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Characters / Borderlands

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Spoilers Off for games prior to Borderlands 3 as well as for spoiler characters that are marked as such. Proceed with caution. You Have Been Warned.

Borderlands Character sheets
Playable Vault Hunters: Borderlands | Borderlands 2 (Krieg) | The Pre-Sequel (Claptrap) | Borderlands 3
Supporting Characters: Borderlands | Borderlands 2 (Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep DLC) | The Pre-Sequel | Borderlands 3
Spinoffs and other media: Tales from the Borderlands | Tiny Tina's Wonderlands | New Tales from the Borderlands | Other media
Weapon Brands: Atlas | Dahl | Hyperion (Handsome Jack) | Maliwan | Jakobs | Torgue | Tediore | Other Weapon Brands
Other: Bandits and Bandit Factions (Children of the Vault) | Hodunk and Zaford Clans | Creatures (Eridians and Vault Monsters) | Raid Bosses
Check the following pages for the following characters:
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    Dr. Zed 

Dr. Zed Blanco

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/DrZed_1385.png

Click here to see him in Borderlands 1
Voiced by: Ric Spiegel

A "doctor" who lived in Fyrestone in the first game, Zed is a helpful healer who supplies most of the planet with medicine through his vending machines, despite the fact that his license to practice was revoked.

Has a brother, Ned, who's the focus of the DLC The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned from 1.

  • Auto Doc: He runs a series of vending machines called "Dr. Zed's Portable Clinic", which are thrown all around the planet to provide healing syringes, shields and class mods to any customers.
  • Back-Alley Doctor: Zed lost his license long ago. It's not clear if he lost it due to insanity (especially considering Doc Mercy, the lunatic laser-wielding bandit still has a license) or some other reason, but he still has an honest, if screwed-up, desire to heal people. However, by the time of the Commander Lilith DLC for 2 he's considering going back to med school to get his license reinstated.
  • Mad Scientist: Shows hints of this in 2. He actually creates skag/rakk hybrids ("skrakk") and a psycho/spiderant hybrid ("Spycho") at one point, for no reason he's willing to divulge.
  • Maybe Ever After: In the Commander Lilith DLC for 2, Zed tries to find a cure for the Pandora Gas in his own way in hopes of getting the attention of Dr. Tannis. Just when he's about to throw in the towel and reconsider going back to med school to actually get his license, Tannis pipes up with intrigue over the horrifically mutilated corpses she's finding from his results. He takes that opportunity to get a relationship going.
  • Meatgrinder Surgery: He even has a quest where you assist him with this in 2. You make the first incision with your melee attack, which kills the patient instantly. Of course, the "patient" in question was a Hyperion agent threatening everyone nearby with death and evidently had to be restrained, so he's not that upset.
    Zed: Close enough.note 
  • Never My Fault: Denies all responsibility for his experiments getting out of control on the technicality that you're the one who went through with helping him in the first place.
    Zed: You know, when you really think about it, this all your fault.
  • Nice Guy: To an extent — slightly less so in 2, if his shades of Mad Scientist are anything to go by. He's still more or less the most morally upstanding member of the supporting cast, not counting Helena Pierce who's no longer alive by the time 2 takes place, or Roland, who dies during the events of said game.
  • On Second Thought: In the "Arid Nexus - Badlands" level of 2, the players can collect five ECHO recordings detailing how Fyrestone fell to Hyperion as part of a challenge. The last one of these is found inside of his clinic, set in the same place it was back when the area was known as the "Arid Badlands". Up to that point, Zed chose to stay in Fyrestone and if needed die there, however, during Hyperion's takedown, he switches his mind at the last minute. It doesn't help that you get to this area during the climax of the game.
    Zed: Heya Roland. I appreciate your offer to move into Sanctuary, but I've got a lot of stuff here in Fyrestone. Sanctuary sounds nice and all, but... Fyrestone's my home. I made my decision, if I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die in the city I was born: Fyresto-
    Hyperion Loader who audibly barges through the door: Attention citizens of Fyrestone: Die.
    Zed: Aw, piss. [Sounds of gunfire] On second thought Roland, when's the soonest you can pick me up?
  • Put on a Bus: Though the med vendors still bear his name and voice, he's a no-show in Borderlands 3. It's possible that he went through with going back to med school to get his license reinstated, and is running the vendors to make some money on the side. Either way, Tannis took over as Sanctuary's doctor. A radio commercial advertises his services of a "portable med clinic", which could be referring to his Auto Doc vending machines, or he actually chose to stay behind on Pandora and drives a mobile clinic from settlement to settlement.
  • Quest Giver:
    • In 1 he tasks you with ridding Fyrestone and its surroundings from bandits, as well as restoring the med machine on his station.
    • In 2 he tasks you with several Collection Sidequests that involve getting biological pieces for... experiments. This is also true for the Commander Lilith DLC.
  • Running Gag: His lack of a medical license becomes one in 2.
  • Suspiciously Specific Denial: He overhandedly denies having any involvement when you return with a bunch of skag and rakk organs for his experiments.
    Zed: (acting disgusted) EWWWW! What are you handing me all these organs for? Here, please take this pile of money as a sign of my disgust!

    T.K. Baha 

Theodore "T.K." Baha

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/TKBaha_8257.png
As of Borderlands. Click to see him in The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned
Voiced by: David Eddings note 

One of the first characters the first Vault Hunters meet, T.K. is a blind hermit with a weird sense of humor and a shotgun.

  • A Day in the Limelight: He's the title character of the Borderlands 2 DLC Zombie T.K.'s Bloody Harvest.
  • Came Back Wrong: In the The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned DLC for 1, he became a zombie. He doesn't attack the player, though, he just sits in his shack rambling about brains while sending you on quests to collect some for him to eat, every time giving you a piece of gear.
  • Canon Discontinuity: In-Universe, he's blatantly aware that he was killed off in the main story of 1, and only comes back as a zombie in DLC. In Zombie TK's Bloody Harvest, he mentions that he thought about moving to Sanctuary, but he didn't want to break canon.
    Zombie T.K. Baha: So then, after Lilith an' all them kilt Doctor Ned, I decided I'd come back here to un-live out the rest of my days. Thought about goin' to Sanctuary with all them Crimson Raider fellas, but I didn't wanna mess with canon.
  • Cool Old Guy: The player characters like him so much that they bring him brains when they find him as a zombie.
  • Cool Shades: Likely worn as a result of his blindness.
  • The Exile: In a sidequest near the end of the main game of 2, it was revealed the very reason why he died after the player reached New Haven back in 1: he was forced to move out after Hyperion sent assassins after him in an attempt to steal his weapon designs, after Mr. Blake made him an offer to move out. He didn't want to move or sell his designs, and the rest is an unfortunate history.
  • Handicapped Badass: Implied to be one. Doesn't save him.
  • Friendly Zombie: Being resurrected as a rotting undead does nothing to dampen his cheery disposition.
  • Late-Arrival Spoiler: Both The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned (which can be played in 1 right after the player enabled the Fast Travel stations) and the Zombie T.K.'s Bloody Harvest DLC of 2 freely spoil that TK doesn't make it out of 1 alive.
  • Our Zombies Are Different: Unlike the other zombies, he doesn't attack the Vault Hunters, instead choosing to sit in his shack happily rambling about how much he loves brains — quite possibly a result of dying before being exposed to the zombie virus.
  • The Pollyanna: He was the target of Hyperion assassins, forced to relocate to Pandora, lost his wife to Scar, before losing his sight and leg to the same skag. None of this stops him from being possibly the cheeriest, friendliest person the Vault Hunters come across. He's still just as cheery as a zombie.
    T.K. Baha: I may be a blind crippled widower, but that don't mean all's lost!
  • Potty Failure: "I uh, I hate to send you away, you're great company and all... but I, I gotta go take a dump. I gotta take a dump somethin' awful! Somethin' real awful! Oh.. never mind... it's all gone now."
  • Revenge:
    • He desires it against a skag named Scar for killing his wife, blinding him, and eating his leg.
    • Fittingly, a group of appropriately leveled Psychos can be found near his house after his death. It's heavily implied that they're the group who killed T.K., allowing the player to directly avenge him.
    • In 2, his niece Una wishes to avenge her uncle by hiring the Vault Hunters to find evidence of how Hyperion planned to steal his weapon designs.
  • Running Gag: He has an obsession with the phrase "Be seeing you", as he uses it as an ironic joke at the expense of his blindness.
  • Trademark Favorite Food: Braaaaaaaaaaains!
  • Tempting Fate:
    • In 2 you are tasked with retrieving his ECHO Logs to find something incriminating against Hyperion. The last one ends with him noting that bandits showed up outside, but it can't possibly go wrong. Anyone who played the original Borderlands knows exactly what happens to him.
    • In the same ECHO Logs, he details his life while living on Pandora and repeatedly assures himself that nothing will go wrong. The next Log after each time has him very shortly and bluntly state that something terrible has happened, like his wife getting mauled to death by a giant Skag, and the same Skag crippling and blinding him when he swears revenge.

    Ernest Whitting 

Ernest Whitting

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ernest_whitting_dr_f.png

One of the very few non-bandit residents of the Dahl Headlands. This enigmatic figure asks the Vault Hunters to save his friend, Lucky Zaford, from some bandits.

  • BFG: As a reward for defeating Skagzilla, the largest Skag on Pandora, he gives you his Elephant Gun, a bolt-action sniper rifle that deals significantly more damage than normal but which lacks a scope and is limited to iron sights.
  • Mysterious Past: Nothing is known about his background.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: His fate post-Borderlands 1 was never revealed.

    Helena Pierce 

Helena Pierce

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/helena_pierce_borderlands_4.jpg
Voiced by: Sue Birch

The mayor of New Haven in the first game, she became a lieutenant in the Crimson Raiders when Hyperion moved in. She is strict and no-nonsense, but also fair and reasonable.

  • Artificial Limbs: Has a mechanical left arm.
  • A Father to His Men: She cares greatly for the citizens of New Haven in the first game.
  • Good Scars, Evil Scars: The left side of her face is severely scarred and she appears to be blind in that eye. It's revealed in 2 that this is due to her husband giving her a skag pearl ring, which released pheromones that attracted hungry skags.
  • Only Sane Man: Most of Pandora has adopted a mixture of selfishness and insanity in the face of its harshness, but she still tries to keep the vestiges of civilization alive.
  • Reasonable Authority Figure: All she ever asks the Vault Hunters to do is fix the messes they make and help her people out.
  • Shoo Out the Clowns: Inverted. The developers have said that her death was to kill off the last serious character on Pandora, so that the comedy of the series could be grounded solely by tragic moments, not a Straight Man.
  • Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: An early sidequest in the sequel has you hunt down ECHO recordings to learn her fate at the behest of Sir Hammerlock. Apparently she had joined the resistance against Hyperion, only to be Killed Off for Real by Handsome Jack himself.
  • Two-Faced: Though it's not so much a reflection on her personality (she's a tough-but-fair Reasonable Authority Figure) as how tough life on Pandora is. It was apparently due to her dead husband giving her a "skag pearl ring". Now giving someone with the word "Skag" in it is bad enough but then you learn it releases "a hunger-inducing pheromone"...
  • Your Head Asplode: Handsome Jack kills her with a headshot, and by his reaction, it's not pretty.
    Handsome Jack: Hohohoho... holy crap! Did you see her head? It was like - PBBLLT!

    Marcus 

Marcus Kincaid V

No Refunds!

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/MarcusBL2_7263.png
As of Borderlands 2. Click to see him in Borderlands 1
Voiced by: Bruce DuBose
Played by: Benjamin Byron Davis (film)

The friendly, helpful, extremely amoral arms dealer who narrates the beginning of each game. He likes killing his competition.

  • Arms Dealer: For the entire planet, it seems.
  • The Barnum: In 2, he convinces a random nerd by the name of Kai that he is The Chosen One just so he could sell him a gun for $2,000,000.
  • Berserk Button:
    • Don't ask Marcus for refunds. And God help you if you steal from him.
    • 3 adds tampering with his vending machines; one of the first few quests involves first killing someone who broke and looted one of them, and then fixing it.
  • Borrowed Catchphrase: Attempts to emulate Scooter in one quote from his vending machines. He immediately regrets it.
    Marcus Munitions: (in Scooter's voice tone) Catch-a-guuunn! Guh! Never doing that again!
  • Buy or Get Lost: Subverted as, despite his Scrooge tendencies, he and his vending machines throughout Pandora greet the Hunters enthusiastically and tells them to take their time. Though it gets double subverted as he gets pissed off if they browse and don't buy anything.
    Marcus Munitions: No window shopping. Buy something or beat it!
  • Casanova Wannabe: Has the Vault Hunters collect skag musk glands and rakk hive ambergris for him in Claptrap's New Robot Robolution so he can make a powerful cologne. It doesn't work.
  • Character Catchphrase:
    • "So, you want to hear a story, heh...". Said at the start of each game (and some DLCs).
    • "No refunds." is more common while you buy stuff from his or his vending machines.
  • Child Hater: Despite children being the ones he tells stories to, Marcus is at best contemptuous of them, as he is quite critical against the child narrator in the prologue and epilogue of the Captain Scarlett DLC.
  • Corrupt Corporate Executive: Has no problem hiring the Vault Hunters to eliminate his competition. Or with convincing a gullible new arrival that he is The Chosen One, foretold by prophecy, in order to sell him a gun. And then he sends the player to recover the gun so can resell it when the "Chosen One" ends up getting killed.
    "You won't find better merchandise from anyone else! I've made sure of that."
    "If you shop anywhere else, I'll have you killed!"
    • He'll even have you test elemental weapons on live targets, with titles like "Shoplifter" or "Competitor". They're Hyperion workers, but still.
    • He's not above selling to the Crimson Raiders' enemies, including the Bloodshot bandits (who worship him as "The Gunbringer"). Still hasn't learned his lesson as of the Commander Lilith DLC; when you return to Sanctuary and see how messed up his store is, he remarks that he will stop selling the New Pandoran Army weapons as retribution. These guys have already thrown him out of his home and are on the verge of killing everyone on the planet, but this is where he draws the line.
    • In his Establishing Character Moment for 2, a customer tries to get a refund for a gun he claims is faulty. Marcus callously demonstrates the gun's reliability by shooting the customer in the leg with it.
      Marcus: Looks like it works to me.
      Customer: [Agonized screaming]
    • In the Mercenary Day DLC of 2, Marcus reveals he doesn't like selling guns to the people of Gingerton because they'll just give them away for free. Later on, he attempts to steal back the guns he sold them so he can keep both his money and his merchandise.
  • The Cynic: His cheery demeanour is strictly a front for the customers - he's the surliest and most cynical of the main cast, and the least tolerant of everyone else's tomfoolery. As a result, he's usually either the Straight Man or The Comically Serious when things get silly.
  • Disproportionate Retribution: Marcus likes to use people who shoplift from him as targets in his shooting range. People who ask him for refunds often find themselves shot in the kneecap with the gun they're trying to return.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Marcus may be greedy and willing to kill his rivals, but Handsome Jack's wanton disregard for life is too much even for him.
  • Fat Bastard: He's clearly overweight and isn't above shooting at any customer who dares ask for a refund, not to mention his ruthless business practices. Apparently, this was done intentionally when he was engaged to Mad Moxxi, who gave him advice to put on some weight so people would underestimate him, much like how she uses her sex appeal the same way.
  • God Guise: Probably unintentionally on his part, the Bloodshots started seeing him as a god and named him the "Gunbringer". The way they saw things, they provided offerings (money) to Marcus, and he brought power (guns). This quickly got out of hand, to the point that the Bloodshots built a massive statue of Marcus on top of their fortress and began sacrificing people into a pit of fire in the name of Marcus the Gun God. Fight for Sanctuary reveals that he knew about this misconception, and took full advantage of it, saying "the best part was, they died soon after, so I didn't owe them anything!"
  • Gold Tooth of Wealth: Marcus's gold tooth is one of the few obvious signs of how ludicrously wealthy he is, on account of being the entire planet's Arms Dealer.
  • Identical Ancestor: Throughout the games are portraits of what seem to be Marcus' ancestors, all of them named Marcus Kincaid and all of them identical save for either different hats or hair.
  • In Vino Veritas: Personality Inversion. Getting drunk makes the notoriously cheap and greedy Marcus mail out refunds to his unsatisfied customers. When he sobers up he is ashamed and disgusted with himself for doing so and has you go around and take the refunds out of the mailboxes before it's too late. When the quest is finished he declares he'll never drink again.
  • It Will Never Catch On: Marcus was initially dismissive of Rhys' efforts of rebuilding Atlas, seeing him as just another upstart. He would eventually end up eating crow as Rhys did just that and was forced to buy weapons from him at a considerable mark-up.
  • Jerkass: Customer demanding a refund on a "faulty" weapon? He shoots him in the leg with said weapon and comments that it seems to work just fine.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Very rarely, he breaks down and acts like a decent human being, but then something happens to counter it. When Roland dies in the second game, he is seriously shook up by it, and when you set out to kill Jack in the final storyline quest, he'll give you a free blue-rarity weapon, not because Hyperion is disrupting his arms trade, but because Handsome Jack is a "greedy murdering sonofabitch who needs to die screaming" — except the assault rifle he gives you is notably underleveled compared to the level-matched gear everyone else in Sanctuary hands out. He might hate Handsome Jack and have every reason to want to see the bastard gone, but Marcus is still Marcus, a cheapskate above all else.
  • Let Me Tell You a Story: Usually starts the narrative on games and even some DLCs.
  • Lzherusskie: He speaks with a thick Russian accent, though his grammar is otherwise perfect.
  • Mad Libs Dialogue: In Borderlands 2, you can find two tapes advertising his wares in the Bloodshot stronghold. They are the same tape with different names (very poorly) spliced in. Even better, the first advertises to Roland, who is fighting the Bloodshots... while the second advertises to the Bloodshots, who are fighting Roland's Crimson Raiders.
    ECHO #1: Dear - Roland - I can't help but notice that the - Bloodshots - you are fighting...
    ECHO #2: Dear - Bloodshots - I can't help but notice that the - Crimson Raiders - you are fighting...
  • New Job as the Plot Demands: Despite primarily being a weapons vendor, he also apparently runs a transportation business (driving the bus himself no less), scavenges corpses for weapons to sell, controls interplanetary commercial weapon shipping to and from Pandora (to the point of being able to blockade all laser weapons from getting to Pandora), and on top of all that finds time to tell stories to children.
  • No Hero Discount: Unsurprising considering his character. His business model is basically built around making would-be heroes pay to properly equip themselves.
    • Averted just barely to hilarious effect late in Borderlands 3. Given you're about to fight to save all of Pandora he decides, reluctantly, to give you something before handing you a single pack of ammo.
  • Noodle Incident: According to one of the loading screen tips from The Pre-Sequel, he never let laser weapons come to Pandora after an incident involving a straw. Apparently, asking anyone about it puts your life at risk.
  • Not Quite Dead: He appears to get killed at the end of Claptrap's New Robot Robolution, but survives. (See Unreliable Narrator below.)
  • Pet the Dog:
    • It's revealed in the tie-in comics that he took in Tannis after her entire team had been killed, and had been living alone for years. He did this for no apparent charge and after meeting her only once in passing years prior.
    • In 3, he realizes that the Vault Hunter of that story is likely to save the entire world when going to stop Troy from infusing Elpis, and so, feeling he should actually do something to help, he provides some ammunition "on the house," despite his notoriously cheap personality overall, with him seeming physically pained to offer such a thing. He even notes, without any sarcasm, that the Vault Hunter is his favorite customer, without his common refrain of "don't let it go to your head."
  • Porn Stash: In the second game, he sends the players to retrieve his most valuable treasure lost after Sanctuary takes flight, which turns out to be dirty pictures of Moxxi. You're then given the option to either bring them back to Marcus or to Moxxi... who plans to post them online.
  • Put on a Bus: Apart from his vending machines and a loading screen tip justifying the lack of laser weapons on Pandora, he doesn't appear at all during The Pre-Sequel.
  • The Scrooge: Notoriously cheap. He'd rather test allegedly faulty merchandise on you than give you a refund (although, to be fair, his merchandise is reliable), and it takes a titanic event to actually make him pull money out of his pocket (usually some kind of business deal that'd make him lose more money if unresolved). In the second game, he gives the wrong change to a customer and sends you on a mission to get the excess change back. How much change? Nine dollars. (And this is for a sale where he conned the guy out of two million dollars.) He pays you tons of money to get his nine dollars back, but that's business. He also sends you on a mission to reclaim refund checks he wrote while drunk before they're sent.
  • The Storyteller: Aside from being an arms dealer (and bus driver), Marcus is the resident storyteller who narrates the stories of the Vault Hunters to kids. According to the ending of Captain Scarlett and her Pirate's Booty, he's training a kid to take up his mantle.
  • Token Evil Teammate: By far the most unsympathetic recurring character to be consistently accepted as a friend among the protagonists.
  • Took a Level in Kindness: Noticeably nicer in 3, with a lot of his more negative traits toned down.
  • Underestimating Badassery: Moxxi advised him to get fat so that his enemies would underestimate him because of his appearance.
  • Unreliable Narrator:
    • Marcus narrates the beginning of the main games, the beginning of the Zombie Island, New Robot Revolution, Pirate's Booty DLC, and the Dragon Keep DLC, as well as the credits for Zombie Island, in the form of a story for a young child. However, he often messes up details or contradicts himself.
      Marcus: The Vault Hunters had stopped the evil doctor Zed from -
      Child: I thought his name was Ned.
      Marcus: Yes, yes. Whatever you say. Where was I...
    • At one point, he explicitly says he is lying when he is talking about Patricia Tannis rejecting him.
    • He also describes himself getting "killed off" in Claptrap's New Robot Revolution, despite still being around to tell the story and showing up in future games.

    Crazy Earl 

Crazy Earl

Buy somethin' or get outta my face!

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/crazyearl_5.png
Voiced by: Randy Pitchford

The owner of a scrapyard, Crazy Earl is angrily antisocial, but moves to Sanctuary to run the black market in the second game.

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