One of the greatest mysteries surrounding Borderlands 3 was just how developer Gearbox was going to approach incorporating the number three on its cover.
Given the first sequel referenced its numbering by showing a “Psycho” holding up two finger gunned hands to his head (the first game had a Psycho holding up just the one hand), fans were rightly concerned – a Psycho only has two hands after all, so how could we possibly get a Borderlands 3 cover that carried on the tradition?
As it turns out, Gearbox played around with a number of approaches before settling on the regal-looking Psycho who simply holds up three fingers on the final cover, dropping the finger gun motif.
During a display at San Diego Comic-Con called the Museum of Mayhem, attendees were treated to a look at 13 of the rejected concepts, including one that looked pretty similar to the cover of Borderlands 2, with an added foot held up to the Psycho’s head.
While the foot cover is undeniably the best one and I’m incredibly disappointed that Gearbox opted to sack it off, the display also highlighted some other striking rejected designs that range from incredibly stylish to off-puttingly weird, including one that showed three Psycho babies – two breastfeeding with their backs turned, and one in the middle facing front.
I’m also a big fan of the one that’s literally just a Psycho with a massive gun for a head. You can take a look at all of the rejected designs over on this here ResetEra thread, but I’ll leave a few favorites down below.
Borderlands 3 arrives on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on September 13, and if I can’t preorder the foot cover as a deluxe steelbook edition at some point, I will most likely riot.
In other Borderlands news, it was recently revealed that a few of the team at Gearbox would very much like to see Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as the voice of Claptrap in the upcoming movie. Him or Bill Murray, because sure.
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Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.