Sabin Train Suplex

About

The Sabin Train Suplex is a moment in the game Final Fantasy VI for the SNES during which the game’s character Sabin performs a suplex on an enemy boss called the Phantom Train. The absurdity of Sabin performing a wrestling move on a moving train with succes and the battle animation of seeing him lift up a train in the air made the fight one of the most memorable moments within the game.

Origin

Final Fantasy VI^[1] was first released on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in April 1994, followed by a North-American release in October of the same year. In the game, the player comes across the Phantom Train,^[2] a dungeon and similar named boss fight with a sentient train locomotive that carries the dead to the other side. During the fight, in which the party is running away from the still moving train, the monk Sabin^[4] is able to perform his move “Suplex” (renamed “Meteor Strike”^[3] in later versions) on the locomotive, lifting the entire train up into the air and slamming it into the ground.

Spread

On February 12th, 2008, Youtuber MoogleBoss uploaded a video^[8] to Youtube of the fight with the Phantom Train in which Sabin defeats it with a single suplex (shown above), which managed to gather nearly 500,000 views in the following 6 years. On July 7th, 2011, web artist Zac Gorman posted a comic^[5] on his art blog showing Sabin preparing to suplex the Phantom Train while saying the comment “I’m Motherfuckin’ Sabin” (shown below), a popular term used by fans of Sabin when referencing to him. As of March 2014, the post managed to get over 1,700 notes.

On July 29, 2013, DeviantArt user EiffelArt uploaded an image showing Sabin lifting up the Phantom Train (shown below, left),^[6] which managed to get over 10,000 views and 750 favorites as of March 2014. On October 23rd, 2013, Redditor Jin_Winspear uploaded an image to the r/gaming sub-Reddit showing Sabin performing the suplex on the Phantom Train (shown below, right),^[7] which gathered a total score of around 1,850 with 3,000 upvotes as of March 2014. On November 9th, 2013, Tumblr user 1986tigerlion made an image post^[9] showing several pieces related to the Suplex, two being Zac Gorman’s comic and Jin_Winspear’s image, which managed to gather nearly 12,000 notes within the first three months after posting.