The tone of Borderlands 4 is intended to land somewhere between the feel of the first two games, and Gearbox says while it isn't just relying on meme humor, players should still expect the "zaniness" that the series is known for.
In an interview with senior project producer Anthony Nicholson, as part of our Borderlands 4 Big in 2025 Preview, we asked about narrative director Sam Winkler's comments that suggested he'd cry real tears if terms like 'skibidi toilet' and 'hawk tuah' appeared in the game. In response, Nicholson said that the team remains "proud of the worlds we've created and stories told in previous Borderlands titles," but notes that "the art of making games evolves over time, and audience expectations for both stories and the way we tell them change as well."
That means that "the tone of Borderlands 4 will evolve too," as Gearbox attempts "to adapt alongside both our amazing community and for new players." That evolution probably won't take the game too far away from what we might expect from Borderlands, however, as Nicholson says that "we'll retain the fun and sometimes over-the-top writing players expect from us that makes us so unique."
So how might that actually look? Nicholson explains that internally, that 'evolved' tone is intended to land "closer to between what players felt tonally in the first Borderlands and the humor and comedic opportunities we explored in Borderlands 2." If I had to guess, that means some of the more brutal, apocalyptic tones of the first game, and the cartoonish villainy of Borderlands 2's Handsome Jack.
Nicholson backs some of that up, explaining that the Borderlands 4 setting of Kairos "is a world where the outlook is bleak, the stakes are real, and the characters treat them as such." That said, however, he also explains that "it all isn't without the zaniness, oddity, and mayhem that makes a Borderlands game a Borderlands game."
