It seems like every time this game comes up with the GB crew someone like Patrick or Alex mumbles something about internet memes and then dismisses the game (as in a recent Bombing AM).

I played a couple of hundred hours and I am hard pressed to think of any cheap comedy memes in the game off the top of my head. I remember most of the comedy writing to be heavily character based and that it improved with each DLC.

So I'm genuinely curious, and maybe I just don't read the right internet sites,...but what memes are they referring to in BL2?

I remember seeing a few meme jokes, but I don't remember which ones and they were definitely not the most offensively terrible bits of that game's humor.

Almost every time I go invisible on my Assassin he says "You've activated my Trap Card!"

So there's a t least one, that I can think off the top of my head. Got real tired of it, real quick.

There are a few here and there, but they are nowhere near as in-your-face as people make them out to be. They are mostly relegated to some easter eggs and text descriptions or challenges. People just like to blow shit out of proportion when they don't have any real criticism, and in this case, use the few meme references there are as an excuse to shit on a game that is otherwise mostly pretty funny.

http://borderlands.wikia.com/wiki/Borderlands_2_pop_culture_references

Just scroll down to the "memes" section.

Also im pretty sure theirs like 4x more than that wiki says from playing the game.

There's some particular section of the game, challenges or something, that's almost all memes.

If I remember correctly, sometimes when Axton kills a guy he says "Cool story bro". That's one off the top of my head.

To be fair I think it's a really lazy way of them trying to describe the really lazy style of humor. A lot of them fail to go into detail and explain things like Claptrap being the worst and such. For me it's Axioms dumb "cool story bro" line. You just hear it constantly.

Edit: Oh and don't forget the insane amount of references.

http://borderlands.wikia.com/wiki/Borderlands_2_pop_culture_references

There really not that bad, its just people being kinda jaded and not finding the game as fun as the first so they find whatever they can to bitch about and overreact a little. And the GB crew tend to find one thing to pick out about a game to keep referencing when that game comes up in discussion, good or bad, that isn't really that big a deal overall compared to the rest of the game.

Memes, not so much.

Annoying characters, uninteresting story and enough pop culture references to make even the most isolated mountain-dweller go "Really? No, seriously, really?" Too much.

I liked the game (the shooty bit with the guns), just not any of the trappings that surrounded it. Tiny Tina almost killed it for me, though.

To be fair, once you hear a line like "Cool story bro" more than once, it's easy to make that the focus of your criticism regarding the writing. Frankly, if the writer is using internet memes and jokes like that in place of original dialogue, then they should be criticized for not being more original.

I found a camp site and at the camp site Jack recites the "Double Rainbow" video word for word. I thought some of the references were funny like the minecraft world or the Dark Souls bonfire. That double rainbow bit was awful.

Edit: Just in case you wanted to see it:

@sethphotopoulos: The biggest meme in Borderlands 2 and it's less than a minute long out of six hours and it's found by going somewhere most players won't go.

@drifteringreen: but a lot of them are the dialogue from the main characters when you do stuff which will happen over and over and over.

Not really a meme, but I remember that the port-o-potty's had "NO FAPPING" written on them... That is some poor humor

@ouranou: Patrick also swoons over Shovel knight and dismisses Watch dogs for being boring and Jeff plays and loves weird old games - you shouldn't really worry about the staff taste in games, their opinions are just as awful as anyone else's on the Internet.

It's funny that they all think this game is over-memed yet let it pass in Guacamelee, which was ruined by it's reddit-memeishness for me.

The memes didn't bother me much, but then again I didn't notice every little thing. I suppose hiring an Internet celebrity to do the writing wasn't the best choice, but I watched some of his videos and he seemed like a smart dude, I guess?

It's still a fairly decent game, but fuck that one escort mission where you have to protect this giant, floating laser that needs to destroy all the Handsome Jack statues. Tried a dozen times and finally gave up.

I totally thought this as well, would love a mod that replaces all those billboards with more appropriate or even real ones.

Most of that games memes are tucked safely away in the names of challenges. Memes in the game itself probably make up less then 1% of it's humor. But hey a main town that's full of memes in your face posters in Guacamele is totally fine.

And unless I am mistaken Alex hasn't really played much of Borderlands 2, so that jibe at the game was based on second hand information anyway. Kinda sad to see the propagation of misinformation in a closed loop.

@drifteringreen: I enjoyed Borderlands 2 quite a lot. Some of the lazier references are cringe worthy though like some of the dialog and stuff like the Double Rainbow bit.

@secondpersonshooter said:

They let it pass? I haven't played the game, but I feel like I definitely remember some comments to the effect of "the gameplay is pretty fun, but the pervasive memes are by far the worst part."

There was definitely some meme-y-ness in Borderlands 2, but I wouldn't say it's any more of a problem than it was in the first game. I think people forget that BL1 was primarily voiceless, and all of the jokes and references were tucked away in quest windows that (probably) nobody read. Out of sight, out of mind.

In BL2, since most of the game is voiced, all of the references are right there for you to see and hear. You can't ignore them. Naturally the people who don't take to Borderlands style humour (its quality and whether or not it's "lazy" being highly subjective) found this the most egregious. Naturally people who somehow made a living out of snark will snark on it.

The thing is, Borderlands is practically the Internet made manifest. It's been that way since the first game and I don't see it changing. Especially not because some near 40 editors on a website don't like the tone. Borderlands knows its audience, and Gearbox knows what their audience likes. If and when they do a Borderlands 3 I expect it to be rife with the same kind of dumb-as-a-brick so-bad-its-good raunchy toilet humour that is rife with references as are the first two games.

And yeah, I liked the tone of Borderlands 2. I also thought Tiny Tina was funny and endearing. I also didn't take the game very seriously, so I found Axton shouting "Cool story bro!" or Zer0 chiding with "You've just activated my trap card!" to be plain cute and dumb. It's what I've to expect from these games. Whether they're annoying or not, I don't know, I was often too busy yelling over the mic to listen to the character barks more than a handful of times.

I'm not trying to cast aspersions on anyone, or say that if you don't like the game's brand of humour you're some kind of vile troglodyte who hates fun, but trying to put a quantitative statement on things like "humour" beyond "I like this" or "I don't like this" I've always found to be a fool's errand. Humour is the most subjective thing there is. What works for me may not work for you, and that is totally fine.

@humanity: Yeah, Patrick is nearly incapable of appreciating a big budget game unless he perceives it as being some kind of risk for the publisher like Dishonored. Though granted, if that is the case and it's a so so game like Thief, Patrick still won't like it.

And I kinda think Jeff decides what new games he likes by throwing darts at a dartboard with various game titles pinned to it.

@hailinel said:

Well said. This feels like a good piece of criticism. I personally didn't have that much issue with the humor and references in BL2, but I did feel like the writers were trying to chase some of that magic from the original a bit too hard and ended up trying too hard in some situations. Also, I'm someone who doesn't like just referencing something as a joke, because that in and of itself is not necessarily funny; there needs to be some actual skill and craft applied to make it funny again.

The meme stuff in the game can be annoying, but a lot of people have taken the opinion that the memes are always in your face, front-and-center. That may be the case for "Cool Story Bro" and "Trap Card" (which are probably the reasons why this topic is brought up in the first place), but most of the memes take work to find. Most of them are challenge names. I'm not defending these memes, but they are not in your face 99% of the time. Also, people don't play Borderlands for the meme jokes. There are other, better reasons why this game is actually funny.

I honestly don't want to actually single anyone out but it's important to note that your appreciation of a game is a highly unique and individual matter. The key difference between what a fan of the site may think of a game and what a staff member might think of it is that one of these people get paid to share their opinion publicly. That is not to diminish what the guys do here to a mere matter of a paycheck, but I have very strong feelings about a variety of games that clash with that of Patricks or Jeffs - and at the end of the day no one is right.

Circling around back to the topic at hand: I didn't really mind much of the humor in Borderlands 2. I did really hate Tiny Tina though and I know that there is a large contingent of players that think she's the best part of the game.

I will say that there has been a strange bandwagon mentality within the game press as of late that I find perturbing - something that I thought would only be limited to horrible internet chatter. Quite possibly it's not even a conscious effort since game critics do tend to isolate themselves in that professional bubble. I've been increasingly noticing different writers repeat almost the exact same critiques concerning any one game. Most recently it's been Watch Dogs. I will admit to almost getting into knife fights over this title because I think it's gotten thrown under the bus for no real reason. And it's completely ok to think it's not the greatest game in the world, but I've heard even game journalists refer to it like it's completely worthless, and thats a shame.

Yeah, pretty much. And I do indeed find BL2 to be pretty funny more often than not, occasional meme-humour and Tiny Tina notwithstanding. Handsome Jack in particular I think can be hilarious sometimes; like the part where he describes a previous moment where he scooped out some guy's eyeballs with a spoon and how funny he found it watching him wandering around bumping into things, only to end it all with ''So what I'm saying is you're a little bitch'' completely out of nowhere.

The quest that involved Claptrap making a bunch of terrible cold weather puns and then explaining ''why'' they're funny in minute detail was pretty good, too. As was the psychopaths running outside in winter hats. The ''kill yourself', robot AI and Mal quests also had a good bunch of material, too.

I can understand why some won't find the game funny, as humour is one of the most subjective experiences out there. But I found myself laughing out loud a fair amount throughout it all and think the ''IT'S ALL A BUNCHA MEMES'' to be completely overblown and is regurgitated by people that quite possibly never even played it to begin with.

My problem with the humour in Borderlands 2 isn't really the straight up meme references. That's just kind of whatever, especially since most of it is just a one-off in the challenge titles. My problem is that I found most of the humour in the game just fell kind of flat. Which would be only kind of bad, except it's exacerbated because something about it just comes across as.. smarmy, like it's reveling in how funny it thinks it is. It's something I tend to encounter a lot on the internet.

There were also a couple times where the joke is the way a line is phrased but while it's somewhat clever, it's something you encounter all the time on the internet. While these phrasings are not necessarily memes in the sense that they're references, they suffer from the same problem in that it's just not funny when you've heard it all before. In response to the OP's question: Perhaps that's what people are referring to when they say they don't like the meme humour?

It doesn't help that the guy with the most lines in the game, Handsome Jack, is basically internet humour personified. As a character who is clearly supposed to be a constant source of comedy throughout the game, for me he completely misses the mark time and time again. The first example I can think of is the 'Butt-Stallion' bit at the start of the game.

And I want to clarify I'm not a complete stick-in-the-mud. There are some good bits that got me to crack a smile or chuckle. The echo recordings of a flustered Lilith hitting on a clueless Roland come to mind. At the end of the day, I wish more games would layer comedy on as thickly as Borderlands does. I guess I'm just looking for something a little different.

@mithical: Ha, it's funny that you mention you liked all of the Roland & Lillith ''meet cute'' stuff, as I thought that all sounded really forced and awkward. But not the loveable kind of awkward, just... awkward.

I will admit that I found the Butt Stallion joke pretty funny, though it wasn't because ''he said Butt Stallion'' but rather how he ponders whether or not he'll call his diamond horse Butt Stallion. It frames it as he's coming up with stupid names to call his horse influenced by the player character, and Butt Stallion is brought up as an exceptionally dumb suggestion that you wouldn't think he'd go for.

Then he calls you back a little later with his horse, that you can now hear him refer to as Butt Stallion. That's what I found funny, the timing of the conversation being brought back up later on and that he actually went through it.

Another joke I liked was the quest where you were supposed to rename the Bullymogs, with each new suggestion from Hammerlock (who I should add don't think is especially funny otherwise) becoming dumber and dumber. It then culminates as ''Bonerfarts'' as an expression of how fed up he is in coming up with new names, before they're then reverted back to their original name, which I actually think was an unfortunate copout.

Though again, I don't begrudge anyone who doesn't find the game very funny. I just feel compelled to explain what it is about specific jokes that got to me given how unpopular the game's humour is on here. Merely saying ''I think it's funny'' doesn't really say much on its own!

It's a fantastic game and I love the writing; but it needs the delivery from characters you love. If you hate or feel nothing for the characters in the game, it's going to fall flat. Like the double rainbow bit; when discovered by my wife she was squeaking with glee since there's just something about Jack delivering those lines.

It's almost like a love-letter to the internet in some spots, but beyond that, there's shit tons of content that's not related to this thing we use everyday. I don't know why the Giantbomb crew tends to hate the internet when its mentioned in games, considering its their user base and livelihood, but that's just me.

@humanity said:

Hey man, I was right in that same boat during the launch of the first Assassin's Creed. Remember how a lot of people in the games press thought it was shit because of no mini maps and repetitive mission design (which was actually one of the points of the whole thing), and then a lot of other people kept trying to stab those people repeatedly in the face and neck going uh uh uh uh uh because they were so blatantly wrong in their opinions?

Remember when Assassin's Creed sold 7 million units in its first month because it was such a fresh, invigorating, bold new game that the average gamer didn't give a piss what critics thought?

What I'm trying to say is that while a lot of people (well, a lot of game journalists) have been throwing Watch_Dogs under the bus, it's ultimately up to the game buying public - the same purchasing public the game journalists are not a part of - that decides what stays and what goes. In the end, word of mouth is far more important than glossy magazine editorials and what some reviews editor for website X says on Twitter. And word of mouth for Watch_Dogs has remained mostly positive. It may not be an Assassin's Creed seller, but I'm sure it's going to do enough good business to warrant a sequel that will, no doubt, iron out the kinks and provide an even richer, cyber-noir hacker experience for you to enjoy.

I have no idea where this came from except to say that all is not lost because game journalists don't like something. They are not the gate keepers of good taste, and they aren't even the gate keepers of taste making. Those would be you and I, and a lot of other people who check something out and deem it "pretty good."

read the quick look comments, i hardly think people let it pass. (which is a shame cause it's a pretty damn good game)

I did find the humor in BL2 to be more miss than hit. Alot of cringe worthy stuff. Though the big reason i never finished that game is the awful loot system. Stop putting sniper scopes on EVERYTHING what the FUCK?

My problem with BL2's writing isn't memes, not entirely. It's the constant nudge/wink humor with punchlines you can see coming from a mile away. It's the jokes that go on waaay too long, like a comedian dying on stage after a joke falls flat but still keeps referencing that same failed joke. And it's also the tryhard wacky anarchy attitude that everyone has. It'd be fine if only a few characters were like that, but every single character is is some cool hardass and it gets really fucking old. And it's also the fact that no one ever shuts the fuck up. Someone is always talking in your ear to deliver a bad joke or talk about that time they were psychotically badass. I went back to Borderlands 1 recently and I really appreciated how little the characters talked. It made me appreciate how every single story beat wasn't punctuated with a punchline.

I don't remember any of the jokes from Borderlands 2 anymore. Everything those characters say is white noise, but I remember thinking when I first played it that it definitely wasn't a game written for everyone to enjoy. World of Warcraft is a game that enjoys having similar types of memes and references as humour yet very few people seem to really complain about that.

Ah...now I remember the double rainbow. The first time that popped up randomly out of nowhere in the game my co-op buddies and I had a pretty good laugh at it. Though we are easily amused...

@hailinel: @connerthekewlkid: Most of the references mentioned in that wikia list are quest names. It's certainly fair to levy some criticism against that, but the vast majority of the humor in the game isn't pop culture references and Internet memes, regardless of what else can be said about it.

I don't really pay attention to meme's, so I guess maybe I avoided a lot of what they were talking about. I really enjoyed the humour in Borderlands 2. Not so much Borderlands 1.

@oldirtybearon: I feel like after that we should lock fists and shout like "Hell yah we do!"

I agree with what you're saying, although I do think game press tend to set the tone for a lot of games due to youths being very impressionable these days.

Holy shit. That's like visual ipecac. The entire page. We should all keep in mind that tonnnnssssss of people loovvveeee that stuff, though. I remember when the first Borderlands came out I thought it was hysterical, because I wasn't on the internet all the time and, well, I was a young idiot.

Axton says "Cool Story Bro" when you kill people sometimes. It's annoying, but I look past the stuff like that because Borderlands 2 is a damn fun game. The humor really sucks but I love everything else about it.

Part of the problem and the same one in Guacamelee is they aren't really a joke. They are like a secret code word that shows they "get" internet culture or something, but without offering anything new to it. If you say i hurd u liek mudkips 400 you don't get some kind of pop culture medal, you just look like a douche trying to appeal to the kids especially if you pump them into a commercial products years after no one cares about them.

You don't have to refer to memes at all to note the terrible unfunny shit in Borderlands 2. Its certainly funny to some people, and a joke here or there can be alright. Unfortunately most of the game is fueled by just terrible humor only the most immature children would appreciate.

Memes are that much more lazy, so the fact its truly riddled with them is even worse, but as I said you don't even need to bring them up to get into the terrible "humor" of Borderlands 2.

I just remember my character constantly saying, "Cool story, Bro!". It is so stupid.

I get what you mean. A lot of times, Patrick will act like he's saying something original and profound, when literally every other press person has said the exact same thing. I'm sure he's in his bubble, too, but it's weird.

I dunno, I just dislike the mentality of dismissing fairly great games because of one or a few dumb things. It's like people forget their unique experience of playing a game (if they've even played it) and only remember some ubiquitous complaint. Borderlands 2 and memes. Assassin's Creed III and no Ezio (it's cool if people do not like ACIII, but Connor not being exactly like Ezio shouldn't be one of the reasons). Bioshock Infinite and not handling social issues better. Batman: Arkham Origins and too many Batman games no matter how surprisingly good they are (fucking seriously? I understand every year, but it was two years, which was the same amount between Asylum and City. Now we're putting arbitrary time limits in-between games? Like, two years in-between Arkham games is too soon now, but 3.5 years -- amount of time between City and Knight -- is totally okay? Just say you don't have time to play certain games and leave it at that. Don't dismiss something because "there's just too much awesome, guys").

At least Jeff can be funny about his dislike for things, sometimes.

Obligatory

@yummylee: That is how I feel about it, too. There are parts in that game that are really funny. Like, more than a chuckle funny, which doesn't happen often with games. The Torgue DLC, especially, is really funny. The quest where you have to go kill game reviewers because Torgue disagrees with their opinions had me pausing the game to laugh it out.

We also have to take into consideration that, we might have a more jaded view on BL2's humor, because we are (more than most) prominent internet users. For example, someone brought up the Reddit memes in Guacamelee (Damn the spelling). For me, I go to Reddit maybe once every year or something, so, I don't get those memes, and I just look over them. I think the same happens with people who aren't on the forums and play Borderlands 2, they hear one of the memes, and go "Haaa! That's something from the internet! That's funny!"

Also, Handsome Jack is just a villain version of Archer. While that's not very original, I fucking love Archer.

I'm 36 and I enjoyed Borderlands 2. You guys need to learn to seperate your taste from quality. Just because something doesn't fit your taste (which is fine) that doesn't mean its A.) overall bad and B.) everyone that likes it has no taste.

I don't like Justin Bieber (or 99% of all rap artists for that matter), not even a bit ... that doesn't mean the music he makes is of poor quality nor does it mean his audience is terrible. It just means his music is not for me.