History VideoGame / Portal

* [[/index]]''Portal Companion Collection'' (2022): a CompilationRerelease of the first two ''Portal'' games released on the UsefulNotes/NintendoSwitch. ''Portal'' has the bonus test chambers from ''Portal: Still Alive'' and the updated ending and ARG content from the PC version's 2010 patch included, and both games include motion control aiming as an option.[[index]]

* ''VideoGame/ApertureDeskJob'' (2022): A short game made to show off the features and controls of the UsefulNotes/SteamDeck.

* [[/index]]''Bridge Constructor Portal'' (2017): A fusion of the ''Bridge Constructor'' and ''Portal'' series, with the former's gameplay in the latter's environment. Released for PC, mobile devices, UsefulNotes/NintendoSwitch, UsefulNotes/Playstation4, and UsefulNotes/XboxOne.

* CriticalStaffingShortage: The Aperture Science Enrichment Center. Never mind staff, the only actual living ''person'' in the entire game is Chell. There used to be a lot more people working there, but [[spoiler:[=GlaDOS=] killed them all]].

** [=GladOS's=] residual trauma from [[spoiler: her conflicting emotions she retained from Caroline]] combined with the cold and callous experimentation from Aperture have driven her insane. She flooded the building with Neurotoxin until she was attached with several sentient personality cores to impede her sociopathy.

** Wheatley, the aforementioned stupidity core is obviously dumb, but he has your best interest at heart... or at least he does until he replaces [=GladOS=] as the central core. As it turns out, being the central core alters the personality of the core to obsessively run tests and experiments. This results in a core becoming corrupted overtime, essentially becoming insane. Wheatley and [=GladOS=] were both partially corrupted, but other corrupted cores include one that obsesses over space, one that thinks its a suave action movie hero, and one that rattles off incoherent fake facts.

** The moon is everywhere on the early game graffitti in the second game. The nail is then hammered in a little deeper by Cave Johnson's explanation on the uses of moon powder. [[spoiler: The climax involves creating a portal on the surface of the moon]].

* AlternateRealityGame: On March 1, 2010, the game received a surprise patch, featuring a new achievement and a load of seemingly innocuous sound files full of static. Until someone savvy enough to know old-school technology (SSTV) found images hidden within them and [[https://half-life.fandom.com/wiki/Portal_ARG#Sound_list oh bloody hell]].

* ''VideoGame/PokerNight2'' (2013): [=GLaDOS=] is the dealer in this Texas Hold-em game and will occasionally converse with the participants ([[WesternAnimation/TheVentureBrothers Brock Samson]], [[VideoGame/{{Borderlands}} Claptrap]], [[Franchise/EvilDead Ash Williams]], and Franchise/{{Sam|AndMax}}). In addition, using Portal-themed chips, cards, and table will cause the entire Inventory to resemble the Aperture Enrichment Center.

Do not confuse this with the similarly-named but wildly different-in-tone VideoGame/{{Postal}} game series.

* ''VideoGame/LegoDimensions'' (2015): A CrisisCrossover where Franchise/{{Batman}}, [[WesternAnimation/TheLegoMovie Wyldstyle]] and [[Franchise/TheLordOfTheRings Gandalf]] explore various dimensions to find a way to defeat [[OmnicidalManiac Lord Vortech]]. One location they visit is Aperture Science, and [=GLaDOS=] plays a supporting role as an antagonist throughout the level and later in the game, and even gets into an argument with [[Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey HAL 9000]] at one point. There is also a level pack that is more-or-less a continuation of the Portal series story featuring Chell (as the playable character), [=GLaDOS=] and Wheatley. The ending song for the game, like the previous ''Portal'' games, was written by Music/JonathanCoulton and sung by Creator/EllenMcLain from [=GLaDOS=]'s perspective.

* ''VideoGame/LegoDimensions'' (2015): A CrisisCrossover where Franchise/{{Batman}}, [[WesternAnimation/TheLegoMovie Wyldstyle]] & [[Franchise/TheLordOfTheRings Gandalf]] explore various dimensions to find a way to defeat [[OmnicidalManiac Lord Vortech]]. One location they visit is Aperture Science, and [=GLaDOS=] plays a supporting role as an antagonist throughout the level and later in the game, and even gets into an argument with [[Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey HAL 9000]] at one point. There is also a level pack that is more-or-less a continuation of the Portal series story featuring Chell (as the playable character), [=GLaDOS=] and Wheatley. The ending song for the game, like the previous ''Portal'' games, was written by Music/JonathanCoulton and sung by Creator/EllenMcLain from [=GLaDOS=]'s perspective.

* ''{{VideoGame/Peggle}} Extreme'' (2007), a tie-in demo version of Peggle that released for free alongside The Orange Box, containing levels themed around the titles included in The Orange Box, of which Portal was one.

* ''VideoGame/PokerNight2'' (2013): [=GLaDOS=] is the dealer in this Texas Hold-em game and will occasionally converse with the participants ([[WesternAnimation/TheVentureBrothers Brock Samson]], [[VideoGame/{{Borderlands}} Claptrap]], [[Franchise/EvilDead Ash Williams]], and [[Franchise/SamAndMax Sam]]). In addition, using Portal-themed chips, cards, and table will cause the entire Inventory to resemble the Aperture Enrichment Center.

* ''[[VideoGame/SuperBomberman Super Bomberman R]]'' (2017): A port for Steam has P-body as an exclusive character.

* EldritchLocation: The Aperture Science Computer-Aided Enrichment Center seems at first like a fairly normal, if deserted, underground testing laboratory. However, as stated above, the place is massive to the point where most of it seems structurally and financially impossible. It also seems to violate the laws of physics. Not only are [=GLaDOS=] and [[spoiler: Wheatley]] able to create new testing chambers out of thin air, but the ending to ''Portal 2'' shows that [[spoiler: you're able to see the moon and sky from Wheatley's chamber, only to be lifted from an elevator multiple floors up in the scene afterwards]]. Granted, it's shown that whatever AI runs the place is able to control and rearrange the facility on a whim, but that still raises the question on how they're able to make such drastic changes to a building that's fixed underneath the ground.
* EnigmaticInstitute: Cave Johnson founded Aperature Science to conduct...scientific research. All kinds of research. Any kind of science, even if seemingly had no practical purpose. While it initially had good success, after an incident involving a prototype technology that eventually led to the portal gun, which resulted in a number of test subjects vanishing, Aperature's fortunes crumbled. Cave Johnson then moved all his more questionable projects deeper into underground labs to avoid further scrutiny.

* {{Everything Is an iPod in the Future}}: Or more accurately, about the same time the iPod came out. The similarity between Aperture's aesthetic and Apple's has been noted and was even exploited for one of Valve's teaser pictures when they were about to release Steam for the Mac. Several fans have even semi-jokingly, semi-seriously compared the differences between Aperture and Black Mesa as analogous to the differences between Apple and Microsoft.

** In his introductory scene, Wheatley attempts to move Chell's cryochamber throughout the facility to the testing area, and hits about every obstacle on his way, before forcing the chamber through a wall. His idea of "hacking" a door is also to break the glass. [[spoiler: So of course, he's not going to be very delicate with the facility once he's in charge]].

** Ends up somewhat [[{{Deconstruction}} deconstructed]] in ''Portal 2''. All of this wasteful spending and death lead to Aperture's bankruptcy in TheSeventies, where they took to hiring homeless people as test subjects before eventually making testing mandatory for all employees. They also couldn't afford to buy ''$7'' worth of moon rocks, but still went ahead with buying $70 million worth and made them into a portal-conducting gel. A move that poisoned Cave Johnson and left him a bitter, dying old man who blamed [[VideoGame/HalfLife Black Mesa]] for all his failures.

* NoMedicationForMe: Inverted in the ''Lab Rat'' comic. Doug Rattman has been saving the last of his anti-psychotic medicine so that he'll have a clear head when Chell destroys [=GLaDOS=] and he can escape, even if his CompanionCube tells him he doesn't need it.

* AbandonedLaboratory: In the first game, there ain't no one in the Aperture Science labs except you and [=GLaDOS=] [[spoiler: and Doug Rattmann]].

* ''VideoGame/EscapeSimulator'' (2021): The Portal Escape Chamber {{DLC}} released
8th of September, 2023 has the players escape the Aperture Science Enrichment Center following "a minor workplace incident" which has put the facility on lockdown.

** Possibly turned up to the level of absurdity in ''Portal 2'', which is heavily implied to take ''multiple millennia'' after the events of the first game ([[DistantFinale and presumably, the rest of the]] ''Half-Life'' series). This even gets comically lampshaded near the beginning of the game as Chell struggles to escape the ruined remnants of the facility and the automated Announcer has [[DissonantSerenity cheery one-sided conversations with her]] where it notes how humanity has likely regressed to FuturePrimitive tribes [[AfterTheEnd after whatever disaster has ended civilization]]... but [[SkewedPriorities this still shouldn't stop testing!]]

* Foreshadowing:

-->''[[[=GLaDOS=]: Oh good, my slow clap processor made it in here.]]''

* NiceJobBreakingItHero: The trope namer, though ironically, [=GLaDOS]' first use of it is not an example. There are several examples thereafter, particularly in Portal 2, when [[spoiler:Chell puts Wheatley in charge of Aperture...only to discover that [=GLaDOS=] was the only thing standing in the way of a nuclear meltdown that Wheatley has no intentions of stopping, and the facility is now about to blow up with all three of them inside.]]
-->''[[GLaDOS: Oh good, my slow clap processor made it in here.]]''

* ''[[Peggle Peggle Extreme]]'' (2007), a tie-in demo version of Peggle that released for free alongside The Orange Box, containing levels themed around the titles included in The Orange Box, of which Portal was one.

* [[/index]]''Portal Companion Collection'' (2022): a CompilationRerelease of the first two ''Portal'' games released on the UsefulNotes/NintendoSwitch. ''Portal'' has the bonus test chambers from ''Portal: Still Alive'' included, and both games include motion control aiming as an option.[[index]]

* ''VideoGame/Portal1'' (2007): The relatively short game that started it all, chronicling Chell's journey as [=GLaDOS=] guides her through a series of test chambers in the Enrichment Center.

* [[/index]]''Portal Companion Collection'' (2022): a CompilationRerelease of the first two ''Portal'' games released on the UsefulNotes/NintendoSwitch.[[index]]