Characters / Borderlands: Atlas

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

---

"It is said that the Greek god Zeus fought for 10 long years against the titans, only to have the battle end in a draw. We at Atlas like to believe Zeus could have won the fight in half the time if only he had one of the guns from our legendary line of firearms. All Atlas guns offer exceptional rate of fire, damage, and an epic level of high technology. Regardless of your god, you need not look to the heavens for salvation from adversity. Atlas weaponry can answer your prayers and grant you a power few mortals have ever experienced. Prove yourself as a true believer. Join the select ranks of Atlas owners and become a god among men!"

A weapon manufacturer and private military contractor, Atlas produce high-quality weapons that excel in almost all areas, with no obvious weaknesses, other than rarity. The corporation staked Pandora as its own in Borderlands but was forced off planet. By the events of Tales from the Borderlands, Atlas is now owned by Hyperion, thanks to Handsome Jack wiping out their executives between the Pre-Sequel and BL2, causing the corporation to disappear into the red ink, with Jack owning the rights to the company.

They make a return in Borderlands 3 after Hyperion programmer Rhys Strongfork took the company deed from the ruins of Helios and rebuilt the company from the ground up. The reborn Atlas trades ultra-high quality for a new type of weaponry: Smart Guns that lock on once an enemy is hit with a tracker projectile fired from an underbarrel attachment.

---

Check the following pages for the following characters:

• Borderlands (2008): Vault Hunters: Roland
• Borderlands 2: Vault Hunters: Zer0
• Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!: Vault Hunters: Athena

---

The brand/In general

• The Aesthetics of Technology: While they didn't have this in the first game (and didn't have enough of a motif to be redesigned for the Art Shift of the second game), Borderlands 3 gives their weapons sleek, curvy shells with geometric designs on them, resembling spaceships more than guns. There's a rather bulky, thrown-together look to some of their weapons under said shells, while pistols and launchers are arm-mounted. This all combines to make them look both very advanced... and jarringly different from the more conventionally held pistols and rocket launchers in the game.
• Arm Cannon: Atlas pistols and launchers in 3 are arm-mounted guns. Some pistols even fire micro-missiles in a more literal interpretation of the trope name.
• Back from the Brink: After the events of Tales, Rhys managed to obtain the rights to Atlas and has made it a successful corporation seemingly back on par with the other companies within five years. Even Marcus was forced to acknowledge that the company was no longer a shadow of it's former self after initially laughing Rhys off as just some upstart and being forced to buy weapons from him at a considerable markup.
• Bad Boss: Before their status as Incompetence, Inc. drove them to collapse, Atlas was extremely hard on its employees. According to Typhon DeLeon's logs, once they found the first Vault on Promethea, they began working the population to the bone, making what was one of the largest urban worlds in the borderlands into a nightmarish hellhole that was almost as bad as Pandora.
• Create Your Own Hero: Atlas's habit of treating their employees like crap came back to bite them in their ass when two of their greatest soldiers (Roland and Athena) end up becoming Vault Hunters and wipe them off Pandora.
• The Empire: While all of the manufacturers are empires to some extent, Atlas seems to consider itself more of a political faction than a corporation, at least in the first game.
• Evil, Inc.: Downplayed, surprisingly. While not completely on the up-and-up they are miles better than their successors, Hyperion. Averted completely in 3, thanks to Rhys.
• Evil Matriarch: Their on-planet leader when invading Pandora was the Siren Steele.
• Elite Mook: The Crimson Lance private army are the most powerful regular enemies in the first game, and are mostly present in the late game. In Borderlands 2, the few Lancemen who became bandits are all Badass-level enemies. Roland and many of the Crimson Raiders were former members of the Lance. They return, on your side, in 3.
• Foil: To Jakobs come 3; both are friendly companies whose (rightful) leaders personally side with the Crimson Raiders and help them obtain the keys to the vaults, and both of them rarely make any elemental weapons. Both of these companies encourage hitting critical spots and good aim, but while Jakobs takes a more direct, simple approach with their increased damage and critical damage, Atlas makes it somewhat easier to land those hits provided the player manages to score a homing beacon on those spots.
• Heel–Face Turn:
  • After the fall of the Crimson Lance, most of them ended up reforming under Roland as the Crimson Raiders, essentially becoming the official army of Pandora.
  • Under the reign of Rhys, Atlas has been largely reformed and serves as allies of the Vault Hunters.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: The Atlas corporation's intense hunger for and reliance on Eridian technology led to them creating the Vault Hunters by paying massive amounts of money to anyone who would search for the Vaults. Those same Vault Hunters, coupled with Atlas' crippling incompetence, would in turn eventually lead to the corporation's collapse.
• Imported Alien Phlebotinum: While most corporations are implied to use Eridian-derived tech to some extent, Atlas deserves special mention - much of the material they used for their guns in Borderlands 1 was derived from Eridian tech, and Rhys semi-jokingly claimed that his company's new weapons use secret Eridian technology. According to Typhon's logs, Eridian technology was the only thing that let them rise to prominence.
• Incompetence, Inc.: Corruption and incompetence was so widespread among the higher-ups in Borderlands 1 that a three-year-old was promoted as a Crimson Lance Admiral due to nepotism. By the time of Borderlands 2 Atlas was virtually defunct, and was so incompetent that the then-current CEO accidentally left the deed to the entire company lying around where Handsome Jack could literally steal it by loading his dog into a gun and firing it at said CEO's daughter, then stealing a Gortys part while making farting noises for some reason. It wasn't until Rhys managed to take over the company that he redeemed the brand name and rebuilt it.
• Infinity +1 Sword: In the first game and their reputation in general. They produce the best of the best, but they waste so much of their resources on pointless crap and nepotism that their products are near-impossible to find.
• I Own This Town: The Crimson Lance casually took over many smaller towns and bandit encampments around Pandora.
• Light Is Not Good: All Atlas equipment in the first game is pearlish-white, befitting their mythical name, but their creators are by no means nice people. Once Rhys takes over the company and Atlas becomes good, they switch to a dark gray with red accents color scheme.
• Master of All: Functions as this in the first game. All Atlas weapons are straight-up better in most areas, but only appear late in the game, are rare to find, and may not be actually better than other brands depending on what you're looking for. Much of their advertisement focus on this aspect as well. This is toned down in 3, as they're just another brand by this point. However, the Q-System Rifles are considered some of the best types of "standard" rifles due to the fact that they always shoot two projectiles at once, meaning they consistently do higher damage than most other rifles.
• Non-Elemental: In 3, pretty much all Atlas weapons save for three unique cases lack elemental damage, similar to Jakobs. In this case, this is compensated by their use of smart bullets that home in on marked targets, making it easier to hit enemies, including weak spots.
• Private Military Contractors: Has a whole army of them, in full heavy armor. When Atlas abandoned Pandora and went bankrupt, some of the leftover and stranded soldiers would later joined the Crimson Raiders in Borderlands 2, while others decided to join the bandits of Pandora.
• Put on a Bus: Doesn't make an appearance in Borderlands 2 or The Pre-Sequel, mostly due to their defeat in the first game. They come back in 3.
• Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: Their company and many of their rare guns draw their names from Greek Mythology.
  • A number of the Lance Assassins they've raised continue the theme. In addition to main character Athena, two of the assassins sent after you in the General Knoxx DLC are named Hera and Minerva.
  • This is later dropped in 3, however, where Atlas guns start receiving names fitting for advanced defense tech prototypes such as "AX-7", "V-System" or "Pattern Red".
• Sighted Guns Are Low-Tech: Atlas guns in 3 are quite advanced...and not a single one of them uses iron sights. Every gun uses an Atlas-built sight, either a scope or a folding reflex sight.
• Smart Gun:
  • Atlas guns in 3 use smart-gun technology that allows them to lock onto enemies. There's a number of mediums they use to accomplish this - "tracker pucks" that fling towards nearby enemies after a kill, "tracker grenades" that cause bullets to spread to everything within the radius of said grenades, and "tracker darts" which either fire a single projectile like the Bullseye from Resistance or the Buzlok from Warframe, or fire a shotgun-like spray of projectiles.
  • According to Marcus, the reason old Atlas guns are no longer usable is because Atlas installed brickware on their weapons that rendered them useless after their fall.

Individuals

Borderlands

Commandant Steele

Commandant Helga Steele

As of Borderlands 1. ^{Click to see her in the Claptrap DLC}

Voiced by: Lani Minella

The leader of the Crimson Lance in the vanilla game, dedicated to finding and plundering the Vault first. Possibly the Siren Lilith came to Pandora to find, but that is never confirmed.

---

• All There in the Manual:
  • Her first name is only stated in the game files.
  • The Borderlands: Origins comics confirm that Steele is, in fact, a Siren, which explains how she was able to activate the Destroyer Vault's key. Apparently Handsome Jack didn't include her in his list of them because she was already dead at the time.
• Bad Boss: Aside from treating her underlings like shit, in the backstory she knowingly sent Roland's squad on a suicide mission, then left them for dead when they were overrun. Of course, this ends up coming back to bite her in the end.
• The Baroness: Not only does she have the personality type, but she also speaks with a Russian accent.
• Big Bad: The closest thing that the first game has to a main villain.
• Big "NO!": As the Destroyer eats her.
• Blatant Lies: After tricking the Vault Hunter into going on a wild goose chase for Baron Flynt's nonexistent piece of the Vault Key, she claims that Tannis came to her and has been working with the Lance the entire time. Once the Vault Hunter finds Tannis she's in a cell with torture equipment just outside, proving that Steele was flat out lying.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • Not only does she get unceremoniously impaled mid-sentence, she then gets revived — twice — and her new Claptrap programming ensures her following deaths are as undignified as possible.
    Steele-Trap: Unce, unce, unce... I was better off with a damn tentacle through my chest.
  • Shows up in Tales from the Borderlands stuffed and as a museum piece. Shade's recounting of how she died doesn't help either.
• Came Back Wrong: She is brought back as Steele-Trap during the Robot Revolution DLC.
• Dark Action Girl: This isn't evident in the main game, but it definitely shows in Robot Revolution.
  Have you met our friend the sun?!
• Horrible Judge of Character: The first possible interaction that the player can have with her, which doesn't always play, has her condemn you for agreeing to "assassinate" a "local leader". The "local leader" she's talking about? Sledge.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: How the Destroyer kills her.
• Informed Ability: She demonstrates no special powers when you fight her as Steele-Trap, despite being a Siren, one of the most dangerous beings in the universe.
• It's All About Me: Her first guaranteed interaction with the Vault Hunter is a direct ECHO-broadcast where she tears into them for killing Sledge because they're a mercenary and she doesn't approve of anyone not affiliated with the Lance doing anything to police Pandora.
• Karmic Death: Steele was hellbent on plundering the Vault and gladly stooped to torture and murder to see it done. But when Steele finally succeeds in opening it, she’s quickly impaled and devoured by the contents.
• King Mook: In the Claptrap DLC, she is more or less a Badass Lance Assassin with much better damage resistance.
• Motor Mouth: According to Knoxx.
  Knoxx: I sent Steele to this planet to take care of this little problem and also because... seriously, have you heard her? She talks all the time.
• Power Tattoo: She has Siren tattoos, although the powers she possesses remain a mystery. Even when fought as Steele-Trap she doesn't demonstrate any special Siren powers, mostly since because she died they jumped to a new host.
• Self-Disposing Villain: The Vault Hunters didn’t even need to kill her the first time around, as she was snapped up unceremoniously by the Destroyer mere seconds after opening the Vault.
• Token Evil Teammate: The Secret Armory of General Knoxx and Borderlands 2 indicate that most of the Crimson Lance rank-and-file were actually decent people who just happened to be on the wrong side, with most of their Kick the Dog moments being ordered by their Atlas superiors. Steele seems to have been one of the few genuine assholes in the organization, and even her villainy barely registers in comparison to the likes of Handsome Jack or the Calypso Twins.
• Touched by Vorlons: She is a Siren, but she never demonstrates any powers in the game (other than being able to operate the Vault Key).
• Unexplained Recovery: She still has a hole in her torso from The Destroyer's tongue when she reappears in the Robot Revolution DLC as Steele-Trap, but as she was last seen being Eaten Alive by The Destroyer it's not made clear how her body has become intact again or how Claptrap retrieved her.
• The Unfought: Played straight in the main game. Subverted in the Robot Revolution DLC, in which she comes back under the control of the Claptraps and fights the player characters twice.
• Unwilling Roboticisation: Rebuilt as Steele Trap in the Robot Revolution DLC.

Master McCloud

A Crimson Lance high-ranking officer stationed at the end of the Crimson Fastness level. Carries an Eridian Cannon.

---

• Boss in Mook Clothing: Unlike other Crimson Lance soldiers, he's armed with an Eridian Cannon.
• Dead Guy on Display: In the "Dead Haven" level of The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned, his body is impaled and on full display in what would be the entrance from the Rust Commons East area.
• The Dragon: The last major boss the Vault Hunters face before Steele and the Destroyer.
• Flunky Boss: He's flanked by two Elite Lancers.
• Miles Gloriosus: According to the Borderlands Strategy Guide, given half a chance, he will regale anyone with tales of his many exploits.

Admiral Mikey

A five-year-old that was Admiral of the Crimson Lance 3rd Starborne Brigade, which unfortunately makes him Knoxx's superior officer. He's one of the reasons why Knoxx hates what Atlas is.

---

• Children Are Innocent: He was a five-year-old boy and barely understood anything, let alone the situation on the ground. He tries sending General Knoxx some chocolate but seeing how it melted on the trip there it didn't warm him to the grumpy old man.
• The Ghost: He's frequently brought up but seeing how he's both a child and a high-ranking officer there was no way he'd show up in-game.
• Improbable Age: He's five and an Admiral.
• Nepotism: He was a five-year-old admiral and that was the only way he could ever be promoted, let alone serve.
• Pointy-Haired Boss: He's a child, what do you expect?
• Staircase Tumble: According to General Knoxx's Twitter account, Mikey met his unfortunate end by falling down "30,000 stairs". Seeing how he had no heirs, this led to more troubles for Atlas.

General Knoxx

General Alphonso Knoxx

Doesn't like Mondays

As of Borderlands 1 (General Knoxx DLC). ^{Click to see him in the Claptrap DLC}

Voiced by: Stan Robak

The beleaguered general of the Crimson Lance after Steele botches the job, he is deeply annoyed by everything to do with Pandora and his superior, the five-year-old Admiral Mikey.

---

• Ace Custom: He's got a red Devastator mech suit that's much larger than even the Badass Devastator suits, can takes tons of damage, and is equipped with a pair of Eridian energy cannons that fire homing explosive energy blasts.
• Affably Evil:
  • He's routinely polite to the Vault Hunters and bears them no hard feelings, despite making it clear he intends to kill them. He also genuinely thanks them for killing Steele, considering he didn't like her very much, and for good reason. Even his dying request that they should destroy Pandora because it's a Crapsack World that doesn't deserve to exist is pretty polite.
  • He's even affable when being forced to fight as Knoxx-trap, encouraging the Vault Hunters on their efforts at killing him and congratulating them on critical hits.
  • Retrospectively reinforced in The Pre-Sequel when playing through the "Boarding Party" side mission as Claptrap.
  Claptrap: Good ol' General Knoxx! He was the nicest, politest, most suicidal killing machine you ever could meet! That's why I revived him during my robolution and— ERROR. FILES LOCKED.
• Anti-Villain: Knoxx just wants to get off Pandora, but he has to kill the Vault Hunters to finish the mission.
• Apologetic Attacker: As a guy who just wants to die or escape Pandora, he laments having to fight you during the entirety of the battle.
  Knoxx: You'd have made a great soldier. It's a pity I didn't recruit you before now.
• Badass Boast: During the battle:
  Knoxx: Where the Omega failed, I will not!
  Knoxx: I have all of Steele's reports on your methods. I have the advantage.
• Butt-Monkey: Sees himself as this, given his Only Sane Man attitude.
• Came Back Wrong: In the Robot Revolution DLC, much to his chagrin.
  Knoxx: I'm back! Wait... I'm back? Dammit.
• The Cameo: In The Pre-Sequel, Knoxx is the one who narrates Athena's personal ECHO logs.
• The Chew Toy: His men disrespect him, his commanding officer is literally a child, and he's stuck on a Crapsack World. Oh, and he gets resurrected, twice, when all he wants is to stay dead.
• Dangerous Deserter: He would have been, if he'd gone through with his plans to kill the Vault Hunters and then leave the Crimson Lance for being full of idiots and incompetents.
• Deadpan Snarker: In his ECHO recordings.
• Death Seeker: When you reach him, he's about to commit suicide, but decides to try killing the Vault Hunters instead. In the Robot Revolution DLC, he is brought back to life twice and is not happy about it.
  Knoxx (dying in the Knoxx DLC battle): Finally it's over.
  Knoxx (intro in the Claptrap DLC): I'm alive!... I'm alive? Damn it!
• Driven to Suicide: Knowing that he can't finish his mission without witnessing another moment of incompetence and corruption from the Crimson Lance, he tries to kill himself, only to be interrupted by the Vault Hunters when they finally show up. He never even wanted to be on Pandora, either.
• Establishing Character Moment: The first ECHO you receive from him begins with a very long-suffering sigh. And that sums up his attitude to Pandora, the Crimson Lance, his mission, the Vault Hunters, his underlings, his superiors, his life, and every other damn thing that goes on to happen from there.
• Even Evil Has Standards: The reason he was furious at his superiors for what they did to Athena was partially that he thinks it was just an incredibly dirty move on their part.
• Eyepatch of Power: Wears one.
• Flunky Boss: Knoxx himself is pretty tough, what with his Ace Custom mech suit, but what really makes him "final boss" difficult is the fact that he's accompanied by lots of Crimson Lance units, including Devastators and a Badass Devastator, as well as multiple Crimson Lance medics that can heal Knoxx to full health if you don't kill them quickly enough. This is most apparent in Claptrap's New Robot Revolution, in which you fight Knoxx again, only this time he's by himself and is a noticeably easier fight.
• King Mook: Knoxx is basically an Ace Custom Devastator (he's larger and has a lot more health), although he does have a few unique attacks and is also a Flunky Boss.
• Large and in Charge: Courtesy of his enormous mech suit.
• My God, What Have I Done?: It's implied. He's so fed up with the Crimson Lance's incompetence and corruption that he regrets working for them to the point where he wants to kill himself so that he doesn't have to bear witness to the utter insanity going on within the Atlas high command.
• Only Sane Man: Sees himself as this among the Crimson Lance leaders. He's not wrong, given that the rank-and-file seem more concerned with ice-cream than their mission and they left a code that their lives depend upon at a blatant tourist trap where anyone could pick it up, the elites are Ax-Crazy (they were brainwashed as children then forced to murder their parents), and his boss is a five year old because of goddamn nepotism. All while he's trapped on a desert planet loaded with crazies and vicious alien wildlife, and someone is massacring his men with little effort. He's so fed up with the situation that when the Vault Hunters find him, he's trying to kill himself to escape the madness.
• Pet the Dog: The Pre-Sequel shows that he was actually quite fond of Athena, noting that she was a "nice enough kid" for a Child Soldier and was pretty angry at his superiors when they ordered her to wipe out the village her sister lived in to cut off her remaining ties to the outside world, knowing that as well as it being a dick move that it will just lead to her wanting vengeance against them. For her part, Athena actually respected Knoxx and regretted that he had to die.
• Powered Armor: Uses his own custom suit of Devastator armor, which is somewhere between here and Mini-Mecha.
• Punch-Clock Villain: He bears the Vault Hunters no ill will and isn't ideologically loyal to the Crimson Lance, but he's a career soldier who takes his work seriously.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: He's pretty pissed at Atlas for screwing Athena over, to say the least.
  Knoxx: You assholes. What the hell did she do to you to deserve THAT? You order a code 64 on a village knowing full well her sister LIVED THERE? For hell's sake, she took out her own sister in all the confusion because you ordered thermals only! You had to tie up that one last loose end just to keep her in the corp? So that's what happens when you know too much to leave, but you're too good at your job to die. When she realized what she'd done, she, uh — she got a little stabby. She's in the brig now. Probably ship her back to Atlas HQ tomorrow. God, I hate this place.
• Tragic Villain: It's an understatement to say that Knoxx is not happy with his current position. He's put in charge of a corporate private military that seeks to take over Pandora in the name of Atlas in order to establish a despotic reign. He's not loyal to the Crimson Lance in any way, but he still has to finish his mission regardless.
• Trapped in Villainy: Downplayed. Leaving the Lance is punishable by death, but since he knows how incompetent the Lance rank-and-file are and that his boss is a five-year-old, he's not too worried that he'll be tracked to the other side of Grophic IV.
• Unwilling Roboticisation: His resurrection — he wanted to die, and bitterly demands you hurry up and kill him during the battle.

Post-Borderlands

Rhys

Rhys Strongfork

Company man (you) // Be-sieged and be-stached // The "Cool" CEO (Not you!)

^{Click here to see him in Tales from the Borderlands}

"Calm down, Vaughn. Everything's going to be fine."

Played by: Troy Baker (Tales from the Borderlands), Ray Chase (Borderlands 3, New Tales from the Borderlands)

A mid-level Hyperion employee with ambitions of controlling the company. After getting screwed out of a promotion by his nemesis Vasquez, he catches wind of a deal for a Vault Key. With that, he and his best friend Vaughn set out to Pandora to steal the deal for themselves.

After the events of Tales from the Borderlands, he acquires the rights to the then-defunct Atlas brand and rebuilds it from scratch. By the time of Borderlands 3 he's a successful CEO, with his company becoming one of the Mega Corps of the six galaxies.

---

• Action Survivor: Without his Loader Bot or his Stun Baton, Rhys is more or less useless in a fight. He injures his hand when throwing a punch and his attempt to choke out a bandit simply amuses said bandit. His robot arm is incredibly strong, though, and he can deliver a helluva right hook. He's got some impressive skill with a stun baton too. In 3 he's still pretty worthless as far as physical activities go but he now has others to do the fighting for him.
• Amusing Injuries:
  • Falls down Jack's trapdoor in Episode Five and lands on the metal floor. He's not really worse for wear, except that he admits he's probably suffering severe internal bleeding.
  • Rhys injures his face a lot. It even appears in the title card in which the game introduces him. Vasquez can punch him there twice, and in most fights, he lands on it at least once. The last time he does it is when he throws himself out of an escape pod, and immediately faceplants. This is even referred to with the result of "why is it always the face?" when you choose a response that ends with getting punched in the face after the first two or three head injuries.
• An Arm and a Leg: Is forced to mutilate himself to rid himself of Handsome Jack. In other words, he has to rip his own cybernetics out of his body, including his ECHO-eye!
• Ascended Fanboy:
  • Getting a digital copy of your idol downloaded into your brain should qualify, but Rhys has very mixed feelings on his situation due to some poor first impressions and a desire to look "cool". The Handsome Jack AI declares him a worthy successor to ruling Hyperion.
  • As of 3, Zer0 is now working as his personal Corporate Samurai.
• The Atoner: Depending on the choices you made for Rhys in Chapter 4, he could have potentially betrayed Fiona and Sasha's trust all in the name of making a power grab for Hyperion, only for Handsome Jack to then in turn stab him in the back. Much of his arc in Chapter 5 focuses on how he can redeem himself and rebuild Atlas into something altruistic.
• Author Avatar: A rather dark meta example. Several Telltale writers have admitted that Rhys became this for the team due to his character arc involving suffering under executive incompetence, much like many of the Telltale staff.
• Authority in Name Only: Only in TFTB. Officially, Rhys is the CEO of Atlas. That said, he doesn't have much to his name, at least at that time.
• Awesome Moment of Crowning: If Rhys accepts Jack's offer to rule Hyperion, after being uploaded, Jack announces to the entirety of Helios that Rhys is now the new President of Hyperion.
• Badass Boast: Can make several, especially as "Rhysquez".
• Bad "Bad Acting": Subverted. He impersonates Vasquez near-flawlessly and hilariously accurately, depending on your dialogue choices. It only fails when the voice modulator starts to break, but that's not necessarily his fault. His unmodulated Vasquez impression is pretty good, too. It all gets a bit zig-zagged and meta as one can tell Troy Baker was having trouble not doing too good a job at imitating Patrick Warburton, doubly so for a brief imitation of August that sounds so dead on like Nolan North that initially it's hard to realize Rhys is the one speaking.
• Badass Transplant: Organically he's no different than any other Hyperion office lackey, but his cybernetic arm gives him much greater physical strength and can function like a mini-supercomputer; his cybernetic eye also allows him to scan and analyze anyone and anything in detail.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Played straight or Defied at the end of Episode 4. If you accept the offer to rule Hyperion Rhys will look pretty satisfied as Jack announces to all of Helios he's the new president. If you refuse, Jack will take over Rhys body and force him to upload him into Helios all while Rhys looks on in terror.
• Benevolent Boss:
  • He is one compared to the standards of the majority of corporate owners in the Borderlands series, by having Vaughn.^note For an accountant. Over the course of his debut though, he can trash this trope down or maintain it by choice.
  • One of his first dialogue options is to declare he's going right to the top, and taking his friends with him.
  • It gets scaled up once he gets promoted to CEO of Hyperion by the Jack AI for the next five minutes, if he chose to eat a pizza over firing the entire accountant office or firing a moonshot cannon at (what he thought was) a bandit settlement.
  • He's a successful one by being the new Atlas CEO. Cassius willingly offers his services to Rhys if he joins to help in the final boss battle.
  • By 3, he takes his employees out to theme parks often and always ensures that they're fed well. In fact, one of the major points of conflict between Rhys and Katagawa Jr. is that they have vastly differing viewpoints on how to treat their employees.
  • New Tales shows that this does have it's limits, where in the beginning of the game he calls Anu up to his office to give her a dressing down for freeing the Jabbers meant for experiments as well as wasting company resources on what is apparently a non-lethal weapon that can only teleport things away without any reliable way to bring them back (which he notes still sounds plenty dangerous). When Anu attempts to demonstrate it, she ends up phasing his personal property as well as his personal assistant, which is enough for him to have her fired.
• Big Badass Battle Sequence: Goes through some personally.
  • Takes on a literal army of bandits with his stun baton in Episode One.
  • Fights a group of bandits on August's customized Bandit Technical in Episode Three.
  • Engages in a hilariously bizarre "gunfight" with a legion of Hyperion accountants in Episode Four.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Dreams of becoming Jack's successor. His odds of achieving this goal are best illustrated in how he utterly fails at strangling people, something Jack was quite adept with.
• Broken Pedestal: To an extent. He doesn't blind himself to or celebrate the atrocities that Jack committed while he was alive, but he still finds the man worthy of his admiration. The pedestal finally crumbles in Episode 5, where Jack decides to make him the first robo-Jack.
• Butt-Monkey: Not much ever goes right for him.
• Captain Obvious: He tends to talk like this at times. It's also August's nickname for him. Even Gortys points it out in Episode Five.
  Gortys: Rhys, I love you, but please stop saying obvious things!
• Character Development: He becomes much more resourceful and stops looking down on Pandora and its inhabitants as the story goes on, and while largely determinant, he'll eventually end his Hero Worship of Handsome Jack.
• The Chessmaster: If you make the right choices, and choose to take over Helios at the end of Episode 4, everything could count as part of Rhys’ masterplan to take over.
• The Chew Toy: VERY frequently injured for comedic effect.
• Chick Magnet: Implied to have been one in the past, with his good looks overcoming his awkwardness. He also seems to win over Sasha despite the relationship starting out rather rocky.
• Closet Geek: He can potentially bond with the Handsome Jack AI over a Conan the Barbarian reference.
• Composite Character:
  • In general terms, he is the in-between characterization of Timothy Lawrence and Professor Nakayama. The former, being the closest resemblance of Handsome Jack before his rise to power and was seemingly forced to work for Hyperion under stress. The latter, has a deep obsession of the same maniac who rose in power, didn't care how much punishment he's been through and is physically weak, but not to the point of being killed by stairs.
  • Despite the differences, both were ridiculed under similar incompetent personalities.
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character: Previous protagonists in the series were eccentric Vault Hunters or, in the instance of the Pre-Sequel, hired guns for Handsome Jack, with many of the Vault Hunters going on to be considered his worst enemies. Rhys is a relatively normal, mid-level Hyperion employee, who idolizes Handsome Jack to some degree.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive:
  • A Downplayed Trope as while it's mentioned Rhys and Vaughn had to do terrible things to get to the place where he could get his promotion, he can also be quite nice.
  • Before Vasquez gave him a "promotion", he used to have a personal bathroom that was bigger than Fiona's caravan.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Outside of things he could've done with his regular limb, Rhys' cybernetic arm seemed to be useless for anything that didn't involve hacking. However, in "Escape Plan Bravo" he realizes that his robot arm gives him a hell of a right-hook and can let him lift pretty heavy things.
• Crystal Dragon Jesus: Becomes this for the Children of Helios, who worship him as the one who "freed them from their corporate shackles".
• Cyborg: He has a cybernetic arm, an ECHO-eye implant and a disc drive socket in the side of his head. As shown by his self-mutilation in Episode 5, unlike some fictional Cyborgs, Rhys' cybernetics are extensively connected to him and removing them is a gruesome process that causes Rhys to lose a lot of blood.
• Dead Person Impersonation: He spends most of Episode 4 impersonating Vasquez through the use of a Quick Change station and a voice changing device.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  • He's quite smarmy just on his own, which can be increased even more through the dialogue options, should the player so desire.
  • Often subverted. The game often offers a choice that sounds cool and snarky, only for Rhys to nervously stumble over his words.
• Determinator: Despite the pain and blood loss he's suffering, he removes all of his cybernetic components to rid himself of Handsome Jack forever.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?:
  • Rhys has a problem with his treatment at Hyperion. Which is to be expected given he's "promoted" to janitor.
  • Also there are moments where people will completely ignore his plans.
  • By Episode 4, he can come to be quite highly respected by both Fiona and Sasha.
• Electronic Eye: One brown and his ECHO implant makes the other blue (though it's gold by the time he recounts his tale to the Stranger). It's one more thing he shares with Handsome Jack. Atlas Mugged reveals that his ECHO eye only turns gold when the Jack AI is controlling him. The final episode reveals that Rhys tore out his eye implant in a last-ditch attempt to break AI Jack's hold on his body. His new eye (and arm) is a result of using Atlas technology in order to rebuild the implants.
• Endearingly Dorky: Depending on player choice, his flirting with Sasha is incredibly adorable in its dorkiness, and she seems to agree.
• Epic Fail: His attempt to choke a bandit to death. Even worse, it was initially an attempt to break his neck. To make it even more embarrassing, he was trying to choke the bandit with his organic arm. The cherry on the top of it is the bandit making fun of him and effortlessly breaking out of his chokehold.
• Even Evil Has Standards: His issue with Jack's actions in the past games isn't that people died because of them. It's that TOO many people died because of them.
• Everyone Can See It: He does a really poor job of hiding his feelings for Sasha. Jack heavily hints that he knows, Fiona makes it clear she’s aware several times, and the whole party standing by and watching them reunite reeks of this.
• Eye Scream: Rhys' Finishing Move when Jack took over Rhys' cybernetic hand once more. Forcibly ripping the socket out of his left eye, it's quite a long one actually, in order to finish Jack for good. Unless he keeps the eye, though.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: How fashionable it actually is is subjective but his pants, shirt, eyes, and arms are all asymmetrical.
• Finger Gun:
  • Even though it doesn't actually kill anyone, it was epicly executed to hundreds of Hyperion employees all by himself, all awhile disguised as Vasquez within said execution.
  • In the final battle, Rhys's legendary skill with the finger gun allows Gortys to fire actual bullets from her fingers.
• Flanderization: Rhys was always a shrill doofus and "walking disaster" kind of guy, but he has had more to his personality and a lot of character development. Come 3 and his screaming and over the top dramatics are played up to the point where it defines much of his character, aside from him being Atlas's CEO. Justified however, in that he's been under a considerable amount of stress due to the prolonged Maliwan siege with his state only worsening every time Katagawa destroys something he loves with his Kill Sat.
• Forgot About His Powers: His robot arm is orders of magnitude stronger than this flesh-and-blood arm, but it takes Rhys a while to realize he could actually use it in a fight. Justified somewhat, as Rhys is out of his depth in any fight that doesn't involve his fingers and saying "pew pew!"
• Freudian Excuse: Believes that "patience sucks" because of his mother lying to him when he was 12.
• Genius Ditz: He puts on the airs of a ball-cracking businessman and ruthless corporate executive, but in practice the only thing he seems to be good at is computers. As of 3 Rhys proves to be a shrewd business man to the point of resurrecting Atlas Corporation and making the ever greedy Marcus eat a humble pie by selling Atlas weaponry at considerable higher price than what Marcus wanted.
• Going Commando: A cut exchange from the game between Sasha and Rhys would've revealed that he isn't wearing any underwear.
• Good Counterpart: As of 3 he's starting to veer into this territory for Handsome Jack. Like Jack, he's a former corporate stooge who through a series of circumstances rose up to the top of the corporate ladder after opening a Vault. Unlike Jack however, Rhys opened the Vault with the aid of allies as a side benefit to saving a friend instead of tricking a group of Vault Hunters into doing it for him. Also unlike Jack, Rhys simply secured the Atlas deed from Jack's ruined office instead of lying, cheating and murdering his way to the top. There are a few other comparisons too- Jack ran Hyperion through fear and Orwellian surveillance, which led to his employees becoming backstabbing sociopaths like him just to survive and get promoted. Rhys' Benevolent Boss status means that his employees actually like him and the stupid backstabbing culture of Hyperion is nonexistent and thus much easier to run.
• He Cleans Up Nicely: Not that he wasn’t a Pretty Boy beforehand, but Rhys gains an attractive new getup after the time jump. Both his clothing and hair are much more casual, he shows some more skin, and he loses his unfortunate looking tie.
• Heel–Face Turn: Depending on how you play him, Rhys can realize that he doesn't want to become like his former idol Handsome Jack and will desire to become a more heroic leader. By the time of 3 he becomes one of the few actually decent CEOs in the setting.
• Hero-Worshipper:
  • He's stated to be absolutely obsessed with Handsome Jack to the point that he specifically styles himself after him. According to Vaughn, his office is filled with posters of the man. However, the player is also given several options in which he calls out Jack for being a psychotic egomaniac.
  • You also have the option of turning him into one for Zer0. There's always an option to Squee over his cool stunts. If you take Zer0 along with you in Episode 5, Rhys will act this way regardless of how you had him act in Episode 1.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Vaughn, bro. If the player wills it.
• Hollywood Hacking: His ECHO-Eye is capable of scanning and hacking into certain tech. AI!Jack is able to upgrade its capabilities even further.
• Honest Corporate Executive: As the new owner of Atlas.
• I Fight for the Strongest Side!: He'd also like to run it someday.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: More than it being his job, Rhys likes being liked. Doesn't stop him from being pretty judgmental, though.
• I'm Taking Him Home with Me!: If the player chooses Jack over Fiona at the end of episode 2, Rhys invokes this on Dumpy, a small Atlas security drone, "for some reason".
• Incredibly Lame Fun: When his splash screen says "Company Man", it ain't kidding. When he was ten, he formed a club with his friends just so he would have an excuse to print business cards.
• Informed Flaw: His hero worship of Jack can end up this depending on how you play his interactions. Despite claims that he's obsessed with him, it's entirely possible to have Rhys never miss a chance to remind the Jack AI that he's an annoying, genocidal psychopath who died like a chump.
• Iron Butt Monkey: He can suffer a lot of abuse thanks to his metal-plated skull.
• Irony: Rhys' main goal for most of the series is to climb to the top of the Hyperion corporate ladder like his idol Handsome Jack. By Episode 5, he ends up destroying Hyperion, defeating the A.I. Jack for good, and taking over Atlas, the company Hyperion came to replace after its downfall in 1.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He can be played in this way. While he might be a greedy and ambitious jerk, he can be quite loyal to his friends and plan to take them along in his rise to power.
• Jerkass: ...Or treat them and everybody else like crap, like Jack would.
• Jerkass Has a Point: He's definitely more hostile to Anu than he is in earlier games to others, but his reasoning makes sense. He is running a weapons manufacturer, so creating a device that sends targets away (but lets them come back) is a bad idea in a galaxy filled to the brim with killers. Anu also had released very dangerous test subjects multiple times, costing a lot of money each time. Lastly, while he did not ask about how it could be tested, Anu did not clarify that her device only could send things away, with no indication of how to bring them back, so she effectively destroyed his personal property, if not general company property, with an extremely expensive, ultimately useless not-weapon. In the end, she is lucky he gave her as much time and patience as he did before firing her.
• Klingon Promotion:
  • This can be his suggested response to Vasquez's taking his boss' position. He's forced to go another route.
  • This route involves literally ripping himself over against Jack's control in order to get his rights to control Atlas instead.
• Licked by the Dog: Unlike every other denizen of Pandora that isn't Shade, Zer0 holds no grudge against Rhys for being affiliated with Hyperion. He even goes so far as to save his life and thank him for recovering his dropped sword for him.
• Left-Handed Mirror: Rhys is left-handed to contrast the right-handed Fiona. Whether the fact that his right arm is robotic is of any importance in this regard is up in the air.
• Loony Fan: The Handsome Jack AI quickly begins to consider him as such.
• Losing a Shoe in the Struggle: Can lose his left shoe at the beginning of Episode 2 when Fiona tries to grab him when Vaughn and he fell out the destroyed back end of their caravan. He can get it back by asking Fiona for it in Old Haven. If he doesn't, he will get it back at the beginning of Episode Three when she throws it at him to wake him up.
• Man of a Thousand Voices: His August and Vasquez imitations are so good it's hard to tell it's still Troy Baker and not the character's VA's themselves.
• Middle-Management Mook: While his exact job is unknown, Rhys was presumably somewhere in middle management along with Vaughn.
• Miles Gloriosus: A mild case, known to embellish his exploits to seem more charismatic and charming than he really is. However, this is balanced out by several moments of Self-Deprecation.
• Mythology Gag: Like his idol in the Pre-Sequel, Rhys' title card flashes onscreen after he's been slugged across the face by an armed, masked man.
• Never Trust a Trailer:
  • The earliest trailer portrays Rhys as Fiona's trusted, competent Cyborg sidekick with a Hyperion Ace Custom arm and a smug smile on his face to say it. Upon the game's release though...
  • It even shows that Jack is in control of the trailer foreshadowing his attempts to manipulate the game after the first episode, which the trailer could be intentional.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Had Rhys not attempted to screw Vasquez out of his Vault Key deal with August, then his hated rival might've destroyed himself without him having to lift a finger given how the key was a fake.
• Non-Action Guy: Rhys isn't much of a fighter, but he can improvise with what he's got, especially with his hacking skills.
• Non-Indicative Name: While his Stun Baton is indeed a baton, it just seems to straight-up murder people rather than stun them.
• Nominal Hero: To begin with, he's not out for any heroic actions, and isn't even fighting Hyperion, unlike Fiona. His primary focus is screwing over Vasquez. This changes as he gets used to what life is like for non-executives on Pandora. Notably, when Jack asks what Rhys would do if he were in Jack’s prior position of power, Rhys can speak selflessly and note how he’d want to help the people of Pandora.
• Obliviously Evil: Like most Hyperion workers, he's unaware of how badly Hyperion treated Pandora, and doesn't see himself, Jack, or Hyperion itself as doing anything necessarily "bad".
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: If you choose Jack over Fiona in Episode 2 or choose to trust him in Episode 3, then he'll possess Rhys's body after a fall, and once Rhys starts acting like a complete asshole and speaking in a voice that sounds exactly like a higher-pitched Handsome Jack, and speaking in a way that he never even did before, the team know that something is definitely wrong with him.
• Opposites Attract: If he fesses up to being attracted to Sasha in Episode 5, he says it's because she's everything he's not.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Refusing to betray Vaughn.
  • Equally, can be a Kick the Dog moment by agreeing to do so.
  • Saving Loader Bot is one, and the dog stays with you too!
  • Can be very sweet and downright romantic with Sasha, which she seems to enjoy quite a bit.
  • In a potential conversation with Vaughn during episode 3, no matter what you choose, Rhys will note how he refused to abandon Vaughn when the latter wasn’t allowed into a party because of his looks. Becomes an even bigger example depending on choices, as Rhys can greatly lift Vaughn’s spirits by stressing his loyalty to him, which will result in Vaughn joyfully hugging him.
• Plausible Deniability: Upon seeing what happened to Terry and Glenn he refuses to ask for further details in order to claim plausible deniability.
• Porn Stache: As of 3, Rhys now has what he calls a "siege mustache". It's actually fake. You can tell Rhys to lose it after Katagawa is dead, and he'll let you keep it as a trinket for your guns.
• Punch-Clock Villain: As a Hyperion office drone, he technically counts as this. Depending on dialog choices made, he might simply just be another person trying to climb the ladder or actually believe Jack's rhetoric of bringing order to Pandora.
• Punny Name: His surname "Strongfork" as given in 3 is a play on Witherspoon.
• Pretty Boy:
  • Virtual Jack calls him on this, but to a near Deconstruction, as his physique isn't as good as Vaughn's or Jack's. When he tries to strangle a random bandit with his own hands, he fails spectacularly.
  • He did sport an ex-girlfriend before the game even started.
    Rhys: Sorry, Stacy.
  • Depending on your choices, Vaughn can note to Rhys how his looks have helped him through life, as despite Rhys being just as awkward and nerdy as Vaughn, because of the way he looked, he could fake it, offering him greater opportunities than Vaughn.
• Relationship Upgrade: With Sasha. A picture of her is seen on Rhys's desk in 3.
• Remembered I Could Fly: It takes him up to the penultimate episode and Jack's help to realize that his robot arm is strong enough to throw out punches that can knock people out as opposed to his regular arm.
• Sanity Slippage: Athena mistakes him talking to the Jack AI as this and warns him that he might end up becoming a Pandoran Psycho if he keeps it up.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • If Fiona fails to activate the EMP in time, he'll find out that the Vault Key is a fake and will try to leave Pandora with Vaughn only for Bossanova and Zer0 to come barging in.
  • Does this in the opening of Episode 5 regardless due to Jack's insanity and attempt to make him into a Robo-Jack.
• Self-Made Man:
  • Working up the ranks of Hyperion is a start for him, with, of course, intentions to control Hyperion one day. It's zigzagged; after losing almost everything to his own mistakes, he steals the rights to Atlas from Jack's double-dead hands, and has to build the defunct corporations from the ground up.
  • Becomes a literal example in Episode 5, where it's heavily implied he used Atlas tech to build and possibly even install his new cybernetic implants himself after destroying his original implants in order to kill Handsome Jack once and for all.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: Rhys and Fiona are, notably, the two nicest dressed people on Pandora.
• Sherlock Scan: Can do this literally with his cyborg-eye.
• Ship Tease:
  • Optional with Sasha in episode 3. You can choose to be a jerkass, a friend, or develop a romance. The quiet walk in the jungle, especially, carries tons of romance if you let it. However, if Rhys and Jack are on good terms when Rhys takes a nasty fall, then things go south after Jack temporarily controls Rhys and has him act incredibly sleazy towards her. Luckily, this can be resolved in Episode 4; if so, even more hints of romance arise.
  • Cut lines from the game have Rhys trying to deny his attraction to her. And asking if she ever talks about him.
  • The last act of episode 5 has Rhys referring to both Fiona and Sasha by shortened variations of their names, and the last five minutes, Rhys has the option to imply interest in Fiona over Sasha given certain dialogue options.
  • Regardless of the player's choices in Tales, a picture of Sasha can be seen on Rhys's desk in Borderlands 3, making them an Official Couple.
• Shock and Awe: He carries a powerful stun baton capable of sending enemies flying with a simple whack.
• Skewed Priorities: He's less horrified by how Vasquez murdered their old boss and more annoyed that his three years kissing up literally went out the window and the resulting waste of a perfectly good tailored suit.
• Smug Snake: A rare heroic example; Rhys definitely starts off as one. Even Handsome Jack calls him out on it.
• Socially Awkward Hero:
  • Some of his dialogue options will be delivered awkwardly, resulting in a temporary silence. But sometimes, his actions are awkward regardless. For example, he can give Sasha a flower, but doing so causes it to release a chemical that makes the surrounding creatures hostile to them.
  • Subverted before he came to Pandora, apparently. Even Vaughn remarks that in college Rhys was a partygoing ladies' man despite being an equally huge nerd due to his confidence, looks, and charisma.
• Spanner in the Works: His attempt to screw over Vasquez creates a massive Gambit Pileup for several unsavory parties.
• Stress Vomit:
  • His Running Gag, literally, in almost every situation a regular person would normally be terrified from. Most of it were avoided by his gang, at least.
  • Eventually, one of his stresses led to a Vomit Discretion Shot with August as his victim.
• Techno Wizard: Appears to have been his role at Hyperion and main area of competence. "Rhyz W1nz.exe" indeed.
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • In Episode 1, he's a pretty cowardly office boy. In Episode 4, he's come a very long way on the Badass scale.
  • Consider this—in Episode 1, Rhys explicitly stated that one of his main desires in life was to be the next Handsome Jack, and idolized the guy as a hero. Now, after four episodes, a massive shift in perspective from his time on Pandora, and general character development, he can potentially tell Jack to shove his offer right up his holographic ass at the end of Episode 4 and call him out for being the genocidal psychopath that he is.
  • On the other hand, if Rhys and Jack are on good terms and Rhys accepts his offer, Jack makes him Hyperion's new President. Rhys appears much more confident and determined by this, coupled with quite a Badass scene of him looking out of Jack's office window at Pandora, now in command of one of the most powerful corporations of all time.
  • Rhys is also much more comfortable in getting his hands dirty. Compare to Episode 1 where he's basically scared out of his mind when having to fight bandits to Episode 3 where he goes to chase August with Loader Bot alongside Sasha to save Gortys. In Episode 5, he is willingly and methodically ripping or cutting out his cybernetics with glass fragments in a last attempt to stop AI Jack.
  • Rhys is now the new CEO of Atlas as well after swiping the deed from Jack's office, even successfully testing prototype technology.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: When you get knocked out from your fall in the Atlas facility, Jack will take full control (unless you've consistently chosen not to trust Jack in episodes 2 and 3), speak like he does in Borderlands 2, complete in his own voice mixed with Rhys's, and proceeds insult everyone and slap Sasha's ass.
• Tranquil Fury: If the player chooses to stun Yvette with either Dumpy or the stun rod while revealing his identity, Rhys's tone can only be described as this.
• Video Game Caring Potential: Depending on player choices, he can either be a stereotypical Hyperion Jerkass or a kind, loyal friend.
• Villain Protagonist: Starts his story off by clarifying that he could be considered "one of the bad guys" in the game, but this being Pandora, he's naturally up against a series of "worse" guys.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Shares elements of this with Fiona and Sasha.
• We Used to Be Friends: Very apparent that he feels this towards Yvette. Based on player choice, this can be Subverted or played straight from Yvette's perspective as well.
  Rhys: I ran into an old friend, who I guess is a new enemy. Heh.
  Fiona: Yvette?
  Rhys: Yeah, she's dead to me.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: Depending on how effective his elaborate plans are.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: In Episode 5, Jack reveals his plan to create an army of copies with his AI uploaded via stuffing robotic endoskeleton in corpses and decides that Rhys will be the first prototype regardless of whether or not he's been friendly to him in previous episodes.
• You Kill It, You Bought It: After defeating Jack once and for all, he steals the deed to Atlas, and is now the CEO. However, the "kill it" part is optional.

Gortys

Gortys

Very excited to meet you! (Older than she looks)

My, she has grown! (This is her final form)

^{Click to see her spoiler form}

Played by: Ashley Johnson

Atlas' "crown jewel" and the titular Gortys Project hinted at in the first two episodes, this small, scarlet robot was going to help Atlas open the Vault of the Traveler before the company's collapse.

---

• Accidental Misnaming: She refers to Handsome Jack as "Gentle Jim".
• All-Loving Hero: Likes nearly everybody, regardless of how well she knows them, even when they're holding her prisoner, unless they do something to scare or upset her. This does not extend to Vallory or the Traveler.
• All Your Powers Combined: The final battle with the Traveler requires the assembled Vault Hunters to contribute their skills for her to use, as she doesn't have any combat protocols.
• Ambiguously Bi: As bisexual as a robot can be, anyway. She loves to flirt.
• Armor-Piercing Question: She asks Athena if she'll try to kill her too for being part of Atlas after she's done murdering Dr. Cassius.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: In the final battle with the Traveler, she states that she doesn't have any combat protocols programmed and must rely on copying whoever you brought along at that point. Once she does, her massive size and powerful weapons make those techniques surpassingly effective.
• Badass Adorable: Episode 5 reveals she was built by Atlas to fight Vault Guardians, the giant doomsday monsters that always serve as each game's Final Boss. Unfortunately, they neglected to program her with any combat protocols, so she has to rely on copying the combat styles of whoever's piloting her.
• BFS: Her final strike against the Traveler uses the beacon that calls the Vault (and by extension, the Traveler) to one specific location to summon a gigantic energy sword. What's more, this is the only time Gortys doesn't borrow a technique from one of her pilots; it appears regardless of who's piloting.
• Big, Stupid Doodoo-Head: During the fight with the Traveler, Rhys asks if she can get its attention. She tries, bless her.
  Gortys: Hey you! Big freaky... glowy... big handed... handy... thing monster... how was that?
  Rhys: Well, I mean, technically you got his attention.
• Break the Cutie: If Fiona decides to side with Athena about killing Dr. Cassius.
• Cuddle Bug: Generally goes for the shins.
• Cute Machines: Even Fiona thinks that she's absolutely adorable.
• Distaff Counterpart: She's practically a female Claptrap: a small, peppy, flirty, rolling, sentient robot whose fundamental purpose concerns opening doors (and dancing). She's round to his trapezoidal shape, coloured red and silver, and generally much less obnoxious, though. Even Jack likes her. Mostly because she's not Claptrap. This similarity becomes even more evident with the reveal of her final form. Like Claptrap's MINAC from the Claptrap's New Robot Revolution DLC for 1, her new body is enormous, and like the Fragtrap from The Pre-Sequel!, her attacks are all based on those of other Vault Hunters, though those Vault Hunters are the ones using them through her.
• Do-Anything Robot: Made not only to locate Vaults and access them, but also to fight the monsters that inevitably turn out to be guarding them. To that end she has surprisingly good combat functions.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The way Rhys and Fiona assemble her in Episode 2 is as suggestive as it is tasteful. Lot of grunting involved.
• Forever War: Her situation with the Traveler can best be described as this, once she's fully upgraded. As long as she's fully assembled, the Traveler is anchored to her location, and they are doomed to fight until one of them is destroyed. The Traveler itself even knows this, and refrains from dealing any finishing blows to her to keep itself anchored. The only reason Gortys is unable to defeat it, however, is because she's inept at fighting on her own.
• Girlish Pigtails: Sports the pair of circular arm doors for headbuns, with energy to rival Gaige.
• Heroic Sacrifice: She has Fiona and Sasha shoot her weak point with Vallory's rocket launcher in order to destroy the Vault of the Traveler and take the Traveler with her. However, she is rebuilt for the finale.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: The Tiny Girl to Loader Bot's Huge Guy.
• Humongous Mecha: She transforms into one after being upgraded with the beacon in Episode 5.
• I Was Fabricated, Programmed and Wired Ready: She was also built to dance!
• Morality Pet: Tries to be this to the group. Her success is dependent on the player's choices.
• Older Than They Look: A living relic from when Atlas was the dominant ruling presence on Pandora.
• Ping Pong Naïveté: Knows enough about the overall plot to understand that Athena's Atlas manhunt is the reason why she's currently incomplete and is ignorant enough of death to not realise that Vasquez is a corpse when she tries to drag him along for the adventure, thinking that he's just being lazy.
• Power Copying: She can copy any fighting skills her pilot(s) know, and can even improve upon them. Rhys is skilled with finger guns, so her fingers become real guns. August's fistfighting skills let her do a Rocket Punch. She can apparently even tap into VaultHunter.exe. Although she can't improve that. Nobody can.
• Robot Buddy: Even moreso than Loader Bot due to being much more cheerful and verbose.
• Robo Romance: Heavily implied between her and Loader Bot and confirmed in audio files.
• The Pollyanna: She rivals Axton in terms of sheer cheerfulness and is optimistic about everything. Diamond horse statue spontaneously bleeds? Maybe it was just filled with strawberry jam. You have to climb through an enormous death trap? Think of it like a giant blender! Everyone loves smoothies!
• Tiny Guy, Huge Girl: In her final form, she's bigger than most buildings, while Loader Bot is just above average human height in his new body. This is reversed again after the final battle, where she reverts to her base form.

Spoiler character

Dr. Cassius Leclemaine

No idea ("The Scientist")

Played by: Phil LaMarr (Tales from the Borderlands), Jim White (Borderlands 2)

An enigmatic old man who the group meet in the abandoned dome.

---

• And Then John Was a Zombie: In Commander Lilith and the Fight for Sanctuary, Cassius is already infected by the time you get to his lab, and his final request has you kill him for his blood sample.
• Ascended Extra: Cassius returns in the last Borderlands 2 DLC, Commander Lilith and the Fight for Sanctuary. Unfortunately, he's also Back for the Dead.
• Apologetic Attacker: He's not in full control of his body when you fight him in Fight for Sanctuary, and as such remains in a containment chamber so as to not hurt anyone. Unfortunately, Mordecai's blood sample is damaged so he has to commit a Heroic Suicide by letting you release and kill him.
• Bad Liar: He is very bad at covering up the fact that he's not new to the dome, what with all the evidence lying around.
• Berserk Button: Do not insult his cat, or he will pull off a Nightmare Face that is actually pretty terrifying.
• Beware the Nice Ones: If you recruit him as a Vault Hunter, his role basically seems to be just knowing about Atlas tech and being a doctor if one is needed. When all the Hunters take control of Gortys for various attacks, Cassius will vaguely remark that he's been working on a couple combat techniques. What are these techniques? Harnessing kinetic energy to launch laser beams and fireballs! Considering he's the most Badass Normal character of the bunch you can choose from (besides possibly Janey Springs), it's no surprise that the (sadly few) people who chose him were very impressed by what they got.
• Black and Nerdy: He's dark skinned, a gifted scientist, and a huge fan of gaming.
• Cool Old Guy: He's a little anti-social, but in the finale he's genuinely one of the nicest teammates on your squad. The coolness only increases when he showcases his knowledge of videogame combat in order to have Gortys fight a giant monster. He's the oldest character in the game, but Episode 5 reveals that he's a master at giant robot combat thanks to his taste in gaming.
• Dead Man Writing: He has a pre-recorded ECHO log that plays after you've just killed him in the Commander Lilith and the Fight for Sanctuary DLC, giving you instructions on how to create the antidote for yourself and for the rest of the remaining survivors.
• Death Seeker:
  • It's subtly implied that he's well aware that enemies want to kill him because of his connections to Atlas, as Athena was ready to kill him and he didn't fight back. However, he can outgrow this if the player chooses the alternative option.
  • Subverted in the Fight for Sanctuary DLC. Cassius is infected by Colonel Hector's plant spores, which he himself had been researching in an effort to make Pandora more hospitable. When the Vault Hunters find him in his lab, Cassius only barely resembles a human and begs to be killed so that his infected blood can be used to produce an antidote for the spores.
• The Dog Bites Back: If you tried to persuade Athena to kill him in episode 3, then at the beginning of episode 4, Dr. Cassius will capture Vaughn off-screen and turn him in to Vallory in exchange for Vallory allowing Dr. Cassius to go back to his work unharmed.
• Exotic Eye Designs:
  • He has incredibly pale pupils that go beyond simple blue eyes.
  • Unusual Eyebrows: kind of feathery, like a Caeserian laurel crown.
• Face Death with Dignity:
  • He doesn't struggle when Athena tries to kill him and simply accepts his fate with simple dejection.
  • He also similarly dignified in the face of his own canonical death at the hands of the Vault Hunters in Fight for Sanctuary, as he knows his death will lead to protecting all of Pandora from his mistake.
• Friendless Background: He informs the group that he has no friends. Of course, the player can befriend him if you choose so.
• Good All Along: If the final episode is anything to go by, he's available as a teammate for your squad, but only if you chose to show him mercy.
• Hidden Depths: Given some of the techniques and slang he uses if you choose him as a member of your team to help defeat the Traveler, it seems he's an avid fighting game fan.
• Horrible Judge of Character: He believed Hector's intentions to be benevolent. Subverted in that all it took him to inform him otherwise was for Vaughn to tell him.
• I Know Mortal Kombat: Turns out, he's a fighting game aficionado who applies his experience into controlling Gortys, letting her pull off Street Fighter moves.
• Kindhearted Cat Lover: He says that he has a cat he loves dearly and is one of the few kind characters in the game.
• Nice Guy: While far from honest, he's quick to help the characters after they explain their predicament and doesn't hesitate to help the characters in the finale episode should he survive Episode 3.
• No Social Skills: He's not very good at bonding with people. This is meant to fool the player into thinking he has ulterior motives, but he can outgrow this if the player trusts him.
• Last of His Kind: As far as he knows, he's the last Atlas employee on Pandora.
• Lethal Joke Character: He serves as another comic relief, but the finale shows he's also a valuable squad mate to fight the Traveler.
• The Medic: He's apparently got some medical knowledge since he can treat Vaughn's injuries and is consulted when Sasha is on the verge of death.
• My Greatest Failure: He's very quickly revealed to be the one who developed Hector's Paradise Gas weapon, though he did it under the impression that it was going to be used to legitimately make Pandora a better place. Instead, Hector used it to begin a brutal military campaign with the intent of committing planet-wide genocide to ensure he and his men have their "paradise".
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: In Fight for Sanctuary, he was tricked by Hector to create the Paradise Gas which Cassius thought would be to terraform the lifeless hellscape that is Pandora. Hector just failed to mention that he would be using it on living people as well. Later on he's mutated to keep the cure out of the Vault Hunter's hands, and sacrifices his life to fix his mistake.
• Not That Kind of Doctor: Helping a fatally wounded Sasha is out of his field. Of course, we never learn what his field is, though biology seems a good guess since he knows how to treat Vaughn's paralysis if he touched the plants.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: He apparently has a thorough knowledge on the rare plants in his facility and some medical knowledge.
• Red Is Heroic: He wears red and is a potential ally.
• Sheep in Sheep's Clothing: When first introduced, the man comes across as suspicious and Ambiguously Evil. As you play through the facility, there are a lot of hints that he's not who he says he is. He's revealed to be the chief of an Atlas facility, but is genuinely a good person at heart. However, he'll turn against you if Fiona suggests killing him.
• Walking Spoiler:
  • Given that his very title card is dotted with question marks, it should be no surprise that a lot of what he does during the series is a spoiler.
  • Even more so about his appearance in Fight for Sanctuary since absolutely nothing hinted at it, much less how it ends.
• When He Smiles: If you recruit him in the finale, he gives off a very friendly smile at the thought that somebody needs his help, making the good doctor look much friendlier than he was when first encountered.
• Zombie Infectee: He's infected with Paradise Gas, and given how far along it is he likely contracted his infection through developing it.

Lor

Bloody. Badass.

Voiced by: Ciarán Strange

A member of Atlas' armed forces that the Vault Hunter rescues from a Maliwan/Bandit attack. He's a transgender man who's introduced as Lorelei in Borderlands 3, and has transitioned by New Tales from the Borderlands.

---

• A Father to His Men: If there's one thing Lor cares about more than saving the innocent civilians of Promethea, it's also the well-being of his men. Most of his missions are for the sake of them.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Lor is a fairly reasonable and understanding person most of the time, but even in his barista days before he became a badass soldier, Lor shoved an espresso scoop through a robber's throat before he got his morning coffee.
• Easy Sex Change: Discussed. In 3 he can just buy one from a Quick Change booth, but narrates that there is still more to it than that. By the time of New Tales, he has officially transitioned and goes by "Lor".
• Hot-Blooded: He's generally even-tempered most of the time, but he notes that the stress of having to deal with a war, taking care of troops and civilians, and going without coffee has put him a little on edge. And it shows from time to time.
  Lor: (While gunning Maliwan troops) This is my turf, you Maliwan dickheads! Haha! Suck my smoking barrel, you wankers! I'll bite your ears off and feed them to you! You bloody slabs of duck butter!
• Mood-Swinger: As he himself put it, he's a nightmare without coffee. Lor will be calm one minute and yelling at the top of his lungs in intervals.
• Must Have Caffeine: Gives you a whole mission to get him a cup of coffee and gets more antsy by the minute. He used to run a coffee shop, "No Roast for the Wicked", and once put an espresso scoop through a guy's throat when he tried to rob him before he got their morning coffee.
• Took a Level in Badass: Went from being a barista to Rhys's secretary to military commander capable of asskicking on his own.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Arcturian Superblack. It's what lets him keep his (mostly) sunny disposition at all times, and getting some of this coffee is what drives the "Rise and Grind" quest.
• What the Hell Is That Accent?: Strange barely changes his natural voice for Lor, and so Lor speaks in his garbled multi-national accent that sounds Australian but is technically a type of Canadian (to be specific Atlantic Canadian English, which has been described as having many features of British and Irish English, as well as the native languages in Ireland and Scotland).

Beau

Voiced by: Ricco Fajardo

One of Lor's subordinates and owner of the fast food joint; Dynasty Diner. He is determined to make some fresh burgers and later on, get his brand out there.

---

• Hot-Blooded: The guy is really passionate about burger cooking.
• Reduced to Ratburgers: Subverted, he's always made his burgers with Ratch meat as his secret ingredient even before the war against Maliwan.
• Timed Mission: Gives these later on, having you deliver his burgers to folks on different planets in an effort to expand his brand. He gives you bonus time for destroying signs from rival food chains.

Quinn

Voiced by: Josh Grelle

A technician that's working on hacking Maliwan's NOG soldiers for Lor. He also might be using his test subjects for an underground fight ring.

---

• Blatant Lies: He's certainly not organizing an underground fighting ring for NOGs. You just misheard that fighting announcement that was clearly voiced by him.
• Epic Fail: His first two test subjects end up burning/shocking themselves to death before he finally gets the third one right.
• Gladiator Games: He secretly hosts these using the NOGs he's reprogramming, who he calls his "Fighting NOGadors."
• Heel–Face Brainwashing: Basically his job. He's been developing technology for the Atlas resistance that uses Maliwan NOGs' digital reality brainwashing system against their allies. He rewards you with a grenade mod that does just that at the end of the mission.
• Insufferable Genius: Not as bad as Tannis, but like her he puts a lot of stock into his smarts.
• Nerdy Nasalness: He's got this going on.

Ace Baron

Word? Word.

Voiced by: Nick Landis

A rapping doctor that believes stitches heal the body, but rhymes heal the soul.

---

• An Arm and a Leg: The Vault Hunter accidentally cuts one of his arms off when he needs their help to extract some hemoglobin.
• Dr. Jerk: When forcing you to shake down Hardin, he's incredibly giddy if you threaten him rather than pay him and gloats about how you've got the guy pissing in his drawers.
• Major Injury Underreaction: Your attempts to apply a hemo-pack to his arm go decidedly awry. Apart from his agonized initial reaction, he rallies pretty quickly and remarks that at least he's got the hemoglobin he needs for his medical supplies now. That and he's probably going to get some street cred and a fine cybernetic arm.
• Nice Guy: Ace is genuinely trying to help people in the war-torn Promethea and he doesn't get pissed at the Vault Hunters when they accidentally chop off his arm even though he has every right to be.
• Rhymes on a Dime: He's constantly trying to turn everything into a rap.
• Stylistic Suck: He fancies himself a rapper as well as a medic, his lyrics leave something to be desired. Amara and FL4K in particular are not amused by them.
  Ace Baron: Oh snap! I forgot to give you my mixtape! You want one?
  FL4K: No.
  Amara: Ura please. I'm from Partali; I don't want your weak-ass rhymes.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Like all side quest NPCs, he will disappear after the mission. However, his character model can later reappear on Sanctuary.

Hardin

Voiced by: Jesse Kirstein

A Promethean citizen and black market dealer that resorted to stealing medical supplies in order to survive in the Atlas-Maliwan war.

---

• Friend in the Black Market: Well, "friend" is a strong choice of words, but he's still on the side of Promethea instead of Maliwan.
• Video Game Caring Potential: Ace Baron's mission has you go on a side mission for medical supplies, and instructs you to shake down Hardin for some. However, Hardin states that he has a family to feed and offers to sell it to you (at a reasonably marked-up price) instead. Should you buy the supplies and not threaten him, you get an extra reward when completing the mission as thanks from Hardin.

Gonner

Voiced by: Brett Hellyer

Gone are his legs

An undercover Atlas agent that infiltrated Skywell-27 alongside three teammates in order to retrieve intel on Katagawa Jr. that could help Atlas win the war against Maliwan.

---

• An Arm and a Leg: He's lost his two legs by the time you find him.
• Almost Dead Guy: Gonner lives just enough to see his mission being finished before dying. He springs back to life for a moment to reward you. Then he dies for real.
• Gallows Humor: He invokes this saying it by name. He starts it with his "name" and keeps doing it as a way to cope with his impending death, and he keeps quipping about his distinct lack of limbs throughout his sidequest.
• Go into the Light: "W-what's that... light?"
• Line-of-Sight Name: He's a goner and so are his legs. Yeah, it's a pun as painful to you as it probably is to him.
• Mauve Shirt: Gonner is the only in his team to get some characterization. Two of them are too dead and the other is smart enough to get the fuck out of your way when you reach the place he's guarding and hand over the information after you kill all hostiles.
• Mission Control: Solely for the "Opposition Research" sidequest.
• Noodle Incident: Gonner never really explains how his mission went sour and how he and some of his teammates were found out, but you can see the outcome was rather bloody.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Gonner isn't his real name, merely an alias he made up on the spot.
• Punny Name: Seriously, he came up with "Gonner Maleggies" for his own name.
• Stepford Snarker: He knows fully well he doesn't have long to live, so he keeps making jokes at his own expense to keep himself focused on the mission.

Terry and Glenn

Voiced by: Matthew Herrera (Terry), Brad Gaffney (Glenn)

A janitor at ATLAS, and his best friend/coworker. When Glenn's life was on the line, Terry took a correspondence course in order to learn brain surgery and save him.

---

• Forced Transformation: They both end up as Ratches.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Glenn ends up eating Terry's corpse to extract its brain, and they both comment on wanting to eat humans at the quest's end.
• Mad Scientist: Terry became one in order to save Glenn.

Anu

Dr. Anuradha Dhar, .PhD

Better-er of worlds (You!)

Played by: Michelle Rambharose

A scientist working for Atlas who's on the verge of creating a device that replicates the power of a Siren but without casualties. After freeing some jabbers and an experiment that still isn't finished, she gets fired from Atlas by her boss. She's also Octavio's adopted sister.

---

• Demonic Possession: After catching up the green crystal her eyes glow green and she begins to have spasms. Afterwards, every time she touches the crystal, a Voice of the Legion speaks through her. It lasts until Anu's own Secret Test of Character that makes her one with the crystal.
• Dream Sequence: While she's being operated at Tediore's table, she begins having visions and conversations with something trapped inside of the Green Shard. The sequence has her on the body of a jabber during her tiredness-induced mistreatment of Phuong, then on Octavio's body reliving her splitting with Octavio.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: In one of the game's Multiple Endings, she didn't survive the crash of Tediore's ship, as seen when Octavio and Fran remember her in the memorial they set up in Fran's Frogurts.
• Establishing Character Moment: She's introduced freeing some jabbers as a sign of protest towards experimentation with animals. By the end of the chapter, this has nasty consequences for her.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: The Responsible Sibling to Octavio's Foolish Sibling. For starters, at the beginning of the story she's working for Atlas. This gets deconstructed as the story progresses.
• Insistent Terminology: She insists time and time again that what she built isn't a gun, but a device. This causes her problems with Rhys, who points out that Atlas makes guns.
• Nervous Wreck: She has severe anxiety issues and is often prone to panic.
• Out of Job, into the Plot: The game begins with her being sacked from her job at Atlas, after freeing a bunch of jabbers and failing to come up with a weapon-based project. The rest of the game has her, her adoptive brother Octavio, and Octavio's superior Fran, finding a new source of income in order to solve their financial problems.
• Percussive Maintenance: How she manages to make her device work. A screen showcasing the device in question is shown, and you smack it, trying to find the sweet spots.
• Secret Test of Character: Her Dream Sequence puts her on the receiving end of one. She needs to accept the flaws of her past in order to become one with the Shard.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: Anu is an idealistic scientist with dreams of creating something that doesn't destroy lives, which is at odds with the fact that she works for a weapons manufacturer.

Phuong

Your partner in crim... science!

Played by: Leana Yu

Anu's co-worker at Atlas who helps her with her experiments. After Tediore invades Atlas's ship, she helps Anu to escape into Promethea.

---

• Ambiguous Situation: It's unclear if she survived Tediore's attack on Atlas's ship. Afterwards she only appears in a flashback during Anu's conversations with the Shard.
• Deadpan Snarker: She can't help but be a bit of a dick regarding Anu's antics.

TIMM-E

Eager, willing, ergonomic.

Played by: Christian Lagasse

Rhys's personal robotic assistant. Doubles as a chair.

---

• Teleport Spam: Not willingly, though. He was hit early in the story by Anu's device, and, as a result, he keeps teleporting to all places, casually encountering the trio while they're in business.

Groups

Borderlands

The Crimson Lance

The Crimson Lance are Atlas's premiere enforcers, deployed when a new business opportunity must be persuaded into acquisition via heavy occupational force. Crimson Lancemen cover many roles, from basic infantry going to battle with assault rifles all the way up to massive mech suits. These specialized roles include Defenders, Engineers, Assassins, Royal Guards, Shock Troopers, Chemical Troopers, Pyros, Rocketeers, Medics and Devastators.

---

• Achilles' Heel: Despite their armor granting them high damage resistence against kinetic weapons they're still vulnerable to elemental damage. A good corrosive or fire gun usually eats through their defenses as long as they're not shielded.
• All Your Base Are Belong to Us: Their modus operandi revolves around invading a town / area of interest and strong arming the population into submitting to their interests. Resistance is typically met with extermination.
• Beef Gate: Devastators often act like this when driving on the roads in The Ridgeway, luckily they can be sped past if they happen to off-centered from the road.
  • Many Crimson Lance roadblocks also act like this during the introductory quests to Secret Armory of General Knoxx in the Crimson Tollway. The quests require you to storm these bases and forcibly open the energy gates to pass, with an obviously massive amount of soldiers trying to stop you.
• Defector from Decadence: Two Vault Hunters served as Crimson Lance soldiers before abandoning them: Roland as part of their infantry, and Athena as one of their assassins.
• Elite Mooks: The Lancemen are among the final enemies faced in the base game and are the most well armed and protected when compared to the Bandit rabble faced before. Not only does their body armor significantly reduce the damage they take from attacks, but they're overall better armed, more accurate, employ better tactics, and have access to specialized equipment including deployable turrets, riot shields, and medic beams. The Secret Armory of General Knoxx adds even more elite units to their ranks, such as Pyro's, Chemical / Shock Troopers, Devastator mech suits.
• Evil Wears Black: Badass Lance Infantries wear ablack attire. They also have red Glowing Eyes of Doom for full intimidating effect. Badass Devastators have also black painting.
• Gas Mask Mooks: Their helmets are a particularly high-tech version of a gas mask. You can wear one as Axton / The Commando in the second game if you got the save file from the first game to prove it.
• Good Armor, Evil Armor: A rare static example. The Lance helmet never change its general design, but between 1 to 3 they completely change their leadership and allegiance to the Vault Hunters. In 2 you interact Crimson Raiders who wear old Crimson Lance helmet but you can potentially have faced Badass Marauders who also wore Crimson Lance helmets too.
• Heavily Armored Mook: They all possess a thick body armor that severely reduces most incoming damage to them.
• Heel–Face Turn: When abandoned on Pandora by Atlas, the surviving Lancemen were given the choice to band under Roland and defend the good people of Pandora, or to resort to becoming Bandits to survive. Most of them chose the former, creating the Crimson Raiders. When Rhys rebuilt Atlas, he turned the remaining Lance forces who weren't on Pandora into a far more competent and honorable military force.
• Humongous Mecha: Devastator are massive weapons platforms that are often deployed at checkpoints or in areas of great importance, and can take massive damage before going down. Luckily, they're massive and slow targets.
• Lightning Bruiser: Assassins are very nimble, hopping all over the battlefield while pelting you with constant damage and taking a large amount themselves before going down. Luckily, their encounters are normally scripted and are thus not seen very often.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Defenders carry a riot shield impervious to most attacks. It doesn't protect them from splash elemental effects, however.
• Punch-Clock Villain: The rank and file troopers are mostly relatively normal people who treat their occupation on Pandora as just another job than with any real malice. One ECHO recording has a Lanceman even mention that they have an ice cream day to look forward and relax to.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: One Crimson Lanceman left his post to see an attraction called the Worlds Largest Bullet nearby, and accidentally left the access code to Atlas' gigantic armory there. The Vault Hunters would use that code to break into the armory, kill General Knoxx, and give Atlas no choice but to abandon the planet and their soldiers.
• Shoot the Medic First: Combat Medics can keep the already sturdy Lancemen alive and well in the middle of battle. Killing them ahead of time is in your best interests.
• The Turret Master: Regular Lancemen can deploy Scorpio Turrets, front facing sentry guns with forward-shields that can more or less the same as the Soldier's / Roland's turret you can play as, albeit un-upgraded unlike theirs.
• Unique Enemy: In 3, there's only a small squad of hostile Lancemen in the game: the Hightower gang, who are a Praetorian Guard for the optional boss Judge Hightower.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: Mooks actually. Before reaching Old Haven the player could've been slaughtering masses of Pandoran wildlife and bandit gangs with ease, but the Crimson Lance is a big step up in difficulty and if they didn't bother, or got lucky, gearing up properly the Lancemen will make short work of them with their superior firepower and armor.

---