TheBorderlandsgames are full to the brim with pop-culture parodies and references. They can be as small as the flavor text on a weapon, or as big as a full-on main story boss fight.
10 Wildest Borderlands Side Quests
From Pandora to the Wonderlands, the Borderlands games are full to the brim with ludicrous side quests.
You never know when the next reference is coming, but you’re always waiting for it. They’re a baked-in part of what makes these games great.
You could fill a book with all the pop culture nods on Pandora, but these are a few of the best that Borderlands has made so far.
10Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Borderlands 2
Scooter’s love life is notably problematic, and this special little reference is no Disney fairy tale. InBorderlands 2, Scooter gives you a side-quest titled The Cold Shoulder.
You’re sent searching for flowers to woo his girlfriend Laney White, and girly mags for Scooter in case the wooing goes poorly. When you deliver the flowers to Laney, you learn that she’s been shacking up with seven little adjective-named guys.
Until Laney and her little lovers jump out to kill you, you aren’t given her last name, so the joke of the quest is a complete surprise. I was highly entertained by it, but I didn’t want to linger too long in the treasure room and the eight beds a blacklight should never go near.
9Family Guy’s Blue Harvest
Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel
This is such a niche reference, it’s surprising that it even made it into thePresequel. After you rescue Professor Nakayama in the Hyperion Hub of Heroism, he enlists your help in making Jack Notice him.
After you inevitably fail at getting Jack’s attention, Nakayama asks you to kill a genetic abomination he created with the quest “Kill Meg”. You have to locate and enter a trash compactor where Meg spawns.
I was expecting to simply find a trash compactor monster as a nod to Star Wars, and I wasn’t completely wrong. This one just happened to be a thresher named Meg that’s wearing a Pink Hat.
I always expect obscure references in these games, but I never had Family Guy’s Blue Harvest, on my Borderlands bingo card.
8Zombie Smurfs
Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands
Tiny Tina’s Wonderlandsoffers a dark look at the Smurfs in the The Little Boys Blue side quest. The Murphs of the Weepwild Dankness are on the brink of extinction due to zombie-like plague and they’re in need of a hero.
The Wife-Queen of the Murphs, Murphette, and Old Murph ask you to help save the murph-napped murphs from the clutches of the wizard Garglesnot. Every step you take, you have to fight off zombiffied Murphs known as “The Blue Ones.”
Though I was initially giggling at the start of this quest because I was killing Smurfs, I got pulled into the riveting story it turns out to be. My heart sank when Old Murph dies after being infected, and I don’t know why I cared as much as I did.
Though it’s an old reference, it’s one of the best parts of thisD&D style spinoff game.
7Star Wars: A New Hope
The Pre-Sequel can be a bit of a grind at times with how quickly it out-levels you. If you’re in Vorago Solitude and willing to step pretty far off the beaten path for EXP, like I was, then you might stumble upon a golden Loader named ICU-P and a blue claptrap named RT-FC.
They give you the very clearStar Warsside quest These Are The Bots, where you escort them across the desert to deliver a holographic request for help to Toby Van Adobe. This is my favorite part of the pre-sequel, because it so lovingly recreates the dynamic of C-3PO and R2-D2.
The quest rewards you with an energy gun called Toby’s Bright Spadroon that functions a bit like a lightsaber. It isn’t practical at all, but I held onto it for far longer than I should have.
6Marvel Comics: The Juggernaut
Borderlands 3
The Unstoppable is one of the random bosses that can be found inBorderlands 3. You’ll find him in Amber Mire at Tig’s Big Rig.
It’s like The Juggernaut was ripped out of a comic book page and slapped right into Borderlands. I didn’t know this was coming when I first encountered him, so I was properly intimidated by the sudden Marvel villain in front of me.
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He’s a goliath, and you can pop his signature helmet off to make him rage and claim better rewards. He has a chance to drop a few items, but the most notable is the Band of Sitorak, another reference to the Juggernaut’s Cyttorak.
5The Secret Mario Room
This is a pretty legendary easter egg in the PreSequel that’s exceptionally well hidden. If you follow an elevator in Tyko’s Ribs all the way up through a pipe, you will enter the secret Mario room.
Enemies will spawn and try to take you down as you navigate the blocky pipes and platforms. The retro music blasting in the background as you seek out your rewards just really hits the nostalgia vibes just right.
You are rewarded with a hidden vault symbol and a room with some high level chests. Though, I was left wishing I’d gotten aplumber-themed cosmeticfor my Fraptrap.
4The Goonies: Sloth and Chunk
While venturing through the Turrntide Shed in Konrad’s Hold, you’ll run into Captain Thunk and his lovable lunk companion, Sloth. They draw inspiration from Sloth in The Goonies, sporting colorful COV t-shirts that look a lot like Superman merch.
They have some great unique voice lines, and Sloth will sometimes launch Captain Thunk at you from a canon. Best, they have a chance to drop a grenade mod called It’s Piss with Sloth’s catchphrase as flavor text, “Hey you guys!”
I first discovered the Sloth and Chunk cameo while playing online with my friends and we laughed about it for a solid ten minutes. And the It’s Piss grenade mod paired perfectly with my Porta-Pooper 5000.
3Lord of the Rings
This is probably the best kept secret on Pandora and I don’t know how anyone discovered it in the first place. After you unlock true vault hunter mode and start that play-through a special item will spawn inside of the fireplace at Claptrap’s Place called Geary’s Unbreakable Gear.
If you pick it up and carry it by foot without dying or fast traveling to the top of Mount Hellsfont in the Eridium Blight. It’s an adventure that begins where the game begins and ends where the game ends.
Atop the mountain you’ll find a Psycho named Geary who will take the gear from you and cast himself into the fire. Three Raks will fly over and drop loot chests for you.
It’s apretty fantastic homage, but I wasn’t lucky enough to walk away with one of the cosmetics Geary can drop as he dies.
2SpongeBob SquarePants
I was already pretty thrilled to be playing a DLC based entirely inside the mind of my favorite vault hunter, Psycho Kreig and the Fantastic Fustercluck. I lost my mind when I found a structure that looked an awful lot likea certain undersea pineappleand was attacked by it’s resident, SpongeBoss BulletPants.
SpongeBoss is a yellow-colored goliath that fires at you with a radioactive bubble gun that hits hard. Taking him down is a tough time at base level, but if you let him rage and reach his final form, Godly SpongeBoss NoChance, he’ll drop a metric ton of loot.
It’s disappointing that SpongeBoss doesn’t drop the bubble gun he fights you with, but you’re able to pick it up in the Bounty of Blood DLC. He does drop the P.A.T. Mk. III, which kind of makes up for it.
1The Secret Minecraft Room
This is easily the best reference in Borderlands and it does everything right by me. In the Caustic Caverns where Sanctuary used to be, there exists a little hidden cave that’s blocked off byMinecraftdirt blocks.
If you melee the blocks, they’ll slowly break inproper Minecraft fashionand reveal a mine full of breakable blocks and Creepers that want to blow you up. If you kill enough of them, a huge one will spawn that drops some incredible loot.
You receive a Minecraft head cosmetic that matches your vault hunter, and a skin that matches Steve’s color scheme. It’s such an authentic homage that I broke every block in the place hoping to find a diamond and appropriately I walked away empty-handed.
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Though the games have their roots in comedy, the character deaths in the Borderlands game hit hard.
