It’s time for the 13th annual round of new honorees for the borg Hall of Fame.  We have new inductees from 2025 films, television, and various print media – 14 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, Star Trek, Alien, Predator, and more.  The new honorees bring the borg Hall of Fame total to 379.  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 2025 we also saw the return of past inductees in new stories, like Frankenstein’s creature in Guillermor del Toro’s movie adaptation, Jim Henson Studios’ new incarnation of the ever-changing Franken Berry, the Synthetics in Alien and Predator books, movies, and TV series, the Winter Soldier and Taskmaster in Thunderbolts*, plus Dynomutt and the Silverhawks in new comic book series.

First up, some great sci-fi stories tie into the questions of what it means to be borg.  M3GAN was back in 2025 in the movie M3GAN 2.0, reinvented as the title character M3GAN 2.0.  A self-realized, sentient or semi-sentient robot (played again by Amie Donald and Jenna Davis), some of the time she’s a digital mind floating from tech to tech.  Think Iron Man’s JARVIS, Spider-Man’s E.D.I.T.H., or even 2001: A Space Odyssey’s HAL.  Then she’s back in the form of a teenaged girl.  Before entering her robotic form, she was able to manipulate the world around her inventor, only to be sought after to remove the latest threat to the world: a government designed M3GAN upgrade called AMELIA, for Autonomous Military Engagement Logistics and Infiltration Android.  AMELIA is part Olga Kurylenko’s Taskmaster and part Terminatrix a la Kristanna Loken in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.  Both M3GAN and M3GAN 2.0 are not being added to the Hall of Fame because they don’t meet the biological requirements of borgdom, but the currency of the AI technology issues the movie introduces as it asks the questions every good borg cautionary tale asks certainly them relevant.  That also goes for Iris from the 2025 mystery-thriller Companion, where the age-old robot science fiction question is pushed and pulled at once again: What does it mean to be human?  Technically Iris is not be a cyborg–at one point a switch turns her into an automaton.  And yet the movie asks all the questions of a great borg story.  How did they make the humanoid robots in the movie?  We just don’t know.  But we didn’t see any cells, skin, or any living matter in their makeup.  Modeus, the robotic bodyguard from Suitor Armor seems to be in the same league. The Sphinx in the graphic novel Edifice prompted similar questions.

For this year’s Hall, Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, Kyriana Kratter’s cyborg character, known only as K.B. is an update to The Goonies’ young inventor Data–she sometimes wears a Geordi LaForge-inspired visor, and is the character the quickest to use technology to get out of a jam:

The one and only original cyborg returned in a big way in 2025 in Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, a faithful adaptation of the 1818 Mary Shelley novel, with a wise but violent Frankenstein’s Monster pursuing his creator to the North Pole:

Inspired of course by Frankenstein’s Monster, Franken Berry returned this year with a new look, reinvisioned by Jim Henson’s artists as a Muppet on the boxes of Big G Monster cereal and a series of commercials and print advertisements:

Prior inductee DynoMutt also made an appearance in 2025, this time in the pages of the comics in the series The Blue Falcon and DynoMutt:

The Alien franchise is all about “go big or go home.”  In 2025 the ground-breaking series Alien: Earth unveiled some stellar cyborgs.  The first up is series star Wendy, a new human/Synth hybrid, adding a new construct to the franchise following the robotic Synths and human-hybrid cyborgs developed in the books.  She has a human mind tucked into a cyborg/robotic shell:

Joining Wendy are a group of Lost Boys-inspired kids in adult bodies, including Nibs, Curly, Slightly, and Smee:

It wouldn’t be Alien without a Synth.  The key Synth of Alien: Earth is Timothy Olyphant’s Kirsh, who is as savvy and ruthless as he is cold and methodical:

Kubi Morrow enters the story of Alien: Earth from the very beginning as a classic cyborg and the mysterious surviving member of the Maginot, infiltrated by aliens which prompts a crash into planet Earth.  Morrow is powerful, and has some tricks up his sleeve, including that arm that transforms into a knife quite like the villain’s in Terminator 2: Judgment Day:

We’ll probably come across more borgs from the show, but another key character includes Wendy’s brother Joe Hermit, a medic and tactical soldier based in New Siam, working for the Prodigy Corporation.  When his lung is replaced with with updated technology, it makes him forever indebted to the corporation:

Weyland-Yutani was also front-and-center in a big-screen release in 2025, Predator: Badlands, featuring two new sister borgs: Thia and Tessa (both played by Elle Fanning), part of a new generation of research Synths.  Thia spent most of her existence at a colony on the planet Genna, undergoing a time at which only her torso and head remained:

M3GAN and Iris aren’t cyborgs, but Murderbot is a borg?  Yep.  It turns out that “bot” was manufactured from cloned human tissue along with those mechanical parts, and human tissue, cloned or not, is biological matter.  So it is more than a bot.  The creation is a media-obsessed private security construct–a bodyguard cyborg who becomes self-aware in the 2025 series of the same name, based on a novel:

More borgs from the Star Trek franchise arose from the unusual movie Section 31.  Dada Noe is a Deltan cyborg arms dealer who carries the story’s MacGuffin:

Also from Section 31, the cyborg Zeph.  He’s covered in cybernetic implants, a mechanical suit incorporating multiple functions, including an energy weapon and a drill bit:

Give them all a (cybernetic) hand, the 2025 inductees–our 13th year–of the borg Hall of Fame!  Find the entire list updated here.  And don’t miss all our Best of 2025 lists here.

Thanks for reading borg this year!

C.J. Bunce / Editor / borg