Probably a Jerkass anti-hero. It's unlikely he got to be a member of the board thanks to daddy's influence: after all, Ed senior's name should be pretty much mud considering his theft of Flynn's games. Junior probably clawed his way to the top, and it's more likely he despises his father for being a talentless thief.
- Supported by bonus material on the Blu-Ray release. "Junior earned his place. He stays."
- Possibly subverted by hidden bonus content in "The Next Day". It' revealed that he's somehow in contact with the Master Control Program... although he seems to think it's his father.
- My theory is that it is his father. Ed Sr. has discovered the grid, and is now the new Master Control Program.
- Even better theory: Dillenger Snr., after founding Dillinger Systems, discovered the digitization system and attempted his company to create their own. He decided to give it a try himself, only to end up being deconstructed a bit to the point where in order for him to survive, he had to remain inside the computer system (this wouldn't be the first time in the TRON franchise this has happened. In the TRON 2.0 video game, not only did this happen to Thorne (with him becoming a computer virus), but it happened to Lora in the game's timeline as well (Not only is actress Cindy Morgan the voice of Ma3a, the game's hidden lore suggests that Lora had her digitization accident that "killed" her, Alan took the fragments that remained and installed them into Ma3a). So, Dillinger may actually be a User/Program hybrid that can only exist inside the computer system, and is, basically, a User version of the MCP.
- Possibly subverted by hidden bonus content in "The Next Day". It' revealed that he's somehow in contact with the Master Control Program... although he seems to think it's his father.
- Considering that he never derezzed and that he lit back up with "good" colors after hitting the water, I see no reason to think that he's dead in the first place.
- If we consider how the grid works in TRON 2.0, what seems water in the grid is actually a pool of concentrated regenerating energy
- Except the Grid in TRON: Legacy is explicitly NOT the same as that in TRON 2.0 since it's a different continuity, and water in Legacy's Grid acts like, well, water since Flynn programmed his grid to resemble a world more. The programs are not drawing power during the rain scene, for example.
- I have the feeling that helmet is also a life-support system à la Darth Vader (who Tron appears to be an expy of: see Vader Breath, The Faceless, More than Mind Control...); thus he shouldn't have any problems breathing "underwater".
- If we consider how the grid works in TRON 2.0, what seems water in the grid is actually a pool of concentrated regenerating energy
- Of course he is alive. He has Plot Armor; the series is named after him!
- If that wasn't a Sequel Hook, I'll eat my hat.
- Bonus: this also makes their reunion after the Games a hell of a lot creepier, and the relationship between them in general, due to how long CLU has actually been pursuing him.
- Here's something you could do in your free-time. Take the script from the Fort Frolic level of BioShock. Change Sander Cohen's, Andrew Ryan's, Atlas' and Jack's names to Castor/Zuse, Clu, Quorra, and Sam respectively. Then, in specific battle against Cohen's army, replace the Splicers with the Black Guard programs and change the music from Tchaikovsky to Daft Punk. It Makes Sense in Context and would make an already awesome level even more awesome.
- This has been confirmed by Olivia Wilde in an article from MTV..Olivia Wilde: I'm so thrilled to play with Quorra in the human world. It would be sort of like Splash.
(referring to the '80s comedy starring Daryl Hannah as a mermaid unleashed in Manhattan)
I want to see her whispering to laptops and hugging toasters.... There's a whole other chapter ahead. - Bonus points if Dillinger Jr. corrupts Quorra's ISO nature, resulting in a Face–Heel Turn against her will, just after the engagement.
- Semi-Jossed. The Great Purge had already happened by the time Uprising started, though it's referred to as "The ISO Wars." Beck could still possibly be an ISO, as we know that Quorra and a friend were able to escape and go into hiding.
- I didn't notice that, but perhaps, since he's the User of the system, the command history just reflects what he's been doing lately in the Grid. (what was the timestamp on it?) Kevin thinks of himself as a tired old man judging by his first conversation with Quorra, and was at least getting ready for his eventual death.
- No, the history shows what he did in 1989, just before entering the grid. Kevin:
- Edited the source code of the program that controls the digitizing laser
- Compiled and installed the new version of the program
- Ran a "sanity_check" program, likely to ensure the modifications contained no obvious errors
- Ran "configure", outputting a text file (perhaps a new set of laser parameters)
- This is somewhat unusual, because "configure" normally refers to a pre-compilation step. Flynn must just have been using the name for a different stage of the setup process.
- Examined (or possibly edited) the output file
- Edited his last will and testament
- Displayed memory usage statistics
- Displayed all currently running processes
- Killed process #2207 with signal 9 (generally SIGKILL, the most immediate and violent way to terminate a process)
- Killed process #2208 (with the default SIGTERM, which allows the process to execute additional graceful exit code first)
- Displayed all currently running processes, again
- Set the modification time of an "ok" file for the laser to the current time
- Most likely, there was a safety module that would inhibit activation of the laser if any files had mtimes after that of the "ok" file. Thus, touching the "ok" file would be confirming that all settings and code were ready to deploy. If other relevant files were accidentally changed afterward, it would not be possible to accidentally activate the laser without redoing the confirmation.
- Activated the digitizing laser
- It's possible he just made sure all his affairs were in order every time he went into the Grid in case he were to die in a freak Lightcycle accident or something.
- If that's the case why the fuck didn't he tell anyone or leave behind an "in case of emergency" letter?
- Maybe some of those commands, like the "sanity_check" command, were run every time Kevin activated the digitizing laser. Bringing "human form into digital space" may have required him to make sure that the Grid, along with himself, was running properly and nothing out of the ordinary was showing up. Plus, if he HAD thought to leave any letter or message behind, there were very few people who would have taken it seriously because of Flynn's eccentricity.
- No, the history shows what he did in 1989, just before entering the grid. Kevin:
- Actually, we have no idea what programs are capable of when they materialize. Plus, Clu doesn't necessarily have to take over the world militarily. All he'd need to do to fuck us over is to connect the digitizing laser or the Grid to the internet and "rectify" it.
- Well, the phone line in the Arcade is disconnected. He'd have to borrow someone else's.
- Really, all they'd need to do is send a single person into meatspace and hook that computer up to the Internet. If the MCP from the first movie was preparing to overcome a military program (Air Force?) back then, it could be cake with Clu's new virus. Related: Digitized humans seem to keep their human aspects; if a 'real' Clu could infect others from the real world, or have his army infect others like Abraxas from Evolution, then despite its small size it could easily have become a major threat as it spread zombie-style.
- The MCP's plan was to 'hit the Pentagon' a week from that time.
- Of course, the MCP was contemporary to the Pentagon's systems back then. Clu is actually contemporary to computer systems from around the late 80's or early 90's. Especially consider that military programs would be no strangers to the Internet and experienced in cyber warfare, Clu would likely get his ass kicked so hard it would implode before derezzing.
- Not necessarily. Flynn was established as being his universe's computer-age Tesla; absolutely batshit nuts, but light-years ahead of anyone else in terms of the stuff he was cooking up. There's that throw-away line to Sam that he had the concept for wi-fi back in 1985. However, brilliant as he was, Kevin Flynn was an utter idiot when it came to "consequences," and that's what hanged him. (Dear God, he should have at least told Alan or Lora what he was up to as a fail-safe!) His Grid cooked up the ISOs and some A.I. units that would shred the Turing Test. Ghu knows what else Flynn could have cooked up with all that time.
- Also, think about these two factors: 1) time moves faster in the Grid/the virtual world, and 2)any program's first language IS computer language. We, as humans, do not have an instinctive grasp of computer language, nor do we have contact with computer programs as direct and fast as the programs themselves. If Clu or one of his cronies got into a computer system, they'd understand it better than any human ever could (unless that human, like Flynn, had actually been inside a system), and they'd have fifty times the time of a human to put changes into it. To use an analogy, for us, talking to a computer program is like an English speaker with a dictionary texting a Japanese speaker letter by letter: to the program, it's slow and cumbersome. Meanwhile, Clu and his cronies could go in and talk to them in their native language or repurpose them faster than any human ever could. Plus, how easy is it for YOU to detect a computer virus? Not very, that's why we have anti-virus programs, right? Well, anti-virus programs don't work unless they're coded to detect specific viruses, they can't detect anything they're not familiar with. Hell, Clu could probably repurpose an anti-virus program into a mega-virus capable of doing the damage of all the viruses it was programmed to eradicate. Any security programmed could easily be turned into the electronic equivalent of a nuke by Clu.
- That's assuming that all the other computers out there don't have programs that can fight back. Remember, Tron didn't have to have Alan telling him every move to make when he was fighting in the first movie; security software and firewalls should be just as smart and capable of independent action as any Grid program, and possibly a whole lot better at what they do because they've had a whole Internet to train on, not just some petty little civil war in an antique backwater Grid the size of a flash drive.
- The MCP's plan was to 'hit the Pentagon' a week from that time.
- Perhaps the real threat (which probably evaded the writers) is this; Yes, Clu gets out. He's ultimately beaten back, but not before he's caused several thousand casualties. This blows the whole masquerade about the digital world open. You think cyber-warfare and internet crime is ugly in the real world? Just think of how much worse it would be in the setting of that film! This is also assuming we wouldn't collectively burn our computers and every program on them down to Ada Lovelace's punchcards so that it never happens again.
- Due to Year Inside, Hour Outside, it's been 1000 years since Flynn first entered the Grid. Either he shouldn't have aged, or he should have aged 1000 years. Good!Clu could have been created when Flynn had aged 20 years in the virtual world.
- As a User, Flynn follows 'real' time because he's of the Real World. If Flynn entered in '89 and it's now modern-day, he's been in the Grid and aging appropriately for the past twenty-thirty years. Betrayal has him spending plenty of time in both the Grid and the real world; if aging in the Grid happened the way you propose, Flynn would have been showing marked differences in appearance (the comic starts before Sam's birth and continues until soon before Flynn's disappearance) if he aged with the passing of cycles.
- Good!Clu's identity disc wouldn't have been useful for allowing Evil!Clu and his minions to escape the system though, would it? If that was something specific to Kevin Flynn's disc. Note that Sam Flynn's disc apparently wasn't good enough, or Evil!Clu would have been able to escape 30 minutes into the movie.
- Hey, Space Paranoids is part of the Kingdom Hearts universe. Nobodies don't have true emotion, just the memories and echoes of their past emotions. This would explain why Good!Flynn was so "zen" and calm, despite all the crap that happened, and why Sam (a strong memory of paternal love) was the trigger. Likewise, Heartless seem to like staying that way and want to overrun whatever world they're in. When a Nobody and a Heartless merge, the results are also catastrophic.
- But two programs can, with the explosive results we see. This is Good!Clu's Heroic Sacrifice.
- Obviously, Dillinger Jr is going to try and sabotage Sam's efforts and take the company himself due to the blood feud started when his own father was overthrown by Kevin. Bonus points if he's being "encouraged" by Dillinger Sr.
- The seeds for this are actually a sequel hook aside from the ones at the end of the film. Flynn/EncomOS 12 has just recently achieved ''Complete. Global. Saturation.'' It is also the "most secure OS ever", thanks to Dillinger's work on it. Dillinger presumably has access to his father's files, and while the system eventually rebelled because AI Is A Crap Shoot, the MCP was a very secure system. Given TRON: Legacy used its budget to revamp just about everything from the old films in glorious new shininess, the sequel has a perfect excuse to both link the Grid to the Web (to combat the resurgent MCP, lying hidden in EOS12), and to bring back both the MCP and Sark, as Dillinger Sr. created the original Sark and would thus be able to recreate him like Flynn did Clu. This ironically would add a bit of Nice Job Breaking It, Hero to Sam's initial prank on Encom in the prologue, as distributing EOS12 for free to everyone ensured that it (and the MCP) would spread worldwide. Assuming other WMGs are accurate (and Disney can get Jeff Bridges back for another film), it's entirely possible that a dream-team of Sam, Flynn, Quorra, Tron, and Clu 3.0 could be the Five-Man Band set to take down the return of their old nemesis.
- Holy crap, does this theory ever rule.
- Except most Grids are connected to the web. Every computer has a Grid in it. However, given that the civilian internet at the time of TRON wasn't anything to speak of, the MCP attempting to take it over would be an interesting plot, as well as an excuse to show how the Web is represented in Grid form. We saw an Internet hub in TRON 2.0, but that game isn't technically in the same canon.
- The seeds for this are actually a sequel hook aside from the ones at the end of the film. Flynn/EncomOS 12 has just recently achieved ''Complete. Global. Saturation.'' It is also the "most secure OS ever", thanks to Dillinger's work on it. Dillinger presumably has access to his father's files, and while the system eventually rebelled because AI Is A Crap Shoot, the MCP was a very secure system. Given TRON: Legacy used its budget to revamp just about everything from the old films in glorious new shininess, the sequel has a perfect excuse to both link the Grid to the Web (to combat the resurgent MCP, lying hidden in EOS12), and to bring back both the MCP and Sark, as Dillinger Sr. created the original Sark and would thus be able to recreate him like Flynn did Clu. This ironically would add a bit of Nice Job Breaking It, Hero to Sam's initial prank on Encom in the prologue, as distributing EOS12 for free to everyone ensured that it (and the MCP) would spread worldwide. Assuming other WMGs are accurate (and Disney can get Jeff Bridges back for another film), it's entirely possible that a dream-team of Sam, Flynn, Quorra, Tron, and Clu 3.0 could be the Five-Man Band set to take down the return of their old nemesis.
- It's indicated that the discs contain a complete copy of a program's capabilities and memories. This seems to apply to humans on the grid as well; Clu reviews Sam's pre-Grid memories. Since Sam escaped the Grid with his dad's disc, he essentially has a backup copy of his father. That may be what he copied to the memory card at the end.
- Sam Flynn to someone at Encom who's about to pop that memory card into their digital camera: "Oh hey, please don't use that one. You might accidentally delete something, and it has my father's soul on it."
- Matter, even inside a computer, cannot be created or destroyed. Just changed from one form to another.
- He may have all of Flynn's memories, but it's unlikely that he just wants to kill Sam to get those messy feelings out of the way. He didn't even know Sam had entered the Grid until he showed up in the disc battle arena. The light cycle game was just a public announcement to bait whatever of Flynn's agents are witness (in this case, Quorra) that Sam's on the grid now ("It wasn't meant for them"). It's a Batman Gambit to get Sam and Flynn together to goad Flynn back onto the grid so he can get a chance to snatch Flynn's identity disk.
- Word of God might actually support this. Lisberger actually went on record in saying that Programs retain at least some memories and emotional impressions from their Users. He even told Cindy Morgan that Yori actually has some memories of Lora's relationship with Flynn. Clu, set up to be Flynn's avatar on the Grid, would likely have even more than that. This may also be why Flynn failed to see Clu had gone off the rails until it was way too late; he assumed Clu had his sense of ethics and shared his love of the Grid.
- Easy! Do it in the style of loony conspiracy theorists making wild claims based on thin associations of words and symbols. Let's see, the first syllable of "Rinzler" sounds like "rinse," which is an action related to "washing," which is the second part of "brainwashing," which Tron was subjected to to turn him into Rinzler!
- "Rinz" sounds like "Rez", as in "De-Rezzed", which is what Tron/Rinzler does to his opponents in the games. Clu dubbed him "'Rezzer", which eventually morphed into "Rinzler".
- Simpler: Clu just used a name that didn't sound like "Tron" after he repurposed him.
- Alternatively, "Rinzler" was the name of the derezzed Blackguard whose disc Tron took.
- There's a news article out there that explains the name (I think it may be on io9, but I can't remember). Basically, the writers were looking for an alias that didn't sound anything like Tron. After thinking about it for awhile, one of the writers saw the name Rinzler on a "Making of Star Wars" book on his coffee table (Rinzler was the author's last name I believe) and it stuck.
- According to this fanart (pic is SFW, but site is not), it's an acronym for "Remote Integrated Neural Zip Linked Enemy Redactor," which... actually makes quite a bit of sense. Also, acronyms-as-names seem to be popular in the Grid (CLU, MCP, etc.)
- Alternatively, the carrier (and, thus, its occupants) would have been resized to fit...
- Alternatively alternatively, sending the carrier through the Portal would have resulted in a disaster... for the real world. When Clu looks at the experiences stored in Sam's disc, he sees everything Sam saw: even where the Portal would have led. So, Clu would have presumably exited the Grid alone, masqueraded as Kevin Flynn for a little while to get the people's trust, moved the digitizing laser to an open space, and only then he would have started the invasion.
He is obviously a Timelord a Cylon The Stig.
Think about it.
- Some say that one of his data streams are longer than the other.
- Some say that he thought System Shock was a documentary.
- Some say that he's the one who started the war between pig and bird, and that he's the reason Pac-Man became a Ms.
- It would also explain Clu's behavior: that the ISOs could create programs where he couldn't (he could only derezz or "rectify"), mimicking Satan's hatred of Humanity when God shifted His love to them.
- If the ISOs could reproduce, it could also explain the Fantastic Racism that led to their genocide; to a Program, it would make them akin to viruses or gridbugs - threats that would overwhelm and crowd out to Programs with sheer numbers, the way some racists today shriek about how the "wrong" people are outbreeding the "right" people. It would also explain partly why Flynn Sr. was so delighted by them; at the time they came out of the Sea, he was excitedly preparing for fatherhood.
- Given the timeflow difference between the two realms, how could he take anyone to the Grid? In the real world, the person is zapped. In the Grid about 8 hours passes before the beam shuts down and access closes. Back in the real world, it's only open for a few microseconds. The first person in would reappear in the real world before the second one could even start to sit down in front of the beam.
- I thought the "8 hours" referred to real-world time, or 13 days 6 hours of Grid time.
- Kevin did state that the beam was only open a few microseconds real-time.
- The portal can be keyed to remain open longer if Kevin wants it to be. In Betrayal Kevin assembles a device to notify him while he's in the Grid if his wife is about to deliver her baby. He wouldn't need this unless he was going to spend a prolonged period in the Grid in terms of "fleshy" time.
- He may have been planning to take Sam into the Grid, but it wasn't to meet Quorra. Kevin didn't save Quorra until after the Purge, which was after CLU's coup and Kevin was trapped.
- The impression I got was that Flynn aged in real time.Sam: Hi dad. Long time no see...Kevin: *chuckles* You have no idea...
- This one is disproved by the run-time clock on the terminal screen, it's display reading 20 years, 11 months, 20 days, 16 hours, 22 minutes, 16 seconds, and 34 hundredths of a second right as Sam wipes the dust off (thanks YouTube!).
Another related possibility is that they are shown that way for sake of the audience. It's similar to movies with talking animals. We're not supposed to imagine that animals really are sentient with the full implications of that—it's not slavery to keep chickens or murder to swat bugs, even in A Bug's Life. It's just a way of letting us relate to the characters. Likewise, these are just computer programs.
- The first movie's novel and the supplemental comic books appear to Joss this one. The Programs interact, form opinions, and have a functional (albeit somewhat odd) society of their own. Master Control was also plenty intelligent, including knowing how to blackmail Dillinger into keeping his mouth shut regarding the MCP's plan to Take Over the World and tricking Flynn into letting down his guard long enough to get him zapped.
- How much of that wasn't just an artefact of intended audience perception, though? Master Control, being far bigger and more powerful than the other programs, is more understandably rendered sapient, or is at least a powerful enough artificial intelligence to pass the Turing Test and then some. Arguably it seems impossible to imagine any of that running on '80s hardware, or even modern hardware, but for Willing Supsension Of Disbelief.
- The original film would disprove this idea. Even before Flynn shows up, Ram was trying to catch Crom up on the basics, and there was a signifigant portion of the film where we were following Tron and Yori, with Flynn otherwise occupied. TRON: Uprising tosses this one completely out the window, since all the characters are Programs (aside from Quorra and Ada showing up in Paige's flashback, and Cutler's appearances), Flynn's long gone to cower in exile, and the Programs are treated as sentient, living beings.
- For the original film, it could be a very strong form of Translation Convention for the viewer- the characters depicted on-screen representing what the actual programs are doing in-system, but shown as the characters Flynn experienced so the viewer can identify with what is going on. Likely anything after the original film is running on the far more advanced systems designed by Flynn in the first place.
There's a great little scene in the first flick where Walter Gibbs (Encom's founder) is chewing out Dillinger, and part of his rant is that "Our spirit remains in every program we create for this system!" Flynn goes down the digital rabbit hole and finds doppelgangers of the people he knows who are oddly similar to them, and yet developed in an entirely different direction. This mixed with Word of God saying that Programs retain emotional impressions and personality traits from their User...and it looks like what Gibbs said metaphorically is actually quite literal. This is also why Flynn had to sadly admit to his son that "[Clu] is me."
- Not necessarily. Users don't become digital on the grid (they are still human and bleed when cut, not disintegrate.) You don't see Quorra do anything in the real world except ride a motorcycle. She could still be digital.
- Clu began as a digital copy of Flynn, who, while flippant and immature, wasn't evil. Somehow, though, his personality manifested as far more aggressive, assertive, obsessive, proactive, driven, etc.
- Kevin clearly is doing some Abiding in the time he's stuck on the grid, and has turned into a chilled-out zen master in the same time that Clu has not really changed at all and/or gotten crazier. "Knocking on the sky and listening to the sound?" Is that what we're calling it, Disney?
- If there is an exploitable Ballmer Peak for alcohol, you can bet marijuana has one too, and Flynn is riding it.
- Does anyone remember the scene in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby where it is revealed that the mantra passed down from the protagonist's father that he's lived by and has ended up really messing his life up with doesn't even mean anything to the father and was bestowed as a directive when the dad was really baked? Clu and his need to create the perfect system takes this to the extreme.
- Unix-like operating system? Check.
- Operating system called "OS" followed by a numeral? Check.
- Prominent touch screen technology? Check.
- Employees using Apple computers (in the first movie)? Check.
- Which all makes the thinly-veiled Take That! at Microsoft in the film deliciously ironic.
- Not to mention, Clu flashes back/freaks out while gazing into a glass apple...
- ... Would that make Daft Punk's characters iTunes?
- Probably not, but it's an amusing thought.
- Also from the first movie, we learn that Encom was started by the founder in his garage. Guess which other company was started off in the garage of one of its founders?
- Yeah, I know, Hewlett-Packard...
- He does look pretty shocked and horrified when Clu's guys start setting bombs... but then again, Castor could have just been acting shocked so that Clu wouldn't suspect anything. As soon as Clu and company were out the door, Castor and Gem split. And entertaining the theory that Castor knew Clu could betray him, he could have set up some sort of secret escape route or something.
- Also, he brags to Sam about how how had the stairs to his private office constructed. Seems reasonable he'd have some other self-serving adaptions as well. (And why pass up the chance to see Beau Garrett in skin-tight white latex again?)
- I predict that Zuse and/or Gem not only survived, but will return in the third movie, having made a Heel–Face Turn because of Clu's betrayal.
- Jossed hard. Sam's mother was n architect named Jordan Canas. In fact, she designed ENCOM Tower, meaning she had to have been alive before the events of the first movie. She's featured somewhat regularly in TRON: Betrayal.
- If you want to go with the idea that the events of Tron 2.0 aren't completely thrown into Canon Discontinuity, then Alan's seen Cyberspace and knows how insanely dangerous it is.
- Alan would already know how a Shiva Laser would work, or know who to ask. Remember the first film; Lora co-invented the laser with Walter Gibbs and Flynn had fuck-all to do with the laser other than swiping one for personal use. If Alan stumbled on that laser, one phone call to his wife would give him most of the rundown on how it all worked.
Mostly going here because the idea of a Sam-Jet-Quorra Power Trio (or a Four Temperment Ensemble if you add Mercury) is just too good not to imagine. However...
Think on it: If F-Con did their homework, they might have figured Flynn was onto something after Digital Frontier was published. Even better, Word of God from Monolith states that F-Con's CEO is Dillinger Sr., who already knew about Master Control's sentience and plans. The Ghost In The Machine comic (written in 2003) also says Flynn mysteriously vanished after a few years back in the analog world. In the game itself, Tron's gone Chekhov M.I.A. — retiring after Master Control's defeat with no one in any system knowing where he vanished to. Better, Alan's slated upgrade to his program was suspended in 1984, on Flynn's orders. In the game, it's never stated why, but if you go with the Legacy canon, it would have been right about the point where the Grid was being constructed.
In Tron 2.0's Back Story, Master Control ran the digitizer. When it was destroyed, Encom was forced to rebuild the laser algorithms from scratch. However, Flynn's pattern was likely stored, meaning he was the only one who could get in and out. So, quietly, he appropriates one of the backup lasers (you never have one of an expensive experiment like that) and uses it to experiment on his own. This would also help explain why he didn't tell anyone - without those algorithms, no one could follow him safely.
Sometime between Flynn's vanishing act and the events of 2.0, F-Con (Dillinger Sr.) acquired a lot of what should have been proprietary information about the laser. Did Flynn's "in case I vanish" notes and letter get stolen as an act of corporate espionage? Worse, you need to have access to a phone line to contact a pager. So, where did Clu score a modem? There are also the matters of Datawraiths and F-Con personnel (Crown, Popoff, and Baza) who were never retrieved from the system. Top it off with the lock in the arcade basement. The key in the lock was far too shiny to have been sitting there since 1989; someone else had access. Did Clu have some "friends on the other side?"
Lora also got Put on a Bus to Washington DC, but we have no idea what happened after that, and she's conspicuously absent in Legacy-verse, aside from an appearance in the ARG. Maybe the accident mentioned in 2.0 happened, but with a less-fatal, (but still damaging), result? And if you did some Canon Welding with the two, it's entirely possible that Alan started putting a lot more time and effort into Roy's "under the table" effort after seeing cyberspace for himself...
- Maybe Jethro "Jet" Bradley exists in the film's continuity as well. Would make a lot of sense that if the story had continued, Jet could have been worked into things, such as him being the one who supplied Sam info on the Encom Press Conference for Space Paranoids Online (since Jet does work in the gaming division of Encom, there's a good chance he probably copied the memo to Sam's e-mail). It would make sense that if the films had continued, Jet would be the Han Solo to Sam's Luke Skywalker. And unlike Sam's fighting ability, Jet would be more proficient at weapons based more on firearms due to his years of being a gamer.
- Some of Sam's stunts definitely needed a wingman to pull off. Who better to hold Sam's proverbial beer? To say nothing of the Wild Mass Guess circulating around that Jet somehow had a hand in creating Beck. If the events of 2.0 did happen, Jet and Sam would also have very different views about Programs and Users. Remember that Sam saw no "good" Programs with his father (the "good" User) betrayed and murdered by them. Jet was actively working with and helped by Programs in a fight against Thorne and the Datawraiths, meaning he saw mostly good Programs and evil Users.
- Well, since the film borrows a lot of story elements from TRON 2.0 (seriously, TRON 2.0 features coding called "TRON Legacy"), it's safe to say the actual events in the game may not be canon. However, this could be an alternate timeline in which TRON 2.0 never happened, but the character of Jet still exists. Both Sam and Jet may have been friends to the point where they were like brothers, and Jet could understand what Sam was going through (especially with an aspect of being stuck in your father's shadow), which would be part of why he would help Sam out (even though Jet may have moved on from childish pranks, he still cares about his friend enough to help him). Jet may have made Beck, but he would have been really young when he did so, maybe hinting at him being a potential child prodigy (this would make the scene at the start of the game, where Alan calls Jet and is disappointed about him turning down the programming position, into a whole new light, as Alan would want Jet to become more than just a game programmer). But if another TRON film had come out and Jet had been introduced in the film, it could have incorporated more of the events seen in the TRON 2.0 game (such as the take over of Encom, now being done by Dillenger Systems instead of fCom), and having Jet trying to save his family and the company from inside the Encom grid (much similar to how he does in the game) while Sam and Quorra are trying to help from the outside.
- Some of Sam's stunts definitely needed a wingman to pull off. Who better to hold Sam's proverbial beer? To say nothing of the Wild Mass Guess circulating around that Jet somehow had a hand in creating Beck. If the events of 2.0 did happen, Jet and Sam would also have very different views about Programs and Users. Remember that Sam saw no "good" Programs with his father (the "good" User) betrayed and murdered by them. Jet was actively working with and helped by Programs in a fight against Thorne and the Datawraiths, meaning he saw mostly good Programs and evil Users.
Assume that Master Control was defeated, but not destroyed. His "take over the virtual and analog worlds" plans had a serious setback. It's not a total loss, though. He's still got piles of embezzled cash from the corporations he took over. He's got access to all kinds of computer networks (which will only increase with the invention of TCP/IP and modern computer networking) plenty of time, and many, many reasons to have a serious grudge against the Flynn/Baines/Bradley Power Trio and any of their Programs. So, he waits, lies low, and gathers strength as computing technology improves. Flynn builds The Grid, and it's almost, but not quite an isolated system (after all, it could still send a signal to Alan's pager). Master Control sees an opportunity, and starts playing Supreme Leader Snoke to Clu's "Kylo Ren", listening to the Administrator's frustrations, being his "friend," making the odd suggestion on what he can do to that careless User and his precious Isos...(Remember, Flynn vanishes in both timelines, making the events of Legacy entirely plausible in 2.0 continuity)
Okay, now Flynn's out of the way, and Tron's not going to be a threat (at least not until after Argon's destroyed), time to turn his attention to Alan and Lora. Arrange for an "accident" in the laser lab to take Lora out of the picture (either death or injury, depending on timeline), and keep Alan isolated in one form or another. And all that embezzled corporate cash and company secrets? Let's start making a company of his own, one specializing in "secure" offsite data storage (all the better for him to go snooping). Hire Crown, Baza, and Popoff to be the fronts there, plant Dillinger Junior and J. D. Thorne as moles inside Encom, and start setting things up for his minions to get Shiva technology and send their army into Cyberspace while Clu gears up to try and invade the analog world. Whichever of them succeeds, Master Control wins and gets revenge. Unfortunately for him, the Spin-Offspring are just a little too good at screwing up well-made plans.
- Sam was joking. He sees a guy that looks just like the toy he had as a child, and jokes that he has a three-inch version of him on his shelf. He wasn't meaning an exact copy.
- It's entirely possible that many Programs look alike, especially Programs that came from the same User-Creator, much like the Echani in Star Wars Legends where all same-sex siblings look identical to an outsider. A Program's circuity patterns and body language would be used to tell one another apart.
- Walter Gibbs was a Son of Ether, the tradition of Mad Science. He founded the company as a front to find and Awaken others with the game gifts. Inventing the laser was just another experiment to that end. He was just on the verge of awakening Lora by trying to get her to question reality. ("Here goes something, here comes nothing.") Unfortunately, he was so busy with that aspect of his mission that he let Ed Dillinger, an agent of the Technocracy, infiltrate and try to shut down his experiments. The Technocracy often uses the same magic they're ostensibly trying to stop, hence why Dillinger's avatars in cyberspace were trying to get the Programs to not believe in their creators. Flynn had the potential to be the most powerful Virtual Adept in existence if he were allowed to awaken. Hence why Dillinger had to resort to stealing Flynn's work, getting him fired, and then having the MCP attempt killing him. He just hadn't counted on two things - Alan Bradley being an awakening Virtual Adept in his own right (both his security Program and the Holy Hand Grenade of a Deadly Disc he uploaded), and that the trip into cyberspace backfired spectacularly. Gibbs was finally able to step away and entrust the real mission of Encom with what was now the most powerful Virtual Adept ever.
- I don't know about squicky, since neither one of them knows the other one very well at all, so they wouldn't have any ingrained prejudices against a relationship. But, if this were real life, they could easily turn out to not be attracted to each other and settle down into a friendly relationship, rather than romantic. Of course, Hollywood abhors a story without a romantic angle in it, so that's not likely to happen. We are not shown any of Sam's preferences or reactions to judge what he would be interested in. For all we know, he could be Straight Gay.
- Yet. Even if we suppose they are analogously Like Brother and Sister, there's the real-life phenomenon of Genetic Sexual Attraction to consider when it comes to Real Life separated siblings. It could be that since Quorra developed inside a computer world, she doesn't behave as human with any sexual desires, but once she takes form in meatspace, might that change?
- Quorra is only really indirectly related to Sam by the fact that she was created as a byproduct of the system his father made. That Flynn took her under his wing is more akin to a teacher/apprentice relationship, or possibly adoption since he didn't start acting like all of the ISOs were his children. She's also not very much like him in personality either, being a bit overly literal, naive, and excitedly curious about everything while he's more of a cool-headed tinkerer who likes to pull things apart, especially programs. There would be no similar genetics for them to be attracted to either, since she is literally an isomorphic digital construct that was created as a result of the Grid's procedural generation algorithm. And other media like Uprising hint at sexuality existing for programs, with the original movie having a cut scene that would have literally shown Tron and Yori meeting for a G-rated tryst. I think they simply wanted to show Sam and Quorra's relationship in a more realistic light. It appears as if they have the beginnings of a budding romance, but it doesn't end in them ending up together by the end of the movie because they still only met a short time ago.
- What the hell have you been smoking?
- No smoking. Just read KinkMemes for both and tried to think of the wildest idea that would still warrant a G rating.
- Gem saw Sam at very close range. All she'd have to do is show Zuse her disc and he would have gotten a closeup of his face. Now, how the rebellious program knew who he was is a different question...
- Then how did it work on Tron?
- He was significantly weaker then usual at the time due to just having been stabbed in the face creating a whole host of vulnerabilities as his core program started to crash.
- Specifically he will be a villain only due to manipulation by a new version of the MCP pretending to be his missing father. In a dark reflection of Sam, Jr. will be trying to help his father only to be duped by an equivalent of CLU who has been masquerading as a now reclusive Dillinger Sr.
So, we have Clu, who wants the perfect system, and is reaching the final stage of the bigger plan. He could use some assistance, but a bunch of rectified drones and ass-kissing sycophants simply will not do. He has all of Flynn's memories up to the point of his creation. And who was Flynn's right-hand man? His Lancer? The guy whose Establishing Character Moment was pulling a Xanatos Gambit on both Master Control and Dillinger? That would be Alan "Alan-1" Bradley. Flynn was the big ideas man, but Alan was the guy who turned the big ideas into workable reality. If Clu wanted to Take Overthe World, he would need Alan or someone with that kind of skillset.
Alan would also solve another issue Clu had; Rinzler. Clu never quite worked the bugs out on his rectified Dragon. And could help work the bugs out of Rinzler? And all it would take is dialing a pager? So maybe he gets Alan, sits him down at a table, discusses an offer he can't refuse, and "sweetens" the deal by showing him "Rinzler." Now, he has a User to assist him, and the best leverage possible to use against his buggy enforcer. No matter how Brainwashed and Crazy Tronzler is, it's not like he's going to allow any harm to come to his creator/personal deity. And Alan would probably be just as unwilling to allow further harm to come to his virtual "son"
- It would be great to see Elijah Wood as Beck and not just voicing him this time.
- Even better if Elijah Wood also played Jethro "Jet" Bradley, since many have theorized that Beck was a program Jet made. Also, it would be an interesting to see the dynamic between TRON/Beck and Alan/Jet as a result.
It's very unlikely that the vast majority of programs running on early '80s computers would be complex enough to appear as fully sentient beings, with the MCP being the only exception as it is clearly becoming sentient in the 'real world' too. (This is an anomaly really unless the world of TRON is several decades more advanced technologically than the real world, which the story doesn't really seem to allow for all that much- honestly, only Flynn thought of wi-fi back in '85 yet we have sentient programs and dematerialising laser devices?). It's far more likely that the computer world of the first movie is a dream-rationalisation produced by Flynn's mind interacting with the computer, in which he "sees" the simple programs as if they were real people. But the experience would leave a lasting impression on Flynn, enough for him to recreate it as a means of pursuing his own lines of research on far more advanced hardware several years down the line, possibly specially developed for the task.
Finding a badly injured Tron with the help of Anon, Yori started her investigations into helping wherever she could to rescue Flynn and help them stop Clu. Naturally, this is the time of the Purge that leads to the great holocaust of Isos - Alan and Lora arrived too late to see on the Grid interface that Yori in helping Anon and Flynn save a young Quorra, was derezzed. Tron, like Flynn, went into hiding within Argon City - but he and Flynn took some of Yori's memories with them in their solitudes until Tron was re-purposed into Rinzler around 2008.
While all digitized humans become incredibly powerful inside cyberspace, and have a "base" set of abilities (higher energy storage, more durability), the rest of their powers can vary wildly and reflect who they are as a person in their own world. Flynn was a consummate manipulator (look how fast he was able to talk both his ex and his ex's fiance into a six-felony night or how loyal they are to him even 20 years after he vanishes!), so his abilities reflected that. He manipulated matter (the Recognizer), energy (draining Sark's Mook, the transport beam), and even pulled a Jedi Mind Trick of sorts on the guard in Tron Legacy.
In TRON 2.0, Thorne was relatively powerless and frustrated with his life in the human world, and was vulnerable to corruption by F-con, who promised great riches and power. Once he got into the digital one, he instantly indulged both his desire for power and inner corruption by becoming "Master User Thorne," and corrupting a horde of Programs into PlagueZombies. On the flip side of the coin, Jethro Bradley did everything he could to avoid power and his abilities centered on using what was already available (archive bins, downloads), including being able to wield corruption-based weaponry without becoming corrupt himself. The only hint we get about what Alan Bradley may have developed is seen when he is able to analyze the Wraith server's schematics and plot out a plan to take it down from the inside - then again, he wasn't in the system for very long.
In TRON: Legacy, Sam is shown to be adept at breaking and entering, dangerous stunts, and fighting. It's also implied that he's inward-facing as a result of his abandonment issues. It's entirely likely that he was drawing on User abilities in both the Games and in other combat situations, enhancing his strength, speed, reaction time, and subconsciously "reading" his enemies for weaknesses. It also allowed him to get into places he shouldn't have been able to access - like Clu's control room.
- There is also the fact that we have no guarantee The Grid's tech and powers would work in meatspace, remember it is implied that Quorras DNA is the "miracle" Flynn is talking about, not any special powers she might have within the Grid, so, possibly, Clu gets to the real world, brings his army, and all he has is a bunch of soldiers in funny armor and no weapons.
- Sam's only met hostile (whether brainwashed or just evil) programs, while Kevin and Jet have met many who were good people and would likely get along just fine with ISOs. Maybe there could be an ISO version of the Brotherhood of Mutants from X-Men who are so disillusioned with programs in general that they want to wipe them out, and maybe Sam could find himself wanting to join their side, only to encounter Kevin, an un-brainwashed Tron, and/or even Jet, who tell(s) him that it's not as black-and-white as he thinks, and that wiping out the programs is just as bad as wiping out the ISOs. The movie would either end with a Grid where programs and ISOs can coexist in harmony, prosperity, and happiness or with the characters working towards that world, setting up further adventures in this ever-evolving virtual world.