History Fridge / Borderlands

*** They don't make Shotguns because their low ammo counts would not fit well with the Vladof rapid-fire approach. Leave that approach to the likes of Hyperion.

** Jack was either [[RevengeBeforeReason too blinded by revenge]] to consider [[FailedASpotCheck checking himself if he was still registered on the stations]], or he was too confident he (or the Warrior) could kill the Vault Hunters and didn't set up the New-U Station accordingly. So, while the Warrior can still be fought against, Jack, in spite of being Hyperion's president, is truly nowhere to be seen.

*** They don't make Shotguns because their low ammo counts would not fit well with the Vladof rapid-fire approach.

* Related to the New-U Station point from FridgeBrilliance: What about [[PlotlineDeath the exceptions]]? Hyperion gets to decide who lives and who doesn't. So yeah, the line about the lack of higher power than Hyperion, also present in 2, wasn't a joke. And Jack was too confident he (or the Warrior) could kill the Vault Hunters and didn't set up the New-U Station accordingly.

* The entire game, even series, seems to be a giant TakeThat against the idea of [[MegaCorp letting corporations act in a government's place]]. In the first game alone you have a corporation that literally abandoned a planet of people to mutated raiders and deadly wildlife (Dahl), one that didn't even try to save lives during a zombie outbreak (Jakobs), and one that treated its best military commander with the same respect you save for a data entry clerk (Atlas). We all know what happened with the corporation shown in the 4th DLC (Hyperion), which, as of the second game, had waged a war with the population for 3 years, turned into a Orwellian corporation full of backstabbing corporate climbers and run by a CorruptCorporateExecutive whose policies were on par with Stalin's regime. And in the third game, the remaining big corporation (Maliwan) becomes the backbone of a cult of bandits led by a Siren bandit and her brother, both of which suffer from [[AGodAmI God complex]].

* Bosses can still be fought even after being defeated and the respective missions they appear are marked as complete. Why does that happen? The New-U stations are the answer, especially considering what one of their spoken lines says in ''2''. In short you aren't fighting the real deal anymore, just a digistructed clone that can still be destroyed:

** Atlas: In the first game they were a master of all, with their weapons being rare yet rarely suck. After the events of ''The Secret Armory of General Knoxx'', they were left in a poor state, and some time before ''2'' they were bought out by Hyperion.
*** In ''3'', with Rhys in charge, their handguns and rocket launchers became wrist-mounted. Their assault rifles still require two hands to use though. All 3 weapons come with alt-fire trackers that lock-on to the enemies. Submachine guns wouldn't benefit much from homing trackers and bullets, nor would shotguns or sniper rifles, hence their absence in Atlas manufacturing. However with 3 exceptions most of their guns don't have any elemental enhancements at all as the grenade mods fill that niche. This is due to Maliwan and the [=CoV=] invading Promethea, which no doubt interrupted any attempts to enhance their firearms with elemental powers, given that there's a ''planet-wide invasion'' going on.

*** In ''3'', with Katagawa in charge of Maliwan, the rocket launchers were dropped in favor of shotguns as he felt that shotguns give the enemy a personal sense of fear. That and he was probably tired of hearing complaints from Torgue, and to fit in with their "stylish corporate executive" aesthetic. Their weapons also added in alt-fire elemental capacitors like incendiary/shock in order to deal with enemies that have shields or incendiary/corrosive to those who have armor, likely as a result of finding out the hard way that having a powerful elemental weapon means absolutely ''nothing'' if the opponent in question can NoSell the oncoming fire.

* Why are there specifically SIX sirens at any one time? There are four players who could all be sirens, and 2 [=NPCs=] who were sirens in each game:
** Steele, Angel and PC Lilith in ''1''
** Lilith, Angel and PC Maya in ''2'' (and, by extension, ''The Pre-Sequel'').
** Lilith (and [[DePower later]] Tyreen), Maya (and [[KilledOffForReal later]] Tannis) and PC Amara in ''3''.

** '''Maliwan:''' Maliwan build weapons to make their designers feel clever. This means either weapons that are precise (pistols, sniper rifles) or weapons that let them push the boundaries with their tech - rocket launchers as a power level and blast radius test, submachine guns as a speed test.

** '''Tediore:''' Tediore don't make guns for the military, they make guns for ordinary citizens to use cheaply in home defense and possibly hunting for food.

* The sirens we see across the series have powers that match their personalities:
** Lilith is powerful and confident, but also reckless and impulsive, and tends to charge into things without thinking, which ends up causing her quite a few problems over the course of the game. Fittingly, Phasewalk is an ability that allows her to charge into combat and tear enemies up, with the risk of leaving her in a bad position after she returns to normal, or it can act as a crutch to escape from enemies if she's gotten herself into trouble.
** In Maya's ECHO logs, it is shown that she refused to hurt someone without first trying to analyse the situation and get context on why she's being asked to hurt them, but once she realises what's happening, she shuts down the corrupt priest who raised her and kills him without a second thought. Fittingly, Phaselock allows her to lock enemies down and gain some breathing room to analyse the situation and decide what to do next, and allows her to immobilise enemies for an easy kill once she's acquired her target.
** Angel has been locked up, abused and pumped full of Eridium for years on end by Handsome Jack, and wants nothing more than to escape his grasp. [[WordOfGod The devs stated on record]] that Angel's siren power is to create alternate realities, and that the original plan was to meet her in a house that she'd simulated with her power. She wants to escape her prison, and her power allows her to do it, at least temporarily.

* Bosses can still be fought even after being defeated and the respective missions they appear are marked as complete. Why does that happen? The New-U stations are the answer, especially considering what one of their spoken lines says in ''2'':

* The entire game, even series, seems to be a giant TakeThat against the idea of [[MegaCorp letting corporations act in a government's place]]. In the first game alone you have a corporation that literally abandoned a planet of people to mutated raiders and deadly wildlife (Dahl), one that didn't even try to save lives during a zombie outbreak (Jakobs), and one that treated its best military commander with the same respect you save for a data entry clerk (Atlas). We all know what happened with the corporation shown in the 4th DLC (Hyperion), which, as of the second game, had waged a war with the population for 3 years, turned into a Orwellian corporation full of backstabbing corporate climbers and run by a CorruptCorporateExecutive whose policies were on par with Stalin's regime.
* This is the first FPS universe where FPS tropes make perfect sense:
** How can governments and megacorps afford to field giant armies all the time? The market only supplies that kind of resources when nobody's at war, and with the constant violence in the Borderlands-verse who has the time to actually produce anything? If there are that many guns everywhere, why are there still jerks to shoot? MoreCriminalsThanTargets... Why do human bosses reappear after a while?
** Answer; robots like the Claptraps keep everything running, [[MatterReplicator digistruct technology]] makes everything literally dirt cheap, [[HealThyself health syringes and kits]] keep everyone going, and the [[BodyBackupDrive New-U stations]] keep bringing everyone back when they die. Thus, people have no reason ''not'' to beat each other up and/or kill each other for fun and profit because violence has no consequences anymore.

** '''S&S/Bandit/Scav/[=CoV=]:''' They don't make sniper rifles, because Pandora's bandits are pretty consistently AxCrazy {{Blood Knight}}s who are largely incapable of the kind of long-distance focus and discipline required to use a sniper rifle effectively, but they make everything else, because bandits are an individualistic lot and don't take kindly to being told they can't have the kind of gun they want.

** '''Dahl:''' They make pistols, [=SMGs=], sniper rifles and assault rifles - pretty straightforward military gear, but ''precise'' military gear. Dahl prizes accuracy and minimal collateral damage above all else, which is why you can only burst fire when aiming down sights - and why they don't make equipment that hurls fragments of metal everywhere or guns that create huge explosions (even the Grenadier has a pretty small blast radius). The primary Dahl multi-target weapons are Bouncing Betty grenade variants - which are mostly emergency panic buttons for when cleaning an entire room quickly is necessary.
** '''Hyperion:''' No assault rifles or rocket launchers. Hyperion weapons are designed largely for the idiosyncratic Hyperion corporate culture - in which being, or at least seeming to be, smart and ruthless, is better than simply appearing strong. Assault rifles are too ''military'', and that's Dahl's and Vladof's approach - Hyperion is for people who are businesslike, and that means mostly weapons that can be carried fairly easily, and/or are designed for deadly accuracy rather than spreading carnage around (hence the sniper rifles). Additionally, the Hyperion proprietary stabiliser - the reason their accuracy goes up as you fire - is an extremely awkward fit for a rocket launcher, given their low rate of fire and bottom-of-the-barrel ammo count.
** '''Jakobs:''' No rocket launchers or [=SMGs=], entirely for aesthetic reasons - the generation of weapons Jakobs takes its inspiration from isn't noted for having either.
*** They don't make lasers in ''TPS'' because lasers obviously wouldn't fit the Wild West theme of Jakobs.
** '''Maliwan:''' No assault rifles or shotguns. Maliwan build weapons to make their designers feel clever. This means either weapons that are precise (pistols, sniper rifles) or weapons that let them push the boundaries with their tech - rocket launchers as a power level and blast radius test, submachine guns as a speed test. Assault rifles aren't a new experiment, they're just big submachine guns, and shotguns don't make them feel smart, because they're a weapon with a lot of scatter and very little precision (Mr. Torgue's obsession with shotguns would not help the case of any would-be Maliwan shotgun designer in ''2'').

** '''Tediore:''' No assault rifles or sniper rifles. Tediore don't make guns for the military - they make guns for ordinary citizens to use cheaply in home defense and possibly hunting for food, for which an assault rifle would be considered overkill in most of the more civilised areas (and especially in Hyperion-controlled ones, that would likely clamp down very hard on unauthorised gun ownership); rocket launchers are panic buttons, probably aimed at people in areas with particularly hostile wildlife. The sniper rifle's problem would be the Tediore explosive construction - unless you have the strongest throwing arm in your galaxy, at sniper rifle ranges, your discarded gun is unlikely to hit anything even semi-reliably, and in a military context you're likely to be grenading your own men.
** '''Torgue:''' No submachine guns or sniper rifles. Mr. Torgue's aversion to long-ranged fire has already been discussed in other fridge entries, explaining the sniper rifles; as for submachine guns, Mr. Torgue's obsession with "bigger" and "louder" means that even if you told him to design a submachine gun, he would immediately ignore the "sub-" and give you a full-on minigun (along the lines of a Spitter).
*** They don't make lasers in ''TPS'' because outside of one unique legendary, lasers don't explode (said straight from the man himself, Torgue Flexington).
** '''Vladof:''' No shotguns or submachine guns. Vladof take a very simple and direct approach to designing guns, meaning that they'd likely dismiss submachine guns as lacking in impact compared to assault rifles, and shotguns' low ammo counts would not fit well with the Vladof rapid-fire approach.

** '''Bandit:''' They don't make sniper rifles, because Pandora's bandits are pretty consistently AxCrazy {{Blood Knight}}s who are largely incapable of the kind of long-distance focus and discipline required to use a sniper rifle effectively, but they make everything else, because bandits are an individualistic lot and don't take kindly to being told they can't have the kind of gun they want.

* Why do human bosses reappear after a while? They can use the New-U stations to come back.
* Related to the above; this is the first FPS universe where FPS tropes make perfect sense:
** How can governments and megacorps afford to field giant armies all the time? The market only supplies that kind of resources when nobody's at war, and with the constant violence in the Borderlands-verse who has the time to actually produce anything? If there are that many guns everywhere, why are there still jerks to shoot? MoreCriminalsThanTargets...

* ''Fridge/TalesFromTheBorderlands''

* ''Fridge/{{Borderlands 1}}''
* ''Fridge/{{Borderlands 2}}''

[[AC:FridgeBrilliance]]

* Look closely at the Fast Travel station in New Haven. If you pay attention to where it is located, it is outside the barriers that inhibit vehicle access to the interior of the city. Why would someone want to put that there? So in case bandits hijack the Fast Travel station, they'll pop in outside the barriers and city's defenders will have cover to gun them down.
* Given the very old story of Pandora's Box, is it any wonder that the Vault on Pandora was revealed to [[spoiler:not contain any loot at all, [[SealedEvilInACan but rather a universe-destroying thing from elsewhere?]]]]
* [[spoiler:When you open the Vault and have to fight The Destroyer]], Angel only mentions that you know where to hit it to kill it, which left many players confused since there was no previous hint of its existence. However any player who payed attention to Pandora's wild life should recognize that [[spoiler:the Destroyer]] has the same split jaw anatomy as the rakk hive, who in turn have their weak point on their eyes. This also means that the rakk hive might be biologically related to [[spoiler:The Destroyer.]]
* The fact that Commandante Steele doesn't use any Siren abilities [[spoiler: when you finally fight her resurrected, Claptrapped self in the 4th DLC.]] Sirens have a mystical quality: there are only 6 of them in the universe at any given time, with a new one coming into existence whenever one of the 6 dies. [[spoiler: It's likely Steele lost her Siren abilities when she was killed by the Destroyer, with her "place in the universe" immediately transferring to a new Siren. When you face her as Steele-Trap, her Siren tattoos are gone and have been replaced by Claptrap circuitry tattoo.]]
* The loot dropped from the Destroyer is of lousy quality, generally no better than what would be dropped by a regular enemy. There's just a lot more of it (most of which is just ammo). This is in keeping with the Vault being full of nothing except "tentacles and disappointment".
* The entire game, even series, seems to be a giant TakeThat against the idea of [[MegaCorp letting corporations act in a government's place]]. In the first game alone you have a corporation that literally abandoned a planet of people to mutated raiders and deadly wildlife, one that didn't even try to save lives during a zombie outbreak, and one that treated its best military commander with the same respect you save for a data entry clerk. We all know what happened with the corporation shown in the 4th DLC, which, as of the second game, had waged a war with the population for 3 years, turned into a Orwellian corporation full of backstabbing corporate climbers and run by a CorruptCorporateExecutive whose policies were on par with Stalin's regime.
* Why do human bosses reappear after a while? They can use the New-U stations to come back.
* Related to the above; this is the first FPS universe where FPS tropes make perfect sense:
** How can governments and megacorps afford to field giant armies all the time? The market only supplies that kind of resources when nobody's at war, and with the constant violence in the Borderlands-verse who has the time to actually produce anything? If there are that many guns everywhere, why are there still jerks to shoot? MoreCriminalsThanTargets...
** Answer; robots like the Claptraps keep everything running, [[MatterReplicator digistruct technology]] makes everything literally dirt cheap, [[HealThyself health syringes and kits]] keep everyone going, and the [[BodyBackupDrive New-U stations]] keep bringing everyone back when they die. Thus, people have no reason ''not'' to beat each other up and/or kill each other for fun and profit because violence has no consequences anymore.
* The song that plays in the end, when [[spoiler:Guardian Angel is revealed to not quite live up to her name]]? "No Heaven".

[[AC:FridgeHorror]]
* The motto on the Welcome To Pandora billboards: "Your final destination, GUARANTEED!" Even leaving aside the implications from the [[Film/FinalDestination film series]] of the same name...
* Related to the FPS justification brilliance; Borderlands is a good example on how TheSingularity won't fix a CrapsackWorld full of [[HumansAreBastards vicious jerks]].

** Answer; robots like the CL4P-TPs keep everything running, [[MatterReplicator digistruct technology]] makes everything literally dirt cheap, [[HealThyself health syringes and kits]] keep everyone going, and the [[BodyBackupDrive New-U stations]] keep bringing everyone back when they die. Thus, people have no reason ''not'' to beat each other up and/or kill each other for fun and profit because violence has no consequences anymore.

** Answer; [[MatterReplicator digistruct technology]] makes everything literally dirt cheap, and the [[BodyBackupDrive New-U stations]] keep everyone alive. Thus, people have no reason ''not'' to beat each other up and/or kill each other for fun and profit because violence has no consequences anymore.

** Answer; [[MatterReplicator digistruct technology]] makes everything literally dirt cheap, and the New-U stations keep everyone alive. Thus, people have no reason ''not'' to beat each other up and/or kill each other for fun and profit because violence has no consequences anymore.

** Answer; [[MatterReplicator digistruct technology]] makes everything literally dirt cheap, and the New-U stations keep everyone alive. Thus, people can beat each other up and kill each other for fun and profit because violence has no consequences anymore.

* The motto on the Welcome To Pandora billboards: "Your final destination, GUARANTEED!" Even leaving aside the implications from the [[Film/FinalDestination film series]] of the same name...

* The entire game, even series, seems to be a giant Take That to the idea that letting corporations act in a government's place is a terrible idea. In the first game alone you have a corporation that literally abandoned a planet of people to mutated raiders and deadly wildlife, one that didn't even try to save lives during a zombie outbreak, and one that treated it's best military commander with the same respect you save for a data entry clerk. We all know what happened with the corporation shown in the 4th DLC, which, as of the second game, had waged a war with the population for 3 years, turned into a Orwellian corporation full of backstabbing corporate climbers and run by a CorruptCorporateExecutive who's policies were on par with Stalin's regime.

* [[spoiler:When you open the Vault and have to fight The Destroyer]], Angel only mentions that you know where to hit it to kill it, which left many players confused since there was no previous hint of its existence. However any player who payed attention to Pandora's wild life should recognize that [[spoiler:the Destroyer]] has the same split jaw and 4 eyes anatomy as the skags, who in turn have their weak point inside their mouths. This also means that the skags might be biologically related to [[spoiler:The Destroyer.]]

* The motto on the Welcome To Pandora billboards: "Your final destination, GUARANTEED!" Even leaving aside the implications from the [[Film/FinalDestination film series]] of the same name...
** Most Pandorans would probably say that's ActuallyPrettyFunny given their love of BlackHumor.

* The motto on the Welcome To Pandora billboards: "Your final destination, GUARANTEED!" Even leaving aside the implications from the [[Film/FinalDestination film series]] of the same name...

* The entire game, even series, seems to be a giant Take That to the idea that letting corporations act in a government's place is a terrible idea. In the first game alone you have a corporation that literally abandoned a planet of people to mutated raiders and deadly wildlife, one that didn't even try to save lives during a zombie outbreak, and one that treated it's best military commander with the same respect you save for a data entry clerk. We all know what happened with the corporation shown in the 4th DLC.