Characters / Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! Vault Hunters

aka: Borderlands Vault Hunters Pre Sequel

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

The Vault Hunters of Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!.

Claptrap has his own page.

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In General

• Anti-Hero Team: Moreso than most Vault Hunter teams. This band of Vault Hunters is composed of a strictly professional Atlas assassin, a murderously sadomasochistic ex-bandit who acts like she's a sheriff, a unscrupulous cybernetics-obsessed mercenary, an eccentric little robot jury-rigged to become a killing machine bound to his programming, an actor who was hired to become the doppelgänger for who'd soon be the most dangerous man in the galaxy, and an immoral huntress who treats going to a hostile moon to kill people and wildlife as a leisurely vacation.
• Ascended Extra: The ones who appeared in previous games were given more characterization in the Pre-Sequel than the games they initially appeared in. Nisha even got an actual name.
• Army of Thieves and Whores: This group has some of the more unsavory kinds of mercenaries seen in the series, and they were all hired as a group on Jack's behalf. While six members is far from an army, they can certainly take one on directly.
• Been There, Shaped History: While most of the blame for the events of TPS rely on the Watcher and Col. Zarpedon, as well as Moxxi, Roland and Lilith's betrayal of Jack, being a prequel to 2, this team of Vault Hunters is responsible for most of the events from 2 onwards, particularly Claptrap and Athena, who were active ever since the first game.
  • For starters, they helped turn Hyperion from just another company into THE big player of the Borderlands world (at least until the end of 2 and its DLCs), and particularly Jack. Forst by giving them their now signature robot army by acquiring an AI and inventing the first Constructor, and then by helping bring Handsome Jack into power, if only by escorting him to the Vault like they were hired to.
  • They introduced the invasive species known as the Threshers to Pandora, tentacled burrowing creature who were apparently tiny on Elpis before being allowed to grow much larger when brought to another environment. They did this by trying to send two specimens to Sir Hammerlock on his behalf, who got lost on the way to him and landed on Pandora. These two were implied to have become Old Slappy and Terramorphous the Invincible, the former being the Thresher who tore Hammerlock's limbs off, and the latter being a freakishly gigantic Thresher who was 2's standard raid boss.
  • They inadvertently helped spread Space Hurps, a disease that causes severe weight loss and a craving for flesh, a.k.a. the disease that the Rats on Pandora carry with.
• Corporate Samurai: They all work for Hyperion, particularly Timothy and Claptrap, the former being a Hyperion doppelgänger hired directly by the company/Jack, and the latter being modified Hyperion property.
• Deadpan Snarker: They're a real surly bunch. Even Claptrap dips into it at times.
• Evil Versus Oblivion: Half of the Vault Hunters are very bad people, but none of them want to see the Lost Legion destroy Pandora and Elpis.
• Face–Heel Turn: Half of the team (Wilhelm, Nisha, and Aurelia) become villains in 2 and 3.
• Gender-Equal Ensemble: If one counts Claptrap as male, then the team as three men and three women.
• Non P.O.V. Protagonist: The story is narrated by Athena, but assuming the player picked another character, then they effectively ends up being this.
• Not So Above It All: While on the middle of some serious quests, they aren't shy of doing more silly things for loot, such as dunking on a basketball court.
• Promoted to Playable: Wilhelm was a story boss in 2 while Nisha was an optional boss in the same game. Athena was a quest giver in 1's The Secret Armory of General Knoxx and Claptrap was 1 and 2's introduction character, as well as a quest giver.
  • To an extent, the doppelgänger could qualify as a body double of Jack was a fought character in 2. The return of Timothy in 3 confirms that these are two different characters however.
• Supporting Protagonist: Since Jack is the central character of the game, the characters are all just his personal goons whose jobs are to get him closer to his goals.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Their relationship as a band of Vault Hunters is a bit more strained than other groups, who tend to insult and berate each other and their clients. Especially apparent in Claptrap and Aurelia, as Claptrap is treated as an annoying burden and Aurelia regularly patronizes the rest of the team.
• Token Good Teammate: Timothy is by far the most morally adjusted member of the group who reacts with reasonable concerns over what they're doing. Athena and Claptrap are more distant examples as Athena is strictly professional and loyal to the job she's hired for while putting aside personal feelings, while Claptrap is friendly but is forced to follow his programming and Jack's orders.

Athena

Athena (AKA The Gladiator)

As seen in The Pre-Sequel!.

^{Click to see her in Borderlands 1}

^{Click to see Tales From The Borderlands (From Fiona’s perspective).}

Voiced by: Lydia Mackay

"Athena, out"

A former Crimson Lance assassin, who escaped to help the Vault Hunters loot Knoxx's armory. Afterwards, she traveled around Pandora as a gun-for-hire before taking a job as a Vault Hunter for a lowly Hyperion programmer by the name of Jack, becoming one of his chief lieutenants in his rise to power.

Her Action Skill lets her pull out her Kinetic Aspis, a shield that absorbs all frontal damage, building up power before being tossed at the nearest enemy.

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• Ambiguous Situation: While New Tales from the Borderlands eventually reveals that she's heading or representing a major company, as seen during Tediore's demonstration where Rhys, Mr. Torgue, Katagawa Sr. and Wainwright Jakobs are present, it's unknown which company she's affiliated with (Hyperion, Dahl, Vladof, Anshin or Pangolin). It's even unknown if like Rhys with Atlas, she acquired the S&S brand. Furthermore it's unknown if she's a head honcho, a representative or if she has another position of power.
• Art Evolution: In the original General Knoxx DLC, the Lance Assassins were all based on the same model and distinguished via Palette Swap and the odd accessory, including Athena. In The Pre-Sequel!, Athena not only has a completely new outfit, but she's got a significantly changed character model and is no longer thin as a rail.
• Ascended Extra: From a quest giver in a DLC to a playable Character Narrator of her own game.
• Attack Reflector: If upgraded, her shield will reflect up to 50% bullets and lasers.
• Back for the Finale: In Tales from the Borderlands, she joins in for the final battle against the Traveler.
• Badass Boast: From time to time, usually when using her shield.
  Athena: Keep shooting, fools!
• Badass in Distress: Needs to be rescued from Mr. Shank's prison. (They stole her teleporter.) She doesn't seem to mind it too much, though.
  Athena: But to be honest, mostly they just wanted to do my nails and talk about boys all the time. I almost sort of liked it here.
• Bad Liar: In Tales from the Borderlands, if Fiona insists that Athena was following and attacking her, Athena artfully dodges the question by passing it off as a coincidence and she was just going the same way they were, because there's no way Athena would be bounty hunting or anything as she'd promised Janey she wouldn't. She looks awfully pleased with her deception skills too.
• Barrier Warrior: The Phalanx tree is focused on making her Aspis more powerful, including giving it additional offensive properties such as storing Elemental damage and even targeting multiple enemies at once.
• Berserk Button:
  • Atlas, to the point that in Tales she goes utterly berserk at the fact that she's face-to-face with an Atlas scientist in hiding.
  • Handsome Jack. His A.I. self outright tells Rhys that he shouldn't talk about him to her (specifically revealing that Jack is still alive as a Virtual Ghost in Rhys' head) since he notes that she'll probably just kill him on the spot. This is one-way, though, as Jack himself, no wonder due to Athena helping him to rise to power in The Pre-Sequel!, bears no hard feelings towards her.
• Big Damn Heroes: In Episode 3 of Tales, she saves Fiona from getting shot in the face by Vallory.
• Blood Knight: Downplayed. She's stoic and professional, but, judging by her laughter and cheering, this doesn't stop her from enjoying the combat, especially in The Pre-Sequel!.
• Break the Cutie: It's very downplayed, but in The Pre-Sequel! we hear the full extent of her reason for wanting to take down Atlas in The Secret Armory of General Knoxx - she had confided in General Knoxx about how excited she was about finally meeting her sister and how they were going to leave Pandora together, and when Atlas found out about this, they deliberately duped her into killing everyone in her sister's village. Upon finding this out, her reaction was to get 'a little stabby', and later, going AWOL and killed 9 1/2^*She cut one of them in half, vertically. He survived. people on her escape.
• Bring It: Athena will sometimes says this when Aspis is activated.
• Broken Pedestal: Seems to have genuinely admired Jack and considered him to be a hero. Even after the scientists are killed, she doesn't consider the heroic Jack to be "gone" until the end of the game.
• Catchphrase:
  "Athena, out."
• Character Narrator:
  • In The Pre-Sequel!, the game's story is narrated by her to Lilith, Brick and Mordecai after the events of 2 and the first half of Tales..., with the other characters commenting on the story as it moves along. In True Vault Hunter Mode, Tiny Tina joins in, telling Athena to make it "more difficult" while also adding in her own commentary on the story.
  • The Holodome DLC also has Athena retelling the story once again, this time to Axton and Gaige who specifically want an abridged version of the story. By that point, Athena seems really annoyed at having to tell the story again.
• Combat Medic: "Vanguard" gives her and nearby teammates health regeneration whenever she has her Aspis out. "Clear!" lets her revive teammates by tossing her shield at them. "United Front" causes damage done to her shield to charge up her and her team's shields.
• Consummate Professional: She takes her jobs seriously and believes in seeing a mission through no matter what. Also, this is the only reason why she sticks with Jack for so long despite his growing madness: Until they find the Vault, she considers her job unfinished. That and since Roland and Lilith tried to kill them, she wanted to deny them the Vault. She makes this very clear to Jack in her personal ECHO log:
  Jack: So, that's the offer. I know you're a certified "badass" and everything, but I need to know you're not gonna run out on me before the job's through.
  Athena: If you hire me, you aren't paying for another merc with a gun. You're paying for decades of experience. You're paying for professionalism. You're paying for loyalty to the mission above all else.
  Jack: Yeah? That's what you told General Knoxx?
  Athena: Loyal to the mission is one thing. Loyal to people is something else.
• The Comically Serious: During the Knoxx DLC, her stone-faced approach to everything that happens (from concealing her transmissions in male virility advertisements to her suicidally annoyed boss to the Atlas corporation's psychopathically upbeat PR-style) ensure comedy, even though she never cracks so much as a smirk. She's also one of the more straight-laced protagonists in The Pre-Sequel, next to Wilhelm. Similarly her professionality, and a good dose of being completely DONE with the Pandoran brand of insanity, makes for a lot of humorous moments in the episodes Athena shows up.
• Counter-Attack: The more damage her Aspis absorbs, the more powerful it becomes when tossed, and "Superconductor" grants Aspis a chance to shock nearby enemies when struck.
• Critical Status Buff: "Clear!" gives her a massive damage bonus in Fight For Your Life.
• Curtains Match the Window: Dark blue eyes and hair.
• Damage-Increasing Debuff: Combination of "Rend" (marker) and "Tear" (actual bonus) grants her bonus gun damage against melee'd enemies.
• Dash Attack: "Blood Rush", which gives her the ability to perform a charging slash at enemies as a Melee Override. If she manages to kill her target or inflict bleed damage, the cooldown is reset.
• Deadpan Snarker: Her default mode of speech is stoic and professional with a technical vocabulary. But she devolves into a more casual tone when she gets pressed far enough.
  CL4P-TP: I'm moving to another fuse box! Follow me!
  Athena: Uh huh... suuuuure.
• Death Glare: Her default expression. Doubly do in Tales from the Borderlands where Fiona's memory of her has her sporting glowing red eyes while hunting her down as part of her exaggeration of the story.
• Deconstruction: Her crusade against Atlas and her motivations as a Vault Hunter are put under a rather unflattering lens in Tales from the Borderlands.
• Defector from Decadence:
  • She defected from the Crimson Lance after they made her kill her sister.
  • This is also why she isn't seen with Jack in 2: she was disgusted by taking part of the events that led Jack to the top tier back in The Pre-Sequel!.
• Draw Aggro: Her skill "Prepare for Glory" gets the attention of enemies around her as soon she uses Aspis.
• The Dreaded: Not just to Atlas and bandits, even Handsome Jack is afraid of her. In Episode 3 of Tales, Jack suggests that if Rhys tells her about Jack being inside his head, Athena will cut off his head before he can even explain.
• Dual Wielding: She wields two swords in the opening cutscene of The Secret Armory of General Knoxx.
• Elemental Baggage: None of her elemental attacks require ammo, though all of them either have a cooldown or will trigger only with a certain probability.
• Evil Former Friend: In the eyes of Lilith at least, she went from a valued ally who helped them take down Atlas to helping her greatest enemy in his rise to power, even though Athena clearly states that she regrets working for Jack.
• Expy:
  • Not only does she throw her shield like Captain America (see below), Athena is also the most moral member of her team. While her idea of morality is still a considerable distance from Captain America's, it is Pandora we're talking about. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. In Episode 5 of Tales, her attacks when piloting Gortys are very similar to Cap's moves in Marvel vs. Capcom.
  • Gameplay-wise, her "Ceraunic Storm" and "Xiphos" skill trees are similar to Gaige's "Little Big Trouble" and Zer0's "Bloodshed" skill trees respectively.
• Face Death with Dignity: Having probably realized Lilith had already decided to have her killed, Athena calmly tells her to get it over with once she finishes her tale.
• The Faceless: In the Knoxx DLC, she starts off as a masked figure before revealing her face.
• Fatal Flaw: Her Consummate Professional tendencies are as good as they are detrimental to her. She is unwilling to leave Jack's employment even though she had seen how far deep he had sank already. She also refuses to not do a job for Felix in Tales of the Borderlands which ultimately gets her captured and nearly executed by Lilith making this an almost literal version of the trope.
• Foil: She's similar to Roland in a lot of ways, being a former member of the Crimson Lance who defected after being screwed over by her superiors (in her case, being tricked into killing her sister rather than being betrayed and almost killed like Roland), and having little in the way of social skills. Both are also The Paladin in comparison to their peers. However, Roland, being a soldier, excels in using firearms such as assault rifles and shotguns, while Athena, being an assassin, excels in using her sword and shield. Athena's grudge against Atlas is also much more severe, as she wishes to rid Pandora of all traces of the MegaCorp, whereas Roland was willing to work with the remnants of the Crimson Lance by reforming them into the Crimson Raiders.
• Gradual Regeneration: "Vanguard" and "Bloodlust" lets her regenerate health by having her Aspis out and inflicting bleed damage respectively.
• Gratuitous Greek: Her sword and shield, as well as many of her skills.
• Guest-Star Party Member: She temporarily joins the Tales from the Borderlands crew in Episode 3, having been hired by Felix to look out for and mentor Fiona and Sasha. By the end of the episode, she's captured by Brick and Mordecai and taken to Sanctuary, thus kicking off the Framing Device of The Pre-Sequel!.
• Gun Kata: One of her skills is called this. Her gun damage is increased, and her melee is boosted for a short time when she shoots an enemy.
• Having a Blast: While they are not superpowers, her "Zeus' Rage", "Smite" and "Hades' Shackles" skills can create quite a firework, and her "You've Got Red on You" skill force dying enemies to explode. Also, Aspis creates a small explosion when it connects with an enemy or a wall.
• Healing Shiv: Picking up from Roland in 1 and Maya in 2. In The Pre-Sequel!, she can revive teammates by throwing her shield at them.
• Herd-Hitting Attack: "Wrath of the Goddess" is a "chain attack" type, "Zeus' Rage", "Hades' Shackles", "You've Got Red on You" and "Smite" are Area of Effect type.
• Heroes Prefer Swords: Her melee weapon in The Pre-Sequel! is a Xiphos plasma sword. She's also the team's effective leader and the most moral and heroic of Jack's minions.
• Heroic BSoD: A very minor example, but when Jack vents the Hyperion scientists on the off-chance that one of them might be a Dahl mole, her mask of stoic professionalism cracks. Janey calls to check up on her and Athena is still obviously shaken, though she restores the mask pretty quickly.
• In Harm's Way: Implied to be the reason why she's still a Vault Hunter even after she promised Janey that she retired.
• Injured Vulnerability: "Omega-Senshu" grants her bonus damage against enemies with less than 50% health remaining.
• Irony: Despite being saved by Lilith's execution at the hands of the Eridian on account of the looming future threat and the need for more Vault Hunters, she's the only surviving The Pre-Sequel! Vault Hunter unaccounted for in 3, as Aurelia returns as an antagonist and Timothy Lawrence resurfaces in the Moxxi's Heist of the Handsome Jackpot DLC. Furthermore, with Axton and Salvador, the last of 2's Vault Hunters, hosting the "Arms Race" of the Director's Cut DLC, Athena remains the only former Vault Hunter to not appear in 3 whatsoever.
• I Shall Taunt You: "Prepare For Glory" causes her to taunt enemies when she pulls out her Aspis, drawing aggro while increasing her gun damage the more enemies attack her shield.
• Lightning Bruiser: Her Aspis shield already makes her a front-line strong fighter. Her "Phalanx" and "Xiphos" trees both give her a boost in survivability and speed that allow her to shred through enemies.
• Life Drain: With "Bloodlust" active, Athena regenerates health for each enemy she causes to bleed.
• Limit Break: "Smite" is a powerful ability, but it will work only if you are airborne and have no less than 10 Maelstrom stacks.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: In the Pre-Sequel, she uses a Kinetic Aspis, a shield that absorbs damage and can be tossed at enemies. Maxing out Phalanx skill tree will turn her into a Barrier Warrior, able to tank ludicrous amounts of damage and kill entire groups of enemies without firing a single shot. In Episode 2 of Tales, it's possible for Fiona to steal the shield right in front of her, which gets you the message that "Athena will REALLY remember that".
• Ludicrous Gibs: "You've Got Red on You" will cause an enemy who dies from a melee attack or bleeding to explode and damage nearby enemies.
• Meaningful Name: Named after a Greek goddess, and she despises Atlas, named after another Greek god.
• Mentor Occupational Hazard: Downplayed. It turns out that while she is mentoring Fiona in Tales, Brick and Mordy show up to catch her. They succeed, but not before Fiona knocks their health down to 50% and slows them down something fierce.
• Mission Control: In the Knoxx DLC.
• Morality Pet: She was this to General Knoxx to an extent, who thought of her as a nice kid for an assassin and was furious at his superiors for screwing her over.
• More Dakka: Athena's "Maelstrom" skill combines with the "Elemental Barrage" and "Unrelenting" skills to boost her fire rate and make her guns not need ammo the more fire or lightning damage she inflicts. Throw in the "Storm Weaving" talent that grants a flat fire rate bonus whenever she swaps weapons and an Athena with a couple of elemental SMG or laser weapons can get her fire rate up to over 100% remarkably quickly as long as she keeps swapping weapons every nine seconds (which, thanks to "Unrelenting", will happen almost immediately). Alternatively, the combo can be used with Maliwan rocket launchers...
• The Musketeer: Her Xiphos skill tree. "Gun Kata" increases her melee damage after shooting an enemy, "Rend" allows her melee attacks to apply bleeding, "Tear" increases her gun damage against bleeding targets.
• My Defense Need Not Protect Me Forever: Because her shield doubles as a powerful weapon, able to absorb and return enemy fire.
• My Master, Right or Wrong: Despite her increasingly low opinion of him, Athena refuses to leave Jack's side until her job as a Vault Hunter is officially done.
• Mythical Motifs: She's designed after Athena from Greek mythology, as shown by her name, perks and owl tattoo.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Named after a goddess of war, strategy and wisdom.
• Neck Snap: Performs one on her prison guard in her intro of the Knoxx DLC.
• Never Bring a Gun to a Knife Fight: As stated on the Game Breaker page, a combination of a melee build and a powerful Maylay Shield can tear apart almost everything, turning even the Excalibastard into a mere Stat Stick.
• No Social Skills: As Tiny Tina states, Athena is really bad at taking compliments and speaking in conversation. Both of which were when the young girl tried to make small talk with her. The former is when Tina told her she was pretty, which Athena said meant little to her due to Crimson Lance training stamping out her capacity for attraction. And for the latter, she said that the cutest thing she ever saw was a young redheaded boy on Promethea. Whose village Atlas bombed to make space for an armory.
• Not So Above It All:
  • While aloof and professional most of the time, she's far more expressive when actually in combat. Or when using a jump pad.
  Athena: AIR TIME!!
  • Upon being asked to give a high-five to Tiny Tina for getting together with Janey, Athena does so.
  • In Tales, Athena is actually quite emotive, outright yelling at Fiona and Sasha multiple times in frustration at their antics/idiocy, which only happened during a couple of encounters with Claptraps. Not that her Atlas colleagues weren't as much of a problem.
  • Notably Athena seems to be enjoying herself when piloting Gortys against the Traveler, if selected for the team.
  • She willingly sings the Mainframe song in Claptastic Voyage and starts making funny background noises with her mouth halfway through.
  • While still the most moral of the group, after Roland, Lilith and Moxxi try to kill them by sabotaging the Eye of Helios Athena openly admits to Lilith that she was motivated by vengeance like most of the others of the group. Similarly, for all her talk of how disgusted she was by Jack by the end, she did end up doing one more job for him for the money.
• Not So Stoic:
  • In Pre-Sequel seeing Jack killing his entire team of scientists on basis that there might be a traitor among them is enough for Athena to voice shock in horror, albeit under her breath. This was a gigantic blood red flag that clued her Jack wasn't the hero he thought himself to be.
  • While everything on both Pandora and Elpis already passed through Athena, seeing Fiona carry an eye of General Pollux in her pocket is enough to make Athena weirded out of her mind.
• Nothing Personal: In TVHM, Athena tells Tina that she's long since gotten over Lilith, Roland and Moxxi trying to kill her since allegiances are always shifting on the battlefield. She's still kind of ticked off about Lilith ordering her execution after she was done telling her story, however, given that clearly was based on something personal and was just an hour or so ago.
• Official Couple: With Springs.
• Old Shame: She does not view her job on Elpis where she directly helped Jack's ascenscion to power as something to be proud of. She seems to be equally not proud of her last job for him, helping Jack, now Handsome Jack, in retrieving the H-Source which Handsome Jack uses to purge (i.e: genocide) the Claptraps line.
• One Last Job: In the Claptastic Voyage DLC, Athena reveals that she did one final job for Jack before fully leaving his employ (which Lilith naturally chews her out for). When asked by Lilith why she did so after everything she's been through, she states that even she wasn't going to turn down the ridiculous paycheck he was offering. She even tells him to consider the H-Source her parting gift.
• The One Thing I Don't Hate About You: According to her, Atlas may have been full of corrupt, murdering bastards—but they made the best lattes.
• Only in It for the Money: She ended up answering Jack's call for Vault Hunters because she desperately needed cash after the fall of Atlas. She also agreed to help him get the H-Source so that she would have money to support both her and Springs.
• The Paladin: As well as being the most moral of the playable characters, statistically she can be built as a Combat Medic with a focus on the defensive abilities of her Aspis.
• Pet the Dog:
  • In Claptastic Voyage, despite agreeing that Claptrap's fatal screw-ups in Overlook were a matter of his own stupidity, she still acknowledges that he isn't actually malicious and didn't mean to hurt anyone.
  • When Claptrap's subconscious finally gets sick of all the abuse everyone's been laying on him and leaves, she's one of only two who apologizes to him for it.
  • Gets a brief one in Tales from the Borderlands if convinced to back down from killing Cassius by Fiona. Moments later, she shoves Cassius out of the way when Brick charges into the facility to prevent him from getting hurt.
• Playing with Fire: Her Ceraunic Storm skill tree is focused on dealing Incendiary and Shock damage and uses a stacking mechanic similar to Gaige's Anarchy and Krieg's Bloodlust.
• Photographic Memory: She's able to remember every detail of Jack's quest to save Elpis, recalling everything word-for-word. In True Vault Hunter mode Tiny Tina actually calls her on this, demanding she recall the 17th thing Jack said since the adventure started, and she does.
• Power Glows: Aspis, when absorbing incoming attacks.
• Promoted to Playable: From a questgiver in a Borderlands 2 DLC to a playable character in the Pre-Sequel.
• Punch-Clock Villain: A Lighter and Softer version. Athena is a good person but is known to have worked for amoral people such as the Atlas corporation as well as Jack, the former because she was raised to and the latter because she needed the money. She repeatedly expresses disgust or anger at what Jack asks her to do over the game, especially as he becomes more unhinged, and eventually walks out and refuses to take Jack's blood money at the end of the main campaign. She does come back for the paycheck in Claptastic Voyage, but that's only to support herself and Janey. At the end, while Jack is killing the entire Claptrap line and gunning down Claptrap himself, she is clearly disgusted by the glee of Jack and her fellow Vault Hunters.
• Put the "Laughter" in "Slaughter": She really enjoys using "Blood Rush".
• Rage Breaking Point: In comparison to her teammates, Athena generally stays professional and patient when dealing with the usual Borderlands weirdo, with the occasional snippets of snark to show her displeasure. But, she has a limit and boy does it show.
  A Claptrap: [Needing to integrate with a door system after repeatedly failing to open said door] O-oh gee! I don't know about that! Integration can be kind of dangerous!
  Athena: DO IT OR I'LL KILL YOU!
  Claptrap: [Cheerfully] O-Kay!
• Rags to Riches: New Tales from the Borderlands reveals that she somehow went from a retired Vault Hunter struggling to make ends meet to being the CEO and/or representative of one of the corporations, on equal standing with Rhys, Wainwright, Katagawa Sr. and Torgue. Exactly how she got to that point or what corp she's affiliated with, however, isn't stated.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: In Tales from the Borderlands, her eyes ominously glowing red under her hood is a clear indicator that she is someone you do not want to mess with as well as being another of Fiona's embellishments.
• Red Is Heroic: The default color of her armor is red, and she's the most heroic member of the cast (except maybe Claptrap).
• Rei Ayanami Expy: Come on. Blue-hair, tight professionalism, a mysteriously dark past that included her sister died with her own hands and a significant hatred towards her origin faction, she is definitely a handful closer to this trope than any other mysterious characters throughout the series. And she had seen a lot weirder things in life.
• Relationship Upgrade: Apparently hooked up with Janey Springs after the events of The Pre-Sequel!, if an amusing exchange between her and Tina during TVHM is to be believed. Later confirmed by Word of God, and visible confirmation in their appearance in Tales from the Borderlands Episode 2.
• Ridiculously Successful Future Self: Of all the Vault Hunters, she's the only one who has somehow managed to become a major corporate figurehead rather than staying a merc.
• Same Character, But Different: In a gameplay sense; her moveset and abilities as a Gladiator are very different from the play-style you'd expect if you were basing expectations on her previous portrayal as a lithe Lance Assassin with a personal teleporter as seen in The Secret Armory of General Knoxx. It's likely the developers didn't want to re-do a similar gameplay style as Lilith and Zer0, and therefore made Athena closer to a knight/tank playstyle instead.
• Scarf of Asskicking: She wears a scarf around her neck that she also drapes around her head like a hood.
• Screaming Warrior: "Blood Rush" makes Athena let out a warcry while dashing and striking the enemy.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Her reaction to Jack's intentions about waking the Warrior and scorching Pandora. However, she ended up returning to do One Last Job for him.
• Seen It All: Athena's seen a lot of stuff, to the point that nothing really weirds her out anymore... up until Fiona reveals that yes, she's still carrying around General Pollux's eyeball in her pocket because it might come in handy.
• Shock and Awe: Her Ceraunic Storm skill tree is focused on dealing Incendiary and Shock damage and uses a stacking mechanic similar to Gaige's Anarchy and Krieg's Bloodlust.
• Shoulders of Doom: Her Class Mods take the form of pauldrons for her left shoulder.
• Sink or Swim Mentor: In Tales, her idea of training Fiona is to let her deal with dangerous situations by herself.
• Situational Damage Attack:
  • Kinetic Aspis deals a fixed amount of damage plus double the absorbed energy. Damage of "Zeus' Rage" also depends on the amount of energy absorbed by Aspis.
  • "Maelstrom" ability grants you stacks of Maelstrom every time you deal incendiary or shock damage. Maelstrom stacks increase all your elemental damage and determines the efficiency of several other abilities.
• Sore Loser: When she rolls a Natural 1 when playing D&D in Tales, she angrily flips the board.
• Spectacular Spinning: Aspis, when absorbing incoming attacks.
• Sprint Shoes: "Ephodos" and "Mercurial" grant her speed bonus when using her Action Skill and after killing an enemy respectively. The latter actually has Mercury's winged shoes for an icon.
• Status Infliction Attack: As well as having an elemental damage-focused Skill Tree, with "Rend", she can inflict bleed damage on her enemies by meleeing them causing damage over time. The damage increases against enemies with higher health, and other skills in the "Xiphos" tree grant her bonuses in return.
• Still Wearing the Old Colors: She wears parts of her old assassin armor and uses Xiphos, a standard-issued weapon of Lance Assassins. Her Class Mods take the form of pauldrons with the Atlas logo on them.
• The Stoic:
  • Very serious and to-the-point, for the most part. She mellows out by The Pre-Sequel! as the source of her anger, Atlas, is dead, and now shows more signs of being unable to act like a regular human being, excitable tendencies, and confusion over the concept of flirting and attraction.
  • According to ECHO logs left by General Knoxx, she wasn't always like this, as he notes that she's endearingly excited about meeting up with her sister and leaving Pandora with her. Her stoicism during the Knoxx DLC is likely just because being unwittingly tricked into murdering her sister was still a little raw.
• Stone Wall: If specced down the Phalanx tree, Athena becomes almost invincible as long as her Aspis is up as she's immune to damage from the front and her shields and health regenerate faster than most enemies can deplete them. Being forced to wield all her weapons one-handed is a murder on accuracy however.
• Swiss-Army Weapon: The Kinetic Aspis, aside from serving as a shield and a throwing weapon, can regenerate health and shields as well as revive downed teammates.
• Tattoo as Character Type: She has a stylized owl, that also resembles an Omega, on her right hand. It's a reference to both her name (Greek goddess Athena is associated with an owl) and her past (She used to be a leader and a top operative of the Omega Squad).
• Team Mom: Not to everyone mind you, but she acts very motherly towards those she cares about, particularly Claptrap (a character most others make a point to despise). Unfortunately, she seems to have lost her fondness for him in Tales. As she can be pretty damn mean to him if they're on the same team.
• Teleporters and Transporters: She had a Personal Teleporter Device in The Secret Armory of General Knoxx DLC.
• That Man Is Dead: As far as she's concerned, Jack the Hero of Elpis died when he became Handsome Jack.
• Throwing Your Shield Always Works: Her Aspis in The Pre-Sequel! can be tossed out Captain America style. It can eventually be upgraded so that it bounces off of multiple enemies before coming back to her. Jack even lampshades this in a trailer, noting that she's just like someone who rhymes with "Schmaptian Schmamerica".
• Token Good Teammate: In The Pre-Sequel, Athena is the most moral and stable of the playable characters and serves as a foil to the others (especially Wilhelm and Nisha). As the game progresses, she goes from admiring Jack somewhat to slowly but surely growing disgusted at his actions to the point that it is only her professionalism that prevents her from leaving his team. Not that this stops her from wanting vengeance against Moxxi and the Vault Hunters of 1 like the rest of Jack's goon squad, the DLC downplays this though as "Jack" seems more suited to this trope.
• Unexplained Recovery: In Tales, she's attacked and taken away by Brick and Mordecai in Episode 3. While we know from the Pre-Sequel that she and the Raiders ultimately work things out peacefully, it doesn't explain how or why she's bored out of her skull doing odd jobs for Rudiger in Prosperity Junction come Episode 5.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Despite the fact that she was uninvolved in his more infamous actions, Athena was still instrumental in the rise of Handsome Jack. After telling her story to Lilith, she openly states that she does indeed regrets her actions.
• Voice of the Legion: In Tales from the Borderlands, she has a demonic-sounding reverb to her voice while chasing Fiona and Sasha, though it's likely just the former's dramatic embellishments.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Despite (nominally) being on the side of the Crimson Raiders and the mounting COV threat, she makes absolutely no appearance in BL3. Though part of that might be due to Rhys reorganizing Atlas, which Athena has had... bad history with. New Tales from the Borderlands reveals that she has somehow become a CEO of a corporation, though exactly what corporation isn't stated.
• What the Hell, Hero?: After Jack had Gladstone and the other scientists spaced, Athena proceeded to call him out for the unnecessary brutality of his actions. Jack simply brushed her off and told her that they'll agree to disagree. In TVHM, she tells Tina that this was the moment when she truly realized what kind of person Jack really was.
• When She Smiles: Athena looks both beautiful and truly happy in the rare moments she smiles in Tales from the Borderlands.
• The Worf Effect: In Tales, if Loader Bot comes to save Fiona and Sasha, it simply grabs Athena and sends her flying with a single throw. The Stranger quickly notes that Hyperion Loaders can't actually do that, something that Fiona brushes off. Since the Stranger IS Loader Bot and would obviously know, this probably never actually happened.
• You Are Already Dead: Gets closer to the Trope Namer than other examples. Her "You've Got On You Skill" causes enemies who die while bleeding to explode into red chunks, damaging and grossing them out.
• You Don't Look Like You: She looks noticeably different in The Pre-Sequel! than she does in the Knoxx DLC, having a shorter and stockier build, a slightly lighter complexion and a new weapon.
• You Will Not Evade Me: Heroic variant. "Epicenter" causes her Slam attack to generate a Singularity effect, pulling enemies towards her.

Wilhelm

Wilhelm (AKA The Enforcer)

As of Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!.

^{Click here to see him in 2.}

Voiced by: Todd Haberkorn (Borderlands 2); Bryan Massey (Pre-Sequel)

"Wilhelm here. Tell me what to shoot and how much I'm gettin' paid."

Wilhelm is a Hyperion cyborg who serves Handsome Jack, and who nearly defeated the original Vault Hunters after the events of Borderlands. Originally a legendary mercenary/bodyguard who became obsessed with enhancing himself via cybernetics, he signed on as a Vault Hunter under Jack after he was offered a couple million dollars.

His action skill lets him summon Wolf and Saint, two Surveyor Drones that attack his enemies and heal him respectively.

---

• Ambiguously Evil: Wilhelm is happy to work for Jack and disturbingly impressed with the latter killing the scientists but, otherwise, never does anything immoral beyond what he's paid to. His betrayal of Felicity gets a rather odd comment that he feels bad about it but that he's also jealous of her cool new robot body. He also legitimately mourns a Claptrap who dies - "poor guy" - but very quickly gets over it. Wilhelm does seem to have a conscience, but he also has a contract, and his conscience never kicks up too much fuss if he's getting paid. By Borderlands 2, he's tortured Tannis and shot women and children.
• Ascended Extra: In Borderlands 2, Wilhelm barely had any characterization beyond being Jack's main enforcer and carrying out his boss's crimes, and he shows up in-game as a relatively easy boss. In Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! he gets Promoted to Playable, and it's detailed how he went from a mercenary to Jack's dragon.
• Artificial Limbs: The Cyber Commando skill tree allows you to replace Wilhelm's arm with a cybernetic Power Fist and his legs with cybernetic ones that let you run and shoot simultaneously.
• Bald of Evil: By the time of Borderlands 2, he no longer has any hair and is more or less a palette swap of a generic Hyperion Engineer.
• Because I'm Good At It: His answer for why he became a mercenary (as well as practically every question involving his life) is "I was good at fights".
• Blood Knight: "I like to fight things" sums up his entire life.
• Book Dumb: Refers to books as word-holders in a sidequest and hopes that the questgiver doesn't ask him to read.
• Call-Back:
  • His action skill in Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! is to call out two flying drones, which can both attack and heal him. This is a reference to him doing the same thing when you fight him as a boss in Borderlands 2.
  • One of his skills is "Rolling Thunder", which was the name of the legendary grenade mod he dropped as a boss.
• Catchphrase: "No."
• Combat Medic: "Zero Hour" causes Saint to create a healing zone when recalled or destroyed that heals Wilhelm and his allies when they step in it.
• Consummate Professional: His only concerns are getting the job done and getting paid once the job's done. Otherwise, he couldn't care less about anything else.
• The Comically Serious: He generally maintains a professional and mercenary demeanor towards others and completely lacks the hang-ups, dramas, goofiness and neuroses of the other characters. Best shown in the Inspirational Posters sidequest, in which Wilhelm is the only character who doesn't indulge Janey's requests to shout something inspiring, and in his backstory logs, where he answers every question about every stage of his life with the phrase "I was good at fights". His explicitly stated motivation in life is "I'm really good at killing people. I want to be a robot." That's it.
• Cutting Off the Branches: While players can spec him however they want, in the credits Wilhelm is depicted◊ with all cybernetic upgrades (left hand, legs and a Shoulder Cannon) from the Cyber Commando skill tree.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: In Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!, he starts off as mostly human save for a cybernetic eye (and beard.) As he levels up and takes certain skills in the Cyber Commando skill tree, he gains more cybernetic parts and his voice changes, slowly but surely becoming the monstrosity seen in Borderlands 2. Angel even tells Jack that by hiring him, he risks transforming Wilhelm into more machine than man, to which Jack responds sounds pretty awesome. The credits show him complete his transformation.
• Deadpan Snarker: Wilhelm is pretty dry. He'll speak up when needed, and doesn't mind giving honest feedback when asked, but he's not exactly a barrel of joy.
• Death or Glory Attack: "Termination Protocols" allows him to self-destruct and explode whenever Fight for your Life ends. Killing an enemy with the explosion gets him a Second Wind.
• Deconstruction: Of The Heavy and The Dragon, particularly the archetype with Undying Loyalty. The pre-sequel shows Wilhelm just trying to make ends meet, and despite his success he had a condition that gave him a mindset that would be too out of place for a normal hero in Borderlands in general. He grows a bond with Jack out of a combination of his own addiction and desire for revenge and becomes his main muscle by the second game that's not much more than a husk surrounded by a robot. Unfortunately because he's Jack's main muscle by this point, he's utilized early on in the Vault Hunter's adventure, and a combo of the degradation his implants have on him as well as outside influence, makes him a footnote and a pawn not much more than a souped up version of the Elite Mooks you've been fighting. He dies a shadowy tool of what he once was, loyal to a man who literally used him up and spat him out at you.
• Desperation Attack: His "Termination Protocols" skill, where his Fight For Your Life mode is replaced with him slowly walking towards his enemies while emitting electricity until he either kills someone or self-destructs in a nuclear explosion. There's also his Vengeance Cannon, which activates when his shield is broken.
• The Dragon: To Handsome Jack. The Pre-Sequel! shows that he initially worked for Jack just for the money, but Wilhelm eventually developed genuine respect for him, approving of many of Jack's more morally dubious actions throughout the game. By the end of the game, he's more than willing to serve Jack just to put a bullet in Roland, Lilith and Moxxi's faces.
• The Dreaded: He is feared by both Angel and the Crimson Raiders. When you finally face him, Roland and Lilith tell you to run. And prior to all that, he was a legendary mercenary prior to working for Jack.
• Drone Deployer: He can launch two Surveyors drones to give him shields as well as to repair him. In Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!, his action skill lets him deploy two drones: Wolf, who attacks his enemies and Saint, who heals him.
• Electronic Eye: He has a scope-like prosthetic in Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Wilhelm is a little disturbed by Nisha's bloodlust. He also seems to be the only one of Jack's Vault Hunters who's never burned down a church.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • To Axton. Both are highly skilled former mercenaries whose main motivation is to obtain vast amounts of wealth, both have the use of lethal, automated machinery to aid them in battle (Wilhelm has his personal drones, Wolf and Saint, while Axton has his Sabre turret), and both ended up in their current situations as a result of failing an important mission involving protection of some kind. What separates them is where their loyalties lie: Axton joined the original Vault Hunters and the Crimson Raiders on their quest to stop Handsome Jack from opening the Vault, whereas Wilhelm continued to work for Hyperion after the events on Elpis and became Handsome Jack's right-hand man, and would carry out Jack's most heinous actions.
  • To a lesser extent, he's also one to Athena. Both are mercenaries who were hired by Jack, and are Punch-Clock Villains who are Only in It for the Money (in contrast to Nisha, who enjoys killing people, and Claptrap, who is programmed to serve Jack). They're also the two most serious of The Pre-Sequel's protagonists, though their stoic demeanors occasionally slip up. In addition, both are shown to ultimately enjoy combat in spite of their shared professionalism. What separates them in spite of all this is that Athena still has moral boundaries and is disgusted by Jack's increasingly unhinged behavior, while Wilhelm has a cold-blooded streak and doesn't care about how immoral his or Jack's actions are so long as he gets paid. A good example of this is their respective reactions to Jack killing the Hyperion scientists. While Athena is horrified by it, Wilhelm is impressed by Jack's ruthless pragmatism.
• Expy: In Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!, he looks like a cyborg Wolverine.
  • His mercenary background, bloodthirsty nature, addiction to cybernetics, being a company hatchet man, and The Dreaded makes him one to Adam Smasher.
• Famed In-Story: He was formerly one of the most famous mercenaries known and several characters know him by reputation. Unfortunately for him, a botched job in which he failed to protect either a president or an orphanage tarnished his rep quite a bit and made it harder to get jobs in the inner worlds.
• Flat Character: Played for Laughs. His backstory is he's good at fights. His reason for joining the team? Jack paid him a lot. His deep, dark, secret he's afraid others will know? He likes steak (and robots).
• Freudian Excuse: He was born with a case of bone waste and the constant surgical implants he required made him addicted to cybernetic implants.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: Jack poisoned him to set up a Batman Gambit in 2. Indeed, his boss fight isn't terribly difficult, and you can take him down before Roland, Lilith and Angel finish talking to you, even in Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode.
• Good Old Fisticuffs: His standard melee attack is Pistol-Whipping with the gun in hand, but if you unequip all weapons he throws a right punch. Even Brick and Salvador have knuckle weapons- Wilhelm just uses his bare hand.
• Hidden Depths: Defied. Despite his interviewer trying as hard as he can to get details of his life in an attempt to write a book about him, Wilhelm either can't or won't answer his questions with incredibly short and blunt answers, simply saying that he was good at fights throughout his entire life, he likes steak and robots and he wants to become a robot. His only concern when he finds all his ECHO logs are that people might know that he likes steak.
  Interviewer: This has been an extraordinary waste of time. What's the point of you, Wilhelm? What do you even want out of life?!
  Wilhelm: I'm really good at killing people. I wanna be a robot.
  Interviewer: That's pretty weird.
• Implacable Man: Termination Protocols essentially turns him into the Terminator once his health is gone. Rather than crawling on the ground, he instead slowly walks forward while shooting electricity.
• Jack of All Stats: Like Axton before him, he's a pretty good all-rounder who can be specced for offense, defense or both. His action skill is both offensive and defensive at the same time, as he heals while Wolf probes for enemies to shoot. He's also got a Jack of All Stats skill deep in his self-improvement tree that makes him better at a little bit of everything.
• Kick the Dog: At the end of Claptastic Voyage, he is laughing and high-fiving Nisha when Jack destroys the Claptrap product line and guns down Claptrap itself.
• Little "No": Wilhelm's Catchphrase. He loves giving blunt "No's" when he's not interested, particularly when Janey's trying to get him to say something inspirational for her posters.
  Janey: Now jump up high and say something inspirational.
  Wilhelm: No.
• Machine Worship: He's a worshiper of the Almighty Robotic Policeman.
• Mook Lieutenant: In Borderlands 2, he's pretty much a regular henchman, but serves as Jack's Dragon in the story.
• Noodle Incident: When asked why he, the best Enforcer in the galaxy, would take up the job for Jack, he remarks that he failed to protect a politician from exploding. But he corrects himself, saying it was an orphanage he failed to protect.
• Not So Stoic: Technically the most "serious" of the Pre-Sequel's protagonists next to Athena, he is nonetheless extremely prone to nigh-comical Hot-Blooded behaviour and platitudes.
• Not Worth Killing: If he refuses to kill the surrendering Lost Legion soldier for Jack, he does it because he doesn't see a point to it when they're eventually going to wipe them out anyways.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: He acts as a professional mercenary that is Only in It for the Money, but gets so pissed off at Moxxi and the original Vault Hunter's betrayal that he comments he'd kill them for free if Jack wasn't already paying him to do it.
• One-Man Army: Is stated to have single-handedly won the battle of New Haven for Hyperion and defeated all of the four original Vault Hunters without breaking a sweat. According to Angel, back when he was a mercenary he had a kill count the equivalent of the population of a small country.
• Only in It for the Money: He only agreed to work for Jack because he was hired for a lot of money. He's generally willing to do just about anything asked of him as long as he gets paid in the end. He makes an exception for people he really hates, such as offering to kill Tassiter for a quarter, or in the case of Moxxi and the original Vault Hunters, he'll do it for free. His backstory echo log bluntly lampshades this.
  Jack: Hey Wilhelm, wanna come to the moon and hunt a Vault for me?
  Wilhelm: No.
  Jack: I'll pay you a couple million dollars.
  Wilhelm: Okay. [End recording]
  Wilhelm: Yep. That's my backstory.
• Pet the Dog: Due to his fondness for robots, he's the only Vault Hunter who actually felt bad about a Claptrap dying from opening the door to Jack's Office for him in Home Sweet Home, despite being as increasingly annoyed as the rest of the Vault Hunters from several attempts. He gets over it later though.
  Wilhelm: Ugh... poor robot.
• Pistol-Whipping: His basic melee attack in Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! is to hit people with the butt of his gun. If you unequip all guns, his melee attack is a bare-handed punch.
• Power Fist: One of his skills in Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! is actually called this. It gives him a pneumatic fist that lets him toss out an explosive punch.
• Private Military Contractors: Wilhelm is outright stated to have been the best mercenary in the galaxy, until he messed up on an important job.
• Promoted to Playable: A mid game boss in Borderlands 2 that became a playable character in Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!.
• Punch-Clock Villain: All indications are that Wilhelm does any and all morally questionable actions in the game because he's being paid to do so. That doesn't stop him from having a disturbing cold-blooded streak, though.
• Rare Random Drop: Upon destruction in 2, it can drop the legendary Logan's Gun^note A legendary Hyperion pistol which always spawns with the Fire element whose rounds explode on contact provided they don't stick to an inert surface such as a wall and Rolling Thunder^note A legendary rubberized grenade mod which makes grenades detonate each time they bounce, exploding like a MIRV grenade after a certain number of bounced or touching an enemy items. In the $100.000 challenge, he dropped Fremington's Edge^note A legendary Sniper Rifle with zoom of up to 11.4%, almost double that of any other sniper rifle.
• Red Baron: "The Enforcer" isn't just his class name; it also seems to be a sort of nickname he's developed as a mercenary since he's addressed as such by people who know him.
• Shadow Archetype: To Athena. Like her, Wilhelm is a Punch-Clock Villain that Jack hired to hunt Elpis' Vault, and generally has a serious, professional demeanor. However, Athena initially admires Jack and considers him a hero before becoming disgusted by his insanity and megalomania, leaving his employ as soon as the mission is completed. In contrast, Wilhelm initially only cares about how much Jack is willing to pay him, before developing a genuine respect for him and approving of his ruthlessness, which results in him becoming Jack's Dragon and the monstrous enforcer shown in Borderlands 2.
• Shoulder Cannon: In Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!, he can be upgraded with a Vengeance Cannon that activates when he's at low health. In Borderlands 2, his cannon shoots mortars.
• Skewed Priorities: Claptastic Voyage reveals a charmingly awkward side of the fearsome enforcer when, upon finding a hapless maiden tied to train tracks, Wilhelm realizes what this must mean and reacts with almost childlike glee.
  Wilhelm: [excited] They have trains here?!
• Slow Laser: His Vengeance Cannon fires typical slower-than-light beams.
• The Stoic: While he can be more expressive when he feels like it, Wilhelm generally keeps his emotions in check and is not one to mince words, to the point that he utterly infuriates the interviewer for his autobiography with how abrupt and short his descriptions of his life are. He's also the only one to not have any particularly extreme reaction towards Jack spacing the scientists, to which he just calmly compliments Jack for his ruthlessness and pragmatism
• Taking You with Me: With Termination Protocols, he can self-destruct in a nuclear explosion similar to Krieg's Light the Fuse. Like Light the Fuse, if he scores a kill, he actually gets revived. In fact, he occasionally namedrops the trope when in "Fight for your Life!" mode.
• Terse Talker: He has the shortest responses out of the group, even putting his catchphrase aside. This is especially played for laughs in his ECHO Logs, where his interviewer is frustrated by how Wilhelm refuses to answer questions about his life in anything other than the briefest words possible.
• This Cannot Be!: How he reacts to losing a fight against the player characters. "This is literally impossible!"
• Tranquil Fury: After Moxxi, Roland and Lilith's betrayal, Wilhelm calmly describes his feelings about the matter to Janey as such:
  Springs: Wilhelm, you saved Elpis and Pandora! Whatcha feelin'?
  Wilhelm: Anger, pain... Lot more people gonna die before I'm done here...
• Transhuman: His stated goal in life is "I want to be a robot". By the events of Borderlands 2, Wilhelm looks and acts more like a machine than a human being from all the cyber enhancements he's had done on himself. Yes, he becomes deadlier than pretty much every human alive (except the Vault Hunters), but pretty much destroys his personality in the process.
• Try Not to Die: His idea of congratulating Nurse Nina's new boyfriend.
  Wilhelm: You're here because you didn't die. My advice is don't die.
• Voice of the Legion: In Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!, the more he upgrades himself with cybernetics, the deeper and more distorted his voice becomes.
• Worf Had the Flu: According to dialogue that was accidentally left out of 2, Jack had him poisoned prior to his boss battle.

Nisha

Nisha Kadam (AKA The Lawbringer; Sheriff of Lynchwood)

As of Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!.

^{Click to see her in 2.}

Voiced by: Stephanie Young

"Howdy, pardner..."

The Sheriff of Lynchwood, a Hyperion-controlled town on Pandora. She is the current girlfriend of Handsome Jack, and was given the city as an anniversary present. Formerly a bandit who hunted down other bandits, she began working for Jack for the action.

Her Action Skill has her temporarily lock onto enemies while gaining substantial buffs, locking onto critical spots when aiming down sights.

---

• Abnormal Ammo: "The Unforgiven" upgrades her Action Skill so that the bullets she shoots during Showdown not only bounce to other enemies but can also be remote-detonated after it runs out.
• Abusive Parents: It's revealed in her personal Echo Logs that Nisha's mother was abusive to her and possibly her father. One of her lines for completing a badass challenge is to brag about how she hasn't felt this good since mom died.
• All Crimes Are Equal: As the Sheriff. In her case, it's not because she really thinks it's a good way to discourage criminals. She just likes hanging people.

• Ascended Extra: Though she gets much more characterization than any of Jack's other henchmen, Nisha is still just a one-off boss in Borderlands 2. She gets Promoted to Playable in Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!.
• Ax-Crazy: What can we say, she likes shooting things. Though she's not the massacre-while-giggling kind so much as the languid "gimme half an excuse" type.
• Badass Longcoat: She sports a purple duster as the Sheriff.
• Badass Normal: Her comrades are a former assassin trained since childhood with a hi-tech shield, a renowned cyborg mercenary with personal drones, a reprogrammed for combat Do-Anything Robot, an actor with a hologram projector and a huntress with a prototype ice trap. Nisha seems to be largely self-trained by experience and doesn't have any of the other characters' fancy toys, but she is just as capable as other Vault Hunters. Of all The Pre-Sequel Vault Hunters however, she's by far the least dangerous when fought as a boss in later games.
• The Berserker: She's able to focus her rage into temporary moments of incredible precision.
• Co-Dragons: The credits of the Pre-Sequel shows that she and Wilhelm served as this to Jack in his war on Pandora.
• Combat Sadomasochist: She's equally sadistic and masochistic, this forms the basis of her Law & Order tree, which gives her stacks of Order whenever she takes damage and gives her a chance to heal and when upgraded gives her the chance to return said damage with interest. Several of her comments definitely make it clear that she loves taking pain as much as she deals it out. Further suggested by her melee weapon, which is a bullwhip.
• Cruel Mercy: If you choose to spare the surrendering Lost Legion soldier, Nisha will remark she's only doing so to make him overconfident, so she can have even more fun strangling him a few months later when he's not expecting it.
• Dark Action Girl: Loves killing bandits so much that she reduced the town, Lynchwood, to poverty just to hunt them down. Word of God even describes her as the most evil character of the series.
• Dark Mistress: She's Handsome Jack's girlfriend. She openly invites anyone who accuses her of gaining her power via nepotism to settle it personally in her broadcasts and states that she has no interest in his vision of utopia.
• Death by Irony: If the player goes for the bonus objectives in Borderlands 2, the woman who uses pistols for every battle is killed... by pistol fire. Doubly so if she's ultimately downed by a Jakobs Iron or Maggie.
• The Dreaded: In Borderlands 2. To say Deputy Winger is scared shitless of her wrath is a huge understatement.
• Even Evil Has Standards: In the "Boarding Party" side-quest, she finds Athena getting tricked into murdering her sister amusing. Wilhem's addiction to cybernetic enhancements, however, is something even she can't get into.
  Nisha: You like surgery? And I thought I was into dark stuff.
• Evil Counterpart: It's subtle, but she has a lot in common with Moxxi in that she has a romantic history with Jack, an affinity for revolvers (as Moxxi carries a revolver named Rubi while revolvers are generally Nisha's weapon of choice), an enjoyment of violence, and a hat. However, unlike Moxxi who dumped Jack after realizing how psychopathic he truly was and opposes him afterwards, Nisha fell in love with Jack because of his insanity and became one of his closest allies following the events of Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!. And while Moxxi is almost always polite and welcoming, Nisha is Faux Affably Evil at best and a sadistic Jerkass at worst.
• Evil Laugh: When activating Showdown, she occasionally lets out a bloodthirsty laugh.
• Evil Matriarch: Her mother. See Freudian Excuse below.
• Faux Affably Evil: She isn't rude to Janey at all and is more amused than anything by Brick and the Vault Hunters' antics in Lynchwood. She's also surprisingly sympathetic to Nina's suitors, considering that they're (lovesick) bandits. That said, she is still extremely sadistic and Ax-Crazy.
• Fetish: She's got an extreme (and lethal) asphyxiation fetish. There's a reason her town is called Lynchwood.
  Nisha: (After running out of oxygen) I'm usually into this but...
• For the Evulz: Why is she evil? Eh. Seems like a fun way to be.
• Freudian Excuse: Revealed in The Pre-Sequel! to have had a traumatic childhood. Her mother was abusive to both her child and her husband, who was too cowed to do anything to defend himself or Nisha. Nisha's only real friend was a puppy that she adored - until it was bitten by something either venomous or rabid. After an accident, the puppy went berserk and attacked her, tearing at her throat, while her mother laughed. Once her father had bandaged her injuries, Nisha killed the dog with a shovel. Ever since that event, she's developed a hatred of small animals such as puppies.
• Glass Cannon: Outside of the Law & Order tree, Nisha has very little in terms of survivability, but is quite possibly the most powerful character in terms of raw damage potential.
• Guns Akimbo: "One For Each of Ya" lets her copy the pistol she's holding, letting her dual-wield them. Unlike Salvador, it's a permanent upgrade and limited to handguns.
• The Gunslinger: While this is a given considering the setting, Nisha takes this further with her western aesthetic. Her Action Skill in Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! makes her auto-lock on enemies, making her The Vaporizer.
• Hanging Judge: They don't call the town "Lynchwood" for nothing. As The Sheriff she acts as the judge, jury, chief of police, and town executioner. Her deputy mentions that there are more than 200 offenses that are punishable by death.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: During Showdown, of course.
• In Love with Your Carnage: She fell in love with Jack the moment he had a group of Hyperion scientists he suspects of being moles for Zarpedon jettisoned out to space. The further he goes through his breakdown and descent into full-on villainy, the more attractive Nisha finds him. By the end of the game, Jack asks Nisha if she wants to go get a drink with him when this is all over, and she replies by saying that "We're just gonna skip the drink."
• Jerkass: Even aside from her murderousness, Nisha is generally incredibly surly and rude to most folks, particularly Moxxi, who she hates on sight and calls her a "slutty clown", plus she's shown willingly helping Jack in his rise to power at the credits. She also really, really, really, really hates the Customs Claptrap. She does mellow out a small bit in Borderlands 2, which is set 3 years after the events on Elpis. As the Sheriff, she's quieter, more subtle in her actions, and is actually polite to both you and even Brick, who she has been putting up bounties for years. She even considers you a Worthy Opponent, something almost none of the antagonists do, and appreciates you killing bandits in the town. That said, though, she's also hypocritical, tortures people for very stupid reasons (for example, going outside at night), hangs everyone for every single crime, gathered almost every unaffiliated bandit in Lynchwood so she could kill them daily and murdered Brick's puppy.
• Just You and Me and My GUARDS!: Her version of a 'duel' in Borderlands 2.
• Karmic Death: For all the atrocities she committed in her life, especially when helping Jack and as the sheriff of Lynchwood, she is ultimately killed in a showdown in Lynchwood by the Vault Hunters.
• Kick the Dog:
  • When Brick was captured, she tried to torture him, but he didn't break. So she got his puppy and snapped its neck in front of him. The Pre-Sequel has her outright state she hates puppies, though it turns out she has a reason for this outside of it just being an obviously unpleasant quality to her.
  • Upon learning that Athena was tricked into killing her sister by Atlas, Nisha proceeds to laugh at her.
  • The rest of the Vault Hunters admitted to feeling disturbed and guilty about what they did to Felicity. Nisha said that it was fun.
  • When Jack personally guns down Claptrap at the end of Claptastic Voyage, she is shown laughing and high-fiving Wilhelm.
• Laser-Guided Karma: She committed horrible actions towards Brick, who then pays you to trash her mining operation and rob her bank.
• Laughably Evil: While several of her Kick the Dog actions are taken seriously, Nisha's evilness and her nonchalant attitude towards her actions are occasionally played for laughs, such as her hatred of small animals and her history of terrorizing innocent and not-so-innocent people (her justification for robbing a convent was that "those nuns were dicks"). Her personal ECHO log consists of the screams of a bandit king she tortured with her happily reminiscing on it.
• King Mook: When you fight her in Borderlands 2, she's basically just a regular enemy with more health and a slightly better weapon who's also a Flunky Boss. This is in contrast to Wilhelm and Aurelia, who are full-on extended boss fights with their own unique movesets, and even Claptrap as the INAC, who while a pushover in direct combat at least had a unique moveset instead of just being a regular Claptrap with more health.
• Lightning Lash: With certain skills, Nisha can unleash a lightning bolt just by cracking her whip.
• Life Drain: Her Celestial Lawbringer mod lets her heal for a fraction of the damage she does in Showdown.
• The Masochism Tango: Handsome Jack's reddit AMA implies that their relationship is like this; it involves strangulation and Russian Roulette, but they both enjoy it.
  Aurelia: (Upon picking up Jack's ECHO on Nisha) I'm sure the sex will be horrifying.
• More Dakka: "Unchained" builds up a stack of buffs to her fire rate whenever she shoots her enemies, up to a maximum of 105% ^note 21 stacks of 5% fire rate buffs by default. With the right guns (particularly a Vladof pistol coupled with One for Each of Ya) Nisha becomes a preposterous bullet hose. See it for yourself.
• Nerves of Steel: In contrast to her boyfriend, who goes screams and rants and rages at you through the course of the game, she doesn't sound annoyed at all when you rob her bank, blow up her train and kill hundreds of bandits. And when she does sound angry, she laughs and states very calmly that she likes you and would like you to come and duel with her.
• Not So Above It All: Nisha takes the weirdness of the Borderlands universe in stride and reacts with either indifference or amusement. One of the few things capable of genuinely pissing her off is Claptrap.
  A Claptrap Unit: I may screw up from time to time, but I love myself and that's what really matters!
  Nisha: NO IT ISN'T!
• Only Known by Their Nickname: In Borderlands 2, she was only known as "The Sheriff", with Deputy Winger stating that she came to the town one day, deputized him, put the town under martial law and declared herself Sheriff. It wasn't until Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! that her name was revealed.
• Optional Boss: Lynchwood is a completely optional area that's only visited in sidequests. However, Word of God states that the Vault Hunters canonically kill Nisha.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: She was formerly a bandit who was wanted for killing Bandit leaders who murdered their way into elected positions. Not that this doesn't stop her from committing atrocities of her own, such as robbing convents and burning down orphanages.
• Pet the Dog: Despite being one of the biggest sadists in the series, she does have an Odd Friendship with Janey Springs. She's always polite to her and even offers to be "besties" with her after finding out how much she likes killing kraggons. She also wishes Nina and Timber Logwood well when they end up together.
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Despite her position as The Sheriff, Nisha doesn't seem to do much when it comes to actually protecting Lynchwood from bandits, considering that the town is absolutely lousy with them. She keeps it that way to have plenty of targets.
• Playing with Fire: Hot Lead makes it so that any crit she makes with a non-elemental gun has a chance to ignite the enemy.
• Promoted to Playable: Was a optional boss in Borderlands 2, but got upgraded to one of the playable characters in Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!.
• Psycho for Hire: While all of Jack's other Vault Hunters worked for him simply because it's their job, Nisha did it primarily for the chance to kill more people.
• Punch-Packing Pistol: She specializes in dishing out damage with pistols. In The Pre-Sequel, she can dual-wield any pistol and gets bonuses for using Jakobs revolvers, but nearly all designs can work. In Borderlands 2, The Sheriff's Badge that drops from her can also turn pistols from being above average into obscenely powerful guns.
• Purple Is Powerful: Judging by her default color scheme in the Pre-Sequel and her duster as the Sheriff, Nisha has a preference for the color purple.
• Quickdraw: The inspiration for her Showdown Action Skill, which is essentially an aimbot assisted by some generous gun buffs.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: As "The Sheriff of Lynchwood" in Borderlands 2 she's the one in charge of Lynchwood and one of the strongest enemies there. She even dares people who thinks she's just "Handsome Jack's gal" to come after her.
  Nisha: A few of you have learned that Handsome Jack is my boyfriend. If you think I'm just a pretty face who got this town as an anniversary gift, you know where to find me.
• Rare Random Drop: Killing her in 2 has a chance of her dropping the Law^note A legendary Pistol with guaranteed melee accessory and 100% accuracy when zoomed in. If the "Order" shield is used in tandem with the weapon, each successful attack restores health by 25%. and the Sheriff's Badge^note A legendary relic that increases Pistol fire rate and damage and an increase in Fight For Your Life time and health for every Deputy's Badge wearer in the team. During the $100.000 Loot Hunt event, she dropped the Octo^note A legendary Shotgun with fixed pattern. and the Fastball.^note A legendary grenade mod that behaves like, well, a fireball.
• Revolvers Are Just Better: She heavily agrees with this trope-she starts off (if you have a B2 save file) with a Jakobs iron and a Masher revolver, plus she's shown wielding Jakobs Irons in all promotional material. However, she uses an incendiary Maliwan revolver with a Tediore grip in Borderlands 2, that also fires flares.
• Sadist: One of the most explicit and disturbing examples in the series. She makes no bones about getting sexual gratification from murder, especially by strangulation. Yes, this does introduce certain complications into her sex life with Jack.
• Self-Made Orphan: It isn't made clear what happened to her father (if anything), but one of her lines for completing challenges has her remark how she hasn't felt this good since mom died.
• Sex Goddess: Despite her disturbing sexual sadism, Jack mentions that sex with her is still incredibly satisfying.
• Shock and Awe: "Thunder Crackdown" lets her create bolts of lighting when she cracks her whip.
• Showdown at High Noon: Challenges the player to a duel. In actuality, it's an ambush, since she "duels" you from a high vantage point and surrounds herself with her marshals.
• Space Western: She has a strong western theme going on, as both the corrupt Sheriff in the second game and the psychopathic gunslinger in the Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!.
• Together in Death: By the end of the main story of 2, both her and her boyfriend are dead.
• Token Evil Teammate: The most evil of the Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! protagonists. While Athena, Claptrap and Timothy lean more towards Token Good Teammate and Wilhelm is mostly mercenary and respects Jack's pragmatism, Nisha just plain likes killing stuff. Even Aurelia, who's just there because she's bored, becomes gradually disgusted with Jack and is more detached and classy than Nisha's Blood Knight hankering for a gunfight.
  Nisha: [on why she's fighting] For fun.
• Too Kinky to Torture: When a quest forces one of the Vault Hunters to complete an electric circuit with their own body, Nisha seems aroused by the idea. She still has her limits though. When her oxygen tank depletes and she starts suffocating, she may say something like "Normally I'm into this kind of thing, but..." However, even she thinks Wilhelm's addiction to surgical implants is a bit too much.
• Tranquil Fury: Her action skill uses her pent-up anger to pull off extraordinary feats. But unlike Salvador, it manifests as sharp precision rather than Unstoppable Rage.
• Trick Bullet: She gains these with her Riflewoman capstone skill, The Unforgiven. When using her Showdown ability, any shots that hit enemies ricochet to hit other enemies for 10% damage. Additionally, her bullets have bombs that explode at the end of Showdown, heavily damaging any enemy who survived getting shot.
• Unholy Matrimony: She genuinely falls in love with Jack over the course of The PreSequel!, and stays in a happy relationship with him for several years, right up until the Vault Hunters kill her in 2. Jack claims he genuinely misses her in Tales of the Borderlands.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Her ECHO logs reveal that she was once a more emotionally adjusted yet abused girl who was terrified by her mother and disappointed with her father's neglect and submissiveness. When her pet puppy got bit by a rabid animal and lashed out at her while her mom laughed, forcing her to kill it, she started developing into the sadomasochistic killer she's known as now. There's an implication that she may have caught whatever disease the puppy had that made it go manic and bloodthirsty.
• Whip of Dominance: Nisha has a big Combat Sadomasochist theme and is openly a fan of S&M, which is further denoted by the fact her melee weapon is a bullwhip.
• Why Am I Ticking?: With The Unforgiven skill, any enemy she doesn't finish off during Showdown becomes a living bomb that Nisha detonates at the end.
• Worthy Opponent: She respects the Vault Hunters as fellow gunslingers. Though it doesn't prevent her from being a Flunky Boss. For all intents and purposes, she's mostly amused and actually somewhat impressed as they proceed to rob her bank, blow up her train and kill her men. Even when fighting her she'll occasionally remark "Good shot" if they manage to hurt her enough.
• You Kill It, You Bought It: After defeating her, the player is informed that they are now the new Sheriff of Lynchwood.

"Jack"/Timothy

"Handsome Jack" (AKA The Doppelgänger; Timothy Lawrence)

As of Borderlands 3 (Handsome Jackpot DLC).

^{Click to see him in The Pre-Sequel!}

Voiced by: Dameon Clarke

"And the world just got 25% more handsome!"

An actor by the name of Timothy Lawrence who was surgically altered to look and sound like Jack to act as his body double.

His action skill allows him to summon two Digi-Jacks to attack his enemies, with another automatically spawning when one dies. His "The Hero of This Story" skill tree focuses upon making himself and his Digi-Jacks more directly powerful with grenade spam and health regeneration. His "Greater Good" tree is filled with kill skills and skills that benefit from him using his Digi-Jacks as disposable cannon fodder, capping off with a skill that makes all his kill skills trigger when a Digi-Jack dies. His "Free Market" skill tree is based around weapon-swapping and equipment management; giving him benefits for using different weapons on the same enemy or passing the benefit of one brand of gun onto another when he swaps.

---

• Action Bomb: The "Optimism" skill makes it so that Digi-Jacks explode when they die.
• Action Survivor:
  • Unlike every previous Vault Hunter in the series, Timothy isn't a veteran soldier, legendary Siren, hulking strongman, hardened bounty hunter/mercenary, career assassin, or even jury-rigged combat robot. He's just a really unlucky actor with student debts, caught in a really bad situation, and unlike Gaige (who takes to Pandora rather quickly) is more or less scared out of his mind at the beginning of the game and by the end game he's a miserable broken mess of a man. And yet he still manages to hold his own alongside a bunch of hardcore badasses with much more combat experience than him.
  • Borderlands 3 reveals that Timothy was trapped inside Jack's space casino after the latter's death. Considering how most of the other doppelgangers on the casino were killed by patrons just for wearing Jack's face, it's a surprise that Timothy managed to survive for seven years straight. Maybe his (admittedly traumatizing) experiences in Elpis had some use for him after all.
• An Arm and a Leg: Pretty Boy captures him near the end of Handsome Jackpot DLC and threatens to saw off his winning hand. Ironically Timothy does end up cutting off his winning hand willingly (which doesn't make it any less painful, mind you), in order to save the casino (and himself).
• Adaptational Wimp: Downplayed in 3. He's a former Vault Hunter, but doesn't fire a single bullet onscreen, lacks his Vault Hunter skill "Expendable Assets" (Digi-Jacks), and is a pile of nerves all the time. He also gets captured near the end, but then again he's survived for 7 years inside the Handsome Jackpot casino which is filled to the brim with people bent on killing him just for having Handsome Jack's face and with Pretty Boy goading them with money on top of everything.
• Anti-Frustration Features: Digi-Jacks can't move from the spot they spawn in, so if an enemy is out of direct line of sight or hiding behind cover, they toss a spark of light like a grenade instead of shooting at it directly. It's pretty accurate and fairly powerful. Since they can't move if you move away from them they'll explode and respawn near "Jack", if you have skills related to digi-clones dying you'll trigger them as if they were normally destroyed.
• Arm Cannon: The default weapon of the Digi-Jacks, which can be upgraded to become shotgun lasers. With the "Merger" skill, he can fire off wrist lasers just like the actual Jack; it's a really powerful shock-element laser beam that fires in a stream for several seconds.
• Artificial Limbs: As of 3 he had one of his hands replaced with a "Winning Hand" that gives him VIP Pass to the Handsome Jackpot's systems. Unfortunately this also means that he's the most wanted man of the casino and a Living MacGuffin.
• Bad Boss: The "Greater Good" skill tree is meant to channel Jack's selfishness and cowardice, meaning that it benefits the most from letting your minions and teammates do most of the work for you, or, at very least, being opportunistic killing things while they're busy with the digi-clones. The capstone makes it so that every Digi-Jack death counts as a kill for "Jack", meaning that he can get Second Wind as well as activating his Kill Skills when they die.
• Bad Impressionists: While Tim might look and sound exactly like Jack, he's not much of an actor. His idea of talking like Jack mostly involves awkwardly-timed slang, bringing up how handsome he is, and introducing himself unprompted. Not a single NPC buys it.
  "Jack": Hey there... kiddos. Uh, Hyperion are losing Helios to Dahl, we need to stop the signal that's jamming its system. ... Bitches?
• Bad "Bad Acting": The biggest flaw in Timothy's acting is how awkward and stilted he sounds, completely lacking the charisma and confidence the real Jack has. By the time 3 rolls he couldn't care less about it but still pulls a downright perfect Handsome Jack impression in order to let the Vault Hunters gain access to the Handsome Jackpot's core, a.k.a: Jack's Secret.
• Badass Boast:
  • When you see this face, RUN!
  • Fear! This! Face!
• Becoming the Mask: Defied. The longer he's alive as Jack, the more that Jack's personality started to meld with him, something that he's desperately afraid of.
• Benevolent Boss: On the other hand, the "Hero of This Story" tree is what Jack thinks he is, encouraging you to keep your Digi-jacks alive through the skill, which increases their damage, grants them copies of your shield to make them more durable, and even rewarding you for going in and taking hits yourself. The capstone turns your first Digi-jack and roughly every third one afterwards into a badass Elite Mook.
• Blessed with Suck:
  • In Pre-Sequel he has many tool, guns and the support of Jack to fight the Lost Legion. He wants anything but fight and despite becoming the Body Double of the man who would become Hyperion's top dog and having at least a modicum of luxury with it, Timothy is fully aware that lotta people will want Jack dead which would make him primo target for assassinations as well.
  • In 3 he's stuck in the Handsome Jackpot, a luxurious casino, with full access to everything thanks to his "winning hand", something exclusive to all doppelgangers... but everyone in the casino blames Jack for being stuck there and wants to kill him just for having his face and Pretty Boy really wants the winning hand to get full control of the Handsome Jackpot which paints a gigantic target on his back.
• Break the Cutie: He starts off the game as a largely clueless actor scared out of his mind by the calamity caused by the Lost Legion. By the end of the game, after all the horrible crap he's gone through and become complicit in he's just too miserable to care about anything and regrets ever agreeing working for Jack.
  Springs: Hey, sorta-Jack! Great job with the laser!
  Timothy: Yeah, thanks! Just had to help kill a few innocent people and nearly got murdered by the girl of my dreams but... yeah, whoo! Go me... ugh, I hate my life...
• Broken Pedestal: One that was already cracked and frail like egg shells, but Timothy's view of Jack goes completely downhill the more things progress in Pre-Sequel and he sees what kind of person Jack really is.
• Body Double: He signed a contract in which he agreed to be Jack's body double for 20 years, complete with plastic surgery and a voice implant. Unbeknownst to him, the process is permanent and can't be reversed. Towards the end of the game, when Jack is well into the process of turning into a supervillain and starts making enemies left and right, Tim realizes that as Jack's body double, there's going to be a lot of very angry people out there trying to kill him.
  • Being a Body Double also causes him no shortage of trouble even after the person he was doubling for was long dead. Case in point: his introduction in 3 has him very nervously (and for good damn reason) begging to whoever saved him NOT to shoot him before they hear him out first, this is because he has the face of Handsome Jack, and everyone wants to kill him to get some degree of Revenge by Proxy.
• Body Horror: Implied in one of his dialogues in Handsome Jackpot DLC of 3. After Lilith scarred Jack's face Timothy mentions he did the same thing to the dopplegangers and considering how freaking nasty that scar was...
• Book Dumb: Implied, despite him having student loans and thus presumably an education. During a sidequest where you collect books, he finds one without pictures and assumes it must be a mistake. He also considers "Crimefighter Frog" (Captain Scarlett's favorite comic book) to be classic literature, and one of his quotes while checking out skills mentions that he doesn't have much patience for reading.
• Bottomless Magazines: He has a number of ways to mitigate ammo consumption. "Jack's Cache" lets him toss a free grenade after getting four kills, and kills from these free grenades do still qualify. "Marginal Benefits" gives him a chance to instantly reload all equipped weapons when tossing grenades. "Absolute Advantage" gives his weapons a chance to not consume ammo for a few seconds after each kill. Add in a few other skills to improve his grenade damage and let him trigger kill skills on demand, and worrying about ammo supplies is a thing of the past.
• Broken Faceplate: In 3, he wears a battered, scarred Jack mask, signifying both his disdain for the role and the hell he's been through.
• Brought to You by the Letter "S": He has a letter "H" on the back of his jacket and the chest of his t-shirt. Like the real Jack, he's a walking Hyperion advert. Donning the skins of another corporation like Vladof Hammer or Spirit by Maliwan will have him wear a jacket that mocks the corporation in question. Vladof gets a slogan of "If You Want to Miss" while Maliwan has "Get Your Ponce On!"
• The Bus Came Back: He returns in 3 as part of the Moxxi's Heist of the Handsome Jackpot DLC.
• Casanova Wannabe:
  • It appears that he can be smooth when he wants to be, but he can't control his mouth around Moxxi. Unfortunately for him, she's not interested in someone who looks like her ex-boyfriend.
    "Jack:" Wow, you're... really pretty. Are you... sure we're not still dating?
    Moxxi: Sorry, sugar, I know my ex from a body double. You're not salivating enough.
  • Subverted somewhat in 3's Handsome Jackpot DLC where it's not only revealed that Timothy got to take Moxxi on a date once as a stand-in for Jack (Timothy: "It was the best night of my life."), but at the end of the adventure Moxxi seems to have come to appreciate him, refusing to abandon him to imminent doom. In the end scene she acts downright flirty with Timothy, going to far as to imply that he might actually have a shot at taking her on a second date for who he is rather than taking Jack's place, and possibly something more lasting. (After already stating she knew who he was during the first date and still went: "Because I was hungry.")
• Cast from Money: Not cast from money per se, but with Money is Power, Jack gets a damage buff for every bit of money he picks up, so long as he doesn't die or spend any of it.
• Catchphrase: "Jack" and his Digi-Jack often insist that they are "The Real Jack".
• Character Tics: He tends to stumble on his words, or try a little too hard, especially when he needs to sound as confident, or douchy, like Jack. This alone is enough for Moxxi to recognize the doppelganger she's dealing with is Timothy and not someone else.
• Clone by Conversion: Borderlands 3 reveals that he had some of Jack's DNA injected into him, which he blames for Jack-like impulses to strangle kittens and insult Vault Hunters.
• Cosmic Plaything: Life has been a constant downhill for Timothy ever since he took the Body Double gig. It starts at being trapped in an inescapable contract with very lethal exit clauses to being forced to be a Vault Hunter with all the danger that entails as well as be complicit in Jack's increasingly villainous actions, be relegated to varying humiliating duties in-between games (including starring in what is heavily implied to be a porno) and finally to being trapped in a casino where he's forced to eke out a miserable existence as the most hunted man due to the VIP Pass grafted to his hand.
• Cool, but Inefficient: "Inspire" has Jack occasionally give you cheesy compliments or smarmy insults, which does absolutely nothing for you as far as gameplay is concerned.
• Corporate-Sponsored Superhero: He's on a team trying to save Elpis and Helios from destruction (and is the friendliest member at that), and his abilities, clothing and especially persona all stem from Hyperion made technology. Naturally, part of his contract also includes advertising Hyperion whenever possible.
  That kill was sponsored by Hyperion!
  This is what happens when you cross Hyperion! / Feel the might of Hyperion!
• Cowardly Lion: While he's a bit spineless at times, this doesn't stop him from fighting monsters and baddies like the other Vault Hunters. Though in his eyes, it's not like he has a choice. In 3 he's still as skittery as he was in Pre-Sequel, if not more, but he never backs down from doing what he has to do and it takes a lot of guts to decide to hack off his own hand in a very painful way even if it was to save his own life in the end.
• Cursed with Awesome: Despite the fact that his transformation was of dubious consent and is irreversible, "Jack" finds that his new-found handsomeness is great for picking up chicks.
• Divergent Character Evolution:
  • Played straight in The Pre-Sequel. Tim uses the exact same model as Jack, and both characters are initially written as being normal people in over their heads. Over the course of the game, Tim matures into exactly the hero Jack pretends to be while Jack slides down the slippery slope.
  • Zig-Zagged in Borderlands 3. Tim picked up some of Jack's mannerisms during the time skip, such as calling people "cupcake", saying "strangling" instead of "choking", and insulting Vault Hunters. However, he's long since given up pretending to be the man, has gotten a lot more skittish, and chooses to dress differently and grow out his hair to minimize the similarities.
• Do Well, But Not Perfect: He jokingly asks his Digi-Jacks not to do too well, so they won't make him look bad.
• Doppelgänger Attack: His Action Skill involves creating digital copies of him to attack his enemies. If one falls, another is made in its stead.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: By the end of his storyline in BL3, Timothy is finally free of Jack's control. It may have costed him a hand, but he's been dealt a bad hand for so long that it really isn't of much consequence. Moxxi herself has forgiven him for his involvement with Jack and hints at a possible relationship between the two. Even though he is free to leave the casino, he chooses to stay once Moxxi allocates it for herself.
• Elite Mooks: "Promote the Ranks" lets him create Badass Digi-Jacks, which are bigger, gold-colored, and all-around better.
• Expendable Clone: Many of his skills in "Greater Good" skill tree benefit him when his Digi-Jacks die and he's even got one skill, ironically named "Accountability," that increases in power when his Digi-Jacks or allies get damaged but goes down when he himself gets damaged, so to get the most out of it he has to hide like a wuss.
• Explosive Leash: There's a bomb in his face that would explode if he tried to get the surgery reversed. Jack later starts using it to keep him as Hyperion property, effectively trapping him in the Jackpot casino.
• Finger Poke of Doom: Effectively, if you use his "Investment" skill. After you shoot one enemy, it begins accruing "interest" for five seconds and shooting it with a different weapon once will make it explode proportional to how much you've ranked up the skill. A single pistol bullet, five seconds, and a single submachinegun bullet can make mooks explode and can even seriously damage a badass enemy.
• Foil: To Handsome Jack, the man he was a Body Double to. Jack, even before becoming Handsome Jack, was a man with dreams bigger than Pandora, Helios and Elpis and it's safe to bet had he conquered Pandora he wouldn't stop there, he was also prone to violent outbursts becoming more unhinged as time went on and things spiralled out of control. Timothy is a simple man with no dellusions of grandeur who accepted the contract of becoming the Body Double of a low-level Hyperion employee because he had student loans, he's a scaredy cat and is very vocal about how he does not relish in the world of violence and insanity Vault Hunters take part of preferring to say as far from it as he can, and he only wants to get away from all that craziness and live his life.
• Gibberish of Love: Falls into stammering Buffy Speak around Moxxi, because of... many reasons. Gets even worse when she's in her mechanic's overalls. Even years later and after, in the Handsome Jackpot DLC, he finds himself barely able to keep himself together at the mention of her.
• Good Old Fisticuffs: "Jack" just throws out a single punch with his left hand when you use default melee. His bare hand, mind you. No weapon or even a pair of knuckle-dusters or reinforced gloves. His bare fist against rock monsters, armored foes, robots, enemies on fire...
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: After Jack got scarred by Lilith, he branded all his dopplegangers, including Timothy, to match.
• Grenade Spam: Invoked. "Just Compensation" increases its bonuses for every grenade missing from your supply, thus urging players to spend grenades whenever possible. He's also got a skill in the same tree called "Jack's Cache" that gives you a free grenade every four kills. He can also have his digi-jacks throw a grenade each with "On my Mark".
• I Meant to Do That: His reaction to failed missions.
• Hard Light: He refers to his Digi-Jacks as holograms.
• I Say What I Say: A variation. "Jack" and the actual Jack share the same voice and ECHO portrait, so when the two are talking, it sounds like Jack is having a conservation with himself.
• Joke Item: Well, Skill. His "Inspire" skill is "Jack will occasionally Inspire you with words of greatness." This actually means it doesn't truly do anything for you but provide entertaining fluff from Jack randomly saying something "inspirational" and cause INSPIRED! go over your screen's weapon corner, or deriding you if dying soon after being "inspired".
• Last of His Kind: In 3, he's the last surviving Jack Body Double. He grimly remembers how most of them were slaughtered by the casino members, Pretty Boy, and that even he had to kill a few of them in self-defense.
• Life-or-Limb Decision: By the time 3 rolls around, Tim has acquired a robotic hand. He later cuts it off, along with part of his forearm, in order to escape capture and help override the Jackpot's self destruct.
• Living MacGuffin: In the "Handsome Jackpot" DLC, due to his Winning Hand granting him VIP access to the casino's systems Pretty Boy will do anything to get his hands on Timothy's hand.
• Love Hurts: What we see of his love life is a freaking trainwreck:
  • In Pre-Sequel he's absolutely smitten by Mad Moxxi, even more so when he sees her "au naturel" (as in without her make-up). Then Moxxi tries to have him, Jack and his Vault Hunters killed by sabotaging the Eye of Helios and Timothy can only express to Janey Springs in utter defeat how the woman he loves just tried to murder him.
  • In 3 he seems to have forgiven Moxxi for that and is positively thrilled at another chance to talk to her, but Moxxi gives him the cold shoulder and a very clear death threat in case Timothy tries anything funny. Poor guy, in Moze's words, folds like a lawnchair. It's only at the end Moxxi comes around and refuses to leave him behind to die. She also seems impressed that Timothy decides to cut off his own hand to give the Vault Hunters clearance to save the casino from being sucked into a black hole.
• Master Actor: In 3 he's able to channel and impersonate Handsome Jack down to near perfection in order to bypass a very intricate security system that would open only for the real Jack. It shows how capable he is whenever he's not scared out of his mind. It helps that Timothy had prior experience as an actor too.
• Mean Character, Nice Actor: In-universe example. Timothy is an aspiring actor who agreed to be Jack's double for the money, and when he's putting on the act he tries to tap into his intense sarcasm, unhealthy ego and vanity and Jerkass tendencies. When he thinks no one's listening or something happens that makes him break character, he doesn't have very many nice things to say about his boss/character.
  (When Idle) "Anybody watching? (Beat) Great. God, this character, right? Such an insufferable piece of shi- heh-hey, somebody’s listening! I’m Jack and I’m the best and I love being Jack! Three cheers for Jack! I’m great!"
  "How egocentric does this guy have to be to hire body doubles? The dude's just a programmer! That’s like a grocery store clerk wearing kevlar. You’re not important enough to kill man, hello!"
• Me's a Crowd: He only has two Digi-Jacks at once, but more keep appearing if the initial ones die, meaning he can flood the enemy with disposable copies of himself. With all 4 players playing Doppelganger, you can have up to 13 Jacks running around at the same time; the real Jack, 4 Doppelgangers, and 8 digistruct copies.
• I Miss Mom: Says out loud when idle that he'd rather be at home with his mom, but since he had to fake his death as part of his contract he's not allowed to see her for a long time. Though, she might not share the same affection he does.
  "Poor mom. I mean, when I took the body double gig they had to fake my death. She was laughing when they told her but I’m sure she was crying, you know, on the inside, sobbing. Well, fairly sure."
• My Master, Right or Wrong: Whether he likes it or not, Jack is still Timothy's boss and his best shot at getting out of Elpis. That doesn't stop him from resenting the guy for putting him in horrible situations and for making him complicit in increasingly horrifying actions.
• Multi-Ranged Master: Doppelganger's "Free Enterprise" capstone skill, "Sponsored By...", gives him a bonus based on the manufacturer of the last gun he wielded (i.e: Vladof gives him Fire Rate bonus, Tediore gives Reload Speed Bonus) which allows him to improve or outright negate problems with other guns and brands blessing the Doppelganger with a lot of versatility.
• Nervous Wreck: One can't blame him, though. He's not a hardened fighter, just someone thrown into a situation he has absolutely no control/choice. He was also just a poor indebted schmuck who needed money and became the Body Double of someone who'd become one of the galaxy's most reviled and douchy person. Before 3 rolls on his situation somehow got worse and so did his nerves since he was stuck in the Handsome Jackpot, a place where everyone hated and wanted him dead just for having the face of the guy responsible for them being stuck there in first place.
• Nice Guy: Once he gets over his fears, he's actually one of the friendlier protagonists of the series. In essence he's The Hero that the real Jack believes himself to be (although he's still too intimidated by the real Jack to confront him on most of his more morally questionable decisions).
• Nothing Personal: Defied; In the Handsome Jackpot DLC he states that while he originally had this feeling towards Lilith trying to kill him, the fact that her scarring Jack led to him branding him meant that he's honestly pretty bitter towards her.
• Not in the Face!: Begs and warns people to not touch/hurt his face, partly because how expensive of a procedure it was, but mostly because he's afraid it'll explode.
  (Getting revived in Pre-Sequel) "N-no-no-no! Don't touch the face! It might explode!"
• Not So Above It All: Timothy doesn't relish in killing like most of the other Vault Hunters, but like Krieg's Inner Voice he sometimes can't help but admit that he's having fun when he's massacring scores of enemies in a short time.
  This is fun!
  Holy crap, I'm amazing at this!
  [Laughing] This is life!
• Not So Stoic: He's not being paid to be stoic, but rather to be as smug and charismatic as possible like the real Jack. Given that he's not a seasoned adventurer though, he sometimes breaks character when things get heated. Notably, he may be the only Vault Hunter in the series who sounds scared / panicked when activating his Action skill.
  Backup! Give me backup!
• Only in It for the Money: Jack had big plans. Timothy Lawrence had unpaid student loans. Add one and one and you have Jack's brand new body double.
• Only Sane Man: Timothy is what happens when you put a completely average person in the middle of the insanity that is common within Borderlands games.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Despite his job being to stand in for Jack, most NPCs quickly recognize that he's just a double for the real deal, especially since Jack himself will show up in person next to him. In Moxxi's case, Timothy's inability to not stumble all over himself is all she needs to recognize him near-immediately even after more than a half-decade since their last meeting.
• Primal Fear: Heights. Poor guy screams in pure terror when using jump pads and geysers, or when jumping in vehicles.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Similar to Claptrap, Timothy is by no means evil but doesn't really have much of a choice considering that he's under contract as Jack's double and him dying would mean he got his face altered for nothing.
• Rousing Speech: "Inspire" lets Real!Jack occasionally calls you up and either "inspiring" you with praise or "disillusioning" you with put-downs. In-practice, this has no actual in-game effect aside from giving you more Jack dialogue.
• Theme Naming: Many of his skills (most prominently the Greater Good skill tree) are generally named after corporate buzzwords, much like how Jack named Hyperion weapons.
• The Minionmaster: Unlike other pet classes in the series, he goes for quantity over quality.
• Throw Down the Bomblet: He has skills that give him free grenades, bonus grenade damage and a chance to reload weapons when throwing a grenade.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: By the end of the Handsome Jackpot DLC of 3, he not only gets to escape the casino he's been trapped in for seven years (as well as finally getting out of Jack's control) but it's implied that he's got a shot with Moxxi.
• 20% More Awesome: "And the world just got 25% more handsome!"
• Sanity Slippage: He's a lot less stable by the time of Borderlands 3, thanks to spending way too long immersed in the role of a genocidal maniac and way too long-running and hiding from murderous bandits. He's still not a bad guy underneath it all, but there's a lot more 'underneath it all' to get through this time around.
• Screw Yourself: The real Jack is very much attracted to his doppelganger, which the fake Jack finds disturbing.
• The Strategist: Becomes this alongside Moxxi in Handsome Jackpot DLC of 3. He knows what he has to do to escape the shithole of a casino he's in, but lacks the manpower for it... until the 3rd generation of Vault Hunters come along.
• Surgical Impersonation: Of Jack, obviously. It's implied that the surgery was done against his consent, but he failed to read the fine print on his contract.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Gearbox openly acknowledges that the Doppelganger is simply their way of justifying having Handsome Jack as a playable character despite him also being a major NPC.
• Un Evil Laugh:
  • One of his reactions to critical hits.
  • He gives a more genuine and convincing evil laugh when he starts killing a lot of enemies in a short time before stopping himself.
    "Oh-God-what-am-I-doing?!"
• Un-person: All records of any "Timothy Lawrence" have been destroyed to better solidify his "job" as a body double. He's also legally forbidden to use his real name, at best saying that it rhymes with "Jimothy". As of the Handsome Jackpot DLC however, he's gone back to using his full name since Jack is long dead.
• Verbal Tic: He got the unfortunate habit calling people "pumpkin", "cupcake" and "kiddo". Sometimes he catches himself doing it and verbally recoils in disgust, but a lot of times he doesn't seem notice anymore.
• We Have Reserves: His "Greater Good" skill tree focuses on getting stronger by letting his allies (both his Digi-Jacks and his teammates) die for him.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Late in the game, if he refuses to kill a surrendering Dahl soldier on Jack's orders, he delivers a simple, solid, and brutal criticism to Jack, who still believes himself the hero of the story.
  Doppleganger: I'm not you, Jack.
• You Are Number 6: In 3, the Hyperion voice recognizes him as "Doppelganger 21-C".
• Your Head Asplode: He's pretty sure that his surgeons planted a bomb in his new face that will explode if it's tampered with, causing him to warn both his enemies and allies to not touch his face. It's a major part of the plot in the 'Handsome Jackpot' DLC.

Aurelia

Lady Aurelia Hammerlock (AKA The Baroness)

As of Borderlands 3.

^{Click to see her in The Pre-Sequel!}

Voiced by: Kenneisha Thompson

"Darling, I'm simply going to kill you for fun. It's not personal, I just bore easily."

The sister and arch-enemy of Sir Hammerlock, Aurelia is the heiress of the Hammerlock family fortune who travels the galaxy to hunt dangerous creatures and to plague her brother's existence (often both at the same time). Growing bored, she came to Pandora on safari, eventually getting tangled up with Jack's entourage.

Her action skill, Cold As Ice, has her throw out her Frost Diadem Shard located on her left arm. The charm automatically homes in on nearby targets and attaches to them, dealing Cryo damage in an area around them.

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• And the Adventure Continues: After the events of The Pre-Sequel, Aurelia cuts off all ties to Jack and hunts Vaults on other worlds, which explains why she was never involved in the events of 2.
• Angry Fist-Shake: She lets one out when she's going into Fight For Your Life.
• Arc Villain: She's the antagonist of the Eden-6 questlines, attempting to take over the Jakobs corporation by killing off the Jakobs family with the help of the COV.
• At Least I Admit It: While she has some standards, she openly acknowledges the fact that she's an evil bitch who kills for fun, as opposed to Jack and his delusions of heroism.
• Back for the Dead: She doesn't play much of a role in the story of 3, mainly providing a boss fight before her death at the hands of the vault hunters.
• Badass Boast: Dishes out plenty of them while you fight her in 3.
  You messed with the wrong rich bitch!
  You're not on Pandora anymore!
  You're outclassed in every way!
  This frost BITES!
  You still think you can save Alistair? Let it go!
  It takes a Vault Hunter to kill a Vault Hunter!
• Bad Boss: Her disregard for the poor isn't just talk, she doesn't give two shits about her COV reinforcements and will gladly kill them with her attacks while fighting you.
• Badass Family: At the very least, both her and her brother are proficient hunters. However, she and her brother have a fairly strained relationship, having made his life miserable during childhood as well as her Egomaniac Hunter tendencies.
• The Baroness: Literally and figuratively: an upper-crust, arrogant aristocrat with an attitude as icy as her favored weapons.
• Big Sister Bully: To Sir Hammerlock. A fair amount of her dialog has her relishing her brother's misery and one of the reasons she took up hunting is so that she can murder the creatures he's studying.
  Aurelia: Hang on, I feel incredibly happy all of a sudden! Alistair must be in pain!
• Bling-Bling-BANG!: She starts out with purple-quality guns unlike the other characters and the "Quality Not Quantity" skill gives her a buff to damage and fire rate to Blue-quality or higher weapons while giving her a penalty for green and whites, encouraging Aurelia players to use only top-shelf guns.
• Blood Knight: Like Nisha, she only became a Vault Hunter because killing lots of things seemed like a fun way to pass the time. Evidently, as much as Jack dampened her vacation, she still had enough fun that she agreed to help him find the H-Source.
• Bottomless Magazines: "Silver Lining" adds a bullet to her magazine anytime she kills someone with a crit with the exception of rocket launchers, meaning that if she's really good with a sniper rifle, she potentially never has to reload.
• Brief Accent Imitation: When taking on Hammerlock's sidequest, she hides her identity so that she wouldn't have to deal with him by putting on a ridiculous cowboy accent.
• Cain and Abel: She's the Cain to Sir Hammerlock's Abel.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: It's implied in the Holodome DLC that Lilith sent Axton and Gaige to Eptah with the goal of killing her on their way to the Vault, but was forced to change her mind after the Watcher alien told her to gather all the Vault Hunters she can get. She apparently refused to join, since she's fully against the Crimson Raiders in 3.
• Catchphrase: "Whatever gets you there, darling."
• Clarke's Third Law: Troy is shocked at her cold "powers," and asks if she's a Siren. She says it's just high-end nanotech and years of training. His confusion is understandable, as during her boss fight she is able to freeze the entire arena and control the weather, both of which are at least on par with what many Sirens can do.
• Climax Boss: Is fought for the last piece of the Eden-6 Vault key.
• Cold Sniper: Taken to the trope name's literal extreme, as she focuses entirely on cold damage and sniper rifles. Some of her skills involve increased critical hit damage on the next shot with a sniper rifle after missing with it, dealing more damage the further away she is from her target, and causing novas to be released from the enemy she just scored a critical hit on, among other skills. Her cap skill for "The Huntress" tree has a wheel spinning when she's looking through the scope of a rifle. Her shots take on the elemental damage of whatever the wheel lands on when she fires. This makes using an elemental rifle even more powerful if you land on the same element.
• Cooldown Manipulation: In addition to increasing her critical hit damage, "Cold Advance" allows Aurelia to extend the duration of Cold As Ice through critical hits with diminishing effect.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Her Contractual Aristocracy is heavily reliant on having a co-op partner, making it very inefficient for single-player.
• Demoted to Extra: Her role in 3 is surprisingly minor, despite her status as a Climax Boss. In fact, Aurelia doesn't spend much time even talking to the vault hunters on Eden 6, like the Calypsos do with their usual taunts and insults.
• The Dreaded: In 3, especially by her brother, Alistair Hammerlock, who shudders at the prospect of having to face her.
• Distracted by the Sexy: When first talking to Moxxi, she simply can't keep a straight face thanks to her cleavage. Though it's less out of attraction and more amusement at how large it is.
• Early-Bird Cameo: While information about her was originally leaked online long before her original announcement, she was first officially referenced in the Holodome DLC, in which Axton and Gaige mention bringing her back to Sanctuary.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Aurelia might be a classist snob who treats killing hundreds of people and animals as a vacation, but even she finds Jack's growing madness a bit too much for her taste. After the scientist scene she does nothing to directly oppose him, but starts openly insulting Jack and even outright shows contempt for him. The only Vault Hunters who are close to this are Athena and Timothy. The former never says it to his face and simply stops working for him and the latter simply resents ever wearing Jack's face.
    (On Jack telling her to kill the RK5 [which is completely unnecessary]) Look, darling. Bloodlust can be fun but you're taking it a shade too far.
  • She also admits that she doesn't "feel particularly enthused" when Jack forcibly inserts Felicity into the prototype Constructor and spends the rest of her journey trying to forget about Felicity in order to feel less guilty about it.
  • At the end of Claptastic Voyage she mentions that while she's all for sacking "the help" and was excited at the prospect during the main campaign, she ultimately finds Jack destroying the entire Claptrap product line using the H-Source to be "a bit... extreme."
• Evil Counterpart: To Sir Hammerlock. While Alistair is a Quintessential British Gentleman who seeks to study wildlife, Aurelia is a snobby Rich Bitch who just wants to murder them and mount their heads on the walls of her turbo-mansion. Also, while Aurelia ends up being an enemy of the Jakobs family by having Monty Jakobs killed and attempting to do the same with Wainwright in a hostile takeover the company, Alistair is Wainwright's lover and ends up marrying into the company at the end of the game.
• Egomaniac Hunter: Her hobbies include riding her hoverbike around her turbo-mansion and murdering exotic creatures throughout the galaxy.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: "I Never Miss" gives you a stacking increase to your crit as long as you never miss with a sniper rifle. Once you do, all your stacks are gone.
• Face–Heel Turn: While she was never really a Face, in The Pre-Sequel she definitely comes across as much saner than Jack, Nisha, and Wilhelm, though this is largely a case of Even Evil Has Standards. In BL3, she's a straight villain who enters into an alliance with the Calypso Twins to both get rid of her brother and seize control of the Jakobs Corporation, ultimately dying in combat against the new Vault Hunters after trying to kill Hammerlock and Wainwright Jakobs, Wainwright being the last of the Jakobs family.
• The Fashionista: Her default outfit is her Designer Ensemble and she is known to make fancy attire out of the creatures she's killed. The wide-flared fur collar of the jacket is the most prominent feature.
• Fiction 500: As well as living in a turbo-mansion, Aurelia brags about how she owns a planet like it's nothing.
• Flanderization: Her disregard for the poor, meanness and contempt for her brother, Sir Hammerlock, becomes her chief "traits" in 3. The last one is taken to its depressing extreme as she's completely unbothered by Alistair's desperate pleas and Aurelia attempts to murder him and Wainwright without a speck of hesitation.
• Foil: To Nisha. Both are women who became Vault Hunters less to obtain vast amounts of wealth and more to satiate their enjoyment of killing, and have a knack for being especially cruel. Furthermore, they're both Glass Cannons gameplay-wise, as they're capable of dealing large amounts of damage but have less survivability than the other Vault Hunters. However, Nisha falls in love with Jack as he descends more and more into madness, while Aurelia considers Jack's bloodlust and ruthless ambition to be too much even for her. Additionally, while Nisha was a bandit prior to working for Jack, Aurelia is an aristocrat who comes from a wealthy family. Both Nisha and Aurelia would become bosses in different games aligned with different villains.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: She's rich, so she starts the game with a big chunk of cash, and a couple of purple-quality guns.
• Glass Cannon: She has tremendous damage potential, but she's also the squishiest out of all the Vault Hunters in the game. Many players have complained about the difficulty of playing her in UVHM, especially against bosses such as EOS.
• Gratuitous French: She loves to pepper her dialog with various French words and phrases.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Her introduction video shows she has a big one. Just because someone grabbed her shoulder, she freezes everyone in Moxxi's bar in retaliation. Her entourage of Brick, Mordecai, Wilhelm, Athena, and Nisha were the only ones not frozen... and Steve.
• Hates Their Parent: As related in the Pre-Sequel, Aurelia dislikes her mother, probably due to being sold the family business just so her mother could retire, and due to acting like there's a psychic link between them that generates irritation, as said in some Idle Animations:
  Wonder if mama is dead yet? Nooooo... Still feeling a deep sense of irritation. Her heart still beats.
  
  After mama sold me the family business, she decided to take it easy. In this context, 'easy' apparently consists of going from planet to planet, subjugating workers, killing people, and generally continuing to run mining operations behind my back. All the same to me as long as all the cheques keep coming, but it's awfully bloody boring to be a CEO with piss-all to do.
• Hey, You!: Due to the lines evidently being recorded before the sixth playable character was decided on, character-specific conversations with Aurelia have the NPC use generic statements and call her "Vault Hunter" rather than by name.
• Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: She seems to consider the Scavs and Lost Legion no different from the fauna of Elpis: big game for her to hunt.
• Hypocrite: In The Pre-Sequel Aurelia gets so fed up with Jack's growing paranoia, delusions, and vindictive attitude that she tells him to kill himself as the universe would be better off without him in it. Come 3, and she has no problem working for someone who was just as bad if not worse than Jack without any shown qualms about it.
• An Ice Person: Her action skill deals Cryo damage, and she has an entire skill tree dedicated to Cryo, with the capstone being a Kill Skill that lets her deal Cryo damage with all weapons. During her boss battle in 3 she will make use of her Frost Diadem, create ice tornadoes, blizzards and bombard the arena with ice balls.
• Idle Rich: Due to her inheritance she has no need for an actual job, which led her to take up big-game hunting so that she has something to do with her time. She even starts off with a large chunk of cash.
• Indentured Servitude: The name of one of her skills. It and the "Contractual Aristocracy" tree focus on entering other players into a servant-master relationship, where both players benefit by having the other player take various forms of punishment first. Just like Gaige's Ordered Chaos, the whole tree depends on the mandatory skill. The contract is as follows:
  I, the undersigned hereby agree to receive & distribute bullets, pain, and/or misery on behalf of Lady Aurelia Hammerlock. I acknowledge that this contract is binding in perpetuity, & I am entitled to no payment of any sort beyond an occasional verbal compliment from Lady Hammerlock, which itself need not be delivered with any degree of enthusiasm. I will also refer to Lady Hammerlock as "madam" or "your ladyship". I shall NEVER refer to her as "m'lady," on pain of wearing the Perpetual Thorned Fedora of Menoctius for the rest of my living days.
• I Meant to Do That: Her aptly named "Warning Shot" skill, which not only gives her bonuses whenever she misses with a sniper rifle but also gives her dialogue where she insists that she intentionally missed. Her laugh and stutter say otherwise.
• Jerkass:
  • Described as cruel and selfish by her brother (who calls her heart a "necrotic lump of flesh") and even Axton finds her intimidating.
    Gaige: Lilith was all like "Go hunt the Vault on Eptah!" And then "Don't kill the Vault Hunter, bring her back! WAR IS COMING!" Tch.
    Tina: Oooh. You got another Vault Hunting buddy? I wanna meet her!
    Axton: No. You don't. Aurelia is the meanest.
  • By 3, she appears to have fully embraced her inner greed and cruelty, starting with calling the Vault Hunters whores, selling out her brother to the COV and going from there.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: A very small heart that she would likely pawn off the second it gains more value. She is less about being kind for the sake of kindness and morality, and more about being kind for the sake of being classy. That said, she is one of the few Vault Hunters who feel bad while forcing Felicity to be a Military AI (she doesn't want to think about the event afterwards, as it would ruin her vacation), is repulsed by Jack's ejecting of the scientists, and when Claptrap finally has enough of being taunted by the Vault Hunters, she actually apologizes to him. Come 3, even that spark of decency has frozen.
• Kick the Dog: According to Alistair, when they were children she had a pet lizard that she neglected, leading to him caring for it in her stead. Knowing this, she caused it to drown in a way so that Alistair would come to believe that its death was his fault. Aurelia put a large block of ice in it's enclosure that slowly melted and filled the tank, forcing the poor animal to try and climb higher and higher until there was nowhere else to go and drowned. Alistair believed at first that he had put too much water in its tank until he saw the claw marks of its escape attempt and figured out what had happened.
• Killed Off for Real: She gets killed by the Vault Hunters in Borderlands 3, when she tries to kill her brother Alistair and the Sole Survivor of the Jakobs family, Wainwright. No New-U station for her this time.
• Lady of Adventure: She's a wealthy huntress who travels the galaxy shooting dangerous creatures for fun.
• Literally Shattered Lives: When she dies after her boss fight in Borderlands 3, she turns to ice and shatters.
• Long-Range Fighter: She is very effective at dispatching enemies from distance, though she does have some counter-attack options such as knocking back enemies when activating her Action Skill or releasing a Cryo Nova whenever she gets hit with a melee attack or when her shield runs out.
• Meaningful Name: Aurelia is the feminine version of Aurelius, which is derived from the Latin word for Gold.
• Mythical Motifs: Downplayed, she has a unicorn motif which is shown on her design. Her reveal trailer has her title card with an emblem of a unicorn and the white stripe in the front of her hair can be compared to a unicorn horn.
• Nanomachines: During the side-mission "Sacked", an ECHO log between her and Troy Calypso reveals that her abilities are the result of "nanotech and years of experience".
• The Nicknamer: In 3, her nickname for the new Vault Hunters is "Whore" under the justification that they'll do anything for money.
• Noodle Incident: The Pre Sequel has Axton and Gaige bringing Aurelia to Sanctuary after the Watcher convinces her it'll be better to have more vault hunters around to fight an upcoming threat than less. By the time 3 rolls around, she's working for the Calypsos and at no point is it ever addressed what happened once she was brought back by Lilith or Aurelia or why she was let go despite it being the last the character was heard of timeline-wise until that point.
• Powers Do the Fighting: Under certain circumstances, "Cold As Ice" is powerful enough to wipe out groups of enemies without her firing a bullet.
• Power Hair: She styles her hair in this fashion, though she leaves a single white bang hanging out in front.
• Punny Name: Her full title Aurelia the Baroness sounds like aurora borealis, a phenomenon that occurs in very cold regions.
• Rare Random Drop: In 3 she has a chance to drop Juliet's Dazzle^note Mayhem Mode 4+, a legendary Torgue Assault Rifle whose projectiles pass through enemies, ricochet up to 3 times, and refills the magazine after a kill. and The Ice Queen^note An unique Jakobs Sniper Rifle which fires two cryo bullets at the nearest enemies.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: She tears into Jack when the rescue mission is over and actually tells him to kill himself. No other character does this. It's anyone's guess why Jack didn't have her executed on the spot.
  Aurelia: Right. That's it. I had my fun, Jack, so I shall leave you with this one final piece of wisdom that your plasticine face will surely ignore: Kill yourself. Darling, I'm evil. Let's not kid ourselves, but you. You're just something else entirely. You're far better off opening the throat beneath that ludicrously soul-patched face than suffer the bloody karma that I imagine the universe has in store for you. And with that, I shall bid you adieu. Additionally, your breath smells like farts.
• Red Baron: She is referred as her Pre-Sequel title, "Baroness", by Troy Calypso. And is a formidable opponent you have to fight for the last Eden-6 key piece.
• Rich Bitch: Much of her dialog is her talking down to others for not being as ridiculously rich as her. She even acknowledges this in her in-combat dialogue and wears the term "bitch" as a symbol of pride.
  Aurelia: [After a Second Wind] The bitch is back!
• Rogue Protagonist: She becomes a full-on villain in 3.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Like Athena, Aurelia cuts all ties with Jack after finding the Vault, though like her she ends up coming back to help him get the H-Source.
• Shout-Out: One of her head models is called "Amazing Grace" and is modeled after Actress Grace Jones.
• Sibling Murder: Attempts to murder Alistair Hammerlock to get to Wainwright Jakobs without even thinking about it, as part of her takeover of the Jakobs corporation.
• Sibling Rivalry: She is of the belief that siblings are destined to be opposed to one another and even starts planting similar ideas in Troy.
• Sixth Ranger: Unlike the other characters, Aurelia isn't actually hired by Jack so much as she just decided to join his team as part of her vacation. Because of this, she cares nothing about the fate of Elpis and is not above openly insulting Jack when she feels like it.
• Sophisticated as Hell: Much like her brother, despite her upper-crust demeanor, she is not above petty and childish insults.
  Aurelia: In the immortal words of The Bard: Suck it!
• Start My Own: In 3, she can't help but be impressed by the Calypsos building a cult dedicated to themselves and considers having one of those herself.
• Statuesque Stunner: As somehow on par to Borderlands 2 (to Krieg), she is surprisingly the tallest female Vault Hunter within the series. She had to be modeled differently on turret mounts as a result, like sitting on the side of a bike, unlike most characters.
• Took a Level in Badass: While she was no slouch in Pre-Sequel she becomes stronger in 3. She can create ice walls, use her Frost Diadem much more proficiently, create ice tornadoes and even blizzard storms. An optional ECHO has her mentioning she had "years of experience" and it wasn't empty boasting.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: She was never nice, but she still managed this between Pre-Sequel and 3. In the Pre-Sequel, she was a vicious, snobbish Rich Bitch, but she was generally helping people and had enough Pet the Dog and Even Evil Has Standards moments to come across as, at least, more admirable than Handsome Jack, Nisha, and Wilhelm. Come 3, she calls the players "whores", manages to treat her brother even worse than she ever did in the Pre-Sequel, and is happily working with the Calypso Twins, who are just as evil as Handsome Jack, who previously inspired her most prominent Even Evil Has Standards moments.
• Verbal Tic: She refers to everyone in the Pre-Sequel as "Darling".
• Villain Team-Up: In 3, she's gotten into bed figuratively (and literally, in the case of Troy) with the COV.

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