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It went from a meme to an inevitability: if a game can be modded, sooner or later somebody's going to add Thomas the Tank Engine to it. The modder who originally brought Thomas's horrifying visage to Skyrim hasn't exactly endeared himself to Mattel, the toy company that now owns the rights to the brand, and with a new Morrowind mod he's effectively daring lawyers to come after him.
"I made a mod that replaces cliffracers with Thomas the Tank Engine," as modder Kevin "Trainwiz" Brock says in a Bluesky post announcing his new Morrowind mod. (Thanks, PC Gamer.) "I am incapable of learning lessons whenever it involves corporations, because I fundamentally do not view toy company CEOs or media CEOs as people."
Brock is, in fact, the same modder who brought Thomas to Skyrim in the first place. "I got in so much trouble,” he told The Face back in 2019. "Mattel pretty much want me dead at this point – it’s the reason why the Fallout 4 mod can't be found on any normal website." He added, "It was some intermediary law firm based out of Macedonia, saying how I diminished the brand of Thomas by showing him blowing up (nothing about him violently murdering people)."
But despite all that, he hasn't given up on the Tank Engine mods. He did his wonderful, terrible service for Starfield, and now he's doing it again for Morrowind, the game that cemented the Bethesda Game Studios formula.
www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mo... I made a mod that replaces cliffracers with Thomas the Tank Engine. I am incapable of learning lessons whenever it involves corporations, because I fundamentally do not view toy company CEOs or media CEOs as people. #morrowind #thomasthetankengine
— @trainwiz.bsky.social (@trainwiz.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2025-11-25T22:56:05.358Z
"In between working on my game and dying of various accidental injuries, I sometimes feel like I need to milk a particular joke until its inevitable demise," Brock says on the Nexus Mods page for his new creation. "I will do this no matter how many legal threats, actual threats, black vans with the Mattel logo on them, or severed Barbie heads are mailed to me. This is because I have issues with authority, particularly authority derived from intimidation. I kicked a lot of bullies in the nuts when I was a kid."
In a way, this mod is even more terrifying than the Skyrim version. That one used dragons as the basis for Thomas's appearance, making the big, scary train appear only for those boss encounters. While dragon fights in Skyrim are frequent, they're nothing compared with the cliff racers in Morrowind, which dog your every step through the open world. Turning those cliff racers into Thomas means you're constantly going to be chased by infinite trains.
And, as Brock explains, the mod gets worse. "It comes in two (TWO) variants: One that just replaces them, and one that also integrates the mod that makes two spawn for every one you kill." If Morrowind wasn't already a surreal horror game, it certainly is now, but Brock's chill vibes make it at least feel okay.
"I actually made this years ago but never released it, but then I realized that I don't particularly care anymore." The rare sort of hero that we both need and deserve.
