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GamesRadar
GamesRadar
Technology
Scott McCrae

Borderlands 4 gets an M rating from the ESRB as it warns of "enemies bursting into chunks" and dialogue such as "I'm gonna go home and have sex with my wife"

Borderlands 4 screenshot showing a character in a shootout with a big boss.

Borderlands 4's ESRB rating is out in the wild, and it's full of "enemies bursting into chunks," sexual references, and even some naughty words, oh heavens!

Gearbox's Borderlands series has always been chock-full of violence and crass writing filled to the brim with cringey humor and pop culture references, and from the looks of things the series is set to continue down that path. The ESRB has released its Borderlands 4 rating and revealed some of the more grisly details about the game, which has unsurprisingly given it a "Mature" rating for "Blood and Gore", "Intense Violence", "Sexual Themes", and "Strong Language."

This time around Gearbox is upping the ante on the gore effects, as the description notes "enemies bursting into chunks of gore and/or losing limbs," "creatures exploding into large blood-splatter effects," "a character snapping their own neck," and "characters stabbed or impaled." Plus the game's environments will be littered with "corpses, large bloodstains, and severed limbs."

And if you didn't like Borderlands humour before, don't hold your breath, as the ESRB has also revealed a gauntlet of sex jokes that 14 year olds and Randy Pitchford are going to find funny, such as "Start a weird robot sex commune"; "New position! Heh. Like sex"; "Light as a feather, stiff as a whore"; "Have you seen my penis strap?" With sex toys also littering part of the world.

And of course, you have to have the pop culture references, with what seems to be a take on the iconic ending of the underrated comedy classic Clue, "…I'm gonna go home and have sex with my wife." Worst of all, just like with Death Stranding 2, ESRB has revealed "The word “f**k” appears in the game."

Borderlands 4 has "more skills per character than in Borderlands 3 and 2 added together," Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford says: "We're working late on Fridays for you."

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