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Unfortunately, nobody knew exactly which world it was: Specific Minecraft worlds, as we explain here (opens in new tab), can be perfectly recreated with "seeds," but if you don't know the seed, you're pretty much out of luck. What is real, however, is the Minecraft world in which Herobrine was first seen. Herobrine doesn't exist (Copeland explained how he got the ball rolling here (opens in new tab)) and, for the record, Notch never had a brother.
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Not that it really matters, because-spoiler alert-the whole thing was made up. Like all good legends, this one had a hook in the real world: Herobrine was reportedly Notch's dead brother (opens in new tab), although to be honest I'm not sure whether the idea was that Notch coded his deceased sibling into Minecraft to preserve him for eternity, or if it was his vengeful spirit come back to haunt the game.
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