging random tunnels throughout the world, and removing the leaves from trees. In mods that add Herobrine to the game, he is typically summoned via the construction of a shrine.

Reception and legacy
Herobrine gained widespread popularity in the 2010s, becoming a notorious part of the Minecraft community and an internet meme. The legend remains popular in the community today. Several other Minecraft creepypastas have been created by fans, including Entity 303, though none were able to reach similar levels of notoriety as Herobrine. VG247 writer Nadia Oxford described Herobrine as one of the best creations of the Minecraft community, and IGN writer Paul Dean wrote Herobrine to be the "most popular example of a game haunting ever." Lauren Morton of PC Gamer wrote that, despite Herobrine never having truly existed, the character "lives on in the minds of plenty of Minecraft players" who were interested in him when younger.

Some players believed Herobrine to be real despite the character never existing, which caused employees of Mojang to comment on the character. Notch in particular has denied the existence of Herobrine numerous times, tweeting that he never had a brother in 2011. Despite this, Mojang has made numerous references to Herobrine in promotional material and merchandise; in numerous versions of Minecraft, the update logs have included the term "Removed Herobrine" as a joke. "We don't usually talk about Herobrine," Minecraft lead designer Jens "Jeb" Bergensten told G1. "It's a mystery [...] And we don't quite confirm if it's true or false." Minecraft director Agnes Larsson added that a creature in the game called the Warden takes inspiration from the community's horror "myths".

In 2013, Herobrine ranked 46th on a poll for the Top 50 Video Game Villains of All Time, which was organized by Guinness World Records. Books based on Herobrine have been published, such as The Legend of Herobrine. In 2021, continued interest in the story resulted in the world seed of the original Herobrine sighting being discovered by a group of players known as Minecraft@Home. Similarly, in 2020, a Minecraft player known as Enderboss25 gained contact with Copeland in an effort to recover the footage of the original livestream that caused Herobrine's popularity. While the original footage was long gone, the original world file was recovered, and a recreation of the livestream was made in a joint effort by the two. In 2024, the livestream was found after it was uploaded by YouTuber Brutalillfjomp. The Youtuber had saved the stream on his computer since 2010 and was not aware it was lost until watching a video on it the previous day.

Gabriel Menotti cited Herobrine as an example of how the recording of playthroughs might influence the universe of Minecraft in a radical way, due to the fact Herobrine never truly existed and yet still became popular. He believed that Persson's ambiguous answer on whether Herobrine will ever be integrated into Minecraft suggests that there is always a possibility for player imagination to be incorporated into one of the game's future updates, which is consistent with the logic behind Minecraft open development as well as its history of frequent updates that sometimes introduce game-changing novelties.