The History of Herobrine

Herobrine, one of the most famous video game characters of all time and yet doesn't actually exist. His origins are strange as one of his earliest appearances came from an online stream of Minecraft which broke whatever 4th wall exists in an online gaming stream. But first let's take a look at the origin the community has given this urban legend.

When Minecraftia was in it's first year two brothers went on the search for diamonds: one called Stebrine and the other Herobrine. The brothers dug their way into a mineshaft and saw rotting flesh, bones, gunpowder (and the rest of the mob drops in Minecraft) and realised a great battle must have taken place in this mineshaft. They went deeper into the mineshaft and encountered a hoard of zombies which they successfully fought off. They soon discovered a massive army assembling in the deep caverns of Minecraftia made up of Zombies, Skeletons, Spiders, Creepers and Endermen. The brothers tried to escape and warn Notch (he apparently just joined the story) but were captured by five Endermen and were brought before the Enderking. He gave them two choices: join the army or die, the brothers decided if they were to die they would die fighting. They battled through a hoard of Endermen and pursued the Enderking and eventually cornered him. In the battle a wall was broken sending lava to fall over the armies of the Enderking. The Enderking escaped but cast a spell on the brothers turning one into the Gaurdian of Minecraftia and the other into the God of War (not Kratos though). The two were pitted into an eternal fued as the God of War was granted the power of and associated with war and the Guardian of Minecraftia was given the power of justice. It is unknown which brother became which being.

Wow! That's a bit different to Herobrine being the ghost of Notch's brother trapped in the game. Now let's look at a real story as we jump from glorified fanfiction to the world of livestreams. One player, whilst livestreaming, found Herobrine standing in the middle of a lava field. The stream crashed and the viewers were taken to a picture of Herobrine where text read: “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.” *Yes I did copy and paste but only to deliver the quote in complete accuracy.* It's amazing how a character that doesn't exist in the game it belongs to has such a devoted following and rich lore. But at the end of the day, no matter which story you believe, he doesn't exist. Even in the Minecraft's changelog after each and every update it states that Herobrine has been removed. Despite all of this he still has a huge impact on Minecraft and the gaming industry simply by being a story for people to tell and claim that they saw Herobrine despite his code not existing in any way shape or form.

#minecraft #herobrine