Among its many additions to the franchise canon, Borderlands 3 introduced players to the very first Vault Hunter, Typhon DeLeon. Offering insights into his life throughout the game in the form of audio recordings, the studio also introduced some rather… strange lore about Pandora which linked to DeLeon’s origins. Now, the studio has offered an explanation for how they came up with Borderlands 3 turd farming…
Borderlands 3 Turd Farming and Typhon DeLeon
According to Borderlands 3 writer Danny Homan, the original term arose quite spontaneously during a recording session. While spouting insults, co-writer Sam Winkler coined the term “turd farmer”; an insult which then became something more literal as they worked further on developing the story. The insult is used by Troy Calypso to describe DeLeon, but while derogatory, it’s also not factually inaccurate.
However, as far as turd faming on Pandora goes, Homan goes on to explain that it isn’t really farming so much as ‘gathering’; “I was hiking in the mountains once,” he explains; “heading towards a remote cabin when I came across a few hikers. When I asked them if I was nearing the cabin, they laughed and said yes, but that there was a crazy guy there who had been gathering horse crap all day and burning it in a wood-burning stove for warmth. When we started thinking about what Pandora was like BEFORE the corporations came, I thought back to this story.”
Thus, turd farming is actually the practice of collecting the excrement of Pandora’s native monsters to burn as fuel. In that sense, despite its absurd-sounding name, it does actually make some sense. In addition, the connotations of this farming help to cement Typhon DeLeon’s backstory. “One of our first goals was to make the first Vault Hunter from the MOST humble of humble origins,” explains Homan. Certainly, it’s hard to get more humble than turd farming, especially on Pandora.