Zanzibart... Forgive Me — Screenshot of the original tweet by Sam Winkler that started the Zanzibart forgive me meme

Zanzibart... Forgive Me

2022catchphraseclassic

Published November 9, 2026

Zanzibart... Forgive Me is a catchphrase coined by Borderlands 3 writer Sam Winkler in a February 2022 tweet mocking how FromSoftware games bury lore in cryptic boss death cries. Within weeks, 4chan posters were treating the fictional Zanzibart as a real FromSoft character, inventing fakelore around a boss who never existed.

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Overview

Zanzibart... Forgive Me parodies the FromSoftware house style where bosses gasp opaque names at the moment of death and fans then spend hours reconstructing the backstory1. The joke hinges on an invented boss, Myrmidon of Loss, whose final words reference a character named Zanzibart who appears nowhere else in the fictional game, mimicking how a Sekiro boss actually mentions someone named Roberto only once in his dying breath2.

Most posts using the phrase either attach it as a caption to screenshots of random corpses or NPCs in Souls-style games, or stage elaborate fakelore explaining who Zanzibart was and what the Myrmidon did to him3. The humor pokes at both the developer and the lore-video industry around creators like VaatiVidya, who built audiences by threading item descriptions into coherent narratives1.

Origin & Background

Platform
Twitter (origin) / 4chan (viral spread)
Creator
Sam Winkler
Date
2022

On February 5, 2022, Borderlands 3 writer Sam Winkler tweeted that Dark Souls revolutionized games by letting a developer skip writing a story and instead name a boss something like Myrmidon of Loss, have him gasp "Zanzibart... forgive me," and watch twenty YouTubers produce hour-long lore videos about it1. The tweet pulled over 8,200 retweets and 67,000 likes within two months1.

Readers initially read the post as a straight insult toward FromSoftware, and Tumblr user official-mugi reposted it with the quip, "The jokes write themselves, 'cause he certainly didn't write any"3. Winkler later clarified in a reply that he liked the games and was teasing them affectionately, not attacking them1.

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How It Spread

After Winkler's clarification, the phrase broke loose from its original bite and became a running joke inside the FromSoftware fandom itself1. The 4chan /v/ board picked it up fastest, with anons posting threads that treated Zanzibart as if he were a canonical character rather than a hypothetical bit3.

On March 19, 2022, an Elden Ring player on /v/ posted a screenshot of an in-game corpse with the caption "Zanzibart... Forgive me..."3. Three days later, on March 22, another anon shared a mock image claiming Zanzibart was a giant boss hidden somewhere in the games3. These posts helped cement the phrase as a reusable template rather than a one-off tweet.

Timeline

2022-02-05

Sam Winkler tweets the original Myrmidon of Loss joke, which pulls 67,000 likes over the following weeks[1].

2022-02-07

Tumblr user official-mugi's repost reaches r/CuratedTumblr, framing the tweet as a dig at FromSoftware[3].

2022-03-19

An /v/ anon captions an Elden Ring corpse screenshot with the phrase, treating Zanzibart as a real character[3].

2022-03-22

Another /v/ post claims Zanzibart is a giant hidden boss, extending the fakelore[3].

How to Use This Meme

Posters typically take a screenshot of an obscure corpse, side character, or ambient prop in a FromSoftware title, then caption it with the phrase to imply the image hides unspeakable backstory. A common convention is to write a mock lore essay underneath, inventing a relationship between Zanzibart and the pictured figure as if it were documented in-game3.

Frequently Asked Questions