Jack was conceived early on as a fellow Vault Hunter "frenemy" before being changed to an outright villain to make Borderlands 2 clearer.

[4] Focused heavily on bravado and looking good, Handsome Jack considers himself "the hero" on Pandora, viewing everyone else on it as a "bandit".

Borderlands 2, in contrast to the first game, was created as a villain-centric story in the vein of System Shock 2, Portal and BioShock in order to both give the player a clear goal and a greater driving motivation.

[6][7] In doing so, it was also hoped to give Jack an arc throughout the game, growing from treating the player characters as irrelevant to hating them.

Clarke was asked to audition "by chance" after he finished recording session for Dragon Ball Kai in the same studio Okatron5000 and did as a favor to Chris Sabat.

[4] Clarke found voicing Jack for Tales from the Borderlands a change of pace, due to the different versions of lines that could be given depending on player dialogue choice.

[6] After surviving the train, the player is guided by the mysterious Guardian Angel from the first game to Sanctuary, the last refuge of the resistance against Jack and Hyperion.

The player is initially intended to take Jack as "a funny, but ultimately harmless dick", evidenced by his early goofy taunts.

[6] Eventually, Mordecai, a player character in the first game turned an NPC ally in the second, reports that he's found a power core that could allow Sanctuary to fly safely in the air.

The player retrieves it and with the help of Angel installs the core, but Angel is revealed to have been working for Jack, and the core instead sabotages Sanctuary's shields, leaving it to be almost destroyed by Jack's moonshot cannons from his space station orbiting Pandora, Helios, before Lilith the Siren teleports it away.

Jack swears vengeance on the Hunters, who in turn do the same after he kills Roland and kidnaps Lilith to continue powering the Key.

Jack (also known as John) is introduced as a low-ranking programmer who, despite the animosity of Hyperion CEO Harold Tassiter towards him, has managed to obtain command of the Helios station.

The leader of the Lost Legion, Colonel Tungsteena Zarpedon, takes control of the Eye of Helios laser, and uses it to begin destroying Elpis, claiming that it is for the greater good.

Jack begins a campaign to retake the station; he destroys a jamming signal disabling Helios' defense systems and confronts the corrupt Meriff of Concordia who was working for Zarpedon.

Jack then creates a robot army, using the AI Felicity as its core, but the Vault Hunters are forced to destroy her when she becomes unwilling to be used as a weapon.

Wilhelm and Nisha remain his top enforcers, Claptrap is betrayed, shot, and left for dead and his entire product line is wiped out, while Athena becomes disgusted with him and leaves his employ.

The next episode explains his presence: Rhys, having retrieved a data file from the corpse of Professor Nakayama, who had attempted to revive Jack, has unknowingly uploaded an artificial intelligence version of the dead Hyperion leader into his mind.

Rhys removes all of his cybernetics to stop him, mutilating himself in the process, and either destroys Jack by crushing the piece of his robotic eye containing him or simply leaves him trapped inside it.

Jack's legacy is also the focus of the first DLC add-on campaign "Moxxi's Heist of the Handsome Jackpot", which takes place on his former casino space station adorned with his image.

The Escapist's Ron Whitaker listed Jack as one villain who "steals the show", praising his humor and taunts, as well as his fall to villainy in The Pre-Sequel!.

[14] Also writing for GamesRadar, Lucas Sullivan placed Jack sixth on a list of top seven "villains we liked better than the hero", noting the build-up to killing him as he becomes "increasingly nuttier and deplorable", as well as how his remarks "grow on you".

[16] He was ranked as one of the best video game characters of the 2010s by Polygon staff and writer Cass Marshall, particularly his appearance and "Handsome Jack doesn’t have an arc or a greater point — he’s just a smug, theatrical jackass, and while he’s fun to hate, part of me cheered for him until the end.

"[21] Clarke won "Best Performance by a Human Male" at the 2012 Spike Video Game Awards for his voicing of Jack.