The story behind Herobrine

From the original creepy-pasta Herobrine creates random constructions, such as pyramids and long 2-block-high tunnels. He also burns down, or cuts off leaves from trees, and createscobblestone-complexes underground, much like dungeons, lit with redstone torches. He often appears at the edge of fog, in a tiny render distance.

Variations

There are many variations of Herobrine's behaviour, but they usually fall under two categories.

The stalker version of Herobrine is Notch's brother, who stalks the player, disappearing if approached. This variation is most likely derived from another internet creepy-pasta, Slenderman.

The miner version of Herobrine is a vengeful miner that 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 variations of this particular version says he breaks the player's creations, and steals their items from chests.

In all versions, Herobrine is a human ghost entity, with the only variable being his intentions and construction abilities, or lack thereof.

Origins and popularity

Herobrine first appeared in a single image detailing an encounter. It was posted on a thread in the forums, 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 was only later that Herobrine grew in popularity, when the Brocast staff staged a hoax in one of their live-streams. Herobrine was introduced to the stream here (at 20:45).

Later on, there was another video showing Herobrine in a user-made lava field. The livestream went down after the player ran and saved, only to resume ten minutes later, where Herobrine had disappeared.

During this stream, the player can be heard talking to his wife, stating he was trolling, which flooded the livestream chat with outrage. The player then faked a game crash.

During this crash, all watchers were redirected to another page, featuring Herobrine's face, but with real, frantically rolling eyes in the place of his block eyes, modified to be completely black.

When viewing the page's source, there were a jumble of characters and letters. after removing all non-alphabet characters, the following message was 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".

It is widely believed all of his appearances in the stream and other video sources are retextured paintings, retextured iron doors, mods or other players, albeit with the name tag removed above their head.

Since then, there has been a huge increase in his popularity, propelling Herobrine to meme status, making moderators of the wiki and forums need to take extra steps to stem the flow of user-made spam.

Future update

Notch posted on twitter about the subject of Herobrine, early in his popularity boost.
RavenBurga Is "he" a real entity ingame or is it just a successful_troll.swf?Notch It's not real. =) But it might be soon!

This confirmed there was no Herobrine, but suggested Notch planned to add him at a later date.

At Minecraftcon 2010, Notch confirmed Herobrine will be in the game, probably in a "seecret friday update".

Due to increased drama surrounding the Herobrine page, a wiki moderator asked notch over IRC if Herobrine would be added:
12:25 Kizzycocoa [...] is there any confirmation on his upcoming existence in MC?12:27 Notch i 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, fuelling beliefs he will be added even further. So, once again, the same user asked for clarification