We’ve all done it before, accidentally shorting Vin (Voltage input) and GND (Ground) on an ESP8266. I have done it as well thinking: How should this break an ESP8266? It turns out by destroying the reverse polarity diode. These are not my findings btw, by these people figured it out. But let’s get to work. Here is the current state:

Broken diode marked with a red rectangle

The thing marked with a red box is the broken diode. This is the thing that needs to be fixed. First step: Remove it.

In the next step, we will replace it with a new diode called wire.

The diode replaced with a wire

This fixed my broken ESP8266 and brought it back to life. I hope someone can use this.