Borderlandswas one of the most pleasant surprises of 2009, and has risen to become one of the most successful franchises in the gaming world. It was well-regarded for its graphical style, and stands out for itscel-shadingtechnique even as other titles push for increased realism.Borderlandsparticularly applied this style to its characters and enemies, giving them a lot of personality.
In fact, if anything made this title stand out from all the other first-person shooters of the time, it was Gearbox’s characters. In addition to its jovial dialogue, character building has always been a cornerstone of theBorderlandsseries, filling out the universe with any number of robots and social misfits. One of those characters from the original entry with among the most tragic backstories in the series is T.K. Baha.
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T.K. Baha, The Weapons Designer
T.K. Baha is one of the first residents of Pandora players get to meet. Also known as Teddy Baha, he is a weapons designer from the world of Isolus. While he and his wife Marian were very much in love, Teddy’s encounters with theHyperion Corporationwould put their love in check. Hyperion constantly stole weapon designs for tools like T.K.’s Wave, and because this blatant theft had proof that could lead to legal ramifications, Mr. Blake of Hyperion told Teddy that he was sending assassins to kill him. This is the reason he and Marian they ended up in Pandora, settled just on the outskirts of Fyrestone.
The planet was hostile and lawless, and the conditions were rough, but they survived because they had each other. In the comic seriesBorderlands: Fall of Fyrestone, issue two (released in August 2014), fans get a closer look as to what happened with T.K. Baha. He and Marian continued to live a decent life on the planet, and even made friends with some of the residents like Dr. Zed andScooter, until one day a monstrous skag nickname Scar killed Marian.
As an act of revenge, Teddy took up a sword that Marian’s father gifted him and attempted to kill Scar. Unfortunately the skag was much too sturdy, catching T.K. off guard and ripping his leg off of him, as well as clawing his eyes to blind him. Even blinded and losing blood, T.K. managed to grab his wife’s corpse and drag it back to their home.
Fyrestone’s Dr. Zed patched him up and provided a prosthetic leg. After he was better healed, Teddy then buried his wife with the gun he made for her, named Lady Finger. Later in life T.K.’s rivalry with Scar came up in yet another encounter, but Scar just ate Teddy’s new leg and ran off. This time the former weapons dealer knew he couldn’t do anything to stop Scar, so he sat on his porch as the days passed by - developing a sense of humor about his blindness.
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The End of T.K. Baha’s Story
Whenfour new vault hunterscome to Pandora during the events ofBorderlandsin search of bandit lord Nine-Toes' hideout, Dr. Zed points them to T.K. Before assisting them in their hunt, T.K. asks them to avenge his murdered wife and return his prosthetic leg. In the comic canon the group does this purely to gain the information about Nine-Toes, but in the game it’s presented more as a courtesy. In both iterations, Scar is killed, T.K.’s leg is returned, and he finally gets some closure.
However, when Dr. Zed later makes his way to New Haven to treats its residents, T.K. is left alone andsome ofBorderlands' common banditsraid his house. They not only kill him, but then tie him upside down to his ceiling fan by his prosthetic leg. When Scooter doesn’t hear from Teddy, he sends players to check the scene out.
In a semi-canon aspect of the story, Dr. Zed’s brother Dr. Ned experiments with bringing the dead back to life, and T.K. is one of his test subjects. In theDLC campaign for The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned, T.K. Baha appears as an NPC who quests the vault hunters with fetching him brains. Once Dr. Ned dies, zombie T.K. moves to Hallowed Hollow - a retirement town for the undead - and serves as the town lookout. When the Pumpkin Kingpin begins causing trouble, zombie T.K. enlists the vault hunters to help.
Zombie T.K. argues he is non-canonical, specifically stating that he would have gone to Sanctuary with the rest of the Crimson Raiders, but he didn’t want to break canon. Still, there is a chance that zombie T.K. will becomecanon in futureBorderlandsstories. Yet one hopes not, as during this DLC he has a line that says being killed was a happy moment, probably because Scar was dead and dying was a way to rejoin his wife.
T.K. does technically make an appearance in the Claptastic Voyage DLC forBorderlands: The Pre-Sequel, but this is merelyClaptrap’s cognition of him coming out of the robot’s fear of loneliness. He creates a happy ending for T.K. by reuniting him with Marian in his head, and T.K.’s legacy would continue through his niece Una Baha enlisting the vault hunters to find Teddy’s secret stash. They gather proof that Hyperion was stealing his weapons design, and she becomes a new ally.
Borderlands 3is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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