There's plenty of weird stuff in Minecraft as it is - Enderman, anyone? - even before you get to the stuff players add into the endlessly-moddable PC title that's become a true gaming phenomenon. Mojang's LEGO-esque build 'em up is endlessly customisable, and indeed that's sort of the point of the title. You build stuff. You bring new skins and bricks into the game. You recreate entire countries (both real and fictional). It's a lot of fun! The creators put enough stuff in there to be getting on with and spark your imagination, and sometimes people stumble across things which set something off in the darker recesses of their minds. Take, for example, the story of Herobrine, which first cropped up all the way back in 2010, when Minecraft was still in alpha testing. Since then it's spread endlessly through social media, YouTube videos and message boards, claiming that it's all totally true despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The legend itself is that, hidden somewhere in the procedurally generated blocky world, is the ghost of Minecraft creator Notch's dead brother. Whose online handle was Herobrine. Occasionally you will come across this guy, who looks like default player character "Steve" with a glassy stare, who will tell you to "stop." In fact that's nonsense. Notch doesn't even have a brother, for a start, just a half-sibling that he rarely sees (and isn't a ghost). Mojang have played up to the hoax a little, however, with a recent list of updates including the cryptic "Removed Herobrine" and the maker's own assertion that he may include the character for a real in a later version of the game. Right now, though, the spirit of Notch's fake dead brother is not a mob you can encounter in Minecraft. So go carry on fighting sheep or whatever instead.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
