Enderman is a tall, black, teleporting mob in Minecraft with glowing purple eyes that attacks players who look directly at it [1].

Where did Enderman come from?

Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson revealed the mob on Google+ on July 26, 2011, and shipped it with the Beta 1.8 Adventure Update on September 9, 2011 [3].

What does Enderman mean?

Notch coined the name on Reddit as a reference to the Slender Man creepypasta figure, whose tall, thin silhouette the mob visually echoes [2].

How do you use Enderman?

In-game, players avoid triggering it by not making eye contact or by wearing a carved pumpkin, and Endermen are farmed for ender pearls needed to reach the End dimension [3].

Is Enderman still popular?

Enderman became one of Minecraft's most recognizable mobs after the 2011 Adventure Update, with heavy fan art activity on deviantArt and Tumblr in the years that followed [3].

Enderman

2011video game characterclassic

Published August 19, 2026

Enderman is a tall, teleporting black mob added to Minecraft in 2011, named after the Slender Man creepypasta and known for its glowing purple eyes and habit of attacking players who look directly at it. It became one of the game's signature monsters and a heavy subject of fan art.

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Overview

Enderman is a black, three-block-tall mob in Minecraft with luminescent purple eyes and long, spindly limbs. It teleports across the world, picks up blocks to rearrange terrain, and stays passive until a player looks straight at it, at which point it opens its mouth and charges 1.

The name is a direct nod to Slender Man, the creepypasta figure Notch riffed on while designing the monster 2. Players quickly worked out the gaze mechanic and started wearing carved pumpkins on their heads to avoid triggering an attack, which turned Enderman encounters into a signature bit of Minecraft folk knowledge 3.

Origin & Background

Platform

Google+ / Reddit (viral spread)

Creator

Markus "Notch" Persson

Date

2011

On July 26, 2011, Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson posted a screenshot on Google+ showing several dark figures standing in the distance 3. When the image was reposted to Reddit the same day, Notch replied in the thread saying he would call the new mobs "Endermen," referencing the mythical Slenderman 3.

Three days later, on July 29, Notch published a blog post walking through the gameplay. He explained that he made the creature passive until you looked straight at it, describing how watching a three-meter-tall beast quietly shuffle blocks around before locking eyes with you felt genuinely scary 1.

How It Spread

Gaming press latched onto the reveal within days. Rock Paper Shotgun called the Endermen "freaky bastards" on July 29, 2011, praising the teleporting-when-not-looked-at design as the kind of enemy behavior other games had been missing 1. The next day, Joystiq ran a piece pointing out how closely the mob's silhouette and stalking behavior mapped onto the Slender Man mythos 2.

An Enderman entry went up on the Minecraft Wiki the day of the reveal, and forum member Tha Kipsta opened a Minecraft Forum thread on July 27 dedicated to the mob's block-carrying abilities 3. Endermen officially shipped with Minecraft Beta 1.8, the first part of the Adventure Update, on September 9, 2011 3.

Fan art piled up on deviantArt and Tumblr under the #enderman tag, and a Facebook fan page reached over 12,000 likes by March 2012 3. The mob was later tied into deeper game lore through the End dimension added in the full 1.0 release.

How to Use This Meme

Enderman shows up less as a text template and more as a visual fan-art staple. Common conventions include drawing the mob mid-teleport with particle trails, pairing it with a scared Steve avatar, or referencing the pumpkin-head workaround players use to make eye contact safely 3. Speedrunners often meme the mob for its ender pearl drops, which are required to reach the End.

Frequently Asked Questions

References (3)