If there's one area where the Borderlands series goes above and beyond, outside its huge arsenal of awesome guns — it's the twisted themes and over-the-top gore. While the game is not afraid to have fun and exude a certain zaniness, the humor is balanced by some dark, intense, and rather disturbing moments.
Despite its colorful, cartoony aesthetic, players that take the time to look closely will notice loads of often-grotesque detail. These mostly adult-oriented traits take the form of spooky scenery, brutal deaths, or creepy, monstrous enemies. There are plenty of examples to be found in this ever-expanding world of Borderlands, to be sure.
10 Assembling A Creepy Cake
There is no shortage of twisted and often creepy imagery sprinkled throughout Borderlands, as the baker Beatrice from BL3 reminds players in the mission, "Just Desserts." During this colorful side quest, players are tasked with cobbling together a rather repulsive cake, which is to be served to a few non-paying deadbeats as revenge.
What's in this cake? Spiderant eggs and gunpowder, for one — but what's really grotesque is what decorates the outer portion of this "dessert." In order to make her message abundantly clear, the cake is wrought with bloody fingers and eyeballs. Not exactly the most appetizing display ever...
9 The Gruesome Effects Of Elemental Weapons On Humanoid Foes
Many of the baddies in the series can be creepy as is, but some of the visuals and reactions when their bloodied can be quite unsettling.
One of BL's unique qualities is the intense, visceral reactions and visuals of slain foes — as well as detailed, gory visuals accompanying them. This is especially the case when it comes to the death animations by way of elemental weapons.
Even in the simpler BL1, Baddies scream in agony as they're engulfed in flames until they're burnt to a crisp, and acid dissolves them into a mess of green goo. Shock weapons can be particularly foul, as their aftermath shows aggressively twitching foes, whose flesh melts from their skull, leaving exposed eyes and brains.
8 Bloodwing's Cruel Farewell
Given the rough and tumble world of Pandora and beyond, it's not surprising that BL has a number of brutal, gut-wrenching deaths. Interestingly enough, one of the roughest is actually an animal. Mordecai's large, majestic bird named Bloodwing is the center of both an intense boss fight and a rather disturbing death in BL2.
Not only are players forced to annihilate a corrupted Bloodwing, but this is compounded by a ticking time bomb in its head, implanted by the sadistic Handsome Jack. Both Mordecai and the players are forced to hopelessly watch as the bird explodes, leaving Mordecai devastated and enraged.
7 Sledge's (Spooky) Safe House
Gearbox decorates many of BL's locales with places that are gritty, rundown, and bloodied — often to the point of eeriness. There are few better examples on this front than the ironically-named "Sledge's Safe House."
This dark, desolate dungeon features ominous messages that read "they got me," along with chained up bodies streaming blood, dismembered figures, and bodies bolted onto walls. Between this gory, slaughterhouse decor, creeping foes, and dark lighting, this area north of Arid Hills proves one of the eeriest settings.
6 Tina's Reaction To Her Parents' Death
Tiny Tina is one of the more dynamic characters in the series, with her anarchic attitude, wild demeanor, and unpredictable quirkiness. The game makes it clear early in her introduction that Tina's had a rough upbringing, to say the least. One particularly intense echo log in BL2's Wildlife Exploitation Preserve sheds further light on this dark past, as it plays out the brutal death of her parents.
While it's only audio, the game paints the picture vividly and grotesquely, featuring sounds of screaming and torture. But this is punctuated by Tina shrieking "why is this happening??" followed by a visceral mixture of her crying and maniacal laughter.
5 Handsome Jack's Eye-Scooping Story
Handsome Jack is a walking paradox, being at once charmingly funny and viciously evil. Nowhere is this best demonstrated than during the "Bright Lights, Flying City" mission in BL2. During this quest, Jack launches into a shockingly gruesome tale about his run-in with a spoon-wielding man.
Being the twisted villain he is, Jack yucks it up as he describes how he "scooped out his eyeballs" as the man's children cried. His nonchalant, humorous tone makes this all the more unsettling.
4 Borderlands 3's Apocalyptic Ending
In keeping with the series' tradition, BL3's set of power-hungry villains is quite sadistic and brutal in its own right. This comes to a head at the bombastic finale of the game, in which a power-drunk Troy sees it fit to wrap the moon Elpis in a Phaselock, in order to smash it into Pandora.
Sure, this will likely lead to the extinguishing of countless lives, but this mad Child of the Vault disregards this, as his only goal is to open the Great Vault. This scene proves intense, especially when players are given a glimpse of the massive glowing moon that draws near, Majora's Mask style.
3 Roland Is Abruptly Slain
The BL games typically unnerve and disturb players by more drawn-out, grotesque imagery. But actually, one of the harsher moments in BL2 takes a far different approach — with a swift, unexpected turn in the story.
This scene, which sees series mainstay Roland get fatally shot by Jack, blindsides viewers with its abruptness and brutality, invoking gasps without the need for much gore. However, this is punctuated by blood spatter on the screen, as the collapsed soldier reveals a cruelly indifferent Jack. The villain proceeds to mock Lilith with the simple greeting, "sup?"
2 Tina Copes By Making Angel Evil
Tiny Tina's odd coping mechanism in dealing with Roland's death plays out in the fantasy board game, Bunkers and Badasses. Players experience this warped fantasy via the amusing DLC, Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep. Following funny fantasy tropes and wackiness, the DLC leads up to the meeting of the heroic knight Roland. But one scene that's subtly dark is near its conclusion, when players are forced to do battle with an evil version of Angel.
This is a character that—it should be noted—had spent the latter part of BL2 bound and tortured by her sociopathic father Jack. Having to slay a creepy, malevolent Angel is both sad and disturbing, especially given that this is coming from the mind of Tina, who blames Angel for Roland's death.
1 The Bonded
Being the anarchic society most of BL is, there are a number of unhinged, often creepy cults and tribes that populate the games. But Gearbox truly outdoes themselves with The Bonded, a twisted cult of planet Xylourgos; and main villains of the DLC Guns, Love, and Tentacles.
There is no shortage of scenes featuring these chilling foes during the campaign, many of which are downright eerie when players get a closer look at their visuals and iconography. Goosebump-inducing chants, grotesque tentacles, and mass sacrifice are all a part of this tribe. Not only this, but some of these foes even wield shields with beating hearts.