Recap / Borderlands 2 C 10 Rising Action C 11 Bright Lights Future City

Recap pages are Spoilers Off by default, so all spoilers were removed. Proceed with caution. You Have Been Warned

"You only survived our train ride together because I wanted you to. Five years ago, Roland and his friends opened the Vault because Angel and I tricked them into doing it. Everything you Vault Hunters have ever done — it's all part of my plan. I'm such a rock star."

— Handsome Jack

Right after defeating Wilhelm and getting the power core, you travel back to Sanctuary in order to help re-empower the shields. Then Jack calls you with a bomb to deliver.

Handsome Jack: Hey, you know, I think it's finally time to tell you that little secret. Angel is working for me.

Angel: Lowering Sanctuary's shields, Jack. Executing phase shift.

Sanctuary's shields are dropped, and Helios Station starts bombarding Sanctuary, prompting Scooter, Lilith and Roland to execute a last-ditch plan: lift off Sanctuary from its location. In a desperate situation, and with everyone on board running and being killed by Helios' Moonshots, Lilith asks you to power her with Eridium. As you get teleported out of Sanctuary's reach, Sanctuary is being teleported to an unknown area. Meanwhile, you're on your own.

So you travel back to Three Horns - Valley and go northwest. You receive a message:

Angel: I know you're angry at me right now, but we don't have a lot of time. I'll explain everything — just get to The Fridge — it's the only way to reach the Highlands. I detect Lilith might have phased your city there.

Once you reach the specified location, the "Rising Action" mission ends as you defreeze the entrance to The Fridge, and a new mission begins: "Bright Lights, Future City". You need to make your way through The Fridge and the Highlands in order to re-establish contact with Sanctuary and return to the city.

These missions unlock four new areas: The Fridge, The Highlands - Outwash, The Highlands, and Fink's Slaughterhouse. Sanctuary also gets replaced by Sanctuary Hole, which also unlocks access to another area, the Caustic Caverns. In addition, these locations are home to the missions "Bandit Slaughter" chain, "Slap-Happy", "Stalker of Stalkers", "Best Mother's Day Ever", "Safe and Sound", "Minecart Mischief", "Arms Dealing", "The Cold Shoulder", "Note for Self-Person", "Perfectly Peaceful", "Clan War" chain, "The Overlooked" chain, "Hidden Journals", "The Lost Treasure" and "Claptrap's Birthday Bash!"^note Located and performed across Sanctuary but unlocked by these chapters, as well as the following challenges:

• The Fridge: "Trapped Rat", "Stiff Competition", "Cult of the Vault", "The Rakk Knight", "It's Off to Hell We Go" and "Fairest of Them All".
• Fink's Slaughterhouse: "Cult of the Vault"
• The Highlands - Outwash: None.
• The Highlands: "Winds of the Highlands", "Cult of the Vault" and "Failure to Communicate".
• Sanctuary Hole: "Cult of the Vault", "Sugar Shack" and "Down the Rabbit Hole".
• Caustic Caverns: "Can't Feel a Thing", "Ever Blow Bubbles...?", "Harchek's Revenge", "Cult of the Vault" and "I Bet I Can Make It" (hidden).

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These missions, the related challenges and sidequests, and the "The Fridge", "The Highlands - Outwash", "The Highlands" and "Fink's Slaughterhouse" show examples of:

• All Animals Are Dogs: The ECHO logs in the Caustic Caverns explain that before Dahl started trying to kill the crystalisks for the resources in their bodies, they were docile and even playful creatures, likened explicitly to kittens.
• All Crimes Are Equal:
  • Overlook has a giant meat grinder in the centre of town...
  Hyperion Announcer: For the next week, the Grinder will only be used for egregious felonies, like littering and profanity.
  • Hyperion would like to remind you that littering is a crime punishable with death. Insulting Hyperion is considered verbal littering.
• Anti-Frustration Features: At the tail end of "Bright Lights, Future City", there's an Escort Mission where you have to protect a beacon from Hyperion robots for a certain time the beacon cannot be permanently destroyed; its health depleting only halts the timer until you repair it. If you fail to do it and have to repair it enough times, the Big Bad himself will remark on how much you're sucking at the job. Afterwards, the beacon becomes completely invulnerable. The difficulty that this mission presents in single-player means that, to a first-timer, this anti-frustration feature makes completing the mission possible.
  Handsome Jack: You're really bad at protecting that beacon, aren't you?
• Asshole Victim: Dave in Overlook. During one quest where you're helping out the house-bound citizens of that town, he constantly berates and makes sexist remarks at the lady who gives you the quest. Then when you help create a shield for the town to protect against Hyperion's bombardment, the lady tells you to fire a mortar at the town to test the shield. The first shot hits (and completely obliterates) Dave's house. Then she actually activates the shield and has you fire another shot to test it.
  Dave: Karima, don't feel bad Jack fed yer husband to the grinder. Well, I'll bed ya, if ya asked nicely! (cackles, then dies screaming)
• Badass Army: You can end up facing a literal one in Fink's Circle of Slaughter. Unless you have a well prepared team or are massively overpowered, prepare to have your ass handed back to you.
• Beehive Barrier:
  • The city of Sanctuary has one to protect against Moonshot Blitzes. It gets disabled by Angel in the climax until the end of the main quest.
  • "The Overlooked: Shields Up" tasks you to create a dome shield similar to Sanctuary's, and you will have to test its effectiveness by firing a mortar.
• Cargo Ship: In-Universe, a set of audio logs in "Torture Chairs" reveal Tannis was in an open relationship with two ceiling chairs (who were brothers). One of the radios scattered around will play a 'personals' ad from Tannis looking for a relationship with someone with furniture, please send pictures of the furniture.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Scooter's "Plan B" to help protect Sanctuary.
  • Angel's ability to take over non-Hyperion machinery. Like Sanctuary's shield.
• Cutting Off the Branches: Mordecai's first side mission once Sanctuary was phased off from its previous location and you return from Overlook refers to the first game's Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot DLC: Mordecai was the canon winner of the entire campaign, with an added prize being a relationship with Moxxi herself... which disintegrated long before the events of 2 took place. The friction between them serves as the choice the player makes during the "Rakkaholics Anonymous" sidequest, now with Mordy in Sanctuary.
• Deflector Shield: You help Karima set one of these up and test it in the side-quest "The Overlooked: Shields Up".
• Developer's Foresight: If you take out the old power core in the beginning of the "Rising Action" mission but don't replace it with the new one, all of your pending quests (main or DLC otherwise) will be set as "Blocked" and will only become available again after Lilith teleports you outside the city's entrance. This has some story justification as well, since Sanctuary is exposed once its shield is gone, defending it is your first priority over the optional quests and side stories.
• Easter Egg: Reaching a certain part of The Highlands will make a double rainbow visible, and either Handsome Jack or Claptrap will ECHO the player and repeat lines from the original viral video when it's spotted. This also unlocks an achievement.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: "Stalker of Stalkers" follows Taggart, an ex-boyfriend of Sir Hammerlock, where you find several of Taggart's ECHO recordings to his mother, ending with you looting what was supposed to be a Mother's Day gift.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: There's an unique midget named Shorty, who you get to kill for the sidequest "Swallowed Whole".
• Eye Scream: The first time you reach The Highlands, after killing the Thresher that ate the core at The Highlands - Outwash. Jack gloats about blinding a man with a spoon in front of his children (one of whom lives in Sanctuary and still has the spoon). While trying to tell you how he differs from the "bad guys" he claims you are.
• Flunky Boss: There's a boss fight against a Thresher at the tail end of "The Highlands - Outwash" that has swallowed a supply beacon and it is inadvertently causing robots to be launched from the moon down to its location, making it one of those rare "inadvertent" flunky boss fights. In a case of Tropes Are Not Bad, this actually works in the player's favour, as it provides the only way to successfully revive yourself out of a Second Wind outside of Co-Op (or if everyone is downed) when the boss still has a reasonable amount of health.
• Game-Breaking Bug: Landing at a certain spot in The Highlands, near Overlook, will end with the player getting stuck in a pit from which they cannot escape or suicide. The only way to escape it is to exit and re-enter the game.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Just after Sanctuary takes off, Lilith sends you back at the entrance of the road leading to Sanctuary with the bridge to the city now broken, and you will be required to exit to Three Horns - Divide. If you turn around and re-enter, the entire location will be replaced with the Sanctuary Hole map, the layout being different, and the bandits are now occupying the place as if the story forgot the fact that the city has just taken off a few seconds ago.
• Gender-Blender Name: Taggart named an especially big and nasty Stalker after his mother, Henry.
• Giant Mook: One of the first Thresher-type monsters you face is the fifty-foot-tall one.
• Gladiator Subquest: The Fink's Slaughterhouse's "Bandit Slaughter" chain has you facing up to 5 waves of bandit assault, with each wave and each quest being harder than the previous one.
• HA HA HA—No: When the player is delivering invitations to Claptrap's birthday party, this is Marcus's reaction to actually coming there.
• Hold the Line:
  • The "Bandit Slaughter" mission chain of Fink's Slaughterhouse, which has the Vault Hunters facing five waves of bandits, each harder than the previous one.
  • The "Bright Lights, Flying City" mission in Overlook ends with the player(s) having to defend a beacon in order to establish a fast-travel link to Sanctuary. You're doing this while Handsome Jack does everything he can to stop you, throwing endless Hyperion robots your way.
• Hub Under Attack: Sanctuary, the players' stronghold and shopping centre, comes under heavy mortar fire after Angel phaseshifts through the fake fusion core and deactivates the shield, forcing the Crimson Raiders to relocate the entire city.
• Human Resources: Overlook, the Hyperion Company Town in the Highlands, has all crimes (including curfew violations, swearing, and littering) punished by being thrown into an industrial-sized meat grinder in the center of town. Hyperion also sends out raffle tickets, with the "winner" ending up in it, a la' The Lottery. They also expect mothers of twins to choose one NOT to get ground into spam.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: The reason the crystal monsters found in the Caustic Caverns and the Fridge became violent is because Dahl wanted the valuable crystals they are comprised of. The foreman even maimed the security chief and anyone with her, who was trying to defend them.
  Sir Hammerlock: Have you heard my speech about how humans are the real monsters? Seems appropriate.
• Karmic Death: Some audio logs in the Caustic Caverns reveal this happened to at least one of the heartless Dahl executives. There were strange, elephant-sized creatures made of crystals down there and the security chief lady noted they were peaceful. The executive goes, "Made of crystals, huh? Chop 'em up, I want my money!" The security chief declines, especially since she's befriended the big blue one, but she gets shot by the executive. The final audio log is of the executive panicking as the peaceful creatures are not so peaceful anymore now that they've been attacked, and she gets squashed by the big blue one. Sir Hammerlock's amused reaction is "Well, that was dark."
• King Mook: Smash-Head, in The Fridge, is the ultimate Goliath, several times normal Goliath size and wielding a huge shield and rocket launcher.
• Lame Pun Reaction: Multiple: The mission "Arms Dealing". You get a bunch of actual human arms for Doctor Zed. Get it? Arms dealing?
  "Since arriving on Pandora you have been mauled, shot, stabbed, and frozen... and yet, that pun hurts worst of all."
• Lottery of Doom: Hyperion runs one (for no reason) in the town of Overlook, throwing "winners" into the "Grinder" which is exactly what it sounds like.
• Momma's Boy: Taggart was one of Hammerlock's exes and was very close to his mother. Prior to his death, he was looking for his lost Mother's Day gift (which was hand-made) and it does initially look innocent since Henry earned Taggart's admiration by teaching him how to survive. However, as the mission progresses, Taggart's behavior sounds more and more oedipal, whether it was intentional or not on Taggart's part is uncertain. At the end of the mission, the shield can be found under the name of "Love Thumper" and it has the inscription "If thumping you is wrong, I don't want to be right". Aside from the shield name, Taggart has a knuckle tattoo of the word "Mama", he named a stalker after his mother, and he dies yelling for his mother to save him. The quest completion notice is mockingly blunt about it:
  "Oedipus complex Shmoedipus complex."
• Mook Maker: Blue, the giant Crystalisk, can spawn mini-versions of himself that he catapults to you. They also explode on impact, with you. If they do not kill you by impact, they will do so by chasing you down.
• My Grandma Can Do Better Than You: During the last part of the main story quest "Bright Lights, Future City", Jack sends robots to try and stop you from activating the beacon. Most players won't experience this (unless you're soloing on True Vault Hunter Mode with sub-par weapons, or have an extremely bad group), but if the robots repeatedly interrupt/destroy the beacon, Jack will chime in, commenting on how bad you are and wonder how you can defeat him if you can't even protect a little beacon.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Your own character ends up doing this during a story quest, where putting a new power core in Sanctuary ends up disabling the town's shields. To be fair however, none of the protagonists were aware of this, as it was yet another of Jack's many Xanatos Gambits.
• Not Even Bothering with an Excuse: In the side mission "Claptrap's Birthday Bash!", all the invitees (except the players) turn him down. None bothers explaining why.
  Scooter: Hah, Clappy's havin' a shindig? You know, I'd go, but... I ain't gonna.
  Moxxi: Ooooh, sorry, I can't make it. Give Claptrap my love, though. My purely platonic love. Don't want him getting any ideas.
  Marcus: Hahahahahahahahahaha! No.
• Overly Long Gag: When you celebrate Claptrap's birthday party, he'll prattle on and on until you give him a high-five (melee him).
• Retcon: Gearbox has admitted the inclusion of Handsome Jack as a puppeteer of the first game is a retcon and wasn't intended, although it did work out and "fans are surprisingly forgiving of".
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: It is implied that this is actually part of the reason why the crystalisks are hostile to all humans now. Dahl's mining chief ordered them to be hunted down and killed the security chief who was refusing to kill them because they were friendly and docile. The crystalisks, which are apparently at least intelligent enough to recognize both of these facts, turned on said mining chief, and the entire species is now hostile to humanity.
• Sadistic Choice: "Safe and Sound" starts with Marcus sending you to Caustic Caverns in order to retrieve the safe and ends with you delivering lewd Moxxi pictures to either Moxxi or Marcus.
• Schrödinger's Gun: "Hidden Journals", the quest where you have to collect Tannis's ECHO logs in The Highlands, regardless of the order in which you retrieve the ECHO logs, has the audio being played in sequence, as Tannis records her story from start to finish.
• Shoddy Shindig: Claptrap ends up throwing a One-Person Birthday Party; after being rejected by everyone he gives an invite to, you (the vault hunter) are the only one who actually attends. He tries to make the most of it with a noisemaker, some music on the radio, a little dancing, and more pizza than he could ever hope to ever consume even if he had a mouth to eat it.
• Smoke Out: The Rakkman in The Fridge throws down a smoke grenade to achieve this.
• Stealth Pun: In The Highlands there are signs warning of Threshers near most of the places where Threshers spawn. Threshers are very large worm-like enemies with tentacles. In other words, Wormsign.
• 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 "Stalker of Stalkers" sidequest deals with the history of Taggart, an ex-boyfriend of Hammerlock that was hired by Hyperion to hunt down and exterminate the Stalker population.
    • The "Hidden Journals" sidequest deals with the whereabouts of Patricia Tannis after the events of 1.
    • The "The Rakk Knight" challenge requires you to find an ECHO log detailing Rakkman's story.
  • During "Minecart Mischief", you can hear on your ECHO the retelling of the turmoil between Booth, the Dahl security officer, and Harchek, a Dahl executive, about the value of Crystallisks, and how these went from being docile to raging enemies.
• Straight Gay:
  • Sir Hammerlock casually mentions in "Stalker of Stalkers" that you're hunting up an ex-boyfriend's belongings. (Although he could be using "boyfriend" in the old-fashioned sense.)
  • The ex-boyfriend falls under Manly Gay. Instead of being a Gentleman Adventurer like Hammerlock, he is more of a Saxton Hale style adventurer who likes to fight dangerous creatures with his bare fists.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: Rakkman's ECHO features him talking about the death of his parents. He mentions that he totally didn't kill them himself, completely out of nowhere (though knowing bandits, the immediate reaction upon hearing "My parents are dead" probably is "So, how'd you kill 'em?")

  Rakkman: My parents jiggled, and squiggled, AND I DIDN'T KILL THEM I PROMISE!

• They Called Me Mad!: Rakkman was labeled insane by his peers, implicitly other bandits.
• Thriving Ghost Town: Overlook is a strangely literal example of the trope: everybody's sick and/or living in constant fear of being thrown in the Grinder for violating curfew so they're all staying indoors, making it look like a ghost town even when it's actually fully populated.
• Three Laws-Compliant: Outside of Hyperion, you find out that Handsome Jack has his own self-aggrandizing three laws for robots. They are:
  1. Handsome Jack is your god.
  2. Threshers are your enemy.
  3. Both consider you expendable.
• Timed Mission: "Arms Dealing" in Overlook requires you to retrieve five arms scattered across The Highlands in less than two minutes, with each arm adding 30 seconds to the timer.
• Wham Episode: "Rising Action". The power core you've spent the first quarter of the game attempting to obtain turns out to be a trap that destroys Sanctuary's shields, leaving it wide open for Jack to attack it. Jack reveals that Angel set you up and she's on his side, and then proceeds to bombard the hell out of Sanctuary. With some quick thinking, Lilith is able to phase the city to safety before it's fully destroyed... but not before half the city is destroyed and hundreds, if not thousands of innocent people die. Finally, when Lilith teleports the city she accidentally leaves the vault hunters behind. The mission ends with your character alone, stranded, and completely cut off from your friends.
• Wham Line: From Handsome Jack. "Hey, you know, I think it's finally time to tell you that little secret: Angel's working for me."
• Would Hurt a Child: In the town of Overlook (where they have a Lottery of Doom whose winners are killed by being fed to a bunch of spinning cogs), you can hear a Hyperion voice over congratulating an inhabitant for the birth of her twins, and wishing her luck on deciding which one to keep.
• You All Look Familiar: When Marshall Friedman asks you to help him solve a murder. Look at his face, then look at the 4 identical quadruplet suspects, and you'll see they look exactly just like him.

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