Whether or not the Borderlands games are funny comes down to your tolerance level for concepts such as "toilet prison" and Rickrolling, but as fans of the 2009 franchise grow older and more world-weary, its le epic memes become less impressive. This is why Borderlands 4 players seem to be glad the latest installment of the looter shooter ditches the series' crudest humor.
But "crude humor," Gearbox devs argue, doesn't exclude a Dark Souls joke from 2022 making an appearance as a self-referential, secret sidequest. So they made a Dark Souls joke from 2022 into a self-referential, secret sidequest – first noticed by our friends at PC Gamer.
The unmarked Forgive Me quest refers to a self-described FromSoftware "meme" Gearbox narrative director Sam Winkler infamously shared to Twitter three years ago, writing, "Dark Souls revolutionized games, in the sense that instead of a story now you can just have some guy with a big sword named Myrmidon of Loss who gasps 'Zanzibart… forgive me' when he dies and then twenty YouTubers will make an hour long video about how deep your lore is."
Its corresponding Borderlands 4 quest sees players attacked by an enemy who drops a Desecrated Bolt that ekes out the line about Zanzibart. Once you hear it, you're instructed to find Zanzibart's grave, where you'll encounter a spirt named Cursed Myrmidon of the Cruel Dawn.
Winkler teased all of this before Borderlands 4 released, telling IGN that, while he wanted to reign in the game's goofiness, he also felt like adding "a specific meme in this game, and I feel justified putting it in because I accidentally created it."
"It does not involve a Skibidi Toilet," Winkler added at the time.
Gearbox Software unveils the first Borderlands 4 DLC Vault Hunter, coming in early 2026 alongside some story expansions for the FPS.
