Cliffs Notes for Dante: Final Fantasy IV’s Elemental Fiends

In several installments of the Final Fantasy games, the heroes must defeat four powerful enemies representing the four natural elements. The most recurring version of this bad guy quartet is the one introduced in the original Final Fantasy, the Four Fiends: Lich the earth fiend, Marilith the fire fiend, Kraken the water fiend, and Tiamat the wind fiend. However, for my money a more interesting twist on them appears in Final Fantasy IV. Depending on the version of the game you’re playing, they’re known as as the Archfiends, the Elemental Lords, the Four Fiends of the Elements or the Shitennō (四天王), or the Four Heavenly Kings.

In the original Super NES English translation of Final Fantasy IV, it’s difficult to tell that these four were supposed to be named for demons appearing in Dante’s Inferno. The earth fiend was Milon, the water fiend was Kainazzo, the air fiend was Valvalis, and the fire fiend was Rubicant. Later translations of the game would fix those names, both to reflect how they were named in the original Japanese version and to allude directly to Inferno. Milon reverted to something much more Italian-sounding and therefore much more fun to say: Scarmiglione (スカルミリョーネ, Sukarumiryōne — sometimes given the appellation “the Blighted Despot.”) Kainazzo became Cagnazzo, the Drowned King (— カイナッツォ, Kainattso — which was especially better because the revised, corrected name looked less like the name of Kain, one of the playable heroes. Valvalis became Barbariccia, the Empress of Wind (バルバリシア, Barubarishia — which works just as well, although the original name back in the day seemed like an allusion to the Valis: The Fantasm Solider series of video games, which starred leggy women in armor bikinis, and this female fiend would not have looked out of place in those games). The final fiend was changed the least: Rubicant became Rubicante, the Autarch of Flame (ルビカンテ, Rubikante — an autarch being an absolute ruler, like you’d find in an autocracy). 

Clockwise from top-left: Scarmiglione, Cagnazzo, Rubicante and Barbariccia — a.k.a. Dusty, Musty, Rusty and Gusty, though I would also accept Busty.

Scarmiglione, Cagnazzo, Barbariccia, and Rubicante each appear in Dante’s Inferno as members of the Malebranche (“evil claws”), the demonic guardians of the Malebolge (“evil ditches”), the eighth circle of hell, where they are tasked to keep the damned souls of corrupt politicians suffering inside a lake of boiling pitch. (Specific!) And that’s interesting, given that in later versions of Final Fantasy IV, all four fiends were given titles identifying them as various kinds of political leaders or figureheads. 

However, except for Rubicante, none of Dante’s versions of these demons resembles their Final Fantasy counterpart all that much, at least judging by the etymology of their names. Cagnazzo’s name, for example, translates as “nasty dog,” which seems far from the squat sea turtle form he’s given in the video game. Mark Rosa’s compilation of Final Fantasy character name origins points out that the character’s name could be read as a sort of pun on kai (海, “sea”) and nazo (謎, “mystery”), but that’s probably just a coincidence, even if he’s the water fiend and he spends a chunk of the game masquerading as a human character.

Despite sounding feminine to this American-born English-speaker, Barbariccia’s name translates as “curly beard,” which would seem to be very far from the sexy, mostly naked, and evidently beardless form she’s given. I suppose there could be a blue, euphemistic reading of beards, but I’m guessing that level of wordplay wouldn’t end up in a video game of this type.

Although different scholars translate the names differently — a paper by Eduardo Crisafulli titled “The Adequate Translation as a Methodological Tool: Dante’s Onomastic Wordplay in English” collects many of them, if you’re interested — Scarmiglione’s name is often interpreted to mean “disheveled” (from the Italian verb scarmigliare, “to dishevel”) or “troublemaker,” either of which work well enough to describe the Final Fantasy version of the character, but if I’m being honest could also describe most monstrous characters in video games. 

Rubicante’s name is translated either as “reddish” or “scarlet fury” or “red-faced fury,” and that does align better with how he’s depicted in-game, but it’s also presumed that Rubicante’s name is a nod to that of Cante dei Gabrielli di Gubbio, who while serving as podesta of Florence exiled Dante from that city and who is now mostly famous for being namechecked by Dante in this way.  

There are a great many boss characters in Final Fantasy IV, but no others are drawn from Dante’s work save for two. Namely, Calcabrina — カルコブリーナ, Karukoburīna — a boss formed from sinister dancing dolls that combine, Voltron-style, into one large, creepy, evil baby-looking thing — is also one of the Malebranche, though the Final Fantasy version has no connection to the elemental fiends. Calcabrina’s name is translated as “nimble-footed” or “the one who can walk on brine” in some places, “frost trampler” or “ancient foot” in others. Given that Final Fantasy’s Calcabrina is known for dancing, any of those seem appropriate enough. Geryon, a boss that appears in only the Nintendo 3DS remake of Final Fantasy IV, also has a counterpart in Dante’s Inferno, although he appears in a later canto and is not a member of the Malebranche.

That said, one of the biggest of the big bads in Final Fantasy IV does share a connection to Dante but in a circuitous way: through Devils — Their Origin and Their History, a 1904 book by the British historian James Charles Wall about demons from different worldwide cultures. It is… a product of its time, to be sure, asserting at various points factoids that I don’t know to be wrong, exactly, but nonetheless seem odd to read in 2022, including that “China simply teems with [demons]; indeed, there is one particular province known as Demonland” and that “The ancient Jews supposed that the demons were propagated like mankind; they ate and drank, were married and divorced.” In giving an overview on different world cultures’ conceptions of demons, however, Wall lists off some (but not all) demons appearing in The Divine Comedy.

A Japanese devil, per J. Charles Wall.

I’m not sure where Wall drew the appositions appearing in this list nor why he didn’t include Malacoda (“evil tail”), the leader of the Malebranche. But included alongside such forgotten demons as Grafficane the Doggish, Dragnignazzo the Fell Dragon, and Farfarello the Scandalmonger are Scarmiglione the Baneful, Cagnazzo (rendered as Caynazzo, at least in the copies I have seen) the Nasty Dog, Barbariccia the Malicious, and Rubicante the Red With Rage. It does occur to me that Devils — Their Origin and Their History is exactly the kind of book someone would pull off a shelf if they were wanting to scour for monster ideas… you know, especially if that person was working on a new installment of a video game franchise previously known to feature monsters draws from an eclectic mix of world folklores. 

Later in the book, Wall also details the story of St. George in a way that has special relevance to Golbez, the game’s main antagonist. 

One legend places the scene of the combat between St. George and the Dragon in one of a range of caves near the castle of Golubaes, in [Serbia]. These caves are infested by the Golubaeser Fly, a venomous insect resembling a mosquito [whose] presence is accounted for by the assertion of the peasants that the decomposed body of the dragon has continued to generate these insects to the present day.

There is some truth to this story. Golubac Fortress was built in the 14th century and has since been the setting for many battles, though none against dragons. Also, beginning in the 1800s, the region was beset by bloodsucking, disease-spreading insects called Golubatz flies. Their scientific name is Simulium colombaschense, the species name reflecting the fact that Golubac’s name derives from the Serbian golub, “pigeon” or “dove,” itself a cognate of the Latin for “dove,” columba.

It really seems like Golbez, essentially Final Fantasy IV’s big bad until the very end of the game, takes his name from these flies, of all things, and specifically the way Wall renders the name in his book: Golubaeser. In Japanese, he is ゴルベーザ, Gorubēza. The original English version of the game caps player character names at six letters, and because Golbez appears kinda sorta as a player character as in a fight against the real big bad, whoever made the final decision on his English name ended up with this being the best possible candidate, even if it made the connection to the St. George legend even harder to spot.

Golbez is not technically a party member, but he is still ruled by party member character limits.

What is especially strange about this, however, is that while it seems like the fiend names might have been picked almost at random, having no real connection to the way the characters function in the game, the lore of Final Fantasy IV actually seems to evoke the Golubaeser fly legend. At one point in the game, the elder of Mysidia, the town of wizards, shares a legend about a chosen one who fights evil.

In the original English script for the game, it reads as follows: 

One to be born
From a dragon
Hoisting the light
And the dark
Arises high up
In the sky to
The still land.
Veiling the moon with
The Light of Eternity,
It brings
Another promise
To Mother Earth with
A bounty and mercy.
The moon has just
started to seek for
its own light...

A translation of the original Japanese version of the legend offers a little more insight, reading as follows:

One born from the mouth of the dragon
rising to the heavens
under the cover of darkness and light.
The moon's eternal light
brings a promise to Mother Earth
with bounty and grace.
A brief pause and the moon
seeking its own radiance
Though of the same blood,
one Earth and one moon,
the march of time keeps two apart.

Most translations say more specifically that the chosen one is born from a dragon’s mouth and not just a dragon. It’s never made specifically clear whom or what the legend is describing. The obvious candidate is the hero, Cecil, who starts the game as a dark knight and then evolves into a paladin, which would make him someone who represents both dark and light. However, it could also be the Lunar Whale, the airship that takes the party to the moon to fight the big bad. In the Nintendo DS remake of Final Fantasy IV, Rydia actually points out that the continent on which Mysidia sits and which surrounds the part of the ocean from where the Lunar Whale rises actually resembles a dragon. Based on the origin of his name, I’d say another candidate could be Golbez, even if he doesn’t really get his redemptive arc until the sequel series, The After Years.

The dragon’s mouth, geographically speaking.

Back when I published the original “It’s a Secret to Everyone” post on my old blog, the connection between Golbez and this Serbian legend was not well known, and it was actually a commenter going by the name Syntyche who pointed out the connection to the Mysidian legend and how the Mysidian continent looks like a dragon. It’s everywhere now, and that’s a good thing, because it’s proof that at least sometimes, there is meaning and intentionality behind some random video game thing ending up the way it does. 

Then again, I couldn’t tell this story without also explaining that all the other characters mentioned in this post seem to be named almost arbitrarily and certainly without a connection to the core of the game that’s as strong as Golbez and a dead dragon in a cave in Serbia. I still think that part is interesting, especially how the original English translation made the allusions to Dante utterly unrecognizable. So not every story behind every thing in every video game ever has a deep meaningful story; sometimes something is a certain way just because. 

Miscellaneous Notes

While Rubicant is the only fiend whose name made to the original English translation of Final Fantasy IV more or less intact, Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow features an enemy called, tragically, Lubicant. Scarmiglione gets done slightly less dirty as Skull Millione.

The fire fiend in the original Final Fantasy is Marilith — マリリス, Maririsu — a six-armed snake woman who originated as a race in Dungeons & Dragons. Before I knew that, I assumed that the first syllable of her name came from the Latin mal, “bad,” but that doesn’t really make sense if she was created and named by English-speakers. Besides, “bad Lilith” is kind of redundant. Instead, it’s cited in various places online that the character’s name is actually a combination of the Mara, a Hindu demon, and the mythological first wife of Adam. It is interesting that in the English translation of Final Fantasy, the character was named Kary, possibly a mistranslation of Kali, the Hindu death goddess, though I wonder where in the process of the English translation Kali would have become Kari. The other original fiends — Lich, Kraken and Tiamat — are more straightforward.

Another Final Fantasy IV character whose tie to Italian culture gets obscured in the original translation is Giott, the king of the dwarves. I always pronounced his name as with a hard “g.” In Japanese, his name is ジオット, Jiotto, presumably after the Italian painter. Unlike the fiends, Giott’s name remained as is in later translations, and a callback character in Final Fantasy XIV is also Giott, as opposed to Giotto.

I know Final Fantasy IV: The After Years isn’t necessarily beloved by fans, but I really appreciated that this game split the Calcabrina up into two playable characters, Calca and Brina, a boy doll and a girl doll, just because it made sense that Luca would have hung onto them despite, you know, being possessed by evil. In fact, them being included into the game helped explained her growing up to be an engineer.

Speaking of Final Fantasy games people don’t care about, Final Fantasy Dimensions was a classic Final Fantasy throwback and allusion-fest that is, as far as I know the only game to acknowledge that there are more than four elements in the world of Final Fantasy and therefore there should be fiends for those addition elements as well, hence Shango the thunder fiend, Cocytus the ice fiend, Imperio the light fiend, and Gehenna the darkness fiend.

Nintendo vs. Squaresoft, essentially.

In Super Mario RPG, Mario can fight an optional Final Fantasy-style boss, elemental crystals and all. This characters, who was invented specifically for the game and who doesn’t exist outside Super Mario RPG is named Culex, who is presumably named after a genus of mosquitoes. That would make him, like Golbez, a dark, imposing boss guy named after a bloodsucking insect. In Japanese, however, Culex is クリスタラー, Kurisutarā.