Characters / Borderlands: Krieg

Spoilers Off for games prior to Borderlands 3 as well as for spoiler characters that are marked as such. Proceed with caution. You Have Been Warned.

Borderlands Character sheets
Playable Vault Hunters: Borderlands | Borderlands 2 (Krieg) | The Pre-Sequel (Claptrap) | Borderlands 3
Supporting Characters: Borderlands | Borderlands 2 (Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep DLC) | The Pre-Sequel | Borderlands 3
Spinoffs and other media: Tales from the Borderlands | Tiny Tina's Wonderlands | New Tales from the Borderlands | Other media
Weapon Brands: Atlas | Dahl | Hyperion (Handsome Jack) | Maliwan | Jakobs | Torgue | Tediore | Other Weapon Brands
Other: Bandits and Bandit Factions (Children of the Vault) | Hodunk and Zaford Clans | Creatures (Eridians and Vault Monsters) | Raid Bosses

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Krieg a.k.a. The Psycho

As of Borderlands 3. ^{Click for his BL2 appearance} 

Voiced by: Jason Douglas (English), Kenji Hamada (Japanese) Patrice Baudrier (French)

Played by: Florian Munteanu (film)

(Say "thank you".) "NIPPLE SALADS!" (Close enough.)

The product of horrifying experimentation at the hands of Hyperion, Krieg was once a heroic Vault Hunter. While the process did make him stronger, it also drove him almost completely insane, with the last remnants of his former self acting as a conscience to him. Encountering Maya as she waited for a train, he fell in love with her and became a Vault Hunter alongside her in hopes that she will be the one to make him sane once more.

His Action Skill in 2, "Buzz Axe Rampage", has him go on a rampage with his buzz axe, regaining health for every kill, and his secondary mechanic is Bloodlust stacks, which are awarded while dealing damage and lost when damage is not being dealt. Unlike the rest of the Vault Hunters, Krieg relies on melee attacks, and his skill trees are oriented towards increasing his survivability to compensate his lack of attack range (Mania), making his Bloodlust stacks more useful (Bloodlust), and setting enemies and himself on fire (Hellborn).

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A-C

• Abusive Parents: A sidequest in "Fantastic Fustercluck" implies that he had a rough upbringing with a mother who constantly called him weak and whose idea of making him "strong" was force-feeding him milk with a gun, though how much of that is just Krieg's own distorted imagination is left up in air.
• Accent Upon The Wrong Syllable: During his stint in the ECHO Casts twitter account, he tends to capitalize random letters such as "NIPpLE SaLAds" and "YoU WANNA know wHo I AM I will SHOW YoU WHo I AM", mimicking this trope's format.
• A Day in the Limelight:
  • A Meat Bicycle Built for Two, a short film made by Gearbox that shows how Krieg became a Vault Hunter and to make up for his own lack of ECHO logs.
  • He's the central figure of the fourth DLC of Borderlands 3, Psycho Krieg and the Fantastic Fustercluck.
• Added Alliterative Appeal:
  • In psychology, alliteration without logical association is often indicative of clanging, a symptom of schizophrenia. Or he's seen V for Vendetta at some point. Unsurprisingly, Krieg is quite fond of this:
    "Pitiful people prepare, plead plentifully plentiful platitude phenomenal patriot pounds, poundingly perverse puppets; pulping, pleasantly, putrid pasties."
  • All of the skill names in the Hellborn skill tree. (Burn Baby Burn, Fuel the Fire, Pain is Power, etc.)
• Affectionate Nickname: Based from related ECHO Logs in 3, both Tina and Maya had been referring to Krieg as "big guy".
• Amnesiac Hero: Inner Krieg doesn't remember anything from his past, and outer Krieg doesn't want to. By the end of Fantastic Fustercluck he never fully regains his memories of who he was, but he accepts it and chooses to build a new future. It's also revealed earlier on that it is less that Psycho Krieg doesn't want to, and more that he knows the memories have completely disappeared from their mind, which he actually sounds saddened by when it is finally revealed to Sane Krieg.
• And I Must Scream: He used to be a much saner, smarter, more moral sort, possibly a Vault Hunting bounty hunter. Now? Thanks to Hyperion experimentation, he's a mass-murdering (of Hyperion and "the deserving") Badass Psycho with all the insanity and Ax-Crazy-ness that implies. And his original personality is a Split Personality stuck inside this lunatic, completely aware of everything he does and nearly unable to affect it in any way.
• Angrish: Especially when Rampaging.
• Are You Pondering What I'm Pondering?: Although Krieg's dialect is nonsensical, people do start understanding him over time. As Maya was able to understand what he was saying after spending time with him. This is also something the DLC draws attention to; due to people misunderstanding him, Krieg believes people see him as stupid and embarrassing. When in reality, people liked him and were happy to see him happy.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Krieg's "I WANNA BE WANTED" head has him wearing a Wanted poster of himself over his face, with a charge written at the bottom for "Indecent Exposure".
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: Generally speaking, Krieg's entire playstyle demands the player to be in the thick of battle to make full use of his skills. Bloodlust stacks decay when he's not doing damage to something, so Krieg must always have a target in his sights to enjoy the gargantuan weapon buffs it provides. The Mania tree encourages Krieg to always be receiving damage to get his Action Skill charged up more often, while also maintaining a close distance to the enemy lest he be shot down before he can get close enough to cut them down. Hellborn is similar to Bloodlust in that he must always have a target in his crosshairs being burnt alive to enjoy the buffs that self-immolation brings.
• Attack Failure Chance: A chance of Self-Damaging Attack Backfire: Krieg's "Silence the Voices" skill gives him a massive boost to melee damage, at the cost of also giving his melee attacks a chance to hit himself instead.
• The Atoner: The sane part of Krieg is trying to redeem himself. The other part really couldn't care less.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Two major examples, both from the "Mania" tree:
  • Silence the Voices gives you a HUGE melee damage boost (easily reaching over 300% with a class mod) but causes you to have a 12% chance to hit yourself. On paper this doesn't seem major, but in practice you're hitting yourself every one in eight swings (more if you're unlucky) and dealing that huge melee damage to yourself. If you're not healthy enough you'll end up KOing yourself. Additionally, if you were close enough to hit the enemy, they're close enough to hit you, meaning that missed swing gives them an opportunity to hit back, hard. On the other hand though, hitting yourself with full HP (which isn't a particularly hard thing to do with Krieg) while in battle can help you activate Release the Beast, which instantly heals him completely and grants him a massive damage buff while he's rampaging. In situations where for some reason you don't or cannot get Release the Beast, then the chance to hit yourself becomes somewhat a liability due the aforementioned reasons.
  • "Light the Fuses" causes Krieg to run around when his health is depleted, throwing bundles of dynamite. Excellent for getting a second wind against bandits and other ground troops, but against airborne enemies you'll wish you had a regular "Fight for Your Life" (which this skill will always override).
• Ax-Crazy: 'Murderous insanity' is the entire job description of a Pandoran psycho and is Krieg's main forte. His action skill literally involves him going crazy with an axe.
• Badass Boast: In a lot of his Ax-Crazy dialogue lines such as:
  MY PECS HAVE PECS!
  (Seeing a Badass enemy) "I'LL SHOW YOU WHAT A BADASS IS!"
  "I'M GONNA PUT MY PAIN INTO YOUR SOUL!"
  I LOOKED INTO THE HEART OF DARKNESS, AND I ATE IT ALL!!!
• Battle Couple: An odd case with Maya. She might not be aware of his feelings for her, but he clearly is attracted to her. In effect, they make the absolute best example of Sword and Sorcerer/Guys Smash, Girls Shoot in the entire game's multiplayer portion. Maya is able to crowd control enemies and allow Krieg to utterly obliterate them in melee, as well as Maya being able to heal Krieg in combat.
• Beast and Beauty: With Maya. He became a Vault Hunter because he fell in love with her and wanted to protect her.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: In "Fantastic Flustercluck", the Sane half of Krieg recognizes that the BL1 Vault Hunters accepted him in spite of him being a Psycho and wants nothing more than to express his gratefulness. Fortunately, they're perfectly fine with him screaming nonsense.
• The Berserker: Given what he is, this is a given as his Action Skill encourages him to resort to his axe, throwing it or getting up close to the enemy. Two skills further emphasize this trope:
  • The Mania tree in particular focuses on fighting as suicidally as possible, doing stuff like deliberately putting yourself in harm's way to recharge your specials or running around with a lit bundle of dynamite.
  • The Bloodlust tree, on the other hand, gives him stacks of "Bloodlust" that accumulate quickly as he damages enemies (but also disappear rapidly if he's not damaging enemies) so to get the most out of its skills, it also forces you to run straight into combat blowing away as many enemies as possible as quickly as possible.
  • With the two aforementioned skill trees combined, he becomes the living embodiment of this trope.
• The Big Guy: Class 3, easily being the loudest and most bloodthirsty Psycho on Pandora, and that is really saying something. Class 1 as well, as he's the tallest and most solidly built of the new Vault Hunters, and can get even bigger with Release the Beast.
• Blood Knight: Even under normal circumstances he's incredibly bloodthirsty, but during Buzz Axe Rampage it reaches new extremes.
  "GRIND GRIND GRIND KILL KILL KILL!"
  "YESYESYESYESYES!"
  "BLOOD, BLOOD, BLOOOOD, BLOOD, BLOOOOOOOD!"
• Body Horror: He was an experiment of some sort, and still has numerous scars, stitches, and various hoses all over his body. He can also mutate himself into a Badass Psycho, misshapen limbs included.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: He makes various references to numbers when talking about loot, and has several lines that more or less tell the player to use his action skill when he's at low health.
• Breakout Mook Character: He's a Psycho, like the kind you've been killing or watching them blow up. One of his rants indirectly references this.
  Krieg: Box cover, box cover! I'm the one who eats the stardom! I'm the hero of all the villains! You can't swallow my morality like a lollipop pill! I'll run around your mind and set the world record with my meat sleeves!
• Breath Weapon: "Hellfire Halitosis" lets him breathe flames.
• Call-Back:
  • Occasionally says "You woke the wrong dog!" when getting a Second Wind. That's what Nine-Toes in Borderlands said to the original Vault Hunters when they fought him.
  • Also, two skills in his Mania skill tree - "Strip the Flesh" and "Salt the Wound" - are two halves of a phrase spoken by most Psychos in the first game.
• The Cameo: He doesn't show up personally in the base game of Borderlands 3, but shows up in various ECHO Logs.
• Cannot Spit It Out: His insanity makes it difficult for him to properly express his feelings for Maya.
• Captain Obvious: His Psycho Mutant transformation. "I'VE GOT A HUGE HAND!"
• Cast from Hit Points: Effectively, if not directly. Related to Self-Harm below, he performs better when his shields are down and his Action Skill recharges faster when he takes damage to his health instead of his shields (his "Feed the Meat" skill massively increases his base health but makes his shields recharge slower to facilitate this). If he's not in enough danger already from the enemy, several of his skills actively hurt himself, like "Silence the Voices" which has a 12% to smash himself in the face with his buzz axe or his Hellborn tree that lights himself on fire (but that's actually a good thing). At any given moment, his health could dip dangerously low, pop back to full, then fall to near-death again, and repeat.
• Catchphrase:
  • The word "meat" in general. So much so that Tiny Tina◊ thinks she can talk to him using only the word meat.
    In words you will understands: MEAT MEAT MEAT MEAT BLOOD MEAT CAKE
  • He has a tendency to scream "NIPPLE SALADS" at times. It's even featured in his Legendary Psycho class mod.
  • His inner/good personality has "...Close enough", usually said in mild annoyance after telling the dominant personality to say something and hearing it expressed as some sort of lunatic non-sequitur.
• Cerebus Retcon: While 2 established his sane side is deeply embarassed by his insane side, this was largely Played for Laughs. The Fantastic Fustercluck instead focuses on how badly his inability to control himself and connect with others have completely destroyed his self-image, to the point it's revealed he believed all Crimson Raiders hated him and sent him on the field hoping he'd never come back.
• Close-Range Combatant: His skills all force him into close-to-mid range combat to the point that certain gun-related skills specifically exclude sniper rifles.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Much of his dialog is generally nonsense involving meat or blood in some way. Especially exacerbated in Raving Retribution, where he'll go on completely unintelligible rants while spouting homing fireballs from his body.
  MY STOMACH IS CLEAR, AND MY MIND IS FULL OF BACON!
• Combat Sadomasochist:
  • Some of his lines seem to openly invite enemies to injure him, particularly ones involved with "Salt the Wound". Additionally, Buzz Axe Rampage has its cooldown reduced whenever he takes damage, with health damage in particular giving him much more cooldown reduction than damage to shields. To facilitate this, certain skills of his increase the recharge delay on his shields.
  • He also seems to really like being set on fire (his sane personality, not so much).
    "HURTS...SO...GOOD!"
    "STAB ME A THOUSAND TIMES!"
    "NOTHING MAKES ME STRONGER THAN A SUCKING CHEST WOUND!"
  • When getting revived, sometimes he will tell his teammate to stop reviving him.
• Composite Character: He's a composite of all the various enemy psychos you can see in the game, that you get to play as instead. The melee-focused psychos with buzz axes, the burning psychos who are heavily resistant to fire and breathe fire on you, the suicide psychos who blow themselves up with grenades, the psycho marauders who shoot at you, and he can even learn the ability to become a huge mutated badass psycho.
• Cool Mask: Wears a gas mask version of the normal Psycho mask as his default Head. Every single one of his alternate Heads is some form of mask, hat, or helmet which covers most of his face.
• Cooldown Manipulation:
  • His Action Skill "Buzz Axe Rampage" gets its cooldown reduced by 1 second for every 3.5% base health lost.
  • Blood Overdrive is one of the very unique skills in the game because it can decrease grenade fuse time by 0.005 seconds for every stack of Bloodlust. With a large number of Bloodlust, your grenades detonate faster, or even immediately after being thrown.
  • Fuel the Rampage decreases your skill's cooldown time when you take damage.
• Crippling Overspecialization: The Mania tree has skills that focus on reducing health to rampage even further. Under this strategy, shield recharge gets slower with certain skills in order to encourage a risk-and-reward gamplay by having your HP reduced. As risky as it may seem, Mania works surprisingly well with the Flame of the Firehawk legendary Nova shield and Roid Shields that provide lasting offensive benefits when they are depleted. Naturally on the other side of the spectrum, this skill tree also lessens the overall effectiveness of shields that provide bonuses when they are full, such as Spike, Amp and all other Nova shields, as it would take longer for these to recover.
• Critical Status Buff: A fair number of his skills involve buffing Krieg when he takes damage, or when his shields are down. He is also the only character to have absolutely no skills that are only active when his shields are full, making him a perfect match for the Rough Rider: a shield that is permanently empty but also gives damage resistance and a boost to max health.
• Crutch Character: If building for melee damage, Krieg combines this with Magikarp Power - Buzz Axe Rampage is tolerable in the early game and monstrous in late-game Normal Mode and in True Vault Hunter mode with the right skills, allowing Krieg to effortlessly carve through most enemies. However, because he has no means of slagging things during Buzz Axe Rampage (as it locks him out of all his weaponry and none of his skills inflict slag), his effectiveness goes down drastically in Ultimate Vault Hunter mode as un-slagged enemies take much longer to kill there and inflict a lot more damage, to the point where a lot of Krieg players just stop using his Action Skill entirely.

D-J

• Damage Reduction:
  • "Taste of Blood" reduces the damage taken by Krieg in Buzz Axe Rampage for every stack of Bloodlust.
  • "Numbed Nerves" gives him damage reduction when he's on fire.
• Deadpan Snarker: When he's not wallowing in self-loathing, his sane half can be pretty snarky.
  It's over, idiot. You're going to die here and now and the last words out of your mouth will have been "poop train."
• Death or Glory Attack: Light the Fuses will end two ways: Krieg takes someone out with an explosion and revives himself or Krieg just blows himself up.
• Death Seeker:
  • His inner voice will occasionally comment "I deserve this" when Krieg either bashes himself in the face or is set on fire.
  • When using Redeem the Soul, both Kriegs have Death Seeker-esque lines. Although for Psycho Krieg it could just as easily be part of his Combat Sadomasochist nature, with him enjoying the thrill of almost dying in battle.
    "I WANNA DIE HERE! ME!"
    "YOU DON'T DIE! I DIE!"
    "YOU'RE IN MY SPOT!"
    ("You don't deserve this. I do.")
• Desperation Attack:
  • The "Light The Fuses" skill, which lets him toss dynamite and move normally when his HP reaches 0. He can also detonate it Suicide Psycho style, though he'll get Second Wind if he manages to score a kill with it.
  • There's also the "Release the Beast" skill, in which if Krieg activates Buzzaxe Rampage when at 1/3 of his health he transforms into a Badass Psycho.
• Determinator: Occasionally when he's downed, Krieg's inner voice will tell him that he cannot die, not while there are bad guys to be killed and not while "she's" still out there.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Mechanically, Krieg is a high-risk high-reward character who is typically more challenging to play as gameplay-wise, at least until you gain access to his more potent skills.
  • His Action Skill encourages a melee playstyle (although he also has a ranged attack while doing it, the buzz-axe is slow, easy-to-dodge and can arc). This is in contrast to the other five playable Vault Hunters whose Action Skills can make them safely attack or escape from a distance.
  • Per the developer's own admittance, the Mania tree falls squarely into this. Taking damage actually buffs Krieg, even moreso without shields. This places him at a higher risk of frequently getting knocked into Fight For Life mode, but one skill completely restores his health with every kill he makes while using his action skill.
  • Several Bloodlust tree skills feed into one another: there's a grenade kill skill that makes gun damage better, a gun kill skill that makes melee damage better and a melee kill skill that makes grenades better. Keeping your Bloodlust from decaying is hard enough, keeping track of all this in the middle of battle is even harder, but if you pull it off: a string of ever-increasing deadliness.
  • All of his skill trees have perks that can feed into each other. Strip The Flesh and Salt The Wound can grant huge boosts to Torgue Shotguns, and Fuel The Rampage (taking damage speeds up Buzz Axe Rampage cooldown) and Release The Beast (Krieg turns into a Badass Psycho with maxed health and massive damage reduction when special is triggered at 33% health, like when you come out of fight for your life mode) means that unless you were in Buzz Axe Rampage when put into fight for your life mode, as soon as you come out, you can immediately trigger a buzz axe rampage, and go on a killing spree as a Badass Psycho mutant.
  • The Hellborn skill tree: you gain bonuses by setting yourself on fire. At higher levels, with the Delusional Damage perk, you can set yourself on fire by using any elemental attacks, including corrosive, which you will use a lot later in the game. Elemental Empathy causes a fraction of all elemental damage you deal to heal you.
• Dogged Nice Guy: The very reason he joined the Vault Hunters in the first place, as seen in A Meat Bicycle Made For Two: he was smitten with Maya. This becomes a plot point in 3's Psycho Krieg and the Fantastic Fustercluck DLC, and it's one of the few things both parts of Krieg can agree on.
• Eats Babies: "I like my treasure like my baby steaks: RARE!" Since Good Krieg threatens him with a Heroic Suicide if he ever hurts an innocent, if this did actually happen (not a guarantee) the babies were presumably dead before he got to them.
• Eloquent in My Native Tongue: A psycho's way of speaking, according to an ECHO recording of him and Tiny Tina and the context clues given through Krieg's interactions, have very specific meanings when deciphered... It's just that a Psycho's way of speaking leans on those aforementioned context clues like a crutch, and it's rare to be in a situation with a Psycho that's more inclined to clarify what they mean over reducing your skull to their morning porridge.
• Empathic Healer: "Redeem the Soul", which lets Krieg instantly revive allies in exchange for immediately putting him in "Fight for your Life" mode.
• Everyone Hates Math: Comparing weapons makes Good Krieg worry about popping a blood vessel.
• Evolving Weapon: His buzzaxe slowly changes appearance as he levels up and takes certain skills.
• Experience Booster: Enemies killed with Pull the Pin will grant Krieg double experience point when he respawns.
• Eyepatch of Power: While not exactly an eyepatch, his default head has his right eye covered by one of the belts that fastens his mask to his face.
• The Faceless: Played with. Krieg's face is largely covered by his various masks, but certain heads show parts of his face, and you can get a rough idea of what he looks like from that. It doesn't appear to be especially disfigured, oddly enough. He does seem to have really bad teeth.
• Flaming Sword: Fire Fiend gives him a chance to set enemies on fire with melee attacks, with his axe becoming wreathed in flames.
• Friendly Fireproof: Averted. "Fuel the Rampage" makes him susceptible to friendly fire. Which Makes this build the worst if coupled with Anarchy Gaige. Both fight best up close, and the thicker the enemy the better. Friendly fire is almost guaranteed.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: The Fantastic Fustercluck DLC shows that the Psycho part of Krieg has internalized his self-hatred to the point that he sees himself as this, which is represented by distorted versions of Brick, Mordecai and Lilith that are actively hostile to him and the Vault Hunters. However, his sane side eventually reminds him that contrary to what he feels, they actually did see him as a friend by showing a memory of them inviting him for drinks.
• Funny Schizophrenia:
  • A rabid, raving, 'roid-raging, ramblin' rancher who drinks blood and chops people into stew meat, mostly played for (dark) laughs thought it has its moments where it's surprisingly creepy. While not completely divorced from reality (at least lucid enough that we can take quests and dialogue at face value), he's still a giggling axe murderer with a good half that keeps him pointed at the (other, worse) bad guys.
  • Downplayed in "The Fantastic Fustercluck". Traces of this are still present as you interact with the personifications of both sane and insane Krieg who bicker about inane topics, but the DLC also treats it in a much more serious manner by revealing just how much Krieg loathes himself.
• Gathering Steam:
  • The Bloodlust Skil tree focuses on gaining lots of Bloodlust stacks to strengthen Krieg in combat. By damaging enemies, you can earn stackable passive bonuses, but these can decay fast after a gunfight. Many of the skills involve adding more bonuses, more ways to earn Bloodlust, and some modify the duration/timer parameters of the stacks.
  • Elemental Elation gives a stacking buff to Krieg's magazine size and fire rate when elemental damage-over-time effects are inflicted to enemies.
• Glass Cannon: Gearbox's take on Krieg is a "High risk, high reward character." Exaggerated with the Hellborn and latter stages of the Mania skill trees, with the main tactics behind Hellborn to actively set Krieg on fire for special attacks and stat increases, and Mania's "Silence The Voices" skill QUADRUPLING his melee damage in exchange for a one-in-eight chance of hitting himself upon melee-ing, which most likely will send him into "Fight For Your Life Mode" with the extremely high damage he deals.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: Whatever reasons Hyperion had for experimenting on him, they probably didn't involve him getting loose and wreaking bloody vengeance upon them.
• Hard Mode Perks: The damage of his Light the Fuse skill is increased by 500% only when playing in Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode.
• Having a Blast: His final "Bloodlust" skill, Bloodsplosion, makes every single enemy an Action Bomb: when they die, they go BOOM! Better yet, if the explosion kills an enemy it can start off a domino effect of explosions.
• Hearing Voices: Indeed he does, though most of the time he's just hearing the person he used to be. The interesting/slightly creepy part is that if Krieg's in a multiplayer group, nobody else will hear the sane voice (except for certain lines where the sane personality is actually the one speaking aloud).
• Heroic Build: "My pecs have pecs!" indeed.
• Heroic Suicide: The biggest rule Krieg's original self has against his dominant personality is to never harm an innocent, and instead unleash his bloodlust on the scum that deserve it^note For instance, in A Meat Bicycle Made For Two, he takes it against an Hyperion soldier and a bunch of Rats, but he doesn't attack Maya. If he breaks this rule, then the original will take over and kill himself, taking the dominant Krieg with him.
• Heroic Willpower:
  • The original personality is able to exert some level of control over the dominant personality's actions...sometimes. Gearbox reps compare said personality to a driver of a huge truck with its brakes cut careening through a town. He can't stop it or slow it, but he can at least steer away from the innocent - and if a jerk or two winds up wrapped around his bumper, he's not weeping.
  • The Fantastic Fustercluck DLC shows that the Psycho personality itself is a manifestation of Krieg's own will to survive and protect what is left of his shattered psyche after Benedict's experiments, and it's hostility to everyone is its desire to protect Krieg from anyone who would ever hurt him. Without it he would have succumbed to despair and just waited for his death.
• Hidden Depths:
  • If the ECHO Log between him and Maya in Borderlands 3 is any indication, he seems to think of himself as "just a psycho", implying some self-hatred. This is shown in Fantastic Fustercluck as Psycho Krieg imagining Brick, Mordecai and Lilith always hating him and treating him as their attack dog when in truth they liked him just fine and just couldn't understand what he was actually saying.
  • An ECHO Log in the base game of 3 states that prior to his current state Krieg was a highly capable stealth operative who preferred silently hunting down his prey.
  • "Fantastic Fustercluck" also reveals in an ECHO Log as well as a sidequest that the sane part of Krieg likes chess because of its ordered nature and rules.
• Homing Projectile: Raving Retribution makes Krieg summon homing balls of fire that seek out enemies when he is on fire.
• Hulking Out: Release the Beast turns him into an absolute monster, both figuratively and literally.
• I Am a Monster:
  • What his inner voice constantly thinks of him. Also one of the quotes upon activating Release the Beast. A couple of his quotes have Krieg trying to shout down his inner voice and declare that he is a monster, and he loves it. One even says it word for word:
    There is no me, there is no you! There is only the never ending spit and bile of combat! The twenty-four hour murder spree of shining metal! I drink the blood and eat the loot and breathe the numbers, because I Am a Monster! NOW AND FOREVER!
  • One of his "Redeem the Soul" lines shows that Psycho Krieg also has negative feelings towards his "monster" status.
    Monster down, Angel up!
• Incendiary Exponent: Pretty much the whole point of Krieg's Hellborn skill-tree. See Infernal Retaliation below.
• Intelligible Unintelligible: As revealed in Fantastic Flustercluck, Maya can understand Krieg as far back as their first conversation, making him this trope. Even though Krieg says a completely random sentence, Maya is able to decipher that fighting to survive is all he knows and respond accordingly that survival isn't all that matters.
• "Instant Death" Radius:
  • Many of Krieg's more successful builds give HIM an instant death radius, making the idea of charging a hoard of powerful enemies a much more viable and entertaining tactic.
  • One of the more popular shields to pair with him is the Love Thumper, which gives ALL of his melee attacks an explosive Nova whenever it connects and dramatically boosts his already high melee damage via its roid damage. This means that, when paired with Buzzaxe Rampage, Krieg will one-shot almost every enemy not ridiculously over his own level and have a literal instant death radius whenever his melee attacks connect. As a side effect, the Love Thumper's explosive Nova hurts allies as well, meaning that NO ONE will want to get within arms reach of a Love Thumper-wearing Krieg.
  • Another wonderful combination is Mania/Hellborn with "Flame of the Firehawk". Flame of the Firehawk is a nova shield, a shield class that releases an elemental blast with a wide range when depleted, that KEEPS BLASTING until it recharges. Krieg's skills and the constant self-immolation mean that if the shield is recharging, there is likely nothing left to kill.
• Immune to Flinching: Krieg is heavier than the other Vault Hunters, giving him less knockback from attacks, which goes good with his melee-centric play-style. This also has the unfortunate side effect of making grenade jumping and certain Badass Challenges impossible to do using him, such as getting a geyser to launch you to the top of the Happy Pig Motel sign. It doesn't launch him nearly high enough. Gearbox patched said Challenges out of the Psycho's Badass Challenge list, possibly because they couldn't rework Krieg to accomplish them without making his knockback the same as the other characters.
• Infernal Retaliation:
  • With points in the Hellborn tree, he gets a ton of buffs from being on fire, and he even has a chance to set himself on fire with his fire attacks (and with the Delusional Damage skill, any elemental damage).
  • "Raving Retribution" is the most literal version of this trope possible. While Krieg is on fire, every time he gets hit or shot by an enemy, he automatically shoots out a fireball which homes in on that enemy.
• Infinity -1 Sword: Triggering your active ability at critical health (1/3rd or less) with 'Release The Beast' turns you into a rampaging Badass Psycho, buffing your melee damage, adding to your damage resistance, and topping off your health instantly. Best of all, your Active Ability is ready for use again the second it wears off. As such, you can keep popping this skill over and over each time your health goes critical. Suffice to say, unless you're armed to the teeth with Legendary Weapons, your Action Skill will see a lot of use.
• Interface Screw: Killing enemies with your action skill splatters your camera with lots of blood.
• I Was Quite a Looker: From what we can see of his face combined with his tall and muscular Heroic Build, Krieg might have been quite attractive before Hyperion got their hands on him.
• I Will Wait for You: According to a series of ECHO Logs in 3, Krieg has been spending the last few years waiting for Maya to return to Pandora as well as struggling to regain control over his body. Sadly, Maya's death dashes Krieg's hopes for a reunion, and part of the main storyline of the Fantastic Fustercluck DLC involves protecting his memory of Maya from his own insanity so that he doesn't lose what he has left of her.
• Jekyll & Hyde: In this case, the Hyde personality is the dominant one while the Jekyll at least tries to make sure that the former only kills evildoers. By the time of 3, both sides share equal control.
• Journey to the Center of the Mind: Psycho Krieg and the Fantastic Fustercluck is a journey inside Krieg's mind and his perspective on the events of the series.
  • In his mind, his personalities are represented by two beings, Sane Krieg and Psycho Krieg. Psycho Krieg is red and angry, while Sane Krieg is blue and calm. Psycho Krieg is the response to Pandora, he wants to protect himself by pushing others away and isolating himself.
  • When the two personalities are found staring at shadows; they claim it is the world despite the cave exit being very close by. This represents Krieg's agoraphobia, he's afraid of leaving a safe space and he only sees the world for what he thinks it is.
  • Sane Krieg is found blowing himself up and claims that nobody cares about him because nobody trying to stop him from hurting himself. This represents Krieg's internal self-hatred and paranoia, he hates himself more than anything on Pandora, believes nobody will care if he dies, and he's terrified of the future.
  • The evil Vault Hunters are what Krieg thinks of the main cast, they see him as a small, rabid, inconsequential, disposable dog who doesn't deserve their respect. He believes they hate him but they did actually like him and did care about him.
  • The Locomöbius is his train of thought, it took Maya away because Krieg was afraid of losing his memory of her.
  • Dr. Benedict is his trauma of being turned into a psycho.
  • Psychoreaver is his uncontrollable rage, the part of Krieg that wants to punish the world for what it did to him.
  • The chess game represents Krieg's fear of uncertainty, he and Maya are the king and queen pieces (both are important pieces of the game) and the Vault Hunter points out that as white pieces they are the attackers. This represents how Krieg is afraid that he'll get into battle one day and cause the death of someone important to him. It also represents how he justifies his actions; to him, if he feels like a victim then he can justify himself for what comes next. An audio log states that Sane Krieg loves the game because he enjoys how calculated it is.
  • The burial of his buzz-axe represents Krieg's need to protect himself.
  • The psychiatric hospital represents Krieg's trauma, he believes the hospital was hell on Earth and he has to learn that it wasn't as bad as he remembered it. As there were some good memories there as well.
• The Juggernaut: With the right skills, Krieg can be nearly impossible to kill, particularly when mutated into a Badass Psycho.

K-Z

• Karmic Nod: Whenever he hits himself with "Silence the Voices" or gets set alight, Krieg's inner voice says that he deserves it, seeing it as a just punishment for the monster he's become.
• Lame Last Words: Referenced in the short Krieg: A Meat Bicycle Built For Two. His inner voice (and remaining sanity) tries to get Maya's attention by saying something normal, but his insanity wins out and he screams "I'M THE CONDUCTOR OF THE POOP TRAIN!" Which leads to Maya assuming he's a random Psycho to be killed, and his inner voice admonishing himself.
  Krieg: It's over, idiot! You're gonna die here, now, and the last words out of your mouth will have been 'poop train.'
• Large Ham: He often shouts in an overly exaggerated manner.
• Laughing Mad: He has quite the variety of maniacal laughter.
• Life Drain: Elemental Empathy allows Krieg to heal himself by inflicting elemental damage on enemies.
• Lightning Bruiser: When using his action skill, combined with Glass Cannon because he can only melee, and thanks to the Silence The Voices talent above he can damage himself.
• Love at First Sight: He falls in love with Maya upon seconds of meeting her. Unfortunately, his lack of communication skills causes her to shoot at him.
• Love Redeems: At least, the inner personality hopes that Maya will be the one to make him sane once more.
• Mad Bomber: "Light the Fuse" makes him throw sticks of dynamyte pulled off a time bomb when in Fight For Your Life! mode. He can also tape them to his axe, turning it into a grenade. There's also a skill that makes him drop a free grenade when he dies that gets 2X EXP.
• Made of Explodium: Bloodsplosion makes every killed enemy to explode with an elemental nova blast of the element that killed them, or a typical explosive nova blast otherwise.
• Madness Mantra: With Raving Retribution, Krieg will go on various extended, maniacal, sometimes fourth-wall breaking rants while on fire. Removed in update 1.6.
• Magikarp Power: All of Krieg's skill trees are like this. When you only have a few skill points, none of them are that great. Going into Hellborn early will probably just kill you for very little benefit. Bloodlust will provide very little advantages since few of them provide non-situational damage boosts, and you probably won't have the equipment to really make use of Mania for a while. However, once you get enough skill points to start maxing out the trees, Krieg becomes capable of both ridiculous survivability and destruction.
• Man on Fire: His "Hellborn" skill tree actually encourages you to set him on fire. You practically get the ability to light yourself on fire at will as you put more points into it.
• Meaningful Echo: Most of his skills are named after phrases that the enemy Psychos may randomly shout in combat, including some catchphrases of the named bandits. However, such phrases make more sense from a gameplay perspective. Some of these names include "Light the Fuse", "Strip the Flesh", "Salt the Wound" amongst others.
• Meaningful Name: Krieg is German for war. Originally his name would have been Blitz but the developers decided that Krieg sounds more like an actual name.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • Sometimes his quotes are Surreal Humor...
    You loud sacks of filth and sour cream can hit me with your pain pinatas all day, but you'll never take the jellied fantasies of my wasted youth! My stomach is clear and my mind is full of bacon!"
  • And sometimes they're not.
    "You're gonna scream, just like she did; open mouth, open heart, blood and noise forever piercing my skull, poisoning me with its psychopathic purple liquid. We watched it all, and felt the knife split down the middle... CAN YOU HEAR ME?!"
  • And sometimes it switches in the same quote:
    "I can't see her anymore. She was so clear and bright. But the blood is in my eyes and I can only watch the ocean of blood. Its waves crash against my forehead again and again AND I JUST NEED TO LEARN HOW TO SURF!"
• Mook Horror Show: The debut trailers show bandits being obliterated by his silhouette. Also, the PAX presentation in which he was introduced had a short video set to "In the Halls of the Mountain King" consisting of Krieg demonstrating his various in-game abilities upon enemies.
• More Dakka: Elemental Elation has it so that Krieg gains an increasing stack of buffs to his fire rate and magazine size anytime he deals elemental damage. Paired with Blood-Filled Guns (which increases his magazine size based on his Bloodlust stacks), he can supply some impressive Dakka. Embrace the Pain increases fire rate as long as shields are down; it and Feed the Meet both increase shield recharge delay, meaning you keep the buff for longer.
• Never Hurt an Innocent: The voice in his head tries to direct Krieg's rage towards "the deserving" and even swears that if he ever kills an innocent person that he will take over and commit suicide.
• Nice Guy: Sane Krieg, as most defined in "Fantastic Fustercluck", is shown to be an affable and understanding person compared to his insane side and, well, most characters in general.
• The Nicknamer: Being that speaking coherently is near-impossible for him, Krieg tends to refer to other characters by nicknames. Notably, he's referred to Maya as "Pretty Lady", "Blue Tattoo" or "Blue Girl" and Moxxi as "Bosom Clown".
• Nigh-Invulnerability: Of the Healing Factor type. With the right skills Krieg recovers health based on elemental damage, overkill damage, and fully heals every time he uses his action skill or gets a kill while in it. Combined with his insane damage output this makes him borderline unstoppable unless something can One-Hit Kill him.
• No Indoor Voice: Anything that Krieg says is shouted, just like every other Psycho on Pandora. It's even extended to every single name for his Heads and Skins, which are in ALL CAPS.
• Not So Above It All: There are rare moments when Krieg's sane personality is actually impressed by the amount of carnage he can cause.
  "(This is kinda awful... but mostly awesome.)"
• One-Winged Angel: His final Mania talent turns him into a Badass Psycho if he uses his action skill at 33% health or less, giving him an even bigger melee damage bonus along with damage resistance.
• Playing with Fire: His "Hellborn" skill tree deals almost exclusively in fire elemental damage. Being set on fire actually buffs him.
• Poor Communication Kills: When he first met Maya, his sane side wanted to tell her how beautiful she was and that she may be the one to save him. What came out was decidedly less eloquent.
  "I'M THE CONDUCTOR OF THE POOP TRAIN!"
• Power at a Price: Pain is Power increases weapon and melee damage but at the cost of decreasing critical hit damage.
• Power-Up Letdown: Being an intensely melee-focused character, Krieg has an inherent melee damage bonus that increases with his level. However this bonus will be overridden by the +50% damage bonus from holding bladed guns. After a certain level, using bladed guns (except for the rare guns with at least +100% melee damage, such as the Law or the Rapier) will actually weaken his melee attacks.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Downplayed. His eyes are constantly bloodshot.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: In the "Fantastic Fustercluck" DLC, Krieg has this with himself since his Sane side is blue while his Psycho side is red.
• Regenerating Health: Averted, except when equipping a Meat class mod. Every other character has some form of skill-based gradual life recovery^note Zer0 only gets constant regeneration during Decepti0n with points in Innervate but he only heals himself through forms of Life Drain. His primary method is the risky but satisfying Buzz Axe Rampage that heals him to full for every enemy he kills in melee (or who he manages to hit with his thrown axe). He can also get healing from overkilling his enemies if he uses "Thrill of the Kill" or heal himself for inflicting damage-over-time to enemies if he goes down the Hellborn tree.
• The Right Hand of Doom: "Release the Beast" makes his right arm absolutely massive while his left arm shrivels up.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: While revenge is a basic motivator for all of the Vault Hunters, Krieg really has it out for Hyperion because they are the ones responsible for making him into what he is. Notably, his version of Handsome Jack's mask is named "GO TO HELL DIE DIE DIE" and his sane side openly encourages him to massacre Hyperion troops.
  "Yes. Make them pay for what they did to us."
• Sanity Strengthening:
  • Krieg is implied to be regaining his sanity by his inner voice/consciences gaining more influence over him as the game goes on. Although his quotes don't reflect it, as he continues his insane raving throughout the game, his involvement in helping fight Handsome Jack and (optionally) taking side quests to help others certainly indicates he's in it for more than killing. Silence The Voices is stated to be his psycho side's attempt to stifle his inner voice. As of the end of the Tiny Tina DLC he is calm and collected with the other Vault Hunters, and he is seen mournfully sitting at Roland's funeral, indicating a respect for Roland and the others.
  • Also reflected in gameplay. At the start of the game Good Krieg's lines are barely audible, but as he levels up the "Little Voice'' gets louder.
  • The Wedding Day Massacre DLC further implies Krieg's sanity is improving, as his quotes actually show an awareness of his surroundings.
    [when motivating Ed to break open the doors] "SHE'S WAITING TO SUCKLE AT THE TEAT OF EXPLOSION CHIVALRY!"
    [when asked by Innuendobot if his oedipal feelings for Moxxi are normal] "DON'T ASK ME TO SHOW YOU NORMAL!"
  • In 3, there's an ECHO recording of Krieg talking to Maya about the fact Sanctuary has been destroyed and Maya has to leave for Athenas. He's actually holding up his end of the conversation, more or less — even his shouting about poop and knives is pretty clearly about his feelings. Another series of ECHO Logs shows that Krieg's sane side is now capable of gaining control temporarily and speaking aloud after years of work. At the end of the Fantastic Fustercluck DLC, Krieg's Sane and Psycho sides are able to come to an understanding and agree to make the best of their shared existence together, with Sane Krieg stating that while Psychoreaver will never get weaker they are now strong enough to properly fight back.
• Screaming Warrior: As befitting a Psycho, Krieg is a towering amalgam of violence, madness, and loud noises. This is doubly true when it comes to his action skill, which has him break out his buzz axe and commence with both the mangling and the random, nonsensical rambling.
• Self-Harm: "Silence the Voices" makes it so that he has a chance to hurt himself in exchange for a major buff to melee damage and putting points in the Hellborn tree gives him a chance to light himself on fire when using Incendiary weapons (or with any elemental damage if you take Delusional Damage).
• Screen Shake: Unlike the rest of the playable Vault Hunters in the second game, Krieg's melee attack always comes with this effect.
• Ship Tease: With Maya
  • In his backstory video his inner voice finds Maya very attractive, and his outer voice refers to her as "PRETTY LADY".
  • Tiny Tina's "invite" to Maya for her Bunkers & Badasses game mentions Krieg staring at Maya a whole lot.
  • In the Wedding Day Massacre, when asked by Moxxi if he ever had a love in his life, he responds with:
    "THE TINY ONE, THE SAD FACED MOTHER AND THE BLUE TATTOO FOREVER AND EVER." This implies that he feels a level of affection for Tiny Tina (the Tiny One) and Mad Moxxi (the Sad Faced Mother because of her makeup and being Ellie and Scooter's mother), in addition to actually being in love with Maya (the Blue Tattoo).
  • The Fantastic Fustercluck DLC reveals that Maya is the one thing that can get Krieg to pull himself together somewhat and stay focused on the task at hand.
• Skull for a Head:
  • His head customization from Captain Scarlett's DLC. In his case it's possible that it's just a mask, unlike Salvador's head.
  • He also gets one in Mad Moxxi's Wedding Day Massacre. It's very clearly not a mask this time, though.
• Split Personality: Besides his "default" Ax-Crazy self, he has a saner, more moral voice in his head - his original personality - who ensures that he only kills "the deserving". They do not get along.
• Split-Personality Merge: At the end of the Fantastic Fustercluck DLC, after the defeat of Psychoreaver (the manifestation of the insanity of Psychos) Krieg's Sane and Psycho half seemingly combine in order to make something new of himself.
• Split-Personality Takeover: Krieg's inner voice threatens to do this if his psychopathic side ever harms an innocent, and makes it clear that he'll do it just to kill them both.
• Surplus Damage Bonus: One Mania skill gives him health for overkilling enemies. Find some way to do ludicrous damage to enemies and he'll get his health back, no problem!
• Taking You with Me: "Pull the Pin" has Krieg drop a grenade when he dies, gaining double XP if it kills someone. Inverted in Light the Fuses mode, where successfully suicide-bombing enemies brings him back to life.
• Talkative Loon: Takes the cake and then goes on to rob the entire bakery before setting it on fire, burning it down, and rolling around in the ashes. Every word out of his mouth is either nonsensical, humorous rambling or berserk, bloodthirsty screaming, a trait he shares with basic Psycho enemies (who either scream violence-related nonsense or ramble ridiculous nonsense).
• Theme Naming: All but one of the skills in the Bloodlust tree have "Blood" in their names, all but one of the skills in the Mania tree follow a "[Verb] the [Noun]" pattern, and all the skills in the Hellborn tree are alliterative. There's also one skill each in Bloodlust and Hellborn that conforms to the Mania tree's theme.
• Throw Down the Bomblet:
  • Light the Fuses has him tossing dynamite when his health reaches zero. He also has several skills that improve explosive damage, as well as the Crunch class mods.
  • Buzz Axe Bombardier straps his throwable buzz axes with dynamites.
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: When in Rampage mode, Krieg can toss his axe as well as swing it. One of his skills even more or less turns it into a grenade by strapping a bundle of dynamite to it, making it deal explosive damage when tossed. Another skill gives him a chance to set enemies on fire with melee attacks, including thrown axes.
• Token Enemy Minority: Seemingly the only semi-heroic Psycho of the series.
• Token Evil Teammate: Psycho Krieg is all too happy to kill anybody he meets. He's only restrained by his inner voice doing what he can to drive him away from hurting the innocent, up to the threat of killing the both of them if he should.
• Transformation Is a Free Action: Release the Beast has a short animation of Krieg transforming into his Badass Psycho form, during which he's completely immune to enemy attacks.
• Violation of Common Sense: Pretty much his entire play-style revolves around doing things you normally try to avoid with the other characters. Like, say being set on fire or taking damage, or getting up-close and personal while hacking at people with a buzz axe. The whole idea for a character with this kind of play-style was thought of before the game was launched, but was saved for DLC because it might have turned away some players.
• Voice of the Legion: Triggering Release the Beast gives Krieg's voice a reverb effect as well as lowering its pitch.
• The Unreveal: Despite 3 delving into how Krieg's insecurities about Lilith, Brick, Mordecai and Maya, it's never brought up what Krieg thought of the rest of his fellow Vault Hunters.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: Considering that he's more or less an upgraded version of a Psycho, Krieg has no shirt. Often the alternatives skins feature body-paint or tattoos rather than garments. Although there are a few skins that give him something to wear, examples are from the Mercenary Day Headhunter DLC which gives him an ugly Christmas sweater, and his Pre-Sequel skin gives him a safety vest, to name a few.
• Word Salad Title: His head and skin names are a fountain of unending randomness. And yet are often Exactly What It Says on the Tin at the same time. For example, one head named I CAN'T BREATHE IN THIS is an extremely bulky full-face-concealing helmet, DOUBLE SUPLEX TIME is a luchador mask, and one skin, named "JEEEEEEEANS", does indeed give Krieg's pants a blue texture similar to blue jeans. Particularly hilarious is his special Jakobs-themed skin, named MY LEFT BOOB SAYS "OBS", most likely because the Jakobs logo is tattooed directly onto his bare chest.
• Wrecked Weapon: By the time of "Fantastic Fustercluck" his Buzz-Axe has finally gave out and a sidequest involves giving it a proper burial for the sake of Krieg's Psycho half.
• Your Head Asplode: Referenced in one of his critical kill lines.
  "HOW CAN I SNAP YOUR NECK IF YOU DON'T HAVE ONE?!"

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