Recap pages are Spoilers Off by default, so all spoilers were removed. Proceed with caution. You Have Been Warned
"Before the Bloodshots grabbed him, Roland was getting intel on the Vault, and what Jack plans to do with it. You have to find him. I gotta head back to Sanctuary, keep the city in one piece while Roland's away. But first, I'm gonna teleport you into the Bloodshot Stronghold — that's where they're keeping Roland. You'll catch 'em by surprise and have a real advantage. It'll be great. Hold still."
— Lilith
After meeting the Firehawk/Lilith, you get to learn the whereabouts of Roland: he was kidnapped by a gang, the Bloodshots, who were negotiating with Hyperion in order to get him. So, the first order of the day is to infiltrate the Bloodshot Dam and rescue Roland before he gets sent to Hyperion territory.
However, things aren't easy: first Lilith, who's still getting used to teleport people with her, only managed to teleport you a few feet. Then you'll find the Bloodshots won't let anybody but their own in, so you need to get equipped with the proper tech. And finally, you have to traverse the inner areas of the Dam. Especially the exterior. At least halfway you finally get to meet Roland, Commander of the Crimson Raiders... who gets kidnapped a second time, this time by Hyperion.
The new areas unlocked by this chapter are The Dust, Bloodshot Stronghold and Bloodshot Ramparts. There's also another area which becomes optional, late in the game, Friendship Gulag. These levels are home to the sidequests "Too Close For Missiles", "Out of Body Experience", "Splinter Group", "Positive Self Image", "The Good, The Bad, And The Mordecai", "Rakkaholics Anonymous" and "The Bane", as well as the following challenges:
- The Dust: "The Van is Damned", "If You're Not First, You're Last", "Dust to Dust", "Cult of the Vault" and "I've Got a Crush on You".
- Bloodshot Stronghold: "Give it a Whirl", "Cult of the Vault", "Cut 'em no Slack", "Eff Yo' Couch" and "Bloodshot Memories".
- Bloodshot Ramparts: "The Last Place You Look", "The Not-So-Phantom Tollbooth" and "Cult of the Vault".
- Friendship Gulag: "In the Middle of the Night" and "Cult of the Vault".
This mission, the related sidequests and challenges, and the "The Dust", "Bloodshot Stronghold", "Bloodshot Ramparts" and "Friendship Gulag" levels, show examples of:
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The "Out of Body Experience" chain involves repeatedly installing an A.I. core from a destroyed Loader into various robot bodies, which promptly attempt to murder you each time. Eventually, frustrated with its failure, the A.I. gives up its attempts to kill you... and asks you to install it in a shield or gun so it can help you kill others instead.
- Amusing Injuries: Ellie is introduced crushing a bandit in her crusher.
- Badass in Distress: The first important mission is to rescue Roland from bandits. Shortly after you meet him, he is attacked by Hyperion robots that have broken into his cell. He then proceeds to rapidly mop them floor with them despite being unarmed. After he beats the robots he gets kidnapped a second time by a constructor.
- Berserk Button: Pretty much anything you do for the Zafords or Hodunks to the other family which angers the other side till the culmination of the final quest in that chain.
- Big Beautiful Woman: Ellie embraces this trope. Her girth is stupendous, but the only people who disparage it are random bandits and her mother Moxxi. Mr. Torgue and her own brother think she's quite attractive—and so does Ellie herself.
- Blatant Lies: An Hyperion A.I. core you meet during the "Out-of-Body Experience" quests will reassure that it totally does not intend to murder you. You should put it in this constructor, over there! Or in that WAR loader there! Or in Moxxi's radio on her bar! After all the ways to kill you prove wrong, you either send it to Zed in order to get a Shield with voice module or to Marcus in order to get a Shotgun, also with voice module.
- Brick Joke: When Scooter first sends you to Ellie, he warns you that if you make fun of her weight, he will have to tie you to a vending machine and light you on fire. Later on, during the "Clan War" arc when you are sent out to talk to Steve near the entrance to the Dust, on the other side of the building from Steve is a charred Dr. Zed vending machine with a bandit corpse tied to it. This one also has an earlier payoff where, after building the Bandit Technical for use, Ellie says to you to tell Scooter to stop setting her customers on fire.
- Brother–Sister Incest: Scooter has an unrequited crush on his sister. Sidequests make it fairly obvious that it's a lot more common among the Hodunk clan proper, which was apparently part of the reason Moxxi wanted out.Scooter: What?! That is...psh... just a tiny one.
- Car Fu: The Caravan car can and will destroy you if you try to stop it by blocking its path with your car (because it is flagged as part of the environment and can't be destroyed).
- Cargo Cult: The Bloodshot bandits worship guns. This has led them to worship Marcus after he sends them a shipment of complimentary weapons better than the stuff they use. They actually erected a giant golden statue in his honor combining him with a many-armed Indian goddess... with a gun clutched in every hand. In co-op you can sacrifice a teammate to it and it'll spit out a gun! The more teammates you sacrifice, the better the gun will be! There is also an ECHO log of them chanting "GUNS! GUNS! GUNS!", and the high priest exhorting them to chant louder so he can hear them.
- Casual Danger Dialog: Roland, when you first meet him in person.[loader blasts through the wall behind him]
Roland: This'll just take a second. - Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: There is a sidequest where a broken Hyperion robot core, Loader #1340, asks you to help find him a new body. The first three times you do this, he tries to kill you. He only stops when he decides he can live with just helping you kill things and you get to place the core in a gun or shield.
- Continuity Nod: In the "Clan War" mission line, Mick Zaford talks about his son Lucky and how he was murdered by an ex-Hodunk. Anyone who played the General Knoxx DLC from the first game would know that Scooter killed Lucky Zaford. He told you he was gonna do it!
- Darker and Edgier: The "Clan War" sidequest chain. Despite the innate absurdity and hilarity of the trademark Borderlands writing, the questline not only reveals some incredibly, graphically messed up aspects of Moxxi, Scooter and Ellie's backstories, but also involves burning people alive in their own homes and slaughtering tens of people at a wake for a guy you yourself helped get killed to begin with.
- Dreadful Musician: The A.I. core that you put into Moxxi's entertainment system overrides the music with a performance by one of these, hoping you'll commit suicide.
- Driven to Suicide: The A.I. core who you "rescue" plays bad music hoping that Moxxi's bar patrons would do this.
- Even the Subtitler Is Stumped:
- Everything Papa Hodunk says is "Unintelligible Old Coot Gibberish." Tector understands him just fine though.
- The Bane makes "Annoying noises" whenever you shoot it.
- Evil Weapon: The Bane. Anyone who encounters it will admit it's a fine weapon, but it bears a horrible curse that either kills its users or drives them insane. Specifically, having it out slows your movement to a crawl, and it's a talking weapon which makes a lot of extremely annoying noise when fired, or zoomed, or anything.
- Experience Booster: The "Moxxi's Endowment" Relic, a reward for completing the mission "The Good, The Bad, And The Mordecai", which increases between 3% and 10% (OP10) the amount of gained experience from combat, depending on your current character's level.
- Feuding Families: The "Clan War" sidequest chain has you reigniting the feud between the Hodunks and the Zafords. Which clan comes out on top is ultimately up to the player.
- Foreshadowing:
- When you first meet Roland in the flesh, he's on a bed with a giant, red graffiti on the wall that reads "You Die!" Roland is the only one of the original Vault Hunters to die in the story.
- Roland also has a prominent black skull tattooed on his left arm. This one could be argued as not foreshadowing, since Roland had the same tattoo in 1, however, 2 keeps positioning Roland so that his left arm is facing the player each time they speak to him in Sanctuary.
- Gotta Catch 'Em All: There are five keys distributed across Bloodshot Ramparts. The challenge "The Last Place You Look" requires collecting all of them.
- Human Sacrifice: At the Shrine of the Gunbringer in Bloodshot Ramparts, if playing multiplayer, one or more players can jump into the shrine and another can pull the lever... which closes the shrine, slowly incinerates the sacrifices, and rewards some guns. The more bodies in the hole, the higher quality the guns.
- Karmic Jackpot: The game seems to favor the Zaford clan at the end of the "Clan War" sidequest chain. Not only killing Tector and Papa Hodunk net you a very good weapon in the Chulainnnote , but you can also fight them as enemies in order to grind the Slagganote , one of the best Slag weapons in the game. If you do the contrary, you'll be rewarded two sub-par weapons: the Maggienote and the Landscapernote . This is exacerbated by the actions of both the Hodunks and Zafords during the previous "Clan War" missions: while the Zafords had you setting on fire the Hodunk camp and blow up the racers, that pales in comparison to the Hodunks sending you to crash Lucky Zaford's wake.
- Mexican Standoff: Near the end of the mission "The Good, the Bad, and the Mordecai", where you stand off against two other people in a fight for a treasure chest.
- Mob War: The entire "Clan War" sidequest arc is one, with the Vault Hunters doing more increasingly brutal acts for both sides until it explodes into a massive firefight at the Lynchwood train station.
- Mood Whiplash: During the hilarity that is the "Clan War" sidequest chain, Ellie offhandedly mentions the reason Moxxi took her away from the Hodunk clan was because they were planning to raise her as the clan wife.
- Mundane Utility: As recorded in an ECHO Log, one of the Bloodshot Bandits used a fire gun Marcus sold him just to roast some food.
- My Grandma Can Do Better Than You: Jack taunts you if you take too long to rescue Roland (either due to dying repeatedly, and/or taking too long to destroy the robots). The Constructor that kidnapped him then takes him to the Hyperion prison in The Dust, "Friendship Gulag", where you now have to travel to and fight more enemies in order to rescue him.
- Prison Level: The "Bloodshot Stronghold" level takes place in a gang hideout with a prison section where you first find Roland.
- Sadistic Choice: "Clan War" is all about the Hodunk vs. Zaford conflict, and ends with you having to pick a side.
- Shouting Shooter: Parodied with "The Bane" - in this case, it's not the shooter doing the shouting, but the gun itself.
- Smart Gun: There's a shotgun that can be loaded with the A.I. core of Hyperion loader #1340 and other guns that have talking artificial intelligence.
- Smoke Out: Peter Zaford disappears in puffs of smoke.
- Stealth Pun:
- The Bane is one. Just say it out loud and consider what the gun does.
- In Marcus' Mad Libs Dialogue ECHO messages to the Bloodshots and Roland, he warns them both that they need to "up... your arsenal."
- Storming the Castle: Your first true mission has you bursting into Bloodshot Ramparts to rescue Roland.
- Story Breadcrumbs: As in the first game, ECHO recorders are strewn around the landscape, as both side quests and just items that fulfill Badass rank requirements.
- The "The Good, the Bad and the Mordecai" sidequest has two ECHOes, one in "The Dust", and another in "Friendship Gulag" that deal with two brothers and a secret weapon stash owned by Mordecai.
- The "Bloodshot Memories" challenge requires you to find four ECHO recordings detailing the conflict between the Crimson Raiders and the Bloodshot Gang.
- The "Dust to Dust" challenge tells the story of the clan war between the Hodunks and the Zafords.
- Suicide as Comedy: Near the end of the quest with the Hyperion A.I., it asks to be plugged into the Radio in Moxxi's and tries to get the player to kill themselves by subjecting them to some absolutely horrible music.
- Take Your Time: Subverted at one point when you are told to rescue Roland before a constructor robot takes him away; even though there is no on-screen timer or other indication of time passing, if you don't destroy the robot in five minutes, it flies away with him, and you have to complete a whole additional sub-mission to break him out of Friendship Gulag before you can proceed with the main story.
- Talking Weapon:
- The Bane, if what it does can be considered talking.
"SWAPPIN' WEAPONS!"
"YEAHYEAHYEAHYEAHYEAHYEAHYEAHYEAHYEAHYEAHYEAHYEAHYEAHYEAHYEAHYEAHYEAHYEAHYEAHYEAHYEAHYEAH"- After "Out of Body Experience", you can obtain either a weapon or shield with an old Hyperion Robot core installed in it. While wielding the weapon/wearing the shield the robot will talk to you. He's rather friendly and enjoys either role quite a bit.
- Teeny Weenie: A line from Moxxi has her laughing at Mordecai over this during "Rakkaholics Anonymous".Moxxi: Oh, and if you see Mordecai, let him know: three inches? (chuckles) Not average size. Not even close.
- Tempting Fate: One quest in the "Clan War" string involves stealthily following a guy to a money vault. The entire time he's talking out loud about how hopefully no one's following him and how he can't wait to get inside and not get ambushed - because that's the best part of these trips, not getting ambushed!
- Translation: "Yes": At the end of "Clan War: End of the Rainbow":Papa Hodunk: (Long-winded old coot gibberish)Tector Hodunk: Paw says "Thanks."
- Turns Red: Tector Hodunk, who literally turns red and goes into Raging Goliath ("Grieving Tector") mode if you kill Papa Hodunk before him.
- The Unfought: Flanksteak, the boss of the Bloodshots. When rescuing Roland from their stronghold early in the game, he's heard trying to negotiate a price from Hyperion for Roland's capture. But he gradually reduces the amount as you progress through the area, blow his men away, and get closer to Roland. Eventually he asks for a really pitiful amount of money ($20, down from the one million dollars he wanted originally), one of the Hyperion loaders denies it, then blasts him away off screen.
- The Unintelligible: Jimbo Hodunk, the patriarch of the Hodunk clan. Subtitles render his speech as "[old coot gibberish]". His son Tector seems to understand him perfectly, though. Tipping Moxxi might prompt her to recall something Jimbo once told her: [frontier coot rambling].
