# Zanzibart... Forgive Me 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. ## Origin 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 it[1]. The tweet pulled over 8,200 retweets and 67,000 likes within two months[1]. 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 them[1]. - **Platform:** Twitter (origin) / 4chan (viral spread) - **Creator:** Sam Winkler - **Date:** 2022 ## 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 backstory[1]. 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 breath[2]. 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 him[3]. 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 narratives[1]. ## How It Spread After Winkler's clarification, the phrase broke loose from its original bite and became a running joke inside the FromSoftware fandom itself[1]. 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 bit[3]. 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 games[3]. These posts helped cement the phrase as a reusable template rather than a one-off tweet. ## How to Use 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-game[3]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Zanzibart... Forgive Me? It is a catchphrase parodying how FromSoftware bosses gasp cryptic names when they die, invented by writer Sam Winkler in 2022[1]. ### Where did Zanzibart... Forgive Me come from? Sam Winkler, a Borderlands 3 writer, tweeted it on February 5, 2022 as part of a joke about the fictional boss Myrmidon of Loss[1]. ### What does Zanzibart... Forgive Me mean? It mocks FromSoft's habit of hinting at lore through single-line boss death cries, like the Sekiro boss who yells "Roberto!" and is never explained[2]. ### How do you use Zanzibart... Forgive Me? People caption screenshots from Souls games with it or write mock lore essays about who Zanzibart was, as seen in /v/ threads from March 2022[3]. ### Is Zanzibart... Forgive Me still popular? It is a classic FromSoftware fandom reference that keeps circulating around new Souls releases, though the first wave peaked in early 2022[3]. ## References 1. [https://twitter.com/thatsamwinkler/status/1490070305859162113]() 2. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhMJbmJMw8A]() 3. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/zanzibart-forgive-me]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/zanzibart-forgive-me Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library