Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands’ T rating is partially due to the mushroom butts

Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is the first Borderlands game to get a 'teen' instead of 'mature' rating by the ESRB, but 'mushroom butts' didn't exactly help.

In an interview with Kotaku, creative director of Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands Max Cox explained why and how the team at Gearbox Software decided to keep the Tiny Tina spin-off game at a 'teen' rating rather than Borderlands usual 'mature' rating.

According to Cox, the intention was to bring the Borderlands franchise to "a wider audience" by reducing the amount of M-rated content in the game. If you didn’t know, for a game to get a mature rating by the ERSB, it would need to contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content, and/or strong language. So basically, almost everything that makes a Borderlands game.

As for why Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands got a T rating, the ESRB website explains that it’s because it contains blood, crude humor, language, partial nudity, suggestive themes, and violence - which is fair.

You may be wondering why the game has been flagged as having "partial nudity" in it though. Well, as Cox explains: "We had a pretty good understanding [of] what we could and could not do," however, he continues, "we didn’t know that we were going to get a 'partial nudity' for mushroom butts."

Mushroom butts aside, Cox says the team "pressed the boundaries of that teen rating to quite a degree" meaning although slightly more tame than the other games in the series, Tiny Tina’s Wonderland hasn’t lost any of its Borderlands charm. "Outside of a few words, and then gore pieces from, like, humanoids, we didn’t find it honestly that limiting," Cox adds.

Still not sure if this Borderlands spin-off is for you? Take a look at our Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands review to help you decide.

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After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training. My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.