Video Game / Tiny Tina's Wonderlands

Be #ChaoticGreat

"There is a world beyond the Borderlands. A world forged by wonder and ruled by fate. There's one alone who can wield fate. One alone whose story is in their own hands: The Fatemaker. That's you. Heavy, right?"

— Official Story trailer

Tiny Tina's Wonderlands is a First-Person Shooter game developed by Gearbox Software, released on March 25th, 2022 for Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and the Epic Games Store, with the Steam version releasing on June 23, 2022.

The game is a spinoff set in the Borderlands universe starring Tiny Tina, Pandora's deadliest 13-year old, playing a session of Bunkers & Badasses alongside two fellows (Valentine and Frette) and the player. In typical Borderlands fashion, the game itself is a Looter Shooter where players select a class, each of which has two Action Skills and several class-specific perks, and set to adventure in the fictitious Wonderlands. Weapons and other items fall from dead enemies, and the players rack up XP to increase their levels. Six classes are available in the base game: the Stabbomancer, the Brrzerker, the Clawbringer, the Spellshot, the Graveborne, and the Spore Warden. A seventh class was added via DLC called the Blightcaller.

As part of the promotional campaign for the game, the Borderlands 2 DLC Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep (the inspiration for this game) was released as a standalone game as Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep: A Wonderlands's One-Shot Adventure for free in the Epic Games Store, and at a small charge everywhere else, on November 9, 2021.

Dark Horse published Tiny Tinas Wonderlands Land Of The Giants in 2024.

Has an official page.

Also has a game guide.

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ROLL FOR INITIATIVE, SUCKAAAAAAAAS!

• Abnormal Ammo:
  • The legendary Li'l K's Breadslicer fires sawblades in its primary mode and explosive baguettes in its secondary firing mode.
  • Mimics will spew out items like books and shields when they're far away from you.
  • Certain non-legendary weapons (called "Magus," as in "Magus of the Example") fire sawblades as well. They stick into enemies, causing bonus damage.
• Absurdly Low Level Cap: With a cap of 40, it's definitely the smallest cap seen in any Borderlands game (even the original capped at 50 at launch). This is likely because you only have two skill trees this time. It's entirely possible to hit the cap before the end of the first playthrough if you do a good amount of side quests. On the other hand, chaos levels (the equivalent to mayhem levels from Borderlands 3) went up to 20 at launch and then was increased to 100 with a later patch.
• Adam Smith Hates Your Guts:
  • Prices are much higher this time around. Even with extensive looting, a single piece of purple gear can cost enough to cleave out a majority of your savings.
  • SDUs for increasing ammo capacity in this game don't use a secondary currency (much like in Borderlands 3), and instead they require a massive amount of Gold, with the final upgrades requiring multiple millions.
• Alice Allusion: Despite the game literally being called Wonderlands, the allusions are limited to Tina's bunny motif in her outfit and the Chaos Chambers.
• Alien Blood: Everything that can bleed bleeds light blue blood, humans included.
• All for Nothing: If you attempt to fight the Optional Bosses in the Chaos Chambers instead of completing the run, but fail due to running out of lives, the run counts as failed and you will not be able to spend what Chaos Crystals you've already collected.
• Antepiece: The puzzles you need to do to unlock the Optional Bosses in the Chaos Chambers are the same techniques you need to use against the corresponding boss.
• And the Adventure Continues: Fittingly enough for a game that's framed in-universe as a B&B campaign, after defeating the Dragon Lord, sparing him, and freeing Queen Butt Stallion, Tina, Frette, and Valentine decide to just start a new campaign with the Newbie.
• And You Were There: While there are more original characters this time around, a number of the NPCs are based around people Tina knows personally or at least met on the ECHOnet. The specific examples this time around are Paladin Mike (Lorelei), Mr. Torgue as a bard, the Fairy Punchfather (Brick), Claptrap (who is basically himself but reskinned for a fantasy world), and The Notetaker (Roland). Curiously, the Zomboss talks and acts exactly like GenIVIV despite Tina unlikely knowing who she is.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • If you happen to die in an encounter after it has been cleared, you get respawned in the encounter arena rather then get booted out if you haven't claimed your loot. This also means that you won't lose a life if this happens in Chaos Chamber runs.
  • Every single area, encounter, and dungeon will scale to your current level. You don't have to abandon certain areas because they're too low-leveled. Unique weapons provided by quests have a small chance of being available at a vending machine (for a hefty price).
  • Due to the Absurdly Low Level Cap at 40, certain level milestones give out more skill points as compensation (though sadly not enough to reach the final skill in two class trees simultaneously).
  • All lootables will now open with a melee attack. This helps in case you're surrounded by enemies. In addition, melee attacks can hit multiple lootables at once. Not to mention injuring mimics pretending to be chests.
  • You can still fast-travel locally around areas, and boss arenas have fast-travel points located outside of their entrances. In addition, you can return to the Overworld or Brighthoof no matter where you are in-game.
  • If you do return to Brighthoof from another area, there will be a portal in the middle of town that leads back to the area you just left.
  • If you die to the subsequent forms on a multi-stage boss fight, then you'll skip straight to that phase once you go back in.
  • Tina will pipe up if a dungeon you're near contains a Shrine piece that you haven't collected yet.
  • An update made golden dice account-bound instead of character-bound, so you no longer need to hunt them down for every file. In addition, they leave behind a distinctive mark on the ground which helps tell if they've already been discovered.
  • Going through a chaos chamber room's exit portal will automatically collect every crystal that dropped so you never accidentally leave any behind.
  • The Featured Runs for the Chaos Chamber always contain all 3 Optional Bosses and therefore lets you fight The Maker, which mitigates some RNG where Normal Runs may not have all 3.
  • To help keep dropped gear strong as you go up in chaos levels, the lower special tiers will actually get lower drop chances while the higher tiers simultaneously get higher. From chaos 20 and up, the chances of Chaotic gear starts going down while the chances for Volatile gear goes up.
  • With the June 23rd update, you can now automatically pick up motes in the chaos chambers by moving into them, making the "keep fireball alive" objective much easier. Previously, this was incredibly difficult due to the enemies swarming you, as well as having to avoid pointlessly grabbing at everything else the enemy dropped, or even their body blocking it if you killed them with cryo.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: The dark magic water in Dry'l's arena will damage your health directly, regardless of ward capacity. The Banshee and Dragon Lord can also cover parts of the arena with health-draining dark magic. Definitely exercise caution if you're using a Deathless.
• Art Evolution: Most notable in Tina herself. Her face comes across as much more expressive than it was in Borderlands 2
• The Artifact: Melee boosts to guns are still represented by bayonets, but with the advent of different melee weapon types, they go unused.
• As Himself: Butt Stallion is credited as herself in the cast list.
• Automatic Crossbows: Crossbows appear as an analog to the alien-barreled firearms of 3. They launch slower projectiles that do increasing amounts of damage with each bolt in a target.
• Bad Powers, Good People:
  • The Graveborn class is a necromancer who has a bound demilich "pet," and specializes in Life Draining enemies, conjuring ghost hydras as a side-effect of killing their foes, has the option to take a Faustian bargain at level 5, and is generally the kind of wizard the clerics preach against.
  • The Blightcaller DLC class is also a nasty necromancer who channels the ill feelings-and restless souls-of people who died in wetlands. Most of their skills revolve around poison and performing dread rituals upon their foes.
• The Beastmaster: The Graveborn, Spore Warden and Clawbringer have pets that follow them around as passive bonuses. By multiclassing, players can even have two pets deployed at once.
• Bait-and-Switch: Plenty - For example, in the quest "Legendary Bow," you're tasked by an archer to find the titular Bow. It's actually a bow-tie. At the end of it, it turns out that said archer was trying to elevate her brand.
• Big Bad: The Dragon Lord is the BBEG of Tina’s campaign and is a villain she reuses for almost all of her campaigns. As it turns out, this is because he was actually her PC in her first game only for him to suffer an alignment change to Evil thanks to her actions in the game.
• Big Good: Butt Stallion as the Queen of the realm and the nemesis of the Dragon Lord.
• Bland-Name Product: In-Universe. The weapons manufacturers are renamed to fit the fantasy universe... except for Torgue, which is still Torgue (though company's logo swaps out the gyrojet for a dagger).
  • Tediore is called Feriore, to emphasize their inferior nature. ^note The name is "Ferrum" + "Tediore", "Ferrum" being Latin for "Iron" and referring to iron swords. The earliest examples were only a slight improvement to their predecessors, bronze swords, and could still be bent out of shape or break during use, referencing Tediore's intentionally shoddy and cheap construction.
  • Hyperion is called Hyperius.
  • Dahl is called Dahlia.
  • Vladof is called Stoker.
  • Jakobs is called Blackpowder.
  • Bandit (A.K.A. Scav and CoV) is called Skulldugger.
  • Anshin is Ashen.
  • Pangolin is Pangoblin.
• Bonus Dungeon: There are a few levels that are completely optional and are never needed to progress through to confront the Dragon Lord. These stages have their own primary sidequest that has the Fatemaker trek through the majority of the level with its own share of sidequests scattered throughout. With the missions constantly scaling themselves to the player's level, one can take their time in conquering each. It may be advisable to put off the earlier stages (such as Mount Craw and Tangledrift) until unlocking all of the weapon slots for convenience's sake.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • The Spellshot's Ambihexterous Action Skill option causes the Fatemaker to disregard the Action Skill concept entirely, instead giving the option to equip and cast another spell. While the extra spell is much less flashy than Action Skills, having an extra spell has massive synergy with the other Spellshot skills and simplifies gearing significantly. Once the Spellshot obtains Sever the Thread which allows both spells to reset up to every 5 seconds, the "boring" aspect becomes no longer applicable as you now have an extra spell to create chaos in short bursts.
  • The Stabbomancer's feat simply gives a 30% boost to critical hit chance. It's not as flashy as having a companion or being able to utilize a class-exclusive buff, but it's useful nonetheless.
• Borrowed Biometric Bypass: King Archer's hand is used to remove Extra-Calibur from the stone where it's planted.
• Boss Rush: The June 2022 update added a boss run to the chaos chamber.
• Boss Subtitles: As per Borderlands tradition. Except this time, instead of “Titles by Marcus”, Tina presents boss subtitles through entries in her monster manual.
• Breaking Old Trends:
  • Character Customization is full effect, the main character is a Featureless Protagonist with selection of appearance and personalities.
  • Parodying classic RPG in addition to tabletop RPG, exploration is now done through top-down overworld, and first-person-combat is done by Random Encounters and Dungeon Crawling.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall:
  • In-universe. As Wonderlands is technically a game of Bunkers and Badasses, one quest has the players' path blocked by a cheese puff that Tina accidentally left on the board.
  • Out of universe, at one point during a Claptrap quest. While attempting to free you from a personal hell, Claptrap accidentally transports you to a bare-bones 3D environment with a wire frame floor and arrows to indicate the x, y, and z axes. Claptrap desperately claims that you’ve found yourself on the “Grey Plains” before sheepishly admitting you weren’t supposed to see any of this.
• Bring My Brown Pants: The Amnesiac halfling scares someone named Billy, and to make amends, she talks about buying him a new pair of trousers, presumably because of what happened to the ones he was wearing because of his scare.
• Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": One of the abilities that the Spellshot has is to transform an enemy into a Sheep, which is instead called a "Skeep." If you look closely, you’ll notice that they’re actually the Borderlands staple “skag” enemy with sheep wool and big glassy eyes.
• Cast From Hitpoints: The Graveborn's abilities focus on draining their health to deal damage. Their "Reaper of Bones" skill grants them Life Drain and bonus Magic Damage at the cost of constantly draining health while their "Dire Sacrifice" has them sacrifice 20% of their health to deal an AOE blast of magic.
• The Cameo:
  • Mr. Torgue High-Five Flexington appears as a bard.
  • While he's never named, Roland makes some voice-only cameos as the narrator and is revealed to be the one who got Tina into B&B in the first place.
  • The soda can that makes the soda river in the beginning section of the overworld is labeled "Maliwater", most likely a side product of Maliwan.
• Character Customization: In contrast with previous games, rather than playing a set character you're playing a customizable character that you build, ranging from body type to species and even different voices. You can also choose a background for your character to determine their starting statistics.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Much of the game's advertising, particularly the box art, prominently features a large undead dragon that is never really addressed anywhere in the game until the final boss fight, where the Dragon Lord summons her for the fight. Turns out, she's called Bernadette.
• Chest Monster: Mimics are back, but their reveals are much less startling than their Dragon Keep versions. They can disguise themselves as ammo chests, overworld money chests, or have baby mimics pop out of broken crates.
• Closed Circle: Valentine had crashed his and Frette’s ship into a mountain shortly before the start of the game. Hence the two are stuck at Tina’s place playing Bunkers & Badasses for the foreseeable future.
• Combo Platter Powers: While initially your character only has one class later on you can multiclass into the other five classes, allowing you to use their Action Skills as well as their passives.
• Continuity Nod:
  • According to her profile page in the game's official site, Tina's referred as "the world's deadliest 13-year old", which is how she was introduced during the main story of Borderlands 2.
  • The Dragon Lord has gone on record as being the villain in all of Tina’s campaigns… except for one (Assult on Dragon’s Keep) where he was replaced by a “Handsome Hack”.
  • One scroll you find indicates that the events of Assault on Dragon’s Keep are canon with this game. It mentions that after the events of the DLC, Queen Butt Stallion founded the city of Brighthoof as a more defensible location.
  • The final prophecy scroll you get in the main game has Tina mention a seat at her tea table being “reserved” and showing a bit of panic when “The Notetaker” a.k.a. Roland almost sits in it. This is likely a Call-Back to Borderlands 2, and the “reserved” seat is probably for the bandit Flesh-Stick who sold her parents and her to Hyperion. (It's also possibly a Genius Bonus reference to the Siege Perilous.)
• Cool Sword: The Sword of Souls, being an elaborately decorated blade with a magic gem imbued above the hilt, a split in its blade to help channel magical laser beams, and "limitless potential", according to Tina. It has the power to sever the bonds of fate itself, allow the user to fight gods, or to become gods themselves.
• Cosmic Horror Story: The world of the game is explicitly an actual reality where Tina is a god with incredible control. Individuals can make decisions that Tina has no effect on but that seems to only be due to ignorance. The Dragon Lord is forced to say and feel things that Tina improvises for him and his main motivation is his lack of actual agency.
• Cursed with Awesome: Several Easy curses in the Chaos Chamber have zero downside in addition to increased crystal generation, such as Party Time (enemies can Lootsplode) and Rend and Rupture (enemies can be executed below 15% Health)
• Critical Hit: In addition to the normal Borderlands "shoot the weak spot" crit, the game also has the classic critical hit system, where any attack has a chance to crit. Guns, magic, and melee all have their own separate crit chance and damage values.
• Critical Hit Class: The Stabbomancer is this - they have multiple skills based around increasing the effects of critical hits as well as several skills based on status effects, with their Tier 5 and Tier 6 skills all adding additional effects to their critical hits. In addition, the Village Idiot backstory option in the character creation gives you a permanent +10% crit chance.
• Deep-Immersion Gaming: The game is actually the shared imagination of a Bunkers & Badasses group. At least, in dungeons.
• Defeat Means Friendship: After you beat the Dragon Lord and the Fatemaker ultimately spares him, to Tina and the Dragon Lord's surprise both, the Dragon Lord realizes the error of his ways and tries to make it up to Butt Stallion for his attempted murder and betrayal. He's also much more friendly to the Fatemaker, making pleasant conversation with them about where his life is going now.
• Dem Bones: Skeletons are a common humanoid enemy type, much like psychos were for Borderlands. They have a new type of health bar; a white colored one for bone, which is weak to ice.
• Deus ex Machina: Queen Butt Stallion serves as this In-Universe, effortlessly resolving every challenge the heroes encounter, including the previous campaign shown in the intro. Which makes it all the more surprising when the Dragon Lord suddenly beheads her at the end of the first act.
• Easily Forgiven: Zig-Zagged in the ending. While the Fatemaker spares the Dragon Lord and is satisfied with him being able to decide his fate without all the apocalyptic consequences, Her Majesty clearly holds a grudge for the Dragon Lord's imprisoning her, beheading her, and attempting to destroy her world as we all knew it, and swiftly sentences him to 200 years imprisonment in the castle.
• Excalibur in the Stone: The Lake Lady directs Claptrap to the sword Extra-Caliber. This sword is stuck inside of a stone, and can only be pulled out by a king.
• Fallen Hero: In-universe, the Dragon Lord used to be Queen Butt Stallion's Fatemaker, until he turned evil and betrayed her, in a desire to be free of his Fate. In a meta sense, Dragon Lord used to be Tina's player character until her usual psychotic actions forced him to change to Evil alignment.
• Fantasy Gun Control: It wouldn't be a Borderlands game if this was in effect. That being said, melee weapons and crossbows appear to be more common than bog-standard firearms.
  Tina: Now, some you may be asking, "Tina, why are there guns in a fantasy world?" And I am so glad you asked, because SHUT UP YOUR FACE AND GET SHOOTING!
• Forced Transformation: The Spellshot has the ability to turn enemies into harmless "Skeep" that float helplessly around, being functionally identical to Phaselock/Phasegrasp.
• Fractured Fairy Tale: A number of classic fairy tales and stories get a nod in the side quests, including Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, Don Quixote, and Pinocchio… each with a Borderlands'' twist.
• Framing Device: Like in the "Dragon Keep" DLC of 2, the game takes the form of Tina running a B&B campaign, with the player being a "newbie" controlling "The Fatemaker" that's been cast as the PC of the game.
• Frothy Mugs of Water: The local pub is noted very explicitly to be a soda bar. Justified, as your GM is a(n unhinged) little girl.
• Getting Crap Past the Radar: Due to the lower age rating of this game, the dirtier jokes tend to be hidden. For example, a sidequest with a magic bean requires the player to flick it into a village; "flick the bean" is an euphemism for female masturbation.
• Glass Cannon: The Spellshot has this as a skill, which prevents their Ward from automatically recharging in exchange for +30% Spell Damage. Notably, the lack of Ward recharge is the better feature of this talent as it allows the Fatemaker to use Wards that benefit from being depleted, notably Cursed Wit.
• Goomba Stomp: You can instakill certain mushroom enemies by jumping on them. They even get cartoonishly flattened!
• Gosh Dangit To Heck: While there still are some PG-13 swear words, vulgarity is more toned down. One enemy death line in particular is "Curse you! Curse you to Heck!"
• Guide Dang It!: The mechanics behind Companions spawned by reloading Feriore weapons are surprisingly complex, with the only hint provided in-game is what type of companion (Hydra, Pixie, or Flying Gun) appears. The damage type of the companion (Gun or Spell) is determined by the weapon type and subtype, which is critically important for making proper builds. There are also additional miscellaneous rules such as pixies not counting for the Graveborn's Faithful Thralls skill, and the flying gun not scaling on Companion damage modifiers at all. A popular community spreadsheet attempts to consolidate all the known rules.
• Frothy Mugs of Water: All drinks are explicitly stated to be non-alcoholic. The main bar, Izzy's Fizzies, serves only soda.
• Healing Checkpoint: Where there's a Mighty Knight vendor, there's a checkpoint. And Mighty Knight vendors can heal the Newbie for free.
• Healing Shiv: One of the explosive barrel types is a health barrel that releases a healing explosion and drops some health potions.
• In Medias Res: The story begins with Frette, Valentine, and the player at the end of a previous campaign involving the Dragon Lord before starting a brand new one.
• Interquel: The game takes place between Dragon Keep and Commander Lilith and the Fight For Sanctuary, with Tina portrayed as a 13 year old and Mr. Torgue (who was introduced in the DLC for the second game) playing a role. The presence of an Ellie's Garage poster in Tina's bunker (best seen in the Social menu) seems to indicate that it takes place after Commander Lilith, since that's when ownership of the garage was officially transferred to her.
• Invisibility: The Stabbomancer has an ability called "From the Shadows" that turns them invisible and causes all attacks to be crits, functioning just like FL4K's Fade Away with the Guerillas in the Mist augment.
• Kill It with Ice: Undead enemies are weak to Frost Damage, as denoted by a gray healthbar.
• Last Lousy Point: Strangely, Lucky Dice don't get marked on the map once found or activated, despite being the most helpful and important collectible. You can't exactly just leave them be for post-game cleanup since finding them gives you a much-needed permanent drop rate boost. If you find yourself with the whole map explored and only one or two missing, then good luck finding them without a guide. And even with a guide, that's upwards of 20 locations to double-check. Thankfully, after patch 1.0.2.0a, this issue has gotten a helpful change, as Lucky Dice only need to be found once in any save file. You still need to painstakingly seek out each one, but just once.
• Life Drain: The Dark Magic damage type returns damage dealt as health. The Graveborn's abilities use this damage type to offset the fact that they're Cast From Hitpoints.
• Lighter and Softer: The game is rated “T for Teen”, as opposed to the “M for Mature” mainline Borderlands series, and it's not hard to see why. Blood is practically non-existent, the swearing and sexual content are dialed back a lot, and the plot itself is a much more whimsical fantasy adventure with little tension, compared to the often-brutal Black Comedy of the main games. Even alcohol has been replaced by soda. Likely justified due to the plot being driven by the imagination of an innocent (albeit somewhat deranged) 13-year old.
• Mage Marksman: The Spellshot is built around weaving spells and gunfire between each other, with a special buff called "Spellweaving" granted every time a spell is cast or a weapon is reloaded, which grants certain effects depending on unlocked skills. Many of their skills are based around spells buffing guns and/or guns buffing spells, with skills such as Imbued Weapon and Double Knot causing weapons to deal damage according to a cast spell's element. Their Tier 6 skill, "Sever the Thread" causes critical hits with guns to have a chance to instantly reset spell cooldowns.
• Medium Awareness:
  • The Dragon Lord is aware of the fact that he's a character in an RPG campaign and thus treats the player as just another PC he's forced to deal with.
  • One sidequest has Claptrap give you a spell that doesn't mesh with his build and mentions he's just gonna go farm for a better one.
  • One of the Gruff voice's idle lines comments that you must have looked away from the big screen to look at the small screen (a phone or tablet).
  • When Izzy introduces the ability to swap your secondary class, she speaks about it in a way that makes her aware she's in a game. After the player asks if she's allowed to talk about things like that, she mentions the "giants in the sky" and says that since she's not real, she doesn't have to worry about her actions.
• Mentor Occupational Hazard: Upon entering Brighthoof, The Dragon Lord asks the Newbie if they have any mentors available to be killed as to raise the Newbie's ire and increase their investment in taking The Dragon Lord down.
• Meteor-Summoning Attack: Certain spells allow the player to do this to enemies once cast.
• Mood Whiplash: Some scenes rely on sudden, dramatic shifts in tone, Played for Drama or Played for Laughs. For specific examples of both:
  • The Fatemaker finally gets to meet Queen Butt Stallion, who opens the gates to her castle and comes out to Brighthoof's town square to see them personally. Paladin Mike happily translates that Her Majesty intends to knight them for their bravery, and the Fatemaker gladly kneels... then the skies darken, the Dragon Lord appears, and beheads Queen Butt Stallion, killing her.
  • As the Fatemaker attempts to get their ship blessed by a bard, Mr. Torgue, Torgue explains that the "vibes" between the arguing Valentine and Frette are too negative, and declares the party too "divided". He orders a "vibe-check", upon which he starts playing music and Frette and Valentine have a heartwarming moment discussing their differences, coming to a compromise, and agreeing to do better so they can both enjoy the game how they wish to. Meanwhile, the Fatemaker assists by summoning various magical instruments, especially an increasingly large "Ding-a-ling" (a cowbell). When Tina declares the party "un-divided", Torgue then says that the "vibes are too powerful" and the blessing has become a "blasting". To everyone's shock, confusion, and horror, Torgue casts "Magic Missile"—a series of gigantic enchanted ICBMs that all fire into the ocean, detonate in a gigantic mushroom cloud, and proceed to displace all of the water in the ocean in a gigantic tsunami. Now able to cross the ocean safely, Tina declares that their "well-thought-out" adventure continues.
• Mythology Gag: In the original Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep DLC, Mr. Torgue gives you a mission to literally blow up the ocean. In this game, we see Mr. Torgue do exactly that.
  Mr. Torgue: I CAST MAGIC *bonk*ING MISSILE!!!!
• Optional Boss: There are four hidden bosses exclusive to the chaos chambers. You unlock them by interacting with a glowing glyph and completing a minigame, after which a red portal will appear next to the yellow end portal leading to them. Fighting all three bosses in one run unlocks the fourth boss, The Maker, a projection of Tina.
• Overly Long Gag: In "Non-Violent Offender", one way to resolve the last stage of the quest is to spend several minutes listening to Broonfeld the guardian's threatening monologue until he gets worn out and falls asleep again.
• Overworld Not to Scale: When walking around in the Overworld the player moves around the map as a miniature version of their character with Big Head Mode. Even then, there are still plenty of interactibles in the map itself including sidequests, random encounters and unlockable shortcuts.
• No-Sell: Loot enemies (such as the Motherlode Mimic and Loot Goblin) are completely immune to guns and spells. You'll have to chase them down and melee them to defeat them. Thankfully, flying loot enemies are still vulnerable to guns. Golden mimics can make all the baby mimics bulletproof until you kill it.
  • The "Elemental Overflow" modifier makes every enemy in a chaos chamber room immune to one element, depending on the color of the aura around them. Killing one makes an explosion of that element around them.
• Pocket Rocket Launcher: Stoker (Not-Vladof) has Zip Rockets as a possible secondary fire mode, and Torgue swaps between Impact and Sticky fuses, similar to Borderlands 3.
• Pooled Funds: One line that might be spoken when idling has the Newbie think about gathering so much coin or gold that they'd need a building to store it in, and then they can dive into it like a "swimming hole".
• Punny Name: Several of the class names are wacky puns:
  • Stabbomancer is based on Stab + Necromancer. Or, considering the series, anything ending with "romancer".
  • Brrzerker is, well, Brr + Berserker: the class has strong emphasis on cryo and melee attacks.
  • Spellshot is Spellsword + Shot, given that the player uses guns instead of melee weapons.
  • Hexecutioner (The result of multiclassing into Spellshot and Clawbringer) is a combination of Hex + Executioner.
  • Ice Shivver for the combination of Stabbomancer + Brrzerker.
• Put on a Bus: Due to the game's setting and spinoff status, most of the Borderlands regulars (Mad Moxxi, Mordecai, Marcus, etc.) don't make an appearance.
• Rage Against the Author: The Dragon Lord is trying to lash out against Tina for turning him from her PC to her standard BBEG doomed to be constantly killed by Fatemakers.
• Random Encounters: You can experience these on the overworld map when walking through tall grass (or anywhere in the desert). When one appears, it takes the form of a glowing light for a couple seconds, then turns into an enemy that chases you. If they touch you, you're taken to a small environment to fight them. You can opt out of these fights by simply meleeing them.
• Retcon: An in-universe example. One sidequest has you retrieving the body of a Coiled's pet crab so she can bury it. After you get it, she starts talking about how much she loved it, then Tina decides that this is too sad and makes it so the crab was just sleeping. From then on, the Coiled and her crab can be seen happily enjoying each other's company on the overworld.
• Roguelike:
  • The Chaos Chamber endgame activity operates like this - you fight through a series of encounters, acquiring buffs, temporary skill increases, and curses along the way. The mode revolves around a currency called crystals. Completing secondary missions in an encounter nets you more crystals; however, you can increase the amount of crystals you get by grabbing curses - each of which introduces a modifier ala Borderlands 3's Mayhem mode into subsequent encounters in exchange for increasing crystal drop rates. Crystals can be used to buy buffs from altars scattered across the encounter, with the price doubling every time you get one. Crystals are also used to get additional loot at the end, forcing the player to decide between getting a buff or saving the crystals to cash out. Beware, however - you cannot carry crystals between runs, regardless if you won or lost.
  • One of the Hard Curses in the Chaos Chambers is literally called "Rouge Lite", which disables the Save Your Soul mechanic.
• RPG Episode: The game is effectively the "Dragon Keep" DLC turned into it's own game since it's focused on yet another B&B campaign run by Tina.
• Running Gag: After the ocean disappears, there's lots of bickering and confusion about the difference between flotsam and jetsam.^note Both are legal distinctions for anything that was originally on a ship but has floated to the surface. Flotsam is anything that was unintentionally lost, jetsam is anything that was intentionally thrown off.
• Schizo Tech: While the setting is chiefly high-fantasy, the futuristic firearms of the Borderlands universe have been retained (albeit with some rebranding for any manufacturer not named Torgue). The crossbows also assume an obvious gun-like form (and are compound x-bows on top of that), the vendors work like they did in 3, Torgue's Magic Missile spell takes the form of an ICBM (with a missile silo to boot), and Paladin Mike even attempts to provide the Fatemaker with some C4 (which was hastily replaced with "FANTASY-4" after a complaint was leveled against Tina).
• Schmuck Bait:
  • The legendary sniper rifle, Antique Greatbow, initially looks like a monster of a gun with ridiculously high damage and a very high sell price. But wait, what's with that red text? "It'd be worth a hefty sum if it was never fired"? Eh, whatever. Fire it, and... oh. The damage goes down by 90%, the sell price goes down to only a few thousand, and the red text changes to "What a pity."
  • Golden mimics will disguise themselves as loot chests when you're not looking, and will get a hit on you if you try to open them.
• Screw Destiny: The Dragon Lord is largely trying to escape his fate as the recurring Big Bad, even if he has to kill Queen Butt Stallion, his former monarch and use the Sword of Souls to destroy the world to do it.
• Spin Attack: The Brrzerker's "Dreadwind" ability has them spinning and hitting enemies with their axe while causing cryo damage.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute:
  • Spells are effectively the replacement for grenades in this game, albeit with more function other than direct damage and working off of cooldowns rather than ammo.
  • Enemy-wise, cultists fill in the role normally taken by Psychos in the main series - unstable lunatics who chase after the player, slashing at them with their edged weapons.
  • Despite the absence of Atlas and Maliwan, there are some guns with homing bullets and charge-up elemental projectiles.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: When it is revealed that the Sword of Souls can absorb and imprison evil souls, Frette questions why it hasn’t been used on the recurring threat of the Dragon Lord. Tina hastily claims that the Dragon Lord, the Big Bad ancient evil, hasn’t actually done anything to deserve that. She conveniently leaves out that he used to be her player character.
• Take a Third Option: With the Dragon Lord defeated and the limitless power of the Sword of Souls in their hand, the Fatemaker decides to spare the Dragon Lord while still freeing Queen Butt Stallion, much to his and even Tina's surprise.
• Trophy Room: Whenever you defeat an obelisk boss, their taxidermied body will appear at Izzy's Fizzies as a decoration.
• Wham Line: Shortly after the Dragon Lord crashes the Fatemaker's knighting ceremony, Tina claims that she didn’t mean for it to happen.
• Wham Shot: Early on in the game, just as the Fatemaker is about to be knighted, the Dragon Lord crashes the party, steals the Sword of Souls, and beheads Butt Stallion.
• Whatevermancy:
  • One of the classes you can take is Stabbomancer, which is Wonderlands' take on the assassin.
  • The Fairy Punchfather mentions using Punchomancy during the sidequest "Walk the Stalk".
• World Shapes: The planet the Wonderlands is located on is meant to resemble a D-20.
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: In-Universe example: Tina is having to quickly make changes to her campaign based on the actions of the players, her own carelessly leaving snacks on the game table, or characters in the game gaining wills of their own and rebelling against her. She will deny this, insisting everything is well thought out and planned ahead.

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