Welcome back to Pandora, Vault Hunter! The planet that's a lot like Australia - everything on or in it is trying to kill you. Including the locals, who again are much like Australౠia in t𓂃hat they're all post-apocalyptic psychopaths.
I may have gotten ever💛ything I know about Australiౠa from the movie Mad Max. To all Australians reading this, I apologize for any stereotyꦏpes I may have reinforced, and a🅰pologize for the fact that your country is a death trap that inspired a movie that then inspired a video game.
Didn’t know that Borderlands had Australian roots? It’s true! Much of the aesthetic for Pandora’s insane ꦑdenizens can be traced back to Mad Max. That’s not the only Australian connection; when ♎Gearbox, the makers of Borderlands, was looking to make the sequel to Borderlands 2 (confusingly called Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel) they tapped 2K Austr✅alia to develop it. The entir𝓰e Borderlands series begins and ends with Australia.
Borderlands’ Aussie connection is just one 💃tidbit in a franchise that’s choc🌊k-full of crazy and weird things you had no idea about. Which makes sense considering how Borderlands is a crazy and weird franchise. I mean, this is a game series where the villain keeps bringing you back to life after you die even thou🏅gh you’re out to kill him and there’s a robot programmed to only speak in innuendo.
Here’s 15 e🍸v♛en crazier things you might never have known about Borderlands.
15 They Left One Of The Best G𒁃uns In The Game Just Laying Out In The Open
If there’s one thing you can say about the d💎esign of Borderlands, it’s 🐭that almost every quest rewards the player with shiny and powerful loot. But you don’t ne♕ed to go to all that effort since in Borderlands 2 they leave one of the best guns in the game just lying on the ground. If you explore the caves in the eastern part of Frostburn Canyon you’ll eventually come acro🦩ss the Lascaux submachine gun submerged in a shallow pool.
𝓡Who would ever leave such an awesome gun to rust in a puddle is beyond me. The Lascaux is a powerhouse that nearly any character can use effectively given its incredible fire rate and hidden two bullets fired per shot. Zoom in and it’l🦄l fire in burst mode, which could fire anywhere from 18 to 28 shots per trigger pull. And you can just walk up and get it 😼very early on in the gam💟e.
14 Krieg Is Tiny Tina’s Father?
There’s a popularly h🙈eld fan the🔥ory that Krieg, the psycho Vault Hunter added in Borderlands 2, is actually Tiny ✅Tina’s father. As evidence, they point out that Krieg was created when Handsome Jack tortured him with slag experimentation, and Tiny Tina’s parents died while undergoing the same experimentation.
We🌟ll, her mother did at least. We hear her last screams in the audio logs during Tiny Tina’s sidequest, while the father remains conspicuously silent in the fourth audio log. Meanwhile, Krieg will briefly ask, “Where is she? Is she still alive? Did she get away?”, but never explain who this mysterious “she” is.
Head Borderlands 2 writer Anthony Burch has thus far only commented on the matte𝕴r by saying “Tiny Tina’s parents are dead”, but perhaps he only meant it in the figurative senseꦍ. Who else would Krieg be referring to otherwise?
13 The Gl🌼itch That Let You L🧜oot To Your Heart’s Content
As solid a game as most of us remember Borderlands to be, there are actually tons🍃 of glitches and bugs that are still in the finished product - we just don’t think of them as glitches. We’ll get into a few more later, but we’ll start with probably the best glitch of them all: the General Knoxx’s Armory glitch.
At the end of the Borderlands DLC, The Secret Armory Of General Knoxx, You defeat Knoxx and enter his titular armory. Normally the armory is rigged to explode after 3 minutes, giving you that long to loot as much stuff as you can🅷 get your blood-stained paws on. But if you wiggle your way inside through a glitch in the wall leading to the ar🦄mory, the timer never starts and you can loot as much as your backpack can hold.
12 Easter Eggs Galore!
I could create a whole oth🅰er list dedicated to all the easter ✅eggs you can find in the Borderlands series. The developers were very fond o🌃f their own little secrets and they loaded them into their games like a fat kid loaded up on chocolate.
The original Borderlands had Tannis 🍬 in Treacher’s landin🌊g (and again in Sawtooth Cauldron in Borderlands 2), a hidden vending machine in New Haven, and🅺 a tiny bandit riding in a model car inside Marcus’ shop in T-Bone✨ Junction. Borderlands 2 had too many to list: there was the Dark Souls reference and Minecraft Creepers in Caustic Caverns,🦹 the Double Rainbow in The Highlands, and a🐼 in the Wildlife Exploitation Preserve.
Even Tales From The Borderlands getsꦍ🐬 in on the action by naming the fish Tannis rides in the first Borderlands Splorghuld the Flesh-Sl﷽ayer and telling the pl🔯ayer it had really bad breath.
11 Borderlands 2 Had More Shakespeare Referen🐭ces Than Any Other Game Not About Shakespeare
Borderlands as a franchise is generally full of pop culture references, but there’s also a ton of literature references you might have missed if you didn’t major in English L𒁃it.
To start, there's Hamlet, which for some reason the psychos inhab🥃iting Pandora love to quote. In fact, occasionally one will recite the entire "Oh, that th💖is too, too sullied flesh would melt" soliloquy from Act 1, scene 2 of Hamlet (and he nails it). Goliaths, upon dying, will sometimes say "Goodnight, sweet prince," another Hamlet reference. A🐎nd then there's the weapon inscription on🍒 The Morningstar, the sniper rifle that berates the player for using it, which says "A Rose by any other name...", which is a reference to Romeo and Juliet.
There are way more classic literature references 🎃too, like Moby Dick, Gone with the Wind, Alice in Wonderland, and Twilight.
What? I like young-adult vampire novels.
10 A Quest That Took Seconds To Complete To🎀ok Months To Creat꧅e
If you’ve played Borderlands 2, then you probably remember this que✱st. There’s a guy in Thousand Cuts called Face McShooty who’s wearing a sign which points to his face and literally cannot stop screaming about how he wants someone to shoot him in the face. If you talk to him, he’ll give you a quest to do just that. He’ll even give you money after you kill him. Somehow.
The funniest part? Apparently, that took months of development to get right. According to head writer Anthony Burch, "That was one of the single most complicated quests in the entire game. In all seriousness, it's a super easy quest to complete but there are so many exceptions to the regular rules of how quests work - just in terms of the way that was built - that it was a nightmare. They were working on that quest on and off for mont🅘hs.”
9 Bullymongs Or ....?
Pandora𒀰 is full of deadly creatures that would like nothing more than to tear you limb from limb. The first such c꧒reature you meet in Borderlands 2 is called𒊎 the Bullymong, but they don’t have to stay🦄 that way.
A fairly early quest takes you under the wing of Sir Hammerlock as he tries to rename the species. He eventual🌊ly gives up and in a fit of rage calls them “Boner Farts,” to the point where even the in-game description of the creatures change to be just that. You can then stop doing the quest and go the entire rest of the game with that name as the official name of the alien baddie.
The whole quest to find a better name for the Bullymongs actually came from real life. “Bullymong” had always been intended to be a plac💝eholder name while the writers came up with something better, but then it caught on in the Gearbox office so they just kept it.
8 Unintentional Nepotism?
Anthony Burch was the lead writer for Borderlands 2. When he was imagining Tiny Tina he confessed that he always pictured his sister, Ashly Burch, while he was writing her dialog. At the time Ashly was already semi-famous from her YouTube seriꦐes called Hey Ash Whatcha Playin'?, but she still had to audition for the part like every other voice actor whe෴n they actuꦕally made the game.
But 🎉Ash had a bit of an unfair advantage in the ꦕfact that no one can act like her better than she could, so when the writer imagines a character literally based off her… Needless to say, she got the part.
To be fair,ღ I 🔜think Ash did a fantastic job and Tiny Tina is one of the most memorable characters from the series, but it’s still a little shady.
7 Borderlands Protagonists Get More Chatty With🍬 ✃Each Game
As was the style at tꦚhe time, Gearbox originally made Borderlands with 🐼the intent that all the playable characters would be almost entirely silent. They say a few things here and there, but🔯 the original four Vault Hunters were mostly mute.
Then, in Borderlands 2, the vault hunters started getting a bit more chatty. They still didn’t necessarily acknowledge being given a quest (or even b𒊎eing addressed directly), but a series of p🏅ersonal audio logs helped give each Vault Hunter a bit more backstory. Then when the Tiny Tina’s Assault On Dragon Keep DLC dropped, each Vault Hu🐟nter would have enough voice lines to engage in conversation during quests.
It turned out that players were tired of the whole silent protagonist thing, and were really into ﷽the fact that everyone, even the player, had witty repart♌ee. By the time you get to The Pre-Sequel, the Vault Hunters can’t shut up.
6 Angel Without Video Editing Is Super Weird
One of the more iconic characters from the 🍒series is Angel, the mysterious wꦕoman who helps the original Vault Hunters in Borderlands and helps the next set in Borderlands 2. It was hinted in the original that she might be some sort of artificial intelligence but is later revealed to be a re🐽al person with fantastic psychic powers.
Gearbox got the message across with some fancy video editin♓g, but the raw footage shows that most of Angel’s filming was just close-ups in the desert under a blue sky with a fan blowing in her face. Oh, and making weird, random facial express🧸ions.
Also, she’s not even the voice actor for Angel. The “face” of Angel is Britanni Johnson, while the voiꦛce was done by Jenn🍒ifer Greene.