It’s always strange when the title of a movie or series doesn’t necessarily match its story, but fewer cases are as puzzling as Blade Runner. The movie adapts a Philip K. Dick novel with a completely different titleitself, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and there isn’t any mention throughout Rick Deckard’s (Harrison Ford) misadventures of why his job is referred to as a blade runner, neither in the movie nor the novel. Decades later, Blade Runner 2049 came out and once again this question went unanswered, and you can bet that, when Blade Runner 2099 arrives, it will remain that way.
There actually is a story behind how director Ridley Scott and writer Hampton Fancher arrived at this title, though. As it turns out, the term “blade runner” had already been floating around for a few years before the movie started development, and it didn’t have anything at all to do with the premise of Scott and Fancher’s movie. Instead, it had to do with actual blades and people running with them. That didn’t stop them from choosing it anyway, but the whole story is nearly as interesting as Blade Runner itself.
The Term ‘Blade Runner’ Comes From an Unrelated Sci-Fi Story From 1974
Harrison Ford as Rick Deckard pointing a gun in the rain in Blade Runner.Image via Warner Bros.
Before Blade Runner, there was The Bladerunner — definite article, no space. That’s the title of a 1974 novel by Alan E. Nourse, a doctor who also wrote quite a few sci-fi novels, and his stories often mixed both these aspects. That’s what happens in The Bladerunner, a dystopia where health care is universal, but those who seek it must undergo sterilization due to newly established eugenics laws. This created a shadow market for medicine, and the protagonist, Billy Gimp, is a “bladerunner” — a smuggler who specializes in medical tools.
The Bladerunner never found much success, but it eventually caught the eye of Beat Generation writer William S. Burroughs, who was at a transition moment in his career. In 1976, he decided to write a film treatment for it, but he twisted the story so much, it ended up nearly unrecognizable. After many unsuccessful attempts to get his script produced, Burroughs eventually gave up and decided to adapt this new version of the story to release it as a novel, which he confusingly named Blade Runner (a movie).
Collider Exclusive · Sci-Fi Survival Quiz Which Sci-Fi World Would You Survive? The Matrix · Mad Max · Blade Runner · Dune · Star Wars
Five universes. Five completely different ways the future went wrong — or sideways, or up in flames. Only one of them is the world your instincts were built for. Ten questions will figure out which dystopia, galaxy, or desert wasteland you’d actually make it out of alive.
💊The Matrix 🔥Mad Max 🌧️Blade Runner 🏜️Dune 🚀Star Wars
01 You sense something is deeply wrong with the world around you. What do you do? The first instinct is often the truest one.
02 In a world of scarcity, what resource do you guard most fiercely? What we protect reveals what we believe survival actually requires.
03 What kind of threat keeps you up at night? Fear is useful data — if you’re honest about what you’re actually afraid of.
04 Which of these comes most naturally to you? Your strongest skill is your best survival asset — use it accordingly.
05 How do you deal with authority you don’t trust? Every dystopia has a power structure. Your approach to it determines everything.
06 Which environment could you actually endure long-term? Survival isn’t just tactical — it’s physical, psychological, and very much about where you are.
07 Who do you want in your corner when things fall apart? The company you keep is the clearest signal of who you actually are.
08 A comfortable lie or a devastating truth — which can you actually live with? Some worlds offer one. Some offer the other. Very few offer both.
09 Where do you draw the line — if you draw one at all? Every survivor eventually faces a moment that tests what they’re actually made of.
10 What would actually make survival worth it? Staying alive is one thing. Having a reason to is another.
Your Fate Has Been Calculated You’d Survive In…
Your answers point to the world your instincts were built for. Read all five — your result is the one that resonates most deeply.
💊
The Matrix
You took the red pill a long time ago — probably before anyone offered it to you. You’re a systems thinker who can’t help but notice the seams in things, the places where the official version doesn’t quite line up. In the Matrix, that instinct is the difference between life and permanent digital sedation. You’d find the Resistance, or it would find you. The machines built an airtight prison. You’d be the one probing the walls for the door.
🔥
Mad Max
The wasteland doesn’t reward the clever or the well-connected — it rewards those who are hard to kill and harder to break. That’s you. You don’t need comfort, community, or a cause larger than the next horizon. You need a vehicle, a clear threat, and enough fuel to outrun it. You are unsentimental enough to survive that world, and decent enough — just barely — to be something more than another raider.
🌧️
Blade Runner
You’d survive here because you know how to exist in moral grey areas without losing yourself completely. You read people accurately, keep your circle small, and ask the questions others prefer not to answer. In a city where humanity is a legal designation rather than a feeling, you hold onto something that keeps you functional. You’re not a hero. But you’re not lost, either. In Blade Runner’s world, that distinction is everything.
🏜️
Dune
Arrakis is the most hostile environment in the known universe — and you are precisely the kind of person it rewards. Patience, discipline, pattern recognition, political awareness, and an understanding that the long game matters more than any single victory. Others come to Dune and are consumed by it. You’d learn its logic, earn its respect, and perhaps, in time, reshape it entirely.
🚀
Star Wars
The galaxy far, far away is vast, loud, and in a constant state of violent political upheaval — and you wouldn’t have it any other way. You’re someone who finds meaning in being part of something larger than yourself. You’d gravitate toward the Rebellion, or the fringes, or whatever pocket of the galaxy still believes the Empire’s grip can be broken. Whatever you are, you fight. And in Star Wars, that willingness is what makes the difference.
Burroughs’ version did eventually become a movie, 1983’s Taking Tiger Mountain. It was one of the late Bill Paxton‘s earliest roles, and director Tom Huckabee bought the rights to Burroughs’ story for 100 dollars, noting that “he was giving away stories to any film student or amateur that wrote him a letter.” It was Burroughs’ only film credit and became a niche classic, but, again, completely unrelated to the 1982 classic Blade Runner, which came out a year earlier and used only the name.
Hampton Fancher Used Burroughs’ Book To Come up With a Title for His Movie With Ridley Scott
In Philip K. Dick’sDo Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the term “blade runner” simply does not exist. Rick Deckard is simply a police detective who specializes in hunting and retiring androids (who are also not called “replicants”). After a few months ofworking on the script,Ridley Scott asked Hampton Fancher what Deckard’s job should be called, “a question that was so obvious I hadn’t really addressed it before,” Fancher toldVulturein 2017. “I didn’t have an answer, but I’d better get one fast.”
As Facher recalls, that same night he found Burroughs’ novel in his library, and that was it. “I was looking through my books and came across a thin little volume by William Burroughs called Blade Runner. Bingo!” That’s how Deckard became a blade runner, but there was still the issue of what the movie was going to be named, since the original novel’s title simply didn’t work for a movie. They had thought about Android or Dangerous Days, butthose titles didn’t have the edge the story itself had. According to Fancher, “Michael Deeley, the producer, said, ‘It’s staring us right in the face,’” and that’s how the movie also became Blade Runner.
To solve the issue of rights over the term “blade runner,” they approached William S. Burroughs and paid him “a nominal fee,” thus securing the perfect title for their movie. Perhaps if they had waited just a little longer, they wouldn’t have been able to. That’s because Blade Runner was developed between the late 1970s and early 1980s, coming out in June 1982. Taking Tiger Mountain came out shortly after, in 1983, but had Tom Huckabee approached Burroughs before, maybe the Blade Runner title would have come with the rights for the novel, and now, we would all be living in a very different world.
There Are No In-Universe Explanations of What “Blade Runner” Means
Stylized artwork of the cast on a poster image for Blade Runner.Image via Warner Bros.
In Blade Runner, the title is also the name of the detectives who hunt and retire replicants, making Rick Deckard a blade runner. However, the reason why this particular division has that name is never given in-universe. In some cuts of the film, Gaff (Edward James Olmos) refers to Deckard as “the blade runner,” but, besides that, the title itself is barely even mentioned, too, and, apparently, that’s on purpose. “I think ‘explanations’ are the bug-bears of screenplay writing and I like to stay clear of them,” Hampton Fancher said in 2017.
The movie doesn’t owe anyone explanations, but this meant that what “blade runner” means ended up falling into the realm of headcanon. Yours truly, for example, first imagined that the only way of being sure someone is a replicant was to open them up with a blade (which admittedly isn’t a very cool thought). The 1982 comic book adaptation did include a narration of Deckard thinking: “Blade runner. You’re always movin’ on the edge,” but that’s almost like his own explanation for something he isn’t sure of himself. But at least now we know what a bladerunner was originally intended to be.
