Borderlands 4 will dial down the toilet humour, says narrative director

Borderlands 4 will dial down the toilet humour compared to the previous game, so don’t expect any “skibidi” quotes.

Narrative director Sam Winkler described Borderlands 4 as Gearbox’s “most ambitious game yet” and said he’s happy to “work with some of the funniest people I know”.

A response to Winkler’s post asked if, judging by trailers, the game will have darker humour, to which he replied: “Not at liberty to talk much about the content of BL4, but I remain firm in my criticism of BL3’s overabundance of toilet humor.”

He added, in a further response: “I’m not gonna say there’s no toilets but if the word skibidi ships in the game under my watch I’m gonna cry real tears. Paul Tassi joked that we were gonna have a gun called Hawk 2A and a fellow dev asked me if it was real and I wanted to put my hand down the sink grinder.”

The Borderlands series isn’t exactly serious in its tone, but the third game was criticised for its humour. For some, though, this didn’t detract from its shooting mechanics.

Reads our Eurogamer Borderlands 3 review: “No, it’s not a particularly cerebral experience, but nor is it trying to be; while stuffed with gore and violence and frankly infantile humour, Borderlands 3 is a solid shooter with a meaty 30-ish hour campaign, plentiful – if repetitive – busywork, and a colourful cast of hard-to-forget characters.”

At last week’s The Game Awards, a new trailer for Borderlands 4 was shown, which revealed its new planet and four playable vault hunters.

It’s looking plenty outlandish, but the lack of poop and fart jokes will make for a more satisfying release once the game launches in 2024.

If you’re unfamiliar with Skibidi Toilet (lucky you), it’s a very silly internet animation made using Valve’s Source Filmmaker software and featuring assets from Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike.