Gearbox let one lucky gamer play Borderlands 4 days before the rest of us: Conan O’Brien, who hated Claptrap after exactly one minute – “He’s my least-favorite trash can I’ve ever met”
By Issy van der Velde
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Gearbox let one lucky gamer play Borderlands 4 days before the rest of us: Conan O’Brien, who hated Claptrap after exactly one minute – “He’s my least-favorite trash can I’ve ever met”
Issy van der Velde
9 September 2025
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Comedian and talk show host Conan O’Brien is a gamer. A clueless one. His series has made a comeback with a Borderlands 4 video, and it’s about as chaotic as you’d expect. From Conan immediately understanding a decade of our feelings about Claptrap to shooting everything but the enemies to simply screaming when he should be paying attention, it’s a great watch.
“Is all the story necessary?” he asks during the intro cutscene that sets the stage for the game. So, we’re off to a great start. Vile Lictor has become an immortal tyrant, terrorizing the good people of Kairos, but Conan is too busy doing an impression of a Russian to care. Until Claptrap appears on screen, that is.
Clueless Gamer: “Borderlands 4” | Team Coco – YouTube
“You know what’s great about this little Claptrap guy? He’ll never get annoying,” he sarcastically remarks. “He’s my least-favorite trash can I’ve ever met.” That’s the sentiment most fans have of Claptrap, so well done Conan for managing to tap into that so quickly. Maybe he’ll turn down the Claptrap-only volume slider if he gets the full game.
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Once he actually gets control of his Vault Hunter, the quips don’t stop. “It’s just shitting, constantly,” he says about a flying enemy. It’s shooting some sort of projectile and, yeah, it does look like it’s just flinging poop at you.
During one tricky section where Conan is being overwhelmed by foes, the game actually crashes. “I’ve never seen this crash before,” says producer Aaron Bleyaert, who had just changed some settings to help Conan out.
“How did you know I wasn’t ‘having trouble’ for the comedy of it?” Conan asks incredulously. He certainly has the energy levels of a screaming streamer, which is very impressive for a host who’s been around as long as he has.
And finally, before facing off against Vile Lictor for the first time, simply getting to the boss arena presents some challenges. Despite being given directions on where to go, Conan says the level “looks like any West German club.” There’s a lot of red light and industrial architecture, so I can see where he’s coming from.
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The boss itself is pretty gruesome, a sort of cocooned bat creature with a large health bar and a lot of immunities. There’s a lot going on during the battle, so be sure to pay attention when you get your hands on Borderlands 4 September 12.
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I’m Issy, a freelancer who you’ll now occasionally see over here covering news on GamesRadar. I’ve always had a passion for playing games, but I learned how to write about them while doing my Film and TV degrees at the University of Warwick and contributing to the student paper, The Boar. After university I worked at TheGamer before heading up the news section at Dot Esports. Now you’ll find me freelancing for Rolling Stone, NME, Inverse, and many more places. I love all things horror, narrative-driven, and indie, and I mainly play on my PS5. I’m currently clearing my backlog and loving Dishonored 2.
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The new Borderlands 4 trailer feels like an extreme parody of the 2025 games industry: a (literal) bloodbath caused by board members killing cool ideas to save money
Borderlands 4 includes a feature the series should have had from the beginning: a Claptrap-only volume slider that means you never have to hear a word he says
New Borderlands 4 trailer is a funny critique of capitalism, and Randy Pitchford says if we “share and retweet” we could get more: “Those numbers directly impact the decisions made in the suit meetings and conference rooms”
Borderlands 4 writers say the previous game “sometimes felt like parody,” and while there’s at least one meme in the new loot shooter “it does not involve a Skibidi Toilet”
“It is a turning point in our universe”: Gearbox explains Borderlands 4’s deliberately less-stupid story, and it feels weird to actually be interested in a Borderlands plot
“We tend to commit to the bit”: Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford talks Borderlands 4, the evolution of looter-shooters, and $80 game discourse
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