It’s time for the 12th annual round of new honorees for the borg Hall of Fame.  We have new inductees from 2024 films, television, and various print media – 30 in all – new borgs or groups of borgs, updated variants of past members, and we also look back each year to find borgs from the past.  This year we tap characters from all sorts of franchises: Star Wars, Doctor Who, Alien, Terminator, Dune, Cowboy Bebop, Dragon Ball, RoboCop, DC Comics, Marvel Comics, ThunderCats, Barbarella, Sonic the Hedgehog, One Piece, and more.  The new honorees bring the borg Hall of Fame total to 365.  Check out the updated borg Hall of Fame here and always available at the bottom of the borg home page under “Know your borg.”

Some reminders about criteria.  Borgs have technology integrated with biology.  Wearing a technology-powered suit alone doesn’t qualify.  Tony Stark aka Iron Man was named an honoree because the Arc Reactor kept in his chest keeps him alive, not because of his incredible tech armor.  The Spider-Man suit worn by Tom Holland is similar to Tony’s, but it’s not integrated with its wearer’s biology.  Also, if the creators tell us the characters are merely robots, automatons, or androids (as in Westworld, the Synths of Star Trek: Picard, the Dark Troopers of The Mandalorian, the Simulants of The Creator and detective Gesecht of the Japanese series Pluto, or the similarly human appearing Demerzel from Foundation), we take their word for it.  But integration is key.

 

In 2024 we also saw the return of past inductees in new stories, like Sam Rutherford in Star Trek: Lower Decks, Furiosa in Furiosa: A Mad Max Story, many X-Men from Marvel Comics, Terminators in Terminator Zero,  and Synthetics in Alien: Romulus. 

So who’s in for 2024?

In 2024 the Terminator franchise was back with a new threat–reflecting AI run amuck in real life 2024.  New characters of James Cameron’s alternate future continue to fight the cybernetic threat from the future.  The antagonist of the series Terminator Zero was this generically-referenced Terminator:

Almost as fun as seeing the Frankensteinian return of the late Peter Cushing via CGI in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story was the return of the late Ian Holm as Rook, a synthetic science officer who was the same model as early borg Hall of Fame inductee Ash from the original Alien movie in the 2024 sequel Alien: Romulus: 

But the surprise of Alien: Romulus was how interesting and borg-centric Andy the Synthetic, raised as a brother of a human girl, made the movie a story about the struggle of being a borg.

It was no surprise to see Hugh Jackman as the cyborg Wolverine in the year’s hit superhero film Deadpool and Wolverine, but the classic supersuit was just perfect:

but the bigger surprise was seeing Dafne Keen return as adult X-23 aka Laura:

We also got the backstory for the previous Hall honoree Furiosa in the 2024 movie Furiosa: A Mad Max Story, this time played by Anya Taylor-Joy:

Frankenberry was one of the first borg admitted to the borg Hall of Fame, and last year we brought in his female counterpart, Franken Betty.  So it makes sense this year to include the third member of the family, their pet Franken Bennie.  Note how society in all its forms continues to expand the cyborg tradition begun by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein novel from 1818.

In DC Comics, B’aad is a cyborg mercenary who hails from the planet Kreno, appearing in the 1990s in the pages of Steel:

From the pages of DC Comics’ series Shadow Cabinet, Bad Betty is a fully enhanced cyborg, with replaced skin and bone, giving her many superpowers:

From a not-so-distant series in the past, we have Kai from the sci-fi TV series Lexx.  Kai was an undead former Divine Assassin and the last of the Brunnen-G, a man in a reconstituted dead body (biology) with a holographic memory (technology) who requires “protoblood” (hybrid biotech) to survive:

Adam Jensen is a mechanically augmented human from the 2010s video game series Deus Ex:

Netflix released a Brazilian film in 2024 called Bionic, featuring Gabi, whose bionic limbs made her an international sports superstar:

Other borgs in the film include Miudo and several voluntary bionic athletes–all who paid to have limbs removed to be upgraded with bionic parts:

From the comic book pages we have a woman named Jury who has a cybernetic leg, from the recent stories in Barbarella comics:

Looking back to the 1990s, Cassandra Taylor aka Ballistic was a superhero and member of Top Cow Comics’ Cyberforce.  After being attacked by bullies when she was young, she had her arm replaced with a bionic attachment.  An implanted “brain box” wiped her memories but was eventually removed:

From the animated ThunderCats, Colonel Bluegrass was a cowboy and pilot who underwent the SilverHawk “bionic surgery” process, and who relied on his guitar Hot Licks and sidekick, fighting hawk Sideman when in battle situations:

From Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball Super is Android 18 aka Cyborg 18.  She was cybernetically enhanced by Dr. Gero, exhibited human features (like the ability to cry), and eventually had a daughter:

Android 17 aka Lapis aka Super 17 is Android 18’s twin brother, a “human turned android” like his sister.  He works as a park ranger who protects wildlife from poaching, eventually exhibiting powerful fighting skills:

When Android 17 and 18’s creator, the old man Dr. Gero, had Android 19 implant his brain inside an android body, he became the final numbered fighting force in the series, called Android 20 (the other numbered Androids of the series, and Dr. Gero’s creation, including the first–Android 8–appear not to have have both biology and mechanics):

From Image Comics was Aphrodite V, who starred in her own self-titled comic.  She was a “cyborg assassin” at “the bleeding edge of biomechanics, and L.A.’s best hope against a new enemy—one that seeks to become a god among machines”–

From the manga One Piece, Bartholomew Kuma aka PX-0 was a Buccaneer pirate modified to become a special type of cyborg known as a “Pacifista,” developed by a scientist named Vegapunk:

From Steven Stahlberg’s 30-years-in-the-making graphic novel Android Blues, in 2024 readers got the full story of Lisa, built like James Cameron’s famous “cybernetic organism” Terminator, she was drawn more biological in look and design, created rapidly with artificial fluids and a process whereby she grows and is able to repair herself, courtesy of nanobots–“an abandoned cyborg shell” with “the heart and soul of a young woman,” a character whose story was of someone more than just an android:

One of several Marvel Comics Synthezoids is the Ultimate Spider-Slayer, formerly a human named Alistair Smythe who encased his body in a “bioorganic carapace” that allowed him to walk again after being paralyzed–in addition to giving him superpowers:

From the Star Wars spin-off adventure series Skeleton Crew, we saw actor Jaleel White as Gunter, one of the space pirates “mods” who sported some borg tech:

Booster Terrik was another borg, a contemporary of Wedge Antilles.  He had a cybernetic eye implant later in his story in the pages of Dark Horse Comics Star Wars stories:

In Star Wars: Legacy comics, Azlyn Rae is a Jedi apprentice who was saved after a battle involving “Force lightning,” preserved to live in a suit of armor like that of Darth Vader:

Also from Star Wars, B’Dard Tone was a Jedi Master who served the Jedi Order and the Galactic Republic as a General in the Grand Army of the Republic during the Clone Wars.  Had had a cybernetic arm and repaired face, damaged in battle with General Grievous (from the General Grievous comic):

Never to let a background character go unnoticed, Star Wars pre-Disney “Legacy” comics recurrected Derek “Hobbie” Klivian from obscurity to be a well-known comics character.  Along his journey he lost a leg (which kept him out of the movies for a spell), replaced with a cyborg leg:

In the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, Bunnie the Rabbot aka Bunnie D’Coolette is an anthropomorphic rabbit who was partially roboticized with mechanical body parts that provide her with superhuman strength and telescopic limbs:

In the RoboCop movies, Cain aka RoboCop 2 was a human villain whose brain is ultimately used as the biology behind the second RoboCop attempt:

Everyone knows Spike Spiegel, star of Cowboy Bebop, but did you remember he had a cybernetic eye from the animated epidode Session 6?  His left eye sees the past and his right the present, but it’s never made clear which is the real eye:

In the 2024 Doctor Who Christmas special, “Joy to the World,” the ill-fated Trev Simpkins was a hotel worker at The Time Hotel who sported a grafted and integrated earpiece to help him with client hospitality:

Finally, one of the biggest surprises of 2024 was that the rogue of Dune: Prophecy, Travis Fimmel’s Desmond Hart, was more than a magically revived soldier.  He was a possessed, machine-hating human with a “microscopic thinking machine virus” that someone on Arrakis implanted into his eye, which sounds a lot like nanobots.  Which makes him a borg, and a great borg at that (his hatred of machines make him something like the hidden borg known as Valance the Hunter from Star Wars comics).

Give them all a (cybernetic) hand, the 2024 inductees–our 12th year–of the borg Hall of Fame!  Find the entire list updated here.  And don’t miss all our Best of 2024 lists here.

Thanks for reading borg this year!

C.J. Bunce / Editor / borg