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    YMMV tropes applying to the game series in general 
  • Adorkable: Claptrap. Even for a robot he's endearingly dorky.
  • Complete Monster: In the novel Unconquered, by John Shirley, Dr. Vialle is a Mad Scientist allied with General Goddess Gynella in her plan to subjugate Pandora. Using his SusDrug, Vialle drives entire villages and camps into lustful frenzies, making the males slaves to Gynella while the females are handed off to be raped by her armies. Vialle also performs horrifying experiments on countless people to test his new inventions, resulting in one subject tearing himself apart, and Vialle plans to ultimately betray Gynella herself for his own power.
  • Demonic Spiders: The Eridian guardians in all of the games are like this, having very powerful exotic weapons and usually teleport around a lot. Thankfully, they have very low HP under their shields, meaning shock weapons are ideal (the third game takes this up to eleven, as their entire health bars are made out of shield.)
  • Diagnosed by the Audience: Handsome Jack. The mood swings, delusions of heroism and distinct lack of impulse control are pretty clear signs something's wrong with this guy. This Game Theory video points out Jack has many symptoms of borderline personality disorder (pun not intended).
  • Goddamn Bats: Rakks, similar to their spiritual predecessors the cliff racers, have an annoying tendency to attack then fly away to the point it is hard to hit their narrow, fast moving bodies.
  • Magnificent Bitch: "Mad" Moxxi is a brilliant, promiscuous entrepreneur and a recurring ally of the Vault Hunters who balances her ruthless streak with a pleasant demeanor and non-stop innuendos. Moxxi's quests throughout the series generally involve you following her directions to accomplish whatever goals either party desires. Moxxi's most prominent feat is working alongside "Handsome" Jack and his crew to take back Helios in order to save Elpis, while secretly planning to kill Jack to stop his escalating megalomania, nearly succeeding when she tricks him into blowing up the Eye of the Destroyer. Still sore over Jack burning down her beloved Underdome bloodsport arena, when Mr. Torgue hosts a bloody tournament to find the ultimate badass on Pandora, Moxxi acts as the player's manager and co-commentates the matches, only to blackmail Torgue at the very end into giving her the keys to his arena. Eventually deciding she wants to scrub Jack out of her life forever, Moxxi leads a heist on the Handsome Jackpot casino, taking over and freeing its trapped denizens.
  • Scrappy Mechanic: Arbitrary Weapon Range is in full effect and is particularly aggravating with sniper rifles, as the bullet just magically disappears after traveling a certain distance, meaning you'll always fail to hit a target more than a certain distance away even if they are holding still and right in your crosshairs.
  • Tough Act to Follow: Handsome Jack is an example of a character being this. He was so well-received as an antagonist that he was brought back in a major role in two other games and is arguably the most iconic character in the series after Claptrap. With a reputation like that, pretty much every other villain afterwards is doomed to be compared to him. Even Gearbox themselves have acknowledged that trying to make an antagonist to match up to Jack was going to be a problem going forward.
  • Ugly Cute: Skags, when domesticated, still look like hideous lizard monsters but act like cute dogs.
  • What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: The games are beautifully cel-animated, which may fool some parents. However, on top of the gory, bloody explosions, you have characters like a thirteen-year old girl who witnesses her parent's brutal murder and wants revenge, a monster who just wants to be accepted and loved by society, an assassin, and a prolonged scene of assisted euthanasia (in which after the father in question hypocritically guilt trip you by calling you a child killer). The game also deals with fairly complex themes like the dark side of capitalism, greed, drug abuse, corporate exploitation of the environment, and grief. The humor is also pretty off-color (though profanity is fairly infrequent). Oh, and there are lots of guns. 87 Bazillion, to be exact.
  • Woolseyism: In the French translation of the series, a literal translation of "Catch-A-Ride" (an automated service providing vehicle rentals) wouldn't sound very good, so the translators changed it into "Auto-loc", which includes a double-meaning where both possible meanings are as meaningful as the original. "Loc" is a shortened form of "location" ("rental"), while "auto" is both the shortened form of "automatique" ("automatic") and "automobile" ("car").

    YMMV pages of specific games 

    YMMV tropes with their own pages 

    YMMV applying to the Russian novel series 
  • Squick: One of the possible mental states required to open a portal to Centrum is the urge to pee or even take a dump.

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