Tiny Tina's Wonderlands may not be a mainline release for the Borderlands franchise, but it is one of the most whacky entries in the series thus far, which has already been setting the bar quite high with every new game. The new gun-and-magic looter shooter is, of course, inspired by some of the classic tabletop RPGs, such as Dungeons and Dragons, albeit with hilariously ridiculous humor that's very much Borderlands-like in its own right. This is one of the reasons why Tiny Tina's Wonderlands is great to play through multiple times, exploring all the various side quests and toying with the hybrid class system it brings.
Just like every Borderlands game to date has always done, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands is no exception when it comes to having many easter eggs dedicated to other franchises. On the contrary, the more successful, the better the easter egg is going to be. A great example of this logic is the Super Mario Bros. series, which has been referenced multiple times across the various Borderlands games, and now in Tiny Tina's Wonderlands too.
A Reddit user by the name of Coshane4 shared a video that shows how Tiny Tina's Wonderlands players who jump on the head of mushroom enemies can instantly defeat them, Super Mario-style. In fact, one of the classic features of the Super Mario Bros. series is that players could jump on the head of Goombas (and other enemies) to defeat them via stomp damage. This is not exactly a novelty in the Borderlands saga, but the instance of stomp damage in Tiny Tina's Wonderlands is the most powerful the series has ever seen, whereas Borderlands 1 enemies would only take very little damage from it.
Borderlands 1 and Borderlands 2 had easter egg trophies dedicated to the Super Mario Bros. series, with the first being called My Brother is an Italian Plumber, obtained by killing a specific enemy with stomp damage, and the other being called Definitely an Italian Plumber. Furthermore, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel had an entire secret level dedicated to Super Mario games, whereas Borderlands 3 had a Legendary gun called Superball as a reference to Mario's in-game Flower Power. Yet, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands does a fantastic job in allowing players to stomp mushrooms to death both because it's a fun nod to Super Mario games and because it's an effective way to kill these pesky little enemies.
The references don't stop there, and Tiny Tina's Wonderlands has a funny The Witcher easter egg that fans of Geralt of Rivia will pick up on. As for those games that are not directly mentioned in Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, the fantastic character creator it features does make up for it by allowing all sorts of crazy looks to remake one's favorite protagonists.
Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.