If you’re an Aftermath OG – a longtimer who’s been here for two entire months, the truest of real ones – you’ll remember one of my first pieces for the site: an investigation into how a leftist meme account accidentally fooled the internet into believing a famous quote came from 1997 PlayStation 1 cult classic Final Fantasy Tactics. In that piece, nobody I spoke to was able to definitively answer the question of why so many people believed that FFT spat out a piece of transcendent wisdom. Until now.
As a refresher, the quote in question is: “If the penalty for a crime is a fine, then that law only exists for the lower class.” It made the rounds primarily by way of an image created by an Instagram and Facebook account called Leftist Gamer Memes, whose creator first jokingly attributed the quote to everybody’s favorite problematic FFT fave, Wiegraf, in 2020. Since then, it’s spread far and wide, with big names like World of Warcraft streamer Asmongold and popular YouTube channel Some More News stating, with utter conviction, that the quote came from a game where tiny dudes take turns beating up other tiny dudes. Google also seems to believe this, insofar as Google is capable of believing things. Even Leftist Gamer Memes, who did not share their real name, was unsure why this pervasive belief – debunked repeatedly – took hold. They figured the main thrust of FFT, its central tensions and themes, were to blame, but could not point to a specific moment.
Recently, however, LGM was streaming FFT to their followers when they came across a particular moment in the game that had previously eluded the grasping tendrils of their memory. In it, a noble named Dycedarg poses a difficult question to the game’s main characters: "What purpose do laws serve when even those who would enforce them choose not to pay them heed?"
"It's this line right here that fooled everyone,” said LGM during their stream. “Everybody thought it was [the other one]. No, I made this meme. It ain't that. It's this right here."
The line is nearly a dead ringer for the meme quote, albeit with a little less specificity around how the wealthy get away with their crimes. But it even includes the word “pay,” which might explain why some people saw a quote involving fines and confused it with the actual line from FFT.
“I completely forgot this line existed,” LGM told Aftermath. “And the parallels between it and the meme are astounding.”
So there you go, there’s the missing piece of the puzzle. Case closed, unless it turns out that every time you pause the game, the characters pull out a copy of The Communist Manifesto and begin reciting it word for word. In a deeply comedic twist, however, if you search "Final Fantasy Tactics" plus the actual quote from the game, verbatim, on Google, the first image result is LGM’s meme.
