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Borderlands

"It's time for another pound of flesh!"
Psycho #34, shortly before taking a faceful of thunder-enhanced missiles.

1,020,000
—Google results for [Borderlands Plot].

3,340,000
—Google results for [Borderlands Guns].

Borderlands is an FPS with RPG Elements made by Gearbox Software, the makers of the Brothers In Arms series, for 360, PS 3 and PC. The game takes place in the desert planet Pandora and you choose from four different characters in search of a vault said to contain vast stores of alien technology.

The problem is that this vault is hidden on Pandora - a backwater world where no one wants to live. Except the raiders. A "guardian angel" appears to four mercenaries, who decide to head toward the planet:

  • Roland, The Soldier. Rumored to be a former member of the Crimson Lance, the best-equipped mercenary company in the galaxy. Can drop a Scorpio Turret to provide fire support and shields to provide cover for his allies.
  • Lilith, the Siren. A Phasewalker, capable of stepping out of reality to a phased out version of the world, while leaving presents for her enemies on the way in and out.
  • Brick, the Berserker. A massive man whose rage makes him punch as hard as any gun. Loves blood.
  • Mordecai, the Hunter. A wandering man whose pet hawk Bloodwing is his best ally. Subverts the stereotype that all snipers are cold.

This series contains examples of:

  • Abnormal Ammo: The more rare guns add special effects to the attacks.
    • One particular weapon mod is "Holy crap! It shoots Rockets!".
  • Action Girl: Lilith (Siren)
  • Amusing Injuries: What happens when you kill an enemy with elemental damage.
  • Anticlimax Boss: Slither, the boss of the "Altar Ego" quest chain
    • Note, it's a parody.
    • Also, more importantly, The Destroyer. The final boss of the entire game. Several enemies encountered earlier are more challenging, The Destroyer is just more tedious, since it has an obscene amount of HP.
  • Apocalyptic Log: Tannis' journals, with her Sanity Slippage played for laughs somewhat.
  • Attack Its Weakpoint: Enemies have them, For Massive Damage. The big red words of Critical Hit appear as they are hit.
    • Before fighting the final boss, you're told that "you just have to know where to hit it." Its five weak points are all very conspicuous.
  • Attack Of The 50 Foot Whatever: Rakkhive, Mothrakk, Skagzilla, Rakkanishu..
    • Rakkanishu even drops a really good shield—called the "Cracked Sash", after the crappiest version of the lowest level belt from Diablo 2.
  • All There In The Manual : Most of the characters back stories are told in the game's guide. Like How Krom and Baron Flynt used to be Wardens on Pandora before becoming bandit leaders,etc.
  • Ax Crazy: Judging by her personal logs, Dahl Corporation scientist Patricia Tannis is equal parts this and Cloud Cuckoolander. She even dated the recorder she used for the logs, they broke up though.
    • Also the majority of the bandits, and at least two of the player characters.
      • The enemies with the label 'psycho' pretty much take the cake, though.
  • Awesome But Impractical: Some of the more esoteric weapons are harder to use then just shooting straight at things... thought generally averted with the many grenade mods. Sticks on to things, explodes into more grenades, steals health, sets stuff on fire, bounces up into the air, etc., combinations of some of these... they work pretty well.
  • Badass: Elite Mooks are called this. On New Game Plus, they get upgraded to Bad Mutha and then Superbads.
  • Badass Normal: The entire civilian populace of the planet Pandora. Considering that the world they live on has 90-hour days, seven-year seasons, at least five separate species of omnivorous wildlife that are large, aggressive, and more than happy to eat anyone who gets in their way, a population of several thousand convict-laborers-turned-bandits, severe and frequent electrical storms, poisonous vegetation, oppressive heat, scarce water, and crazy archaeologists, anyone who can survive there for any length of time whatsoever has to be at least a little badass.
  • Big No: Whenever Mordecai dies. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!! I NEVER DIE!!!"
  • Boom Headshot: Weapons do insane amounts of damage with headshots.
    • The Hunter will occasionally say "Boom" after a headshot, as well.
    • Headshots can be so boomy that they take the torso with them. Even without explosive ammunition.
  • The Baroness: Commander Steele, who even comes with an over-the-top Russian accent.
  • Boss Subtitles: Even the main characters get one.
    • Mordecai as the "Hunter"
    • Lilith as the "Siren"
    • Roland as the "Soldier"
    • and Brick as "Himself!"
    • Sledge. P.S.: You guys aren't friends.
    • Nine-Toes. He also has three balls.
    • Baron Flynt. That's medicinal.
    • The player characters have differing ones in the PC Launch Trailer also. Mordecai is "Suavemaculant", Lilith is "Hot" (what, you expected anything else?), Roland is "Swashbucklerous" and Brick is "Ballnormous". I am not making this up.
    • CL 4 P-TP. Interplanetary Ninja Assassin
  • Breather Boss: The end boss, despite taking a lot of ammo to bring down, has a fairly predictable attack pattern and doesn't hit very hard.
  • Cain And Abel Jaynis and Taylor Kobb.
    • Actually subverted, as once Jaynis is killed and Taylor takes control of his town, he proves to be just as bad as his brother.
  • Car Fu: Encouraged by the game, to the point that there is actually a quest whose sole goal is to kill a number of enemies using a Runner (the game's version of cars). In addition, there is at least one achievement (on the X-Box 360 version) and several in-game challenges involving running enemies over or ramming them.
    • The final one is "Hell On Wheels," granted for killing 1,000 enemies with the vehicle.
    • Be warned! Hitting enemies (especially ones larger than you) damages your Runner. This troper once had a very close shave with death by ramming a named mob...
    • A vehicle upside down (or close to it) for a few seconds results in all the inhabitants automatically getting out. Combine this with the fact that you can have more than one in multiplayer, and hours of fun can be had just tackling each other's cars and stealing them. Or blowing them up.
      • Also consider that Melee-ing a car will send it flying (to avoid the runners getting stuck on things).
  • Cargo Ship: As part of her descent into CloudCuckooland, Patricia Tannis dates her voice recorder. And gets into fights with it. And then they decide to remain friends.
  • Cheerful Child with a side of Ugly Cute: Young Brick, in the introductory sequence, is aww-inducing. OUT of the introductory sequence, though...
  • Cherry Tapping: Very possible, for example if you're feeling suicidal enough to use the melee attacks (Brick in Berserker mode doesn't count) or an amazingly underlevelled weapon.
    • This player likes to finish off the bosses with a Revolver critical shot where possible, for the The Wild West-style Badassery with a side of Boom Headshot... though to be fair, revolvers are far from the weakest firearm in the game, and criticals deal a lot of damage, even to bosses.
  • Color Coded For Your Convenience: Elemental weapons have distinctive color markings on them that represent their element. Shock (good against shields) is blue. Fire (good against fleshy bits) is red. Blast (good against everything) is yellow. Corrosion (good against armor) is green.
    • Don't forget that loot is also Color Coded by rarity. (White=Normal, Green=Less Common, Blue=Rare, Purple=Very Rare, Orange=Incredibly Rare, Pearl=Obscenely Rare. And to top that off, orange comes in three different shades for just how badass the weapon you just found is.)
      • Word Of God (and judicious viewing of the game's data files) states that Pearl isn't a real rarity color — Pearl items are all ShoutOuts to people from the forums, beta testers, programmers, family members, etc etc. The really good weapons are supposed to be the Dark Orange ones.
    • Enemy shields and clothing are coded this way too. Red enemies tend to be fire resistant and use fire attacks, green enemies are corrosion resistant and might spit poison at you, blue enemies are shock resistant and use electrical attacks..., and so on.
  • Combat Medic: Roland has a skill tree called 'Medic' that helps him heal his allies, but that doesn't mean he's any less capable of shooting you. The tree has other abilities that specifically make him hardier, increases his weaponry's magazine size. and actually has an ability that requires him to kill an enemy to activate it.
    • ...and one of the ways he can heal allies is by shooting them, giving the term new meaning.
      • Plus he can upgrade his turret to heal allies while unhealing everyone else
  • Crapsack World: Hoo boy. Borderlands takes this trope and runs with it. Although the planet Pandora was originally colonized in the hopes of turning it into a lucrative, prosperous mining settlement, it was found to be an almost completely barren and borderline uninhabitable wasteland - and that was before the spring cycle began seven Earth years later and the local wildlife woke up from hibernation. Then, of course, there are the several thousand murderous bandits who prey on the few remaining locals, the extreme scarcity of food, water, electricity and medical supplies, and the near-complete lack of anything resembling functioning infrastructure or an effective government. Death is so common that never once do you see an NPC express grief, even when close friends or relatives are killed.
  • Crazy Prepared: Taylor Kobb apparently puts armed midgets in storage containers (complete with beds and toilets) in case he has a sudden need to betray someone.
  • Critical Hit: Pops up in big red letters as they are hit, though more In Name Only example of what this trope usually is; and taken more literally - A Critical Hit is scored from hitting an enemy in a certain point or area on its body to inflict much more damage, unlike other games.
    • For human(oid) enemies it's the head, of course. For Skags, you have to shoot their exposed mouth, with a similar Pink Mist effect. Finally, for Spiderants, you have to shoot the abdomen. Bosses are where things get a bit more complicated, but it's generally pretty obvious; large glowy bits, things that look squishy, etc. etc.
  • Crowning Moment Of Funny: Hiyoo!
  • Cluster F Bomb: In some videos, ClapTrap.
  • Deadly Doctor: Played with 'Dr.' Zed. His first appearance gives him a small cutscene with Boss Subtitles for him, pausing before he strikes down on a corpse he is about to chop up. He explicitly states he's lost his license when first meeting him and his medical machines occasionally say in his voice "Who needs a doctor when you've got my machines and their scary needles?". Afraid Of Needles yet?
  • Defector From Decadence: Roland (Soldier) is a former member of the Crimson Lance.
  • Deflector Shields: A device that acts as additional regenerating hit points.
  • Demonic Spiders: Gatling turrets. Hope you like sniping.
    • Psychos, when they swap the axe for a grenade.
    • The Crimson Lance probably qualify in some regards; they are by far the most class of dangerous opponents in the game due to their higher-quality firearms, higher chances of coming equipped with enhanced shields/grenades, and body armour that can absorbs a lot of damage and is best worked around via Boom Headshot, Groin Attack or Kill It With Fire (or acid)... or all of the above. Their Badass incarnations have heavy armour all over them, and can literally only be hurt by Boom Headshot and Kill It With Fire (again, or acid).
  • Desert Punk: No, really.
  • Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu: The End Game Boss is a giant Cthulhu like monster complete with tentacles, giant gaping maw, and a massive eye that shoots energy beams. The character is armed with ballistic weapons and maybe some alien weapons you found. And if you're Brick, you can literally punch it out too.
  • Does This Remind You Of Anything: A surprising amount of enemies in this game can be described as a giant vagina with teeth that either bites you or shoots things out of the vagina until you stick your long phallic gun into it and unload.
    • Especially true with the End Boss, which not only has the giant killgina with an enormous tenticle inside, but also wields several other tenticles with large glowing testicles on it that you shoot until they burst. It was as awesome for me as it was for it.
  • Double Entendre: Dixie Wrecked brand Moonshine.
  • Driven To Suicide: The imagery of such an act is used for the boxart, as can be seen above. Was specifically created for a striking image.
  • Ear Worm: "Ain't no rest for the wicked" by Cage The Elephant. You can get it stuck in your head just from watching the commercial.
  • Eldritch Abomination: The vault actually contains this. See Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu above.
  • Elemental Powers: Certain guns can cause Standard Status Effects with fire, lightning, acid... or just potentially explode.
  • Elite Mooks: Called Badasses, unless you do the New Game Plus which makes them ever more powerful and called 'Bad Mutha'.
    • And the third playthrough upgrades them again, this time to 'Superbads'.
  • Excuse Plot: You travel to Pandora to find a vault, for a reason mentioned in the manual and never brought up in game, a girl talks to you for while, you do random things for complete strangers for a few hours, the Brotherhood outcasts attack you, and then you fight Zeromus Fluthlu.
  • Exploding Barrels: Now with exciting new corrosive, shock, and fire flavors!
  • Expy: The Crimson Lance mooks like quite a bit like Protect Gears.
    • They also seem to get compared to the Helghast an awful lot by the fandom.
      • If you can scrounge up an old copy of Game Informer with the pre-release article on the game, take a look at the characters and note that they were all different then. Zed is Roland, Steele is Lilith, one of the later sub-bosses (Reaver) was Mordecai, and supposedly the badass bruiser model was Brick.
  • Every Car Is A Pinto: The Runners explode fantastically when reduced to 0 whatever-it-is points. Don't be standing next to them when that happens.
  • Everythings Deader With Zombies: The first DLC will include zombies.
  • Evil Albino: Commandant Steele.
  • Faceless Goons: The Bandits and the Crimson Lance.
  • Fake Boss: Baron Flynt, leader of Pandora's bandit hordes.
  • Five Man Band: Kinda. Roland is the Leader, Lilith is the Chick, Mordecai is the Lancer, Brick is the Big Guy. Tannis makes sense as the Smart Guy, even though she isn't a playable character.
  • Flash Step: Lilith's special ability allows her to step into an alternate dimension (causing an explosion that helps discourage her enemies from attacking), run quickly to her target, pop out with an energetic shockwave that stuns her foes, and then proceed to mow them all down.
  • Follow The Leader: The developers have cited many influences to the game, even saying at one point this game stemmed from wanting to make "Fallout 3, but with co-op". Of course, in the end, there were many differences from that basic statement. It's more Fallout 3 meets... a lot of stuff.
  • For The Cel Of It
  • Fridge Brilliance: Pandora's Box (or box-analogue, like a Vault, if you will) does not have really nice things in it. Damn bitch.
  • Fridge Logic: If you find yourself being unable to abide by MST 3 K Mantra, you will have trouble enjoying this game.
    • For example, how does a shotgun loaded with shotgun shells fire rockets?
      • Frag-12, motherfucker! We can already make shotguns that fire grenades, and a fair distance with pretty good accuracy too. Rocket shotguns would be a bit ridiculous but by no means impossible.
    • More importantly, who stores grenades in a toilet?
      • Then again, Pandora is populated almost entirely by rednecks...
    • The only illogical thing that actually bothered me was why the hell does Skagzilla have laser-breath? But then it dawned on me: Godzilla! After that it was perfectly logical that a big-ass alien dog called something-zilla could breath lasers.
    • Why do the Crimson Lance, mercs working for the Atlas corporation, almost never have Atlas weapons, especially considering how powerful they are?
      • Probably the same reason most of the Lance mooks don't even have shields; their Commanding Officers are a bunch of cheapskates.
    • Pandora is a completely alien world with life-forms emerging from an entirely different evolutionary tree from humans, and yet Skag Meat is Nutritious and Delicious!
  • Friendly Sniper: Mordecai (Hunter) can specialize in sniping. Although personality-wise he's anything but cold...
    • Mordecai seems boisterous and friendly and likes his foe shredding pet.
      • He seems more psychotic than friendly, really.
  • Game Breaker: Go to New Haven. Note that there are five gun crates around town. Open them up. Sell anything that isn't a Double Anarchy, X4 elemental gun, or has unlimited ammo. Exit game. Load game from menu. Repeat.
    • And if you hold off on doing a certain storyline quest, you can claim an additional two chests.
    • Hunters don't even need the guns. The Bloodwing is practically a helicopter gunship at high levels.
    • A Hellfire SMG with some way of regenerating ammo for it (it's just very good if you can't regen ammo for it). About the only times you'll need something else are if the enemy is fire immune or you need range.
  • Game Mod: Gearbox won't provide a development kit for fear of breaking what little balance the game has already, but this hasn't stopped people from creating save editors to experiment with. Want a 40000 damage revolver that shoots fire rockets and never needs reloading? Okay!
    • Not quite 40,000 damage revolvers that shoot rockets and don't need to reload, but you can do some pretty creative things nonetheless—such as combining parts from The Dove (a pistol that never runs out of ammo) with parts from the Hyperion Invader (a pistol that fires its entire clip when fired while the aim button is held down) to create a pistol that, when you fire it while aiming, never stops shooting and never runs out of ammo (until you let go of the aim button, anyway.)
  • Gameplay Ally Immortality: If someone won't shoot at you, you can't shoot it at it. They won't even notice.
  • Gas Mask Mooks The Crimson Lance. Some of the bandits on closer inspection are wearing what appear to be some sort of gas mask.
    • Just about every human enemy save bosses wears a mask of some sort, presumably so the developers wouldn't have to animate them speaking their various taunts and cries.
  • Giant Enemy Crab: They appear out of nowhere and you Attack Their Weakpoints For Massive Damage.
  • Giant Space Flea From Nowhere: the finale. Yes, all of it.
    • Hell, one of the challenge acheivements for killing the Guardians is titled "What is this thing?", as if to Lampshade the sheer absurdity of the situation.
  • Goddamned Rakks: Let's just say Pandora's ecosystem is designed to breed annoying hard-to-kill creatures.
  • Good Bad Bugs / Game Breaking Bugs: The Skill Point Dupe glitch. Done right, you can max out every skill for your character. done wrongly, and you'll have to tag along with a newbie character for the entire game to be able to complete the playthrough.
  • Groin Attack: A viable (in fact, more like necessary) tactic when facing the Crimson Lance if you don't have any Incendiary or Corrosive weapons and can't get a straight shot at their heads.
  • Gun Porn: According to The Other Wiki entry for Borderlands, the debug menu for the game shows over three million guns are available in the game. According to the devs, they stopped counting once they hit 17 million.
    • Suddenly the commercial touting "87 bazillion guns" doesn't sound so far-fetched.
    • Although, to be fair, the majority of those are probably the same gun with very slight stat differences.
    • To be specific there seems to be a certain amount of basic gun models (somewhere in the 40-50 range) but each of those models can have their stats, element, barrel, magazine, grip, scope etc. changed many different ways. This leads to the aforementioned "87 Bazillion guns."
  • Good Old Fisticuffs: Brick (Berserker) Can specialize in hand to hand combat. Keep in mind the planet is populated with gun toting road warrior type bandits and assorted monsters. Good thing Brick hits like a train.
    • Brick doesn't hit like a train. Trains hit like Brick.
      • Pssh, maybe in Soviet Russia...
      • Trains wish they could hit like Brick.
  • Healing Shiv: Roland (The Soldier) can access Cauterize, a special ability that makes his weaponry heal allies. The text of the skill states this also works with rockets and grenades.
  • Hulk Speak: Sledge
  • Impaled With Extreme Prejudice:Victims of the bandits can be seen impaled on various objects in some places.
  • I Am A Humanitarian: Psychos: "Just three more steps and I got me dinner"
  • Incendiary Exponent: Lilith's Phoenix sets her on fire (with only beneficial effects). It also allows her shots to cause fire damage, acquainting their targets with the Man On Fire trope (with harmful effects).
    • Also, Flaming Psychos. Cackling insanely and trying to kill you while ON FIRE.
  • Infinity Plus One Sword: If you find a gun made by Atlas, it will often serve as your personal Infinity Plus One Sword for a given level range.
    • Double Anarchy works well for this purpose as well, as do Tediore Equalizers.
    • The weapons go in a set range — White, Green, Blue, Purple, Yellow (aka Orange), Orange (Aka "Dark Orange"), and "Pearl" (aka "Woah, did you see how many mods were on that White I just picked up?"). Pearl weapons are apparently joke items based on forum posters and beta testers and are... Potent. Still, given the right number of mods, the lower tier weapons can be much more powerful.
    • And then there are the boss weapons. Some players have suggested that you can kill practically anything with Sledge's shotgun and enough magazine size bonuses.
      • Don't forget The Boomstick. A six round shotgun. That fires rockets. In six round bursts.
  • Insurmountable Waist High Fence: Oh god so many everywhere. There are even some bollard things your vehicle can't pass between or over.
  • Invulnerable Knuckles: Brick can beat alien monsters, bandits with various head gear, and other things to death with his bare hands and not bat an eye. He even regenerates while he does it.
  • Karmic Death Commamder Steele
  • Kleptomaniac Hero: Really, the point of this game is the many, many, many guns you can loot. NP Cs will occasionally comment on how many things have turned up missing since you've arrived.
    • It probably doesn't help that they keep their guns in unlocked boxes stored outside.
  • Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: Eridian weapons usually have a short range, long recharge time and/or slow moving projectiles that effectively blind the person using them. Compared to human weapons, they're little more than a novelty. The icing on the cake? They also force you to move slower.
  • King Mook: Nine-Toes
    • In New Haven there is a boss enemy called King Wee Wee.
  • Law Enforcement Inc The Crimson Lance who work for the Atlas Corp.
  • Level Grinding: Just why exactly do you need to be a certain level to shoot a gun, anyway?
    • Marcus sometimes comments on using the best gun you can "as long as you're strong enough to hold it"
  • Ludicrous Gibs: Running over a bandit in your vehicle will cause chunks to go flying about 35-40 meters high and rain down for several seconds. And that's not even counting the weapons with explosive or incendiary ammunition...
  • Mac Guffin: The Vault or more specifically everything that you are told would be in it.
  • Mega Corp: Every gun manufacturer seems to have spinoff products scattered around the world. Atlas is the current leader, but Dahl's insignia shows up everywhere. Jakobs seems to have a prefab housing division, just for starters...
    • Dahl Corporation seems to have run the mining firm on Pandora which went defunct when they realized there were almost no natural resources.
  • Money Spider: Considering the millions of guns that Randomly Drops, this game laughs at your concerns for the Fridge Logic it produces. (It also manages to justify it with the local wildlife - Rakks and Skags will eat anything - but not be able to digest certain things, and so vomit it up (for you to loot).)
    • Further, it manages to justify the finding of good stuff later- other guys took all the good stuff from the early sections and died later on.
  • More Criminals Than Targets: Let's just say the raider population outnumbers the non-raider population. And since raiders are never seen fighting one another, one can't assume they raid one another...
    • Somewhat justified, as Dahl was using them for cheap labour, until they shut down their mining operations.
    • They also sell metal ore from one of the mines they control, and possibly the shock and corrosive crystals as well, so they do have an occupation and source of income other than killing people and taking their stuff.
  • More Dakka: Roland can summon a turret to add more firepower. And upgrade it through his skill trees for even MORE dakka, as well as guided missiles. And then we get into the guns themselves...
    • Arguably, the point of the entire game.
    • A Double Anarchy (each bullet fires as four) SMG with bonuses to fire speed and magazine size can put hundreds of rounds downrange in seconds... and that's not counting the boosters from Roland's Metal Storm skill, which increases rate of fire and accuracy for a few seconds after killing an enemy.
    • "Vladof! You don't need to be a better shot, you just need to shoot more bullets."
  • New Game Plus: Beat the game, then start a new run of the campaign with tougher enemies and your old guns!
  • No Kill Like Overkill: One headshot not enough? How about a sniper rifle that shoots six bullets at once?
  • Non Human Sidekick: The Claptraps.
  • One Of Us: Sure, video game developers are practically already One Of Us, but they really love their ShoutOuts...
  • Only Sane Man: Helena Pierce
  • Painting The Fourth Wall: As if potentially voicing the player view on the situation, Mordecai going down may incite him to say "Noooo! Whhhyyyy!?", "Nooooo! I never die!" or "Whhhhyyyy!? WHHHYYY!?"
  • Palette Swap: There are only four real types of enemies in the game: human-type (who shoot guns or rush you with melee, and on two maps drive around in runners), quadripedal type (which uses tackles and spit things at you), flying creatures (which have nothing but a divebomb attack), and the Eridians, which are a mix of all types.
    • Not only that, you can change your character's colours, so don't be surprised to see two Bricks standing next to each other, one in black and the other wearing bright pink.
  • Paper Thin Disguise: Dr. Ned bears a striking resemblance to Dr. Zed. That said, it's still possible that they really are different people.
    • Given Gearbox's sense of humor, it wouldn't surprise me if Ned was Zed's brother.
  • Player Punch: T.K Baha's Death.
    • An extremely odd variety of Player Punch, as it's a punch from the gameworld rather than a character death. Pandora being what it is, most of the other characters don't react with sorrow. You know, since the average lifespan once you hit Pandora ends up being a very small number of weeks. The game also doesn't do anything with it in terms of storyline afterwards; there's no investigation or revenge beyond immediately slaughtering another band of psychos.
    • The effect is diminished slightly when he's still sitting outside the building giving out quests due a glitch some players encounter.
  • Randomly Drops: Said to be the system for gun drops, though with a supposed over 17 million possibilities, you'll probably be able to find something cool in general.
  • Rated M For Manly: Borderlands is for Real Gamers.
  • Real Song Theme Tune: "Ain't No Rest For The Wicked" by Cage The Elephant. It's both used in the games trailer and the intro to the game itself.
  • Revolvers Are Just Better: The designers certainly seem to think so. Revolver pistols, revolver shotguns, revolver sniper rifles, revolver rocket launchers, in six shot, three shot, two shot, side-gate, cylinder swapping, break-open with speed loaders... almost every gun with under 8 rounds per reload.
    • It's hard not to like a Revolver with the name Bloody Justice.
  • Robot Buddy: Claptrap serves as one, while these trailers play with it - do you know a Robot Buddy that curses so much?
  • Rocket Jump: Partially averted. Rocket launchers don't appear to have enough knockback, but grenades still work. Alternatively you can get a friend to launch you using Sledge's shotgun
  • RPG Elements: You'll need levels to utilize better equipment and have more health to survive against harder enemies - plus there's those nifty skill trees.
  • Shaped Like Itself: Used for the Boss Subtitles of the PlayerCharacters an opening cutscene for the game:
    Brick - As himself
  • Short Range Long Range Weapon: The elephant gun, an otherwise top of the line sniper rifle that lacks any sort of scope, making it useless at the long range you usually use snipers for.
  • Shout Out: The entire game is crammed with them, to the point that it's easier to list which parts of the game aren't Shout Outs. A few examples:
  • Sliding Scale Long Name: Idealism got shot in the face with a Double Anarchy.
  • Sniper Rifle: Oodles of them. Everything can have a scope. Nothing like finding a shotgun with a 4x scope, whilst your best sniper rifle is only 1x...
  • Space Western: The game beats you over the head with this theme.
  • Special Attack: All the PC characters have them and several enemy characters seem to have them as well.
  • The Stinger: CL4P-TRP: Intergalactic Ninja Assassin!
  • Stuff Blowing Up: Barrels, Fuel Tanks, vehicles, rockets, grenades, quite a few things go boom.
    • The most memorable example is probably the Rakk Hive. After you kill it, it falls over like any other enemy. A few seconds later it explodes for no apparent reason.
  • Taking You With Me: Some bandits will try this.
    • The player can do a version of this. When the character runs out of heath they don't die immediately, instead they collapse on the spot have a few seconds while they bleed out during which they can still fire their equipped weapons (as if they'd been to the Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy, mind you), if the player gets a kill in this time they regain a small amount of health and can continue on.
  • That One Boss: Dear Mad Mel: die in a fire. Thank you, from Troperdom.
    • Krom is a pain just getting to him... Unless you use Mordecai and a good sniper rifle- either a Jakobs (high damage), Hyperion (high accuracy) or Maliwan (high elemental effects).
    • You don't have to be Mordecai to use a sniper rifle. But it doesn't hurt.
      • It depends on who it hurts. Mordecai's sniper bonuses can really mess enemies up.
    • The trick is to take cover and just sprint when he's stopped firing rockets. Or you can just leg it up there with no regard for personal safety if you're feeling gutsy.
    • Krom is really only difficult on the first attempt. Mothrakk is the real One Boss in this game.
  • That One Sidequest: Most critter-based elemental bosses tend to be rough in the early segments of the game, but aren't required to progress. Moe and Marley and Mothrakk are the standouts.
  • The Beastmaster: Mordecai, barring its cooldown, has a skill which allows him to sic a bird on his enemies.
  • The Gunslinger: Every playable character can use guns and has skill trees relating to them, but Mordecai actually gets a skill tree that's called this, specifically with pistols.
  • The Big Guy: Brick (Berserker)
  • The Medic: Roland has a skill tree called 'Medic'.
    • And his main medic skill converts friendly fire damage to health. Yeah, he shoots people to life (See Healing Shiv above).
  • This Is For Emphasis Bitch: Roland is known to say "Critical, Bitch!" after a critical.
    • No, No, it's "critical BIATCH!"
  • Time Keeps On Slipping: For a planet that supposedly has a 90-hour day/night cycle, Pandora gets dark awfully frequently.
    • Actually, the game takes place on the planet's night side. The day/night cycle there is caused by sunlight reflecting off Pandora's moon, which has a considerably faster orbit.
  • Token Minority: Roland is the only black character (There are some Faceless Goons that make their ethnicity unclear...), Lilith follows The Smurfette Principle for the playable characters.
  • Too Awesome To Use: Deliciously averted: You'll be throwing away or selling epic loot every fifteen seconds. Of course, there's no weapon durability, the only consumable is ammo, and it's both cheap and easily lootable.
    • Even more so with the Soldier if you have a good Support Gunner mod. Ammo regen!
  • Trigger Happy: Does this trope apply to you? You will probably enjoy this game, then. See Gun Porn Above.
  • Twenty Bear Asses: Every quest is this. Go here, kill those guys, get this macguffin, repeat.
  • Unusable Enemy Equipment: Averted with... the guns. If an enemy is shooting you with a cool gun, it will be there for you to take when you kill him. Played straight with normal weapons and melee weapons, though.
  • Universal Ammunition: While there are seperate ammunition categories (sniper rifle, combat rifle, rockets, etc.), the numberable variations within the types still use the same ammo... even if that variation happens to fire rockets or fire, and such.
  • Violence Is The Only Option: You shoot anything that gets in your way which is just about everything.
  • Viral Marketing: Hey, Gearbox Software! You do know that everyone on /v/ is just going to pirate your game, right?
  • Xen Syndrome: The only reason this game isn't solid gold is that frakking ending.
    • Or should it be that Rakking ending?
    • Though as the Fridge Brilliance points out, this may not actually be the case as far as story goes.
  • X Meets Y: Variously described in this way involving Diablo, World Of Warcraft, Fallout 3, Mad Max and probably more.
  • Your Head A Splode: Tag an enemy in the head with a sniper rifle. Presto! What head?
    • Get a rifle with enough damage and your entire freakin' body asplode.
    • ...Or just get Brick angry enough to punch a raider to make instant raider puree!
    • Or just get an Explosive Artifact upgrade for your character's special move or a gun that does Explosive element damage. Chances are SOMETHING on your foes will asplode.
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