Characters / Borderlands: Hodunk and Zaford Clans

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 | 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

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Two warring clans inhabiting the Dust and Overlook areas, respectively.

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In general (both clans)

• Ambiguous Situation: Considering that Jimbo and Tector Hodunk are still alive in Tales from the Borderlands, and that both clans joined forces after the events of Mad Moxxi's Wedding Day Massacre, either the Vault Hunters sided with them in the Clan Wars arc, or the final part never happened.
• Enemy Mine: The ending of the Wedding Day Massacre DLC sees both clans allying together to swear vengeance against Moxxi and the Vault Hunters after the botched attempt to unite the clans by marriage. Moxxi has mixed feelings since she technically accomplished what she set out to do.
• Feuding Families: An optional series of sidequests from Ellie lets you provoke one between these clans. Mad Moxxi's Wedding Day Massacre lets you help Moxxi patch things up between them again.
• Too Dumb to Live: They never seem to realize that the same people that they're hiring to go after the other clan are the same people that the other clan hired to go after them, at least until the climax of the "Clan Wars" arc. That or they don't care.

Hodunk clan (including former members)

A clan of the Pandoran equivalent to stereotypical rednecks. Also the family that Mad Moxxi, Scooter, and Ellie hail from before Moxxi took the kids and left.

In General

• Deep South: Apparently their neck of the Dust is the Pandora equivalent. These guys leave no stereotype unturned, either. Playing the banjo, living in trailers, driving race cars...
• Hayseed Name: Hodunk, which derives from Podunk, a term for an insignificant small town in the country.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: They're armed with shotguns in every mission. Tector has one too. For the most part, they seem to like Torgue shotguns very much.
• Southern-Fried Genius/Idiot Savant: Surprisingly. Despite all the genetic disorders and physical and mental development issues, the Hodunk clan are innate technological geniuses. They even run their own family race track.

Moxxi

"Mad" Moxxi Hodunk

Top Shelf

As of Borderlands 3. Click to see her in: ^{Borderlands 1 (General Knoxx DLC)} - ^{Borderlands 2 (Mr. Torgue DLC)} - ^{The Pre-Sequel!}

Voiced by: Brina Palencia

Played by: Gina Gershon (film)

The buxom and drop-dead gorgeous mother of Scooter and Ellie, who was introduced during the first game via her eponymous DLC. By the second game, her Colosseum has been destroyed, so she tends her bar in Sanctuary. The Pre-Sequel and the third game show that she has several bars on different planets.

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• Absurdly Youthful Mother: Seriously, would you be able to tell she has at least three grown-up children by looking at her?! She starts to look more like her age by 3, though the brunt of it is still nullified by plenty of makeup.
• Accent Slip-Up:
  • In 2, if you place money in her Tip Jar, she'll occasionally start talking about her old clan. Partway through, she starts slipping into the same redneck accent her children use, before berating herself for it.
  • The Pre-Sequel shows that she drops her accent when she's alone tinkering and is very sensitive about being caught off-character, threatening the Vault Hunters with getting Scooter to bury them in a shallow grave.
  • By 3 she's seemingly made some peace with it and gone into an almost full Accent Relapse as she's started leaning into a classy Southern Belle persona. Still not a full-on Hodunk accent, but it's progress for someone who once threatened to kill people who heard her actual voice.
• Ace Custom: Moxxi evidently has an arsenal of custom weapons she's made that are handed out as rewards, repainted rose-red/bright pink, are typically augmented with generous Life Drain, and prominently display the Mad Moxxi logo across them. These weapons include the Hail, the Creamer, the Chère-amie, the Rubi, and many more.
• Alice Allusion: Her outfit (specifically her hat) and personality remind one of the Mad Hatter and the Queen of Hearts.
• The Bartender: She's the owner and bartender of several Good-Guy Bar's around Pandora.
• Beneath the Mask: There's a moment in Mr. Torgue's Campaign of Carnage where Mad Moxxi makes some innuendo that relates cunnilingus to literal cannibalism, and manages to disgust herself. She apologizes and says that her innuendo talk is "just a defense mechanism" and her part of the radio goes silent for a while. The fact is, Moxxi wears a mask because she's ashamed to have been born into the Hodunk clan and tries to resemble her relatives as little as possible in public. This is contrasted with her daughter Ellie, who has just as much distaste for the Hodunks but insists on being herself, to Moxxi's disappointment. In Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!, Moxxi is mortified that the PCs get a peek beneath the mask by walking in on her without her trademark exaggerated makeup, wearing dirty overalls, and singing in her natural redneck accent as she works on a robot.
  Nisha: I hereby promise not to tell people the slutty clown is also a slutty mechanic.
• Berserk Button: No-one threatens her in her own bar.
• Beware the Nice Ones:
  • Jack found this out the hard way in The Pre-Sequel.
  • She's almost always friendly and pleasant towards the vault hunters and their friends. That said, anyone who threatens or harms her (or worse, her kids) will be lucky to leave the room alive.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: While her actions on Pandora are already questionable at best while tainted white in Borderlands 2, yet nobody seemed to care anyway, it gets darker when she tries to kill Jack and his hired Vault Hunters by blowing up the Eye of Helios while the space station in question is filled with innocent civilians and repenting Dahl soldiers all out of fear that Jack may become a threat to them. In fairness, he had already built an enormous space laser pointed at Pandora with intent to use it before that point, so it isn't as if she was doing it for unjustified reasons.
• Buxom Beauty Standard: She's very buxom, dresses in a way that shows it off and has no shortage of admirers due to it.
• Characterization Marches On: In Moxxi's debut she was an amoral Blood Knight running a Blood Sport. After Jack blew up her arena in 2 Moxxi slowly became one of the few characters with ethical standards.
• Cosplay Otaku Girl: Meta example: Moxxi is one of the most popular characters to cosplay as, to the point that she was one of the Pre-Sequel characters aside from the main characters that had a cosplay guide released.
• Closet Geek: In Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! it's revealed that Moxxi is secretly a mechanical geek, just like both her children and the rest of her former bandit clan, the Hodunks. She threatens the player with death if they tell.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Invoked. After saying "No one eats my girlfriends but me" in reference to an ex-girlfriend cannibal who literally ate one of her female lovers, this causes her to quickly apologize and throw up in her mouth. Doubles as Not So Stoic after she reveals her puns are a defense mechanism.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Implied. She was born as a member of the Hodunk bandits, and while her reason for leaving is unclear, it's implied they treated her and her children horribly, as at one point Ellie gives you a line of quests to kill the Hodunks and says that "they will regret not killing me as a baby".
• Defector from Decadence: Formerly a member of the Hodunk clan along with Scooter and Ellie before eventually leaving them. Despite being contemptuous of them in the main game, she attempts to settle their feud with the Zafords peacefully through marriage of two of their Goliaths in the Wedding Day Massacre DLC, with understandably disastrous results.
• Double Entendre: She definitely likes to use them on occasion. Can't really fault her, though. According to a transmission during Mr. Torgue's Campaign of Carnage, this is a coping mechanism for some horrible things that happened to her and her kids while with the Hodunk clan.
  • In 1: She definitely likes to use them on occasion.
    Moxxi: You should be able to see the prison now. It used to be an island in the ancient sea. Now it's Mr. Shank's own personal male stabbing machine — That's What She Said!
  • Her tip jar has a sign above it that reads "Insert your tip", and she reprogrammed a Hyperion loader to speak in little but sexual innuendos. And named it Innuendobot 5000.
  • In 2, she gets so angry at Mordecai that she can't think of any sexual innuendos.
  • In the Mr. Torgue's Campaign of Carnage DLC, she claims the innuendo thing is a coping mechanism for the horrors of Pandora. And considering what a Crapsack World the planet is, well...
  • In Tales from the Borderlands she basically drops a pile of innuendo at Zer0, who doesn't give a damn about it, and would rather get paid than listen to more.
• Double X: Her name Moxxi has two "x's". Despite it sounding like a Porn Name (and her having the reputation for it) it seems to actually just be her real name.
• Ethical Slut: "Ethical" is a stretch given the Black-and-Gray Morality of the series, but she is one of the nicer characters and is known for being really slutty.
• Even the Girls Want Her: Almost every woman in Sanctuary will ask you if Moxxi said anything about them, implying they had a one-night stand. And if you bought the DLC content, even Captain Scarlett. Fan fiction, ho!
• Fanservice with a Smile: As if her default outfit wasn't revealing enough, Moxxi wears a typical medieval bar wench outfit + tight corset in Tiny Tina's Bunkers & Badasses campaign. Being in a fantasy setting, she reflects upon this awareness and comments that she's surprised that Tina didn't make her outfit even more revealing than it is. Totally not what she was expecting.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: Moxxi is "ragdoll sexy" in her asymmetrical attire, most notably her stockings: one fishnet, one striped.
• Gem-Encrusted: According to Episode 4 of Claptrap's web series, Moxxi drinks "diamond flavored water". Don't ask us how that works.
• Genki Girl: Whatever else you say about her, she is extremely enthusiastic about what she does in the Underdome.
• Gladiator Subquest: She runs the various arena tournaments of Pandora. In the second game, she's the one behind the Circles of Slaughter and hopes to take Torgue's tournament as her own.
• Gold Digger: She spared her last ex, because he was good with money (and his hands). She later dated Handsome Jack, until he got too overprotective and she broke up with him The fact that he was a dangerous psychopath even before he went completely off the rails probably contributed more then a little too. He then proceeded to destroy the Underdome.
• Good Bad Girl: Well, more like "Neutral bad girl", but despite having quite the reputation, she's not inherently evil.
• Good-Guy Bar:
  • Owns one in every game in the series. In Borderlands 2, she was forced to move to Sanctuary, but business is not booming and she literally has a tip jar.
  • She opens another one in the Badass Crater of Badassitude.
  • She runs "Moxxi's Tavern" in Tina's campaign. Being aware that she's being used as an NPC in her game, she comments that she's surprised that the uniform Tina put her in is not even more revealing than she expected.
  • She also runs a bar on Elpis. She mostly stays away from it because Janey Springs uses it as an excuse to "accidentally" run into her. Appropriately, she leaves it after Jack and the Vault Hunters may no longer be considered "good" anymore. Although pragmatically it's because she just screwed Jack and almost killed the vault hunters, so it's not entirely safe anymore.
• Guile Hero: In The Pre-Sequel, she tricks Jack and his Vault Hunters into destroying the Destroyer's eye in an attempt to kill them. Had Jack and his goons not decided to activate the sequence remotely, she would have succeeded in the latter. Brick and Mordecai are actually impressed at how crafty she is.
• Head-Turning Beauty: Several characters are attracted to her, or at least mention her good looks.
• Hidden Depths: She's got a few. She admits in 2 that her constant innuendos are a defense mechanism, while in The Pre-Sequel, it turns out that she's actually a mechanic nearly as good as her children (and with an equally thick accent), but she finds this embarrassing. Near the end of the game, she helps Lilith and Roland try to kill Jack, which would have instantly smoothed over her problems with Mordecai if she had ever told him.
  Lilith: Moxxi's got layers, like an onion made of boobs.
• Horrible Judge of Character: One of the reasons she dumped Mordecai for Jack. Her relationships with Mr. Shank and Motor Momma could also qualify. Though it turns out that she dumped Jack because she could tell he was a psychopath underneath his nice-guy exterior, and was proven right when he burned down her Underdome in retaliation, among other atrocities.
• Hospitality for Heroes: Invokes this in Borderlands 2 if you talk to her prior to starting the final storyline mission, she invokes this, promising that if you take down Handsome Jack, you'll never pay for another drink at her bar again.
• Hotter and Sexier: Moxxi's outfit in 3 ditches her sleeves and has much more prominent cleavage.
• I Call It "Vera": Has a personal revolver by the name of Rubi. In the second game, she offers it as a reward if the player collects Rakk Ale for her rather than Mordecai.
• Iconic Sequel Character: She first showed up in the second DLC for the first game, "Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot", mostly as an announcer. The next DLC gave her a bigger role that was involved in the plot and established her relationship with Scooter. In the next games, she plays a much larger role and a major NPC and became one of the most iconic characters in the Borderlands series.
• Impossibly-Low Neckline: The neckline actually isn't that low, but considering the size of her, it's still a surprise she doesn't pop out.
• Ink-Suit Actor: Even with the makeup out, she definitely looks like her voice actress, Brina Palencia.
• Intergenerational Friendship: With Tiny Tina, although theirs is of the Vitriolic Best Buds variety.
• I Take Offense to That Last One: Invoked upon herself. When she asks you to go clean up some graffiti, she says that most of it isn't true.
• Life Drain: Nearly every weapon Moxxi gives you as a reward or has her name on it has life-stealing properties, healing you for a percentage of damage dealt.
• Mama Bear:
  • She left the Hodunk clan and killed the clan leader because he was planning on having Ellie becoming one of his wives.
  • When talking about Motor Mama, she gets uncharacteristically pissed off when telling you that she (Motor) eats her own kids.
  • In the Wedding Day Massacre DLC, she is incredibly uncomfortable with the idea of kidnapping a baby to make a love potion and horrified at the idea of actually tossing it into the concoction. Even after the recipe simply calls for making the baby cry, she's still disappointed at both herself and the Vault Hunters, noting that it's not something heroes should be doing.
• Ms. Fanservice: If her appearance, clothing, and... top-heaviness did not emphasize the point enough, her constant innuendo and sensual voice will do the trick.
• My Beloved Smother: Towards Ellie. She does not like the fact that Ellie intentionally puts herself in danger by being involved with her old clan and constantly bothers her about being massively overweight. But Ellie seems quite capable of taking care of herself and has no problems with her body image and claims to have plenty of male admirers. (One of which being... Scooter).
• My God, What Have I Done?: When the Vault Hunter kills Shank in the Secret Armory of General Knoxx DLC in 1. Despite telling the player to kill him, she is still completely in shock at his death and regrets it.
• Named Weapons: Moxxi brandishes a Maliwan pistol called the Rubi, which deals a hefty amount of elemental damage and boasts the highest Life Drain percentage in the base game versus her other weapons (12% vs 2%), beaten out only by the Grog Nozzle in the Dragon Keep DLC (which heals for a full 65%).
• The Nicknamer: She tends to address the players as "Sugar".
• No Historical Figures Were Harmed: She's obviously based somewhat on Mae West. In Borderlands 2 she even has two weapons (good touch and bad touch) with Mae West quotes on them.
• Older Than They Look: She's old enough to have two known kids of adult age.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Moxxi hates when anyone sees her out of character, threatening anyone who learns that she enjoys tinkering and slips back into her redneck accent in her off time with a shallow grave provided by Scooter. During the assault on the Hyperion moon base to recover the Eye of Helios from Dahl forces, Moxxi is so focused on giving her technical know-how to the Vault Hunters, that when Lilith finds a chance to slip in a "That's What She Said" to one of Moxxi's unintentional innuendos, she barks back to her to focus on the mission.
• Only Sane Woman:
  • In MR. TORGUE'S CAMPAIGN OF CARNAGE! anyway. Of course, for much of the DLC she's between Tiny Tina (a Creepy Child obsessed with Stuff Blowing Up) and Mr. Torgue (a musclebound Psychopathic Manchild also obsessed with Stuff Blowing Up), so she may seem saner in comparison.
  • In The Pre-Sequel!, she is this as well especially in comparison to Janey and Lilith. Roland seem to be the only one on the same page as her. There's a good reason for this though; she's planning to kill Jack.
• Outliving One's Offspring: The Fight for Sanctuary DLC shows that she misses Scooter dearly, and a sidequest involves helping her fill out his last requests.
• Pet the Dog:
  • During Claptrap's birthday party in the second game, when he sends out invitations, her reply is by far the nicest (most of the characters basically say Hahaha No, she says she's too busy and tells you to tell Claptrap she likes him. Platonically, of course.)
  • In the Handsome Jackpot DLC of 3, while she initially regards Timothy as a gutless coward loyal to Jack, by the end of the story she shows actual concern for him, refusing to leave him to his fate. She also revealed that when Jack sent him on a date with her in his place, she knew full well who he was but still went out with him, implying that he might have a shot at a second date.
• Phrase Catcher: "Has Moxxi said anything about me?"
• Proud Beauty: She puts great value in one's appearance and is very proud of her good looks, and is dismayed that her daughter Ellie is Fat and Proud and constantly nags her about losing weight.
• Really Gets Around:
  • "Hot dog down a skag den, y'know what I'm sayin?", and this comment is coming from her own son.
  • Apparently she even sleeps with bandits if the graffiti she makes you erase is to be believed.
  • So far, we know she's had three husbands (Jimbo, Mr. Shank, and Marcus) and possibly had more between games, has had many lovers which have given her kids (Scooter, Ellie, and two more unnamed ones), had sex with Lucky, and she used to date Mordecai, whom she dumped for Handsome Jack, of all people. So, yeah, she really seems to enjoy being on her back a lot. It was also revealed she used to date Motor Momma.
  • Might add Mr. Torgue to the list, considering how they act in the Campaign of Carnage DLC. In the Wattle Gobbler DLC, Torgue even proclaims that he's willing to work for her "Pro-Boner".
  • If every NPC that asks "Has Moxxi said anything about me?" is implying that they had a one-night stand, then you can add the populations of Sanctuary, Overlook, Concordia, and the Hyperion Moon Base, as well as Captain Scarlett and Zombie TK Baha to the list.
  • In 3, Zane says they had a lovely night together. She doesn't seem to remember him.
• Retired Badass: According to her, there was a time when she was a skilled fighter and would be in the front lines alongside other Crimson Raiders.
• Revenge: She desires it on Jack for the destruction of her Underdome, so she sends the Vault Hunters on a quest to flood Jack's under-construction version.
• Sad Clown: Aside from her makeup invoking the trope in the most literal sense, Moxxi is revealed to be at least a little traumatized from living on Pandora and especially from dating Motor Mama. She admits that her flirty showgirl sense of humor is her way of coping.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: When her clan leader ordered Moxxi to kill someone or have her daughter be turned into the clan wife, she responded by killing the asshole and taking both Scooter and Ellie out of the clan.
• Sex Goddess: Dialogue about her suggests her sexual prowess is just as legendary as her promiscuity.
• Sex Is Violence: Moxxi gets really excited watching the Vault Hunters fight in the Underdome.
  Moxxi: More! More! MORE!
• Southern Belle: Developed this persona by Borderlands 3, or at least the Pandoran equivalent, being from the redneck tribe known as the Hodunk clan. In the previous games, she hated being seen out-of-character^note  The OOC side of her being a Wrench Wench with an Appalachian accent, as opposed to the showgirl with a clown motif that she publicly presents, and threatens anyone who catches her out-of-character with a live burial in a shallow grave by one of her offspring. It's evident that she's made some peace with who she is. While her dating life is questionable, at best (considering she's slept with people like Handsome Jack and various bandits), her genuinely kind nature makes her closer to a Bonne Belle.
• Stepford Smiler: All of her innuendos are defense mechanisms. She admits to this after becoming disgusted with herself for telling the Vault Hunters "No one eats my girlfriends but me!" when talking about Motor Momma.
• Teen Pregnancy: Considering the ages of Scooter and Ellie, it's implied that Moxxi gave birth to all four children the moment she started menstruating due to the fact of living on a Death World like Pandora. Or she's older than she looks.
• That's What She Said: Moxxi does this to herself.
  Moxxi: You should be able to see the prison now. It used to be an island in the ancient sea. Now it's Mr. Shank's own personal male stabbing machine — that's what she said! Heyo!
  [silence]
  Moxxi: Ahem. Anyway.
  • In Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!, we have this little gem while Jack, Roland, Lilith, and the player work to take back Helios:
    Moxxi: (to Lilith and Roland) You two need to open the path wide open or this is going to get messy.
    Lilith: Working on it! Also, that's what she said!
    Moxxi: I KNOW WHAT SHE SAID! JUST DO IT!
• Underestimating Badassery: Her entire sexy image is crafted so that her enemies will underestimate her because of her appearance. She gave the same advice to Marcus when they were married, only in his case it was to gain weight.
• Unkempt Beauty: She's still hot when she's out of character and covered in engine grease.
  "Jack": Wow, you're even prettier without makeup. That's just... so terrible...
• Victoria's Secret Compartment: She keeps her submachine guns and her booze tucked inside her ample cleavage.
• The Voice: She doesn't appear in person in Tales of the Borderlands, but is heard briefly while talking to Zer0 after he kills Bosanova in episode 1.
• What You Are in the Dark: At the end of Handsome Jackpot DLC... Everything seems to be going downhill with Pretty Boy's death causing the casino to engage a self-destruct sequence by launch itself into a black hole nearby and Timothy, the only person who can stop it being stuck inside a laser cage and unable to do anything about it. Timothy is resigned and asks for everyone to leave him behind, but Moxxi's refuses to abandon him and allow a long dead Handsome Jack get the last laugh. This encourages Timothy enough to cut off his "Winning Hand", the thing that can abort the self-desctruction, even though he knows it'll be excruciatingly painful.
• Wrench Wench: The Pre-Sequel! shows that in her private time, she's a mechanic like her kids. Unlike her kids, she's very self-conscious about being caught tinkering since she also reverts to her Hodunk accent. Also unlike her kids, she shows more aptitude in electronics than mechanics, and she does have the technical vocabulary and knowledge to explain it, rather than just an intuitive grasp of machines. She's mechanically adept enough to reprogram a loader to speak only in innuendo (though the robot in question absolutely loathed it) as well as being able to sabotage Jack's superweapon.

Scooter

Scooter

Get you one!

As of Tales from the Borderlands. Click to see him in: ^{Borderlands 1 (General Knoxx DLC)} - ^{Borderlands 2}

Voiced by: Michael Neumann

Played by: Steven Boyer (film)

The friendly owner and operator of Catch-A-Ride, which owns the vehicle digistruct stations across the planet. Scooter is loud, boisterous, and dumb as a bag of hammers — except when it comes to machines.

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• Agent Scully: One of his primary character traits in the first game was doubting the Vault's existence, alongside Marcus' belief in it (and the potential profit) and Helena's pragmatism.
• Abhorrent Admirer:
  • Laney joins a band of cannibals because it's the only place she can avoid Scooter's sexual advances. Daisy takes one listen to a love poem he composes for her and immediately commits suicide.
    Everyone's a critic.
  • He apparently had a thing for Ellie too. Mind you Ellie is his sister (one of his few direct relatives too). It's one of the reasons that Ellie lives in The Dust (the other being that she just likes killing bandits).
  • He appears to have a thing for Fiona too. She's appropriately horrified. She didn't have to worry about that for long, with him dying in Episode 4 of Tales from the Borderlands, although you do have the option to have Fiona give him a Last Kiss so that he dies happy.
• Berserk Button:
  • Destroying his runners, "breaking his mama's girl parts," and making fun of his sister's appearance.
  • Borderlands 2 adds tampering with his Catch-a-Ride stations. Which is a bit of a problem, because that's exactly how you gain access to his Catch-a-Ride network; he's willing to give you a pass just because you're a Vault Hunter, but he will always bear a grudge against you for this.
  • When he overheard Hamhock had a one-night stand with his mom, he apparently interpreted it as him raping her and sent a group of mercenaries (one of which is a badass psycho) after him. If Moxxi is to be believed, this is apparently a regular occurrence; he is extremely overprotective of his mom and sister.
• Beware the Silly Ones: On the surface, he looks like a harmless, awkward geek but throughout the games you find evidence that he's just as dangerous as any of the other bandits out there, if not moreso. You never see any of it on screen, but he's not afraid to get his hands dirty. He apparently buried Lucky alive after the first game and you can find one of his victims tied burnt to a vending machine in the dust.
• Book Dumb: Has no actual idea how anything works, but is able to fix just about anything anyway. In short, he's just about the best engineer on Pandora (Hyperion, Atlas, and all the rest of the megacorps included), and he does it all by instinct. In at least this respect (and indeed a few others) he's a lot like Kaylee, who probably didn't make it through sixth grade but can 'talk' to machines.
• Book Ends: The player is introduced to Scooter after jumping over Piss Wash Gully in a car. His send-off from the series has the player making a similar jump over his memorial site.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: His introduction in Tales from the Borderlands.
• Brother–Sister Incest: Has a tiny crush on Ellie. Who's his sister.
• Casanova Wannabe: Tries to woo a few girls in 2, fails miserably... But he thinks ahead enough to ask you to get him girly mags in case he fails.
• Catchphrase: "Catch a ride!" and "Get you one!"
• Cloudcuckoolander: He does have his moments.
  Scooter: You's a Vault Hunter! (awestruck) That's like a unicorn!
• Dead Man Writing: Scooter's death is openly spoiled in Commander Lilith and the Fight for Sanctuary, and a side quest requires you to fulfill his final requests that he recorded in an ECHO log, knowing that he will die soon.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: His Heroic Sacrifice in Tales from the Borderlands. Hell, knowing him it's probably how he's always wanted to go.
• Easily Forgiven: Zigzagged in the sequel. The "Swallowed Whole" sidequest reveals that he was planning to kill you for hacking the Catch-A-Ride system at the beginning of the game, but instead settles for sending you on a dangerous mission to kill a midget in a stalker-infested cavern. Once you make it back alive, he declares that your hacking is in the past now and he will definitely not kill you, probably.
• The Engineer: Support engineer for the protagonists of both games. Seriously, moving around Pandora would be a BITCH if the player didn't have access to his Catch-A-Ride terminals. Hell, he's even the main engineer for the flying city of Sanctuary. The fact he actually gets trusted with the maintenance of it is testament to his skill.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • Like most of the characters, his moral compass isn't exactly the best, but he genuinely loves his family, as shown by how he threatens to kill you if you hurt Ellie and killing Lucky Zaford after he slept with Moxxi.
  • He has a quest in the Mr. Torgue DLC where he sends you to go kill a man who slept with Moxxi for all the wrong reasons. Moxxi tries to defend him by saying that it was a misunderstanding and it was partially her fault that it happened. You get the choice of either killing the guy Scooter wants you to kill, or kill the 4 other bounty hunters that he sent to do the job instead. (He gives you first dibs.)
• Face Death with Dignity: In Tales, upon realizing that he's not going to be able to get his hand out of the rocket in time, Scooter calmly accepts his fate and tells Fiona to save herself and the team.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Easily overlooked but qualifies. He's able to keep Sanctuary flying on scrap metal and totally repairs (and can upgrade) Fiona and Sasha's totaled caravan in the space of a couple of hours at most.
• Genius Ditz: He is, for the most part, a dumb as bricks redneck stereotype, with limited grasp of social interaction, and a crush on his sister ^note Just a tiny one.. However, he also happens to be a brilliant mechanic. He's able to build and maintain cars ant teleporters using only the kinds of junk and scrap metal available on the hell-hole that is Pandora.
• Grease Monkey: Works as a mechanic. Literally covered in grease.
• Half-Witted Hillbilly: He has a strong Southern accent, and is completely clueless about anything that doesn't involve machines. One sidequest has you help him find inspirations to compose a poem to woo a girl he likes. The results are... less than impressive.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Failed to pull his hand out in time while trying to press a button to start ejecting a thruster about to explode on the spaceship used by the protagonists in Tales from the Borderlands. Knowing it's far too late to do anything about it, he tells Fiona to just eject it while he's still stuck to it, and he of course explodes with the thruster. The team commemorates him by launching his satellite into space for all to see.
• Hidden Depths: In Tales from the Borderlands, if you reveal to him in episode 4 that Fiona and Sasha lied about participating in death races, he doesn't even miss a beat as he reveals he already caught on the first time they talked, but helped them out anyway (with free car repairs and covering for them from Finch and Kroger) because they seemed nice.
• I Just Want to Be Badass: In the "Commander Lilith" DLC, he tells the Vault Hunters via a pre-recorded message that he always wanted to be a Vault Hunter but knew he wasn't cut out for it and thus he's grateful to all the Vault Hunters he's met for letting him be a part of their adventures.
• Informed Attribute: Judging by his signs and his satellite, he apparently works/worked for Dahl. This never comes up, and other characters like Moxxi and Marcus seem to be independent entrepreneurs.
  • Oddly Tales reminds us of his connection to Dahl with the satellite (which is a problem at first as Hyperion still holds a grudge for a certain rogue Dahl legion's assault on Helios), but changes Old Haven (his home town) to an Atlas city originally, instead of being occupied by them later. Though the city originally being an Atlas city would explain why the Lance have seen fit to take it over as it provides no real tactical advantage.
• Last Request: In the Commander Lilith and the Fight for Sanctuary of 2, Scooter leaves an ECHO for his family and the Vault Hunters containing his last words and requests. After having his porno magazines regathered (which Moxxi keeps since no one wants them) and naming Ellie as the new owner of Catch-A-Ride, he asks the Vault Hunters to do one final spectacular stunt jump for him at the crater where he and the rocket booster he was stuck to crashed.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: His third Establishing Character Moment in the series makes him appear to have enough Medium Awareness to know about game's Running Gag character intros. Too bad Fiona is weirded out by this.
• Mad Libs Catchphrase: He tends to replace "ride" with whatever is relevant with the current topic sometimes, such as "Catch-a-Familial-Reconciliation!". This got so bad that he somehow convinced Marcus to say "Catch-a-Gun!" in one of his vending machines.
• Metaphorgotten: He makes quite a few of these.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted. He claims to be named after his sister.
• Properly Paranoid: He was fully aware he lived on a Death World and kept his will and testamony updated.
• Passing the Torch: His final ECHO request to Ellie is given in the Commander Lilith and the Fight for Sanctuary DLC, with his sister becoming the new owner of Catch-A-Ride in his passing.
• Psychopathic Manchild: He behaves like a teenager in going to petty ways to get laid, but he is as homicidal as anyone else on Pandora, killing his mom's boyfriends just because they are her boyfriends.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Mike Neumann's diminishing health made it progressively more difficult to act or script for Gearbox Software, the decision was made to kill Scooter off in order to emphasize how important Tales From The Borderlands is to the overall franchise's plot.
• Riding the Bomb: He goes to his death bellowing his catchphrase, as a faulty booster rocket about to explode heads down to Pandora.
• Socially Awkward Hero: He is very unlucky with love and is often overexcited with interactions. In Tales if Fiona says "Everything will be fine" then Scooter will reply with "Haa, there's the girl I fell in love with", understandably Fiona is a little freaked out by the bold statement and Scooter quickly fumbles.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: To Lucky.
  Scooter: Lucky's an old buddy of mine — and by old buddy I mean "asshole what ruined my momma's girl parts". Sounds like he's in trouble so you go on ahead and try and keep him alive long enough so I can kill him at a later occasion.
  • He reveals that he was successful in killing him in the General Knoxx DLC. He told you he was gonna do it.
  • It goes on to be the central conflict of a clan rivalry as well. Lucky was part of the Zaford clan and Scooter was formerly part of the Hodunk.
• Vocal Evolution: From 1 to 2, Scooter's delivery of his lines gained their unique cadence and his Hodunk accent started to be more emphasized.

Ellie

Ellie

Likes: cuddling, murder

As of Borderlands 3. Click to see: ^{Her in Borderlands 2} - ^{Her 2 character card}

Voiced by: Jamie Marchi

Scooter's sister, who runs a vehicle garage in The Dust.

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• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: While her relationship with Moxxi is strained, if you visit Scooter's garage in the final mission of the main story of 2, she'll tell him to tell their mom that she loves her.
• Big Beautiful Woman: She's quite stout and rotund but still manages to be rather attractive as well. Scooter himself even admits to having a crush on her when they were younger.
• Chainmail Bikini: In Tiny Tina's Assault On Dragon Keep, you can choose between giving Ellie a bikini or actual platemail for armor. She points out the flaws of this trope. If you give her the bikini, she says that she wishes she had a sweater as well.
  Ellie: That ain't armor! That's not even big enough to cover half a tit. Besides, it ain't like the bad guys are gonna be aimin' for my saucy bits.
• Fat and Proud:
  • One of the reasons why she moved out to the Dust is because Moxxi kept nagging her to lose weight, and she didn't want to.
  • The dev team actually was so insistent on getting her "fatness" right that her neck-rolls alone went through five different iterations before they were satisfied.
  • She also is rather proud of her beauty and has a healthy sense self-worth, referring to the Hodunks' clan emblem being a skinny chick because they like skinny chicks.
    Ellie: And they love skinny chicks 'cause they's pussies.
  • A side quest with her revolves around her finding out that the local bandits made sculptures of her that emphasize her fatness. She is flattered when she finds out, and asks you to gather some to decorate her garage.
• Insult Backfire: The bandits make hood ornaments in her likeness to mock her. Although she is aware they were meant to be insulting, she thinks the design is "badass" and has you steal some so she can put them around the shop.
• It Amused Me: Secretly instigates the clan war between the Zafords and the Hodunks primarily for kicks, as well as wanting to prove to Moxxi that she can survive in The Dust.
• It Runs in the Family:
  • In The Pre-Sequel! you can catch Moxxi "out of character" tinkering with a loader bot. She sounds remarkably like Ellie, especially with the same drawl and enthusiasm for tinkering.
  • Moxxi also briefly drops her accent for a few seconds if you tip her in Sanctuary before she quickly corrects herself and strongly advises you to never tell anyone about it. Again, she sounds remarkably like Ellie.
• Karma Houdini: Neither side of the Clan War arc ever catches on that she started it. However as of 4th Headhunter DLC, they're starting to put two & two together... and still never figure it out.
• The Lancer: In Borderlands 3 she seemly becomes Lilith's second in command, as she's working closer to her than she did in the previous game.
• Leg Cling: Official artwork for Tiny Tina's Assault On Dragon Keep shows Ellie clinging to Roland's leg. She's wearing a Slave Leia outfit.
• Passing the Torch: Scooter's final ECHO request to Ellie is given in the Commander Lilith and the Fight for Sanctuary DLC, with his sister becoming the new owner of Catch-A-Ride in his passing.
• Southern-Fried Genius: She is basically what Scooter would be if he was actually intelligent. Her drawl and attitude are just like Scooter's, but she does knows her stuff when it comes to trucks n' stuff... when she isn't crushing them around a bandit in a trash compactor over an insult. It is implied in Borderlands 3 that the Catch-a-Ride network's safety greatly improved under her command.
• Tattoo as Character Type: Her heart tattoo was a courtesy of the Hodunk clan, as they marked her as a breeding female. After Scooter's death in Tales From the Borderlands, she gets a memorial tattoo of a skull wearing his signature cap with a banner reading "CATCH A RIDE TO HEAVEN".
• Wrench Wench:
  • Helps Scooter out and introduces the player to the new Bandit Technical, which the player first uses to get into the Bloodshot Stronghold. Starting with the Fight for Sanctuary DLC and into 3, she also runs all of the Catch-A-Ride stations as per Scooter's dying wishes.
  • In Borderlands 3, she becomes Sanctuary's chief engineer.
• Victoria's Secret Compartment: She can fit an entire suit of armor in her size in her cleavage, much like her mother with guns.

Papa Hodunk

Jimbo "Papa" Hodunk

Voiced by: Ian Sinclair

The patriarch of the clan, he's an unintelligible old coot stuck in a wheelchair.

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• Berserk Button: The sheer mention of Moxxi and her kids sends him into a gibbering rage since he sees them as traitors.
• Disappeared Dad: Is vaguely implied to be Scooter's father, but since Scooter's been kicked out of the clan it's doubtful he has much of a presence in his life.
• Even the Subtitler Is Stumped: "[old coot gibberish]".
• Handicapped Badass: He's missing his left leg and is normally confined to a wheelchair, but he still personally takes part in the final battle against the Zafords, riding on Tector's shoulders.
• Hayseed Name: Jimbo, which is more typically a redneck nickname for "James."
• The Patriarch: Generally referred to as "Papa Hodunk".
• The Unintelligible: Everything he says has to be translated by another member of the Hodunk clan.
• Villainous Incest: Given he's all but stated outright to be Scooter's dad, then he slept with Moxxi enough to impregnate her despite the fact that they're both Hodunks. It's not clear if it's a case of Kissing Cousins or flat out Parental Incest.

Tector

Tector Hodunk

As of Tales from the Borderlands. ^{Click here to see him in Borderlands 2}

Voiced by: Joel McDonald

The eldest Hodunk son, and Jimbo's right-hand man.

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• Book Dumb: From what we get from Tales, he can't read. Which is good, because Fiona's wanted poster is pretty much right next to him, outside the Purple Skag.
• The Dragon: To Jimbo in Borderlands 2 and to August in Tales from the Borderlands.
• Friendly Enemy: He seems to be on even personal terms with Moxxi, recommending her bar to people even though he knows it ticks his dad off.
• Gonk: Probably the most unusual looking human NPC in the game, if not the ugliest.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: He wields a shotgun at the end of the Clan War arc. In Tales, though, he uses a blue-rarity Dahl repeater due to his new job as a bouncer.
• Translator Buddy: To his own father.
• Turns Red: If you kill his father, Tector turns into "Grieving Tector". It's sort of like making a Goliath mad, except he doesn't regenerate health.
• You All Look Familiar: His model is re-used during the Wedding Day Massacre DLC for the Giant Mooks on the Hodunk side (the Zafords re-use a model from the Campaign of Carnage DLC).

Bridget Hodunk

A Hodunk female goliath who had a drunken fling with Colin Zaford that resulted in a child that Moxxi attempts to marry in order to unite their clans peacefully.

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• Battle Couple: Their boss name with Colin Zaford is even "The Happy Couple".
• Brawn Hilda: A regular Goliath with a flower on her helmet.
• Didn't See That Coming: She's a Goliath. NOBODY took into consideration what would happen if she removed her helmet.
• Dual Boss: You fight her and her boyfriend Colin tigether. If you bring down one, the other will run over to revive them and level themselves up.
• Dumb Muscle: While she's far more articulate than a regular Goliath, she still didn't see anything wrong with purchasing a house that only had 2 walls.
• Jerkass: She doesn't like Vault Hunters much, and has nothing but bad things to say about Moxxi.

Zaford clan

A clan of Irishmen who run their own pub, the Holy Spirits, near the town of Overlook.

In General

• Fighting Irish: Irishmen obsessed with fighting the Hodunk clan. "I pay in blood, booze, and bullets!"
• Oireland: Shamelessly, although Played for Laughs. Lots of alcohol, ridiculous accents, shamrocks, and sooo much green.

Lucky Zaford

Lucky Sleveen Zaford

The proprietor of Lucky's Last Chance Watering Hole and son of Mick Zaford, leader of the Zaford clan.

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• Buried Alive: This is how he died. In a shallow grave, no less.
• Disproportionate Retribution: He was killed over a one-night stand he once had with Moxxi.
• Distressed Dude: He was being held captive by some bandits when the Vault Hunters arrived in the Dahl Headlands.
• Killed Offscreen: Scooter reveals in The Secret of General Knoxx that he buried Lucky alive in a shallow grave.
  Scooter: Yeah, I killed him, don't act all surprised. I told you I was gonna do it.
• Posthumous Character: His death is occasionally refered in 2 during the Hodunks-Zafords feud arc.

Mick

Mick Zaford

Voiced by: Chuck Huber

Patriarch of the Zaford clan, he's a friendly, affable father who just wants to kill every single Hodunk he sees.

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• Invisibility Cloak: If you haven't encountered Hyperion Infiltrators yet, Mick is the first human enemy you'll see with a cloak in the game's chronological order of quests, so be wary.
• Meaningful Name: As the Zafords represent the Fighting Irish trope, Mick is a pejorative often used for the Irish.
• Papa Wolf: His response to the Hodunks killing his son Peter is to have the Vault Hunter go and burn them alive in their trailers, and he has enough when Lucky's wake is crashed.

The Bagman

Peter Zaford

Voiced by: Chuck Huber

Mick's son, a nice boy who might be a little insane.

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• The Dutiful Son: To hear him tell it.
• Hearing Voices: Or more specifically, a single voice, which he addresses as "voice in me 'ead."
• Leprechaun: Not a typical example, but his traits make The Bagman an allusion to one. He's short and the family's bagman, but he's called a leprechaun. When fought, he teleports around the room as if by magic, and can drop a relic called the Pot O'Gold.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: Oddly enough, he carries a corrosive E-Tech Bandit shotgun.
• Tempting Fate: As the player stalks him in order to find the Zafords' hidden money cache, Peter constantly and loudly talks to himself about how he hopes nobody is following him with the intention of ambushing him when he finally reaches the cache, and that he loves not getting ambushed as part of the trip.
• The Unfavorite: What he thinks himself to be. It's unknown if it's true or just a result of his insanity, but Mick does seem horribly torn up over his death.

Colin Zaford

A Zaford goliath who had a drunken fling with Bridget that resulted in a child that Moxxi attempts to marry in order to unite their clans peacefully.

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• Battle Couple: Their boss name with Bridget is even "The Happy Couple".
• Didn't See That Coming: He's a Goliath. NOBODY took into consideration what would happen if he removed his helmet.
• Dual Boss: You fight him and his girlfriend Bridget together. If you bring down one, the other will run over to revive them and level themselves up.
• Jerkass: Doesn't like Vault Hunters much.

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