Minecraft wiki entry for Herobrine, associated text: Herobrine was first stated to have been removed in Beta 1.6.6. This was a joke, referring to Notch partially removing the human mob's essential code, making it unspawnable within Minecraft. An ulterior motive was to troll the community, as this was around the time Herobrine had gained memetic status within the community. Ever since, the Minecraft update changelog included the entry "Removed Herobrine" at least once every update cycle as a running gag, with the sole exception of Java Edition 1.1.