Spoilers ahead for certain Borderlands 4 side quests.
One of the most consistent points of praise for Borderlands 4 is how Gearbox has nailed the tone of the Vault Hunters’ journey on Kairos, and I couldn’t agree more. There are plenty of funny moments, from the Vault Hunters putting on phony voices while doing mob work to a side quest that pays off a moment from The Pre-Sequel over a decade later, but when it’s time to get serious, that shift is maintained for as long as it needs to be. Whether it’s in the main story where the heroes encounter the disturbing experiments conducted by Vile Lictor, or in the two side quests involving an unhinged serial killer, there are no misplaced jokes to be found in Borderlands 4.
It’s these two side quests in particular — “Meat is Murder” and “A Call For Help” — that really piqued my interest. The former established the stakes, with an incredibly dangerous killer torturing and killing a farmer before laying waste to a group of attacking Rippers. It was revealed that the person who committed the crime was simply driven insane by the ramblings of the real killer, an unhinged man who constantly spoke in rhymes, sharing their philosophy of “breaking free” through death. Given their unique way of delivering their speeches, I expected a payoff involving my all-time favorite Vault Hunter: Zer0. Instead, what I got in the follow-up mission fell fairly flat, which is a shame since a different Borderlands 4 side quest showed Gearbox was willing to sneak some cool surprises into optional content.
Borderlands 4’s Serial Killer Quests Should Have Involved Another Rhyming Assassin
Though Amon is quickly rising up the ranks, I’m fairly confident my favorite Borderlands Vault Hunter will always be Zer0. Borderlands 2 came out at the perfect time for me to really appreciate a mysterious robotic assassin, as I had just entered my teenage years and was obsessed with video game fan theories. To be fair, Zer0 would have been up my alley anyway, as I already had a vested interest in cyborg ninjas thanks to the Metal Gear Solid franchise’s Gray Fox. Add on how the red displays on his face allowed for silly moments, his unique way of speaking made him unlike any video game character I had ever seen, and fans were unsure of what exactly he was, and there was a perfect recipe for a character that appealed to me.
Zer0 speaks exclusively in haikus, Japanese poems of seventeen syllables.
It’s Zer0’s constant killing and his distinct dialect that immediately got me excited for this pair of quests. “Meat is Murder” having a killer that speaks in rhymes, even if they weren’t an exact match to Zer0’s poetry, made me think there was some kind of connection. As the first quest ended, and it was revealed the killer was still out there to be dealt with later, numerous possibilities ran through my head:
- I wondered if the killer was Zer0 himself, driven insane by some kind of malfunction, killing at random instead of taking out select targets he was paid to eliminate. It wouldn’t be the first time his voice changed, after all, as Tales from the Borderlands saw his voice software briefly altered.
- I wondered if the killer was someone who idolized Zer0, trying to copy his speech patterns as a disturbing tribute of sorts. I thought that the killer’s real goal may have been to get Zer0’s attention by leaving bodies in his wake.
- I wondered if the killer was another numbered assassin like Zer0. After 0ne helped him in Borderlands 2, it’s clear that there are others like him out there, but perhaps some of them don’t share Zer0’s code.
In reality, the actual killer was a throwaway NPC disguised as a froyo stand worker. While the idea that the killer was lurking quietly in the background all along was a decent touch, players killing him without much of a fight at the end of “A Call for Help” felt very anticlimactic. Sure, I may have built up the killer’s identity to be something more special in my head, but after seeing a disguised version of The Watcher show up in a different standout side quest, I don’t blame myself for wanting something more impactful after all the setup.
Borderlands 4’s Serial Killer Quests Missed a Golden Opportunity
The mystery about Zer0’s origins (as well as Borderlands 3 Vault Hunter FL4K) has been left lingering for years, with very few developments despite consistent interest from fans like myself. Randy Pitchford and other Gearbox developers have drawn attention to Zer0 and FL4K having the same amount of digits on their hands, seemingly confirming that Zer0 is indeed robotic and not an alien like some initially thought. Other than that, though, he’s been an enigma, and it would be great to get some proper answers on where he came from after over a decade of waiting. This murder mystery could have been a step toward those answers, allowing Zer0 to make a big cameo to dispatch the killer (or having players restore Zer0 to his former self if the killer had turned out to be him). The Grin Reaper being a random froyo guy does a disservice to the entire questline, as he was terrifying enough to be someone that mattered more to the wider Borderlands story.