Borderlands/YMMV

"Can't shoot enough bullets from your favorite gun? S&S has the solution: More Boolets! Four!Hundred!Percent!More!AWESOME! Also, Torgue doesn't make their guns out of freakin' wood."
 * Award Snub: CL4P-TP thinking it happened is the entire point of this video.
 * Broken Base: About the occasionally rampant modded weapons.
 * And the game's move from realistic looking graphics to cel-shaded ones.
 * Complete Monster: According to the strategy guide, psychos and psycho midgets are engineered by Pandoran outlaws themselves through a combination of child abuse and torturing their mothers while they're pregnant. If you still need an excuse to blast every single one of 'em, there you go.
 * What, the outlaws, or the midgets?
 * Demonic Spiders: Gatling turrets. Hope you like sniping.
 * Psychos, when they swap the axe for a grenade. Though it also counts as a Crowning Moment of Funny if said Psycho decides to whip out the grenade... at a point where it'll take more than the 3 seconds of the fuse to reach you.
 * The Crimson Lance probably qualify in some regards; they are by far the most dangerous class of opponents in the game due to their higher-quality firearms, higher chances of coming equipped with enhanced shields/grenades, and body armour that absorbs a lot of damage and is best worked around via Boom! Headshot!, Groin Attack or Kill It with Fire (or acid)... or all of the above. Their Badass incarnations have heavy armour all over them, and can literally only be hurt by Boom! Headshot! and Kill It with Fire (again, or acid).
 * Drifters in Secret Armory. 50 foot tall spider-things that eat cars for breakfast. There are few things in this game that are as terrifying and skin crawling as getting your vehicle destroyed by a group of them who then proceed to wail on your sorry hide. What's worse is they don't make a sound when they spawn, see you and/or approach like everything else in the game. They do make a quiet cough-like growl as they attack, but by then it's too late.
 * Oh God, Drifters are frightening. They'll kill you in one or two hits when you're on foot, so naturally, your instinct is to run for a vehicle... which they can easily destroy with their acidic saliva. Oh, and using the vehicle turret's lock-on function makes the Racer and Lancer blast ineffectually at their feet. Your only hope is to be in a Monster, locked on to the Drifter, constantly firing homing missile barrages behind you as you get the hell out of there. That works fine when there's one of them... Strategic retreat.
 * Skags. They're annoying in the first playthrough, but manageable. In the SECOND playthrough, they become death itself, especially when Hardened Alpha Skags become common. Imagine trying to take down something roughly the size of a tank with huge amounts of damage reduction while being surrounded by lots of smaller ones who are constantly spitting Interface Screw acid at you AND others are pouncing you from all sides. Not fun.
 * Disappointing Last Level: The only reason this game isn't solid gold is that Rakking ending.
 * Ensemble Darkhorse: Steve, a bandit from the trailers who's only real characteristic is yelling out "Heyyoooo!", whose popularity caused him to appear in the Zombie Island DLC and in the trailer for the Underground Riot DLC. He's even in the Secret Armory DLC as "Mini-Steve".
 * Epileptic Trees: someone actually attempts to explain how New Game Plus fits into the story. Yes, you read that right. Someone believes the game is infinitely looping!
 * Ear Worm: "Ain't No Rest For the Wicked" by Cage The Elephant. You can get it stuck in your head just from watching the commercial.
 * Or reading about it on TV tropes. DAMN YOU!
 * He was a-// You know he-// He was a-//I was walking down the street//When out the corner of my eye...
 * The end theme as well, "No Heaven" by DJ Champion. I was embarrassed to have my roommate come in and find me dancing to it after beating the game.
 * In non-song examples, Scooter's hilarious quips from the Catch-a-Ride system will definitely find their way into your head. "My daddy always said, 'Wheels is better than heels!' Uh, he was paralyzed, though. Anyway, don't walk, drive!"
 * "Four wheels is better than...zero...uh...wheels...um, have fun!"
 * By the same token, a lot of Marcus' and (to a lesser extent) Zed's quips when you use the vending machines.


 * Excuse Plot: You travel to Pandora to dick around/look for some Vault, a girl hits on you since you both need the vault, you do random things for complete strangers for a few hours, the Helghast attack you, and then you fight Cthulhu.
 * A possible lampshading occurs in the opening cutscene, what with your bus driver saying "So, you want to hear a story?" in a do-we-really-have-to-go-over-this-because-I-do-this-all-the-time-and-you-lot-sound-like-you-don't-need-it kind of tone.
 * The really annoying thing is that there is a great story there, just below the surface, but for some reason they left most of it unpolished. The simplest example is the near lack of story-driven cutscenes after the first.
 * There originally had been a deeper plot told via cutscenes - which mostly survives with Tannis and the Angel, but Gearbox decided it just wouldn't work with the new art direction.
 * Fridge Brilliance: The Vault . But what did you expect on a planet called Pandora?
 * Game Breaker: Go to New Haven. Note that there are five gun crates around town. Open them up. Sell anything that isn't a Double Anarchy, X4 elemental gun, or has unlimited ammo. Exit game. Load game from menu. Repeat.
 * And if you hold off on doing a certain storyline quest, you can claim an additional two chests.
 * There are a LOT of farmable red chests around Pandora. Behind Lucky's station in the Dahl Headlands is a red and two silver chests as well as one on top of Lucky's, and the enemies guarding them won't respawn as long as you don't leave the Headlands. In Rust Commons West, there are actually three easy-to-get red chests, one near the bridge, which is only guarded by a single Badass bandit. Two more are at a large spiderants spawnpoint in the northwest, but the spiderants can easily be run down with the rider. Another two are in the salt flats, guarded by just two Lancers, and can be reached within 30 seconds from the New-U-Station. Hell, there's some lying around in Fyrestone, just keep quitting and loading to farm some cash.
 * Farming the chests in the first playthrough is only feasible once you reach New Haven. New Haven is the first zone where the really good guns (Volcano Sniper, Hellfire SMG, Crux Shotgun etc.) can spawn in the chests.
 * Hunters don't even need the guns. The Bloodwing is practically a helicopter gunship at high levels.
 * Ditto with soldiers. The ability to hose down whole checkpoints without even being there.
 * A Hellfire SMG with some way of regenerating ammo for it (it's just very good if you can't regen ammo for it). About the only times you'll need something else are if the enemy is fire immune or you need range.
 * Combine that with Lilith's Firefly class mod, and she becomes a red headed fire-breathing death machine. And that's before you add the next item on this list.
 * You don't even need the ammo regeneration. Ammo is plentiful, can be dropped by almost every enemy or the various chests and stashes, and is very cheap at the numerous ammo vending machines. In addition, the SMGs tend to have a very large spare ammo capacity, at the end of the first playthrough over 1000 bullets. Equip Lilith with one of these and watch her turn everything to shreds within seconds.
 * The Daze status effect; particularly, Lilith's final tier Controller talent Mind Games. Mind Games gives each bullet Lilith fires a 5/10/15/20/25% chance to inflict Daze upon an equal level target. Daze reduces the enemy's rate of fire to a crawl, obliterates the accuracy, and lowers movement speed such that the effect essentially roots the target. Enjoy your easy mode critical shots.
 * A patch rebalanced the New Haven loot drops and the Daze effect, although now all sniper rifles do boosted critical damage.
 * Roland has certain class mods that have an ability that restores ammo for your active weapon. You will NEVER run out of bullets.
 * In fact, Roland's final support tier skill, Supply Drop, in which his turret spits out homing boxes including 10% of every ammo's max capacity at the same time, as well as 1 or 2 grenades. While it doesn't do much in multiplayer, it does mean that in single player, every time you throw out your turret (which may be often), you get at least 30% of every single ammo type and 3-6 grenades, at level one! Never rely on dirty random ammo drops again!
 * Don't forget his ability to heal teammates by shooting them. You will NEVER run out of health.
 * Add Aid Station (Turret has a healing aura) with one of the two skills that makes Roland's turret supply ammo, and he practically has his own dispenser.
 * Practically any given skill set is game breaking with enough points. Special mention for Mordecai's gunslinger set; revolvers were high on the kickass tier already, but max skills in things like Gun Crazy and a high proficiency means the enemies are pretty screwed.
 * The Hunter's Trespass ability from the Sniper Tree deserves another special mention. Five points in this allows Mordecai to completely bypass enemy shields. While "only" useful against Bandits and Lancers, it completely annihilates the end game's main enemies, the Guardians, who have very little life but extremly strong shields. With Trespass, they will die when Mordecai just looks at them.
 * The usefulness of this ability is somewhat misleading. The vast majority of shields, even on bosses, are so weak they aren't even worth acknowledging. The Lance shields are only marginally stronger. Guardian shields are extremely strong, especially compared to their health, but you don't ever have to fight them outside one optional, low level sidequest, which occurs too early to even get Trespass before it shows up. In every area Guardians show up, they are fighting the Lance and your only objective is to make it to the end of the area. It is entirely possible to just run past them while they are distracted. On the second playthrough, you can completely bypass the main areas the Guardians show up. You are not obligated to actually go through them.
 * With fourth DLC, there is a quest at the very end were you go raid the Hyperion Corporate Gift shop, which happens to be a basement packed stem to stern with red weapon chests and three vending machines. Best part is you can reload your game and the chests will respawn, allowing you to farm guns as long as you want and get ridiculous amounts of money for selling what guns you don't want. You'll never need to search for decent weapons or want money EVER again.
 * Since game saves are unencrypted, save editors and gear construction toolkits allow some pretty severe game-breaking twinking (such as adjusting your character's skill slots or creating the rarest/best possible version of any given weapon scaled to a particular level of character).
 * The Clipper is one of the very first "reward" guns you'll find. It has a large clip, a high rate of fire, extra melee damage, and a chance to do fire damage. Even half a game later, it's devastating against most enemies.
 * Giant Space Flea From Nowhere The Bleeder, whatever the hell that thing is supposed to be, there is no indication in the sidequest that you encounter it that it is anything BUT a an ordinary Scythid.
 * Goddamned Rakks: Let's just say Pandora's ecosystem is designed to breed annoying hard-to-kill creatures.
 * Not all that difficult. Easy enough to flee if you're in a vehicle and easy enough to mow down with a decent rate of fire gun.
 * Special mention goes to Rakk (which usually fly at the player when he's distracted with something else. Say, getting shot at), and Alpha Skags, annoying Bullfight Minibosses.
 * Likewise Scythids, they really like to be up in your face, they like to come up from the ground unexpectantly, they have a really creepy hiss and fly, they also like to ambush you with schmuck bait. And they remain silent until they lunge at you, oh wait the tiny ones lunge at you spontaneously without warning lik a facehugger plus they're hissing the whole time they do it. Only the really huge ones are none of these things I describe above. Fighting these and Rakks at the same time can be the most frustratingly annoying experience you can have in the game.
 * Good Bad Bugs / Game Breaking Bugs: The Skill Point Dupe glitch. Done right, you can max out every skill for your character. done wrongly, and you'll have to tag along with a newbie character for the entire game to be able to complete the playthrough.
 * You should be able to reset skill points.
 * You can, at the New-U station.
 * In the third DLC, there is a way to access the armory, but without the time limit usually imposed on you. You can get unhindered access to 100+ chests because of a weak bit of programming in the floor. Although if you go near the wrong area it'll weird out the code for the mission and you won't be able to finish it or repeat the bug (unless you edit your save using a game editor to fix it).
 * With the way multiplayer saving works you can dupe your weapons rather easily and sometimes by complete accident.
 * Hell Is That Noise: Pretty much any sound made by Midgets.
 * Hilarious in Hindsight: A Death World called Pandora? Hmm...
 * Only if Moxxi had been a ten foot tall blue cat and mostly nekkid. Well, one out of three ain't bad...
 * Les Yay: In the secret armoury DLC, Moxxi will mention that part of the reason she's helping you is because she thinks you're cute, even when you play as Lilith.
 * Pfft, that's not even the half of it. Moxxi has many quotes especially for Lilith that turn Les Yay Up to Eleven.
 * "Looks like that sweet ass isn't helping you now Lilith."
 * "Look at that little Lilith, Mmm Mmm Mmmmm."
 * "Lilith is looking absolutely delicious down there. Mmmm..."
 * Memetic Badass: Brick on Chuck Norris levels, at least here. Since he can punch explosions with his bare hands this isn't a surprise.
 * Most Annoying Sound:
 * "CATCH-A-RIIIIIIIIDE!!"
 * Just about anything Claptrap says. "Think I lost the beat, but..."
 * Midgets.
 * Nausea Fuel: Every single thing about
 * Nightmare Fuel : There are a couple in The Zombie Island DLC.
 * In Claptrap's New Robot Revolution, fighting the Bandit-Trap's becomes disturbing fast when one of their death cries is "Please....Just let me die". Suddenly it puts the Claptrap conversion into a VERY different light.
 * If you have a thing against giant hissing cockroaches or bugs in general then the Scythids when you first encounter them in a tiny to maneuver space is going to be fun!!!
 * Paranoia Fuel: Is a midget with a knife going to jump out of this chest when I open it? Is a midget with a knife going to jump out of this toilet when I open it? Yeah, it's that kind of game.
 * Player Punch:
 * An extremely odd variety of Player Punch, as it's a punch from the gameworld rather than a character death. Pandora being what it is, most of the other characters don't react with sorrow. You know, since the average lifespan once you hit Pandora ends up being a very small number of weeks. The game also doesn't do anything with it in terms of storyline afterwards; there's no investigation or revenge beyond immediately slaughtering another band of psychos.
 * The effect is diminished slightly when he's still sitting outside the building giving out quests due a glitch some players encounter.
 * Also,  in Robot Revolution. He gets better though.
 * Play the Game Skip the Story: There's something of a detailed backstory floating around in the game if you pay attention.
 * Stop Reminding Me: No matter what you are up to, the Claptraps will ALWAYS keep bugging you about new missions that are available. It even gets to the point where they will repeat it AGAIN after you move to another region!
 * That One Boss: Crawmerax the Invincible, which players only attempt to kill because he drops pearlescent weapons. The developers even lampshade how hard it is by calling the mission to kill him "You. Will. Die."
 * Also from the Secret Armory DLC, Knoxx himself turns into this after your first playthrough (At which point his level adjusts to 2 above yours): He's incredibly strong, but the problem is that he spawns Medics to heal himself. If you die horrifically (As you easily might while trying to kill the medics before they heal Knoxx) the medics will heal him to FULL HEALTH AGAIN. After taking out the medics and going back to killing him, there's a good chance he'll spawn more Medics if you don't kill him fast enough.
 * Mothrakk and Rakkinishou take a ton of punishment to down, can deal a lot of damage quickly, and their aerial mobility means running on foot is hopeless. Even Runners have a hard time hitting them, even locking onto them.
 * That One Sidequest: Most critter-based elemental bosses tend to be rough in the early segments of the game, but aren't required to progress. Moe and Marley and Mothrakk are the standouts.
 * The second Circle of Slaughter series is aneurysm-inducing unless your character either has an impenetrable shield or insane weaponry. To be fair, the first playthrough's version isn't that bad with some luck and persistence, but the second time? -shudder-
 * The Underdome is a HUGE pain in the ass if you play solo.
 * Farming Claptraps for the collection achievements in Robot Revolution. Especially on Playthrough 2.5 where you can die in the blink of an eye from being blasted from all directions by Vladof shotguns with Cheating Bastard levels of accuracy. Also, every time you die, the Hyperion soldiers come back.
 * They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: In its original, less cel-shaded version, it was to have a plot told via cutscenes, but with their art shift (they decided it'd fit their original concepts better), they throw out the story. One Gearbox member left developing games entirely due to this.
 * For other people, it's a subversion as many games typically have inane plots and the lack of cutscenes means the extra playthroughs aren't spoiled with redundant, seen-it-already cutscenes.
 * The Woobie: Dr. Patricia Tannis. Her ECHO journal recordings paint a fairly poignant, if humorous, picture of a brilliant scientist who has thrown away her sanity in search of a mystic treasure vault . She is lonely enough to have conversations with corpses, or to hope that the violent convicts who infest Pandora will be her friend, or eventually . That poor woman.
 * General Knoxx. Tannis is nuts, but this guy just wants to die and the rebel Claptraps just won't let him.
 * General Knoxx. Tannis is nuts, but this guy just wants to die and the rebel Claptraps just won't let him.