Herobrine

"Only God can help you now."

- Herobrine's most famous quote.

"Stop."

- Herobrine to the author.

"Wake up."

- A quote commonly associated with Herobrine.

"Removed Herobrine."

- A phrase commonly seen on Minecraft updates logs.

Herobrine (also knows as "Him"), is the titular main antagonist of the Creepypasta story of the same name. The Creepypasta surrounds an urban legend within the sandbox video game Minecraft known as Herobrine, a ghost haunting the game. While his goals seem unclear, they become more clear when being visited by him on multiple occasions. Herobrine is rumored to be Notch's dead brother (the creator of Minecraft), while this is "canon" in the Minecraft community it false in reality, as Notch has no brother (except for a half-brother he's never met).

History
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 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:

"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."

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.

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.

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, although this is most likely him just showing his creepy and sadistic demeanor.

Personality
In most depictions, Herobrine appears as a hurtful, sadistic, manipulative, psychopathic, evil-minded and treacherous individual, which is partially hidden by his false friendliness and weirdly mischievous behavior, whose goals appears unclear at first, until he frostily reveals them. Herobrine is remorseless 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.

Herobrine is very hard to understand, one day he may seem harmless and the next he's a full-blown misanthropic psychopath who craves destruction and anarchy, he only really seems to care about his own safety, although this is hard to tell as he is very powerful when it comes to combat. It also seems like Herobrine could be leading players down a path into discovering who he really is, ever since his first appearance, the bogeyman of Minecraft has continued to torture, stalk, and murder anyone around him.

Powers and Abilities
From players far and wide, Herobrine is described as a competent and overpowered homicidal maniac when it comes to his powers and abilities. Herobrine has the powers of a player in creative mode, he can fly and levitate for unlimited amounts of time, teleport without using ender pearls or chorus fruit, turn invisible, mind control mobs into becoming evil and following his every command, and is fully omnipotent and in control of both the game and electronic devices, as he is able to manipulate all kinds of code and can summon anything he wants in the game. Herobrine is also able to mess with recording softwares and send viruses.

Herobrine has very strange and supernatural powers, he's able to move any object and player with his mind alone, can spread fire rapidly without the need of a flint and steal, is able to summon fireballs and wither skulls to throw them at people, and can corrupt the game entirely. Herobrine is also the strongest entity within Minecraft, he can kill people with a single punch if he wants to, can run at incredible speeds, and rarely ever gets tired, as he also has incredible reflexes, durability, and stamina.

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.

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.

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.

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 with 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.

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.

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.

Danger Level
Herobrine is shown to be very dangerous, he seems harmless at first until he starts attacking and using his powers to their full potentials. Even when he's just staring at the player he's just as dangerous, as he knows what will get them caught in his traps. However, Herobrine doesn't seem to be able to cross over to the real world, and is supposedly confined to technology. The worst Herobrine can do is wrecking the computer the user is playing on and destroying everything on it, and even if he could cross over, he's still a ghost, which still makes him dangerous, but could still possibly be driven out with an exorcism. Thus scoring him an 8.7 on the danger level.

Trivia

 * Possible origins for Herobrine include a demon, a deity, a virus, a glitch/coding bug, a figment of imagination, a removed mob from the game, a shapeshifter, an eldritch abomination, or a relative of Steve, all of which are unlikely.
 * Herobrine is commonly seen as the true main antagonist of the Minecraft Mythos.
 * Herobrine's two main skins consist of a version with a goatee (which many thought was a smile, making him seem more evil and twisted) and a version with a simple, blank expression.
 * Herobrine seems to be a poltergeist (also known as a noisy ghost), although he's way more aggressive and incredibly hostile and violent.