Trivia / Borderlands 3

• Acting for Two: Just like in Borderlands 2, Colleen Clinkenbeard voices both Lilith and Tannis, and the two characters have interactions or dialogue between each other in certain scenes.
• Ascended Fanon: One common theory regarding Timothy Lawrence was that the real Handsome Jack scarred his body doubles to maintain the appearance of him being branded by Lilith at the end of Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!. Timothy confirms this in idle dialogue during the Handsome Jackpot DLC.
• Breakthrough Hit: SungWon Cho considers this his. While he had already been a cult favorite for years, his role as FL4K brought him substantially greater mainstream attention.
• The Cameo:
  • Penn and Teller's composer Mike Jones conducted the music in Moxxi's new bar. Penn and Teller themselves appear in the game as bosses Pain and Terror, with Penn voicing Pain and Terror being mute like his counterpart. Teller instead voices the NPC Ramsden, who issues a side-mission on Eden-6.
  • Randy Pitchford confirmed that Jack's presence in the teaser was this, and not an indicator of his or AI Jack's return. The character does make a vocal appearance in an optional sidequest and all throughout the Handsome Jackpot DLC.
• The Cast Showoff: When you find a present for Gaige in the "Guns, Love & Tentacles" DLC, Gaige will read out the corresponding letter from the one who sent the present, complete with an impression of the character. A perfect excuse for Cherami Leigh to demonstrate her insanely wide vocal range.
• Converted Fanboy: Marissa Lenti became a fan of the series after being cast as Moze and has streamed herself playing the game as her character. She’s also evidently a Moze/Amara shipper judging by some of the fanart she has shared on her Twitter account.
• Creator Breakdown: Borderlands co-creator Mikey Neumann's notoriously poor health bottomed out a few months after signing onto the project. Because of his decreased mobility and psychological trauma, he left Gearbox to focus on his less-strenuous YouTube channel full time. He did end up coming back to cut the initial launch trailer, though. Ironically, his Deep Dive co-star Elisa Melendez wound up being cast as Tyreen.
• Dueling Works: With Rage 2, another open-world shooter set in a colorful, but chaotic, wasteland set several years after its previous outing. Both games have also been subject to a Sequel Gap (five years for Borderlands, eight years for Rage). Fitting, as the original Rage (2011) drew several comparisons to the original Borderlands.
• Dummied Out: There's a few guns within the game files that, as of October 2023, are still unobtainable.
  • Manic Pixie Dream Gun (Tediore Shotgun): Can jump out of your hand and become a walking turret. Needs to be destroyed before you can pick it up again.
  • P2P Networker (Maliwan SMG): Was briefly obtainable from the diamond armory. Essentially the Maliwan version of the Redistributor, but very obviously unfinished, given its lack of Mayhem damage scaling and a non-elemental firing mode with a placeholder name (GUN TEAM PLZ FIX MODE NAME).
  • Bite Size (Jakobs pistol): Shots make a colorful but harmless explosion on impact. Bullets that hit enemies apply a sticky bomb.
  • Portals and Shite (Atlas assault rifle): No gimmicks. Behaves like an ordinary fast-firing Atlas rifle.
  • Ice Pick (Maliwan pistol): Aside from a lack of red text and always having optional charged shots, there's nothing really unique about it. Despite its name, it can come in any combination of elements.
  • Ice Age (Torgue launcher): Fires a cryo projectile in an arc. Large explosion radius.
  • Heckle (Torgue pistol): Behaves like an ordinary Torgue pistol. Always incendiary.
  • Hyde (Torgue pistol): Again, regular Torgue pistol, but has an alien barrel and always corrosive.
  • Bloodsucker (Atlas grenade mod): Sticks to enemies, making a blood spatter and leeching health for 10 seconds that the player get healed. Also removes status effects.
  • Kryll (Atlas grenade mod): Spawns 12 homing child grenades.
  • Slider (Tediore grenade mod): Travels much further than regular grenades when thrown, with much less of a downward arc.
  • Also only obtainable from the diamond vault is a beta version of the purple rarity Seventh Sense the player is given during the "Cold Case: Restless Memories" quest in Guns, Love, and Tentacles. It lacks the final version's gimmick of projectiles that home in in enemies when reloaded, and has the King's/Queen's Call gimmick of crits returning bullets to the magazine.
• Executive Meddling: While Randy Pitchford has made it clear that he was personally fine with the decision, he did specify that the game's temporary exclusivity to the Epic Games Store was due to 2K making the decision as Gearbox's publisher.
• Follow the Leader:
  • Defied with the absence of battle royale when the genre has been incorporated by a lot of shooting games in the late 2010's. During the game's reveal, Randy Pitchford announced that the game will not have a battle royale mode, which lead to fans erupting in cheers. Arms Race and the Electra City stage does parody this phenomenon (and the former does emulate a few mechanics straight), but without the mass-multiplayer action and remaining focused on cooperative party play.
  • Also defied in the game not being a live-service MMO game á la Destiny and The Division. Most game commentators were all but certain it was gonna be such because in many ways, the Borderlands franchise created and popularized the Looter Shooter genre adopted by Destiny even years before Destiny was released, and more publishers seem to want their own Destiny-style game, so most assumed Borderlands 3 would be a natural conversion. It didn't happen. The game is four-player co-op like the previous games in the series, with seemingly no mandatory (PC DRM and methods to download updates and DLC notwithstanding) multiplayer component.
• Late Export for You: While Borderlands 3 had an initial release date of September 13, 2019, the PC version remained exclusive to the Epic Games Store for months until March 2020 when the Steam version was made available.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Ray Chase replaced Troy Baker as Rhys. Troy stated that he would've been fine with returning, but declined to due to concerns about a lack of unionization from the actors involved.
  • Jim Foronda replaced David Eddings as Claptrap. Both Eddings and Gearbox were interested in him returning, but a deal couldn't be reached (and ended in violence, oddly fittingly).
• Reality Subtext: The story of Borderlands 3 is said to take place seven years after the events of Borderlands 2. BL2 was released on September 2012 while the release date for BL3 took place on September 13, 2019, making it a complete seven year gap.
• Real Song Theme Tune: This time around it's "Put It On The Line" by The Heavy. The ending credits has "Girl on Fire" by Alicia Keys.
• Release Date Change: The Director's Cut DLC was supposed to launch on March 18, 2021, but was changed to April 8 due to the extreme weather that impacted Texas (where Gearbox was located).
• Wag the Director: Gearbox ended up doing this to themselves. One of BALEX's lines includes a Precision F-Strike, which Gearbox usually bleeps. They ended up leaving it uncensored, reasoning that Ice-T isn't meant to be censored.
• What Could Have Been:
  • According to Jeremy Dooley, he was briefly considered for the role of Pretty Boy, and also auditioned for Freddie. He shared his audition tapes on stream, and while he expressed dissatisfaction with his rendition of Pretty Boy, his Freddy was very close to Brendan Blader.^note He conceded that Blader's was better, though he still prefers his own delivery of "And I'm cool!"
  • A behind the scenes video included in Director's Cut shows that there was originally going to be a lot more time devoted to everyone feeling the weight of Maya's death, including a funeral that the player would help set up and Krieg watching from the background.
  • The character selection screen from an earlier version had the hunters leaping into a fight, pausing in midair as the player makes their choice, and then getting thrown into a playable battle with multiple bandits and a vault monster, with Lilith doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Another had them standing outside the door to Marcus' bus, getting ready to board, while Marcus pointed at and commented on the highlighted character.
  • Amara was originally going to be named Lorelei, but Amara became her final name and Lorelei's name went to the military commander of Atlas.
  • Zane had a different design. He wore a cowboy hat, had four robotic arms (two of which were hidden in his long coat), and he was called the "Wild Card".
  • The outcome of Troy's boss fight was originally going to be competely different. Troy was supposed to survive the fight and go on to become the superpowered Final Boss, with Tyreen dying due to being drained too much. A guilt-ridden Troy would then revive her with Eridium, swapping their roles as host and parasite.
  • Scooter was going to have a son named Scooper who was being looked after by Ellie, and a side quest would've revolved around him.
• Word of Gay: Katagawa's voice actor, Christopher Wehkamp, has confirmed multiple times that he does have a romantic interest in Rhys. Whether that's explicit or not is up to debate.

---