Continuing in the Borderlands series’ grand tradition of making sly winks at everything from Minecraft to Game of Thrones to a whole lot of internet memes, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel is littered with secrets and references — some especially elaborate. Here are all the ones we know of so far.
As ever, beware of the over-9000-eyed spoiler beast from Zarcon VII.
It’s A-Me, Mario
Courtesy of GameFront, here’s a look at The Pre-Sequel‘s hidden Super Mario-themed room, complete with gigantic plumber pipes (albeit purple ones) and pixelated blocks as far as the eye can see. It can be found in the game’s final area, as per the video’s instructions.
Here are some pictures of the glimmering loot castle too:
Buzz Lightyear To The Rescue
Via deathmule, here’s a video of a quest line — called “No Such Thing As A Free Lunch”, itself likely a reference to classic Robert Heilein sci-fi novel The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress — that ends in a brief, bone-splintering encounter with Toy Story‘s Buzz Lightyear. Or, if not the tiny plastic man who believed he could fly, then a very convincing lookalike. This particular toy story, however, doesn’t have the, er, happiest ending.
3001: A Space Odyssey
This one might just be the most elaborate of all of The Pre-Sequel‘s references. In short, if you book it over to Stanton’s Liver, you can hop up some cliffs to find a cave with a silently terrifying monolith. If you step in, you’ll find yourself on a multi-place, multi-portal odyssey of references to… 2001: A Space Odyssey. I am beginning to suspect there might be some classic sci-fi fans at 2K Australia and Gearbox.
We’re Up All Night To Get Lucky
They probably won’t play Coachella until the Earth is naught but the universe’s biggest pile of ash and bone, but Daft Punk is playing the moon right now. Or, well, Pandora’s moon — and also they’re not really Daft Punk. Still though, as Somewhat Awesome Games points out, the reference here should be pretty obvious. You can find the duo spinning a set in Mad Moxxi’s bar in Concordia.
Of Course There Is A Star Wars Reference
It’s a Borderlands game set on the moon. What else were you expecting? And actually, it’s not just a reference. There’s more than one. In a quest called “These Are The Bots,” you can hang out with Borderlands-ified versions of R2-D2, C-3PO, Princess Leia, and Obi-Wan Kenobi. Hint: they are all awful people/robots.
Meanwhile, if you’re a bigger fan of the Star Wars prequels than you are the originals (HAHAHAHA), there’s also the option to go pod racing. In this case it’s called “pop racing,” and also it’s… not much like pod racing at all. You get to embarrass the snot right out of a snot-nosed little brat, though, so it’s all good in the end.
Halo, There
Does the teddy bear hanging out in Mad Moxxi’s bar (yes, that happens) strike you as a bit… familiar? Hint: it’s because he’s Master Chief from Halo, but for some reason tiny, inanimate, and stuffed to the seams with moon fluff. And how about that rad Mjolnir armour, huh?
I’ll continue updating this post as I come across more references and easter eggs. Feel free to pass along any that you find!
Comments
10 responses to “Of Course The New Borderlands Is Loaded With Secrets And References”
But if you tell us then they’re not a secret any more.
And of course Kotaku sees it as it’s sworn duty to spoil every bloody thing it can in the week after a game is released!
It’s to the stage where one has to go on a complete media black out of you want to discover things for yourself.
It seems to be part of their new philosophy of covering games after their release which sounded good on paper but has sort of devolved into spoiling all the secrets and posting every “Hey this cool thing was done by a person” video they can find.
i know right?
im so sick of them holding a gun to my head and forcibly opening links that are clearly titled with “SECRETS”
you could read the article headline and the first few lines and then boom… you know there’s spoiler. so why complain?
I went straight to the comments and by passed the content of this article. But the issue is that they tend to post what has been found in the game as the heading. Today it is the Bogan Gun, yesterday the badass sword gun and a few the day before.
It just takes the magic away from games.
Love all these little easter eggs but am I the only one that is completely over the “Oziness” of the game? From the accents to the lame aussie humour. It’s bad, really bad.
That’s the thing though: it’s bad and over the top on purpose. Exactly the same way the previous Borderlandseses were, but (obviously) not American this time.
So while Bordlerands 2 was effectively “internet meme: the game” the pre-sequel is “pop culture reference: the game”?
What makes it a Halo reference? The helmet in no way resembles the Reclaimer’s.