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The Enrichment Center is committed to the well-being of all participants. Cake and grief counseling will be available at the conclusion of the test. Thank you for helping us help you help us all.

-GLaDOS

Hello, <<subject name here>>.

We hope your brief detention in the Aperture Science Relaxation Vault has been enjoyable. We have noticed your uncanny ability to distinguish cliches from media works across the spectrum. Due to previous tests being solvable, we shall proceed into a new test designed for the most advanced subjects.

Your simple task is to collect as many tropes as possible from: Video Footage: Chell Johnson. Do this, and cake will be served.

Oh, and the *bzzzzt* will kill you.

Good luck!

This article is about the video game actually titled Portal. If you are currently searching for portal-related tropes, please refer to Teleportation Tropes.

The most fitting description you can have for Portal is possibly what Wikipedia calls it: "first-person puzzle game". Essentially, it is a Puzzle Game made in 3D with a First Person Shooter engine, which can serve as a somewhat misleading combination.

Portal nominally takes place in the Half-Life universe, but there's nothing connecting them other than random hints on walls referring to Black Mesa and the fact that Aperture Science is mentioned in the Half-Life 2 episodes. The storyline is very simple: Chell, the player character (female, but that's where the characterization ends) wakes up in a seemingly uninhabited facility, finding her way through a series of puzzles as a test subject for the portal gun, which is capable of shooting portals on flat surfaces (only two at a time), creating a link between them, sometimes with bizarre twists of geometry and gravity that are exploited for all they're worth.

There are no other characters to interact with (except for an AI voice guiding the player throughout the puzzles), no enemies to kill (except for largely indestructible gun-turrets), and no items to find (other than a number of cubes, and the portal gun itself, which is given to the player in the very beginning and upgraded slightly later). However, it's clever, challenging, and has a unique premise - definitely worth checking out.

Finally: the fact that Ben 'Yahtzee' Croshaw simply couldn't find anything bad to say about it should probably tell you something. Now, please enter your local Aperture Science Enrichment Centre for further testing.

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Provides examples of:

• AI Is A Crapshoot (A pleasant amusing physics game is turned into a brilliant meme-rich story demonstrating the power of the medium merely by the judicious application of an Insane Killer Robot.)
• All There In The Manual (The Aperture Science website reveals much of the backstory. If you know what to do and where to look.)
• And I Must Scream (GLaDOS, possibly.)
• Arson Murder And Jaywalking (I'm going to kill you. And all the cake is gone.)
• Arc Words: *warping sound* C-C-Cakecakecakecakecake... To an extent, anyway. "The Cake Is A Lie" fits the bill.
• Black Comedy: GLaDOS's sense of humor.
• Brain Uploading (GLaDOS claims to have a backup of Chell on file, which she later claims to delete. Of course, she is a lying liar who lies, so who knows.)
  • Also, the AI in the rumored sequel, and again, possibly GLaDOS.
• Bread Eggs Milk Squick (listen to the cake recipe...)
• Briar Patching (Near the end of the game, GLaDOS tells you not to touch a certain object and, for once, it would probably be for the best if you complied (But Stupidity Is The Only Option in order to beat the game). GLaDOS actually bets on the player not trusting it and doing the opposite of what it says. Despite its double use of Reverse Psychology, its intention is still pretty obvious.)
• Cool Gate
• Companion Cube (Trope Namer)
• Copy Protection: Sort of. If you want to access the backstory on the official site, you need the login and password found in one of the Rooms Full Of Crazy. Specifically, it's in the level with... that aforementioned Companion Cube. Just look around. It's there.
  • Fine, go ahead and take it from below, if you're a whiny little would-be gamer who can't even beat a puzzle game. Wuss. Especially if you don't wanna bother going through that again. You can only type in capital letters on the site no matter what.
  Login: CJOHNSON
  Password: TIER3
• Deadpan Snarker (GLaDOS, the AI)
• Ear Worm ("Still Alive", the end song, is incredibly catchy.)
• Elaborate Underground Base
• Ensemble Darkhorse: The game was originally sold in "The Orange Box" with the much-anticipated Team Fortress 2 and Half Life 2: Episode 2. Guess which one turned out to be the runaway hit and critics' darling? (Not that the other two weren't good themselves.)
• Epileptic Trees (See Everyone Is Jesus In Purgatory, below.)
• Everyone Is Jesus In Purgatory (There have been some truly odd interpretations of this fairly straightforward game as, among other things, a crushing feminist assault on the masculine and misogynist games industry.)
  • There is a far, far worse Epileptic Tree: that the heroine is actually the latest in a series of Chell clones. There was only ever one test subject - Chell - who, whenever she died in a test, was cloned from the backed-up brain tapes GLaDOS kept in storage, had her memories but not her evolved problem-solving abilities erased, and sent back into the mess. The messages found in the testing rooms were left by the last Chell, who nearly escaped, but died just before reaching GLaDOS. This Chell is the last, evidenced by GLaDOS deleting her brain backup and, of course, her escape. There are also less-jaw-dropping and infinitely more sapphic theories that state that GLaDOS considers Chell her daughter, or falls in love with her in her own unique way as Chell bests her traps and ultimately herself.
    • Itself.
    • You sure?
  • Expanding on that, there's another one which actually seems to hold up, which holds that GLaDOS in fact actually IS Chell—or rather, the original Chell Johnson, a child brought there by her father on Take Your Daughter to Work Day, promised cake, and uploaded into the AI mainframe. She's been cloning herself ever since in the hopes that one of them will escape, but of course she's gone completely insane in the meantime; she's still happy when her clone escapes. Besides the dialogue, this supported by Word Of God saying that if there is a sequel, it will feature Cave Johnson as another AI.
  • There's a pretty decent idea positing the idea that GLaDOS Cannot Self Terminate and that the entire purpose of Chell is to ensure GLaDOS's destruction. The fact that the author makes a good argument that there are recurring bondage themes in the game is kind of scary.
    • It's only once you get close up to GLaDOS, on the gantry surrounding her, that you realise how disturbingly she's writhing about.
  • Also, I heard an idea that Chell never actually escaped. The escape was just another test to see if Chell would comply with the orders or escape, and the "outside" we see in the last scene is actually one final test.
    • The Incineration was the last test, and you passed, and she baked you a cake, but you were pissed so you killed her, and you broke her heart because you were here greatest creation. Bastard
    • That's why there are 19 tests, because the Incineration was the 20th, a nice round number
    • They need to test whether you could make portals under severe stress with no prompting
    • People couldn't, which is why Gla DOS keeps hinting at it early on, so you are prepared and as such you survive
• Everything's Better With Plushies (after months of fan made plushies of the companion cube, Valve released an official one)
• Excuse Plot (Seems to deconstruct this trope. The whole time Chell is fighting for something that doesn't exist and a cake is a pretty lame reward for going through life risking challenges. Also another common Excuse Plot fighting to save an undeveloped character the hero barely knows. Testchamber 17 inverts this completely by putting you in a situation where you are endangering and ultimately destroying a completely speechless character.)
• Expository Theme Tune (Unusually, this one is an Ending Theme rather than an opening theme.)
• False Reassurance (GLaDOS is quite fond of these)
• For Science (Aperture Science doesn't seem to be too good at considering the future implications of the gadgets they make...)
  • We do what we must / Because we can...
  • If you pay attention in the game you can see a slide presenting GLaDOS originally as a competing bid for an airplane Fuel System Icing Inhibitor. (Cheaper, a fully functional disk operating system, and, arguably, alive.)
• Gaiden Game (To the Half-Life series.)
• Gannon Banned: GLaDOS's name is often misspelled "GLADUS" on message boards.
• Grotesque Cute: The turrets — such cute voices. Such infantile dialogue. So polite and apologetic while they machine-gun you to bits dispense product. So much dakka. The Curiosity Core qualifies too.
  Are you still there?
• Hello Insert Name Here
  GLaDOS: Unbelievable! You, (subject name here), must be the pride of (subject hometown here)!
• Hey Its That Voice: (Ellen McLain is the voice of GLaDOS, the Team Fortress 2 announcer, and the Half-Life 2 Combine Overwatch)
• It Was His Sled: (The cake is a lie. Or Is It?)
  • Literal Genie / False Reassurance, variation. There's cake, it's just not for you.
  • You wouldn't want to eat the damn cake.
  • Although there was cake, there's no way Rat Man could have known about it.
• Laser Sight (the turrets)
• Layman's Terms ("speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out")
• Lights Off Their Eyes - GlaDOS' multiple eyes go dark in the end. Are you happy now? She certainly is. Happy to be still alive.
• Load Bearing Boss - Justifiable by the fact that GLaDOS is attached to the ceiling.
• Meaningful Name (Chell, pronounced "shell," as in hollow construct or vessel, which is especially meaningful if you tend to the above Epileptic Tree.) In the Hebrew, Chell is a girl's name meaning "ewe, little lamb, or daughter." Connotations include Chell being led as a lamb to slaughter, being herded or following a herd of identical precursors- as well as tie-ins to the cloning idea (think Dolly), and lending support to the idea that Chell is meant to be seen a daughter-figure to GLaDOS. The fact that there's another Jew referred to as a lamb more than a few times in a certain book is, of course, entirely coincidental. According to the backstory, it was originally a shower-curtain company, and the name was chosen to sound scientific. "Very little actual science is involved."
  • "GLaDOS" stands for "Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System," a standard robot name and an acronym that cutely suggests "Gladys", much like "HAL". However, the Aperture Science website's backstory points out that the initially successful implementation of the "Genetic Lifeform" part took place during "Bring Your Daughter to Work Day". Think about that for a while.
  • Referring to the second theory under Everyone Is Jesus In Purgatory: the theory proposes that Chell's brain was uploaded to the GLaDOS body on Bring Your Daughter to Work Day. If Chell is GLaDOS, then her human memories make up the "Genetic Lifeform" part of the acronym. The computer makes up the "Disk-Operating System" part, essentially creating a half-human/half-computer hybrid. I think.
• Memetic Mutation ("There Will Be Cake," "The Cake Is a Lie," "Now You're Thinking With Portals," and the Weighted Companion Cube)
• Morality Chip (Well, technically a Morality Core)
  "It was a Morality Core they installed after I flooded the Enrichment Center with a deadly neurotoxin to make me stop flooding the Enrichment Center with a deadly neurotoxin."
• Nice Job Breaking It Hero (Trope Namer again)
• No Fair Cheating: The steps, portals, and time challenges. Also, you can't get achievements with cheat mode on.
• Ontological Mystery
• Or Is It The last scene shows GLaDOS' backup orbs turning on.
• Peace And Love Incorporated
• Phlebotinum Rebel
• Portal Cut is averted: If the player tries to put a portal elsewhere when the player is in the middle of a portal, the player gets pushed out. Most of the time. Unless you loosen a security camera, but that's opening a portal.
• Portal Splat gets completely averted, at considerable programmer effort.
• Pressure Plate
• Puzzle Game
• Robo Speak
• Room Full Of Crazy (I <3 Companion Cube.)
• Secret Test Of Character
• Single Player Scam - The ending song implies that the whole thing, including the "putting your life in danger" part, was just a test by the computer.
  • She's not even angry, she is being so sincere right now.
  • Other sides read this as extremely bitter, passive-aggressive sarcasm that she's forced to regenerate elsewhere.
  • The fact that the song is playing on the radio blaring at the very beginning of the test suggests that it all went exactly as planned.
    • Unless, of course, the song itself was just a random song, and the lyrics were written after the events of the game.
    • But what's the fun in that?
• The Stinger (Unusual in that the "extra content" occurs in the credits themselves, yet regardless adds to the game's ambiguous ending.)
• Stupidity Is The Only Option Subverted, in that the only way to progress is to escape from an apparently inescapable trap.
• Super Powered Robot Meter Maids (GLaDOS was originally designed to be a fuel-injection system de-icer. Someone went just a tad overboard.)
  • Likewise, the portal gun was originally intended to be a shower curtain.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial "The Weighted Companion Cube will never threaten to stab you and, in fact, cannot speak."
• Synthesizeritis (Done intentionally in Still Alive.)
• There Will Be Cake (Trope Namer)
• Villainous Breakdown: G La DOS. When you try to invoke This Is My Side during the final boss fight and spend most of said fighting making petty insults, you're broken. Though she may have got better...
• Wreaking Havok

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Thank you for helping us help you help us all. Here is your cake. The antidote will be served in three, two..*bzzt*