History WMG / Portal

* Let's assume that Cave-Prime is right and that he IS actually Cave-Prime. It doesn't seem that far-fetched, really. Most alternate universe counterparts of Cave are CrazyIsCool ComedicSociopath BadBoss leaders of their versions of Aperture, each with their own Greg. Assuming all Caves follow this template, the Cave in the main story seems like a perfect fit... save for the fact that he doesn't have a Greg. However he DOES have an assistant: Caroline. Perhaps this [[ForWantOfANail one small factor]] is what caused our Cave to diverge from the Cave-Prime timeline, especially since most of the other alternate Caves seem to be alive and well in their universes, unlike our Cave.

[[WMG: The series is a retelling of ''WALL•E'']]

''Portal 2'' takes place only 20 or 30 years after ''Portal'', allowing Chell to meet Freeman without time travel. They'll team up and fight the Combine. Gameplay will be similar to ''VideoGame/FEAR3'', with the ability to switch between Chell and Freeman; Chell is unarmed or equipped only with a sidearm but can place portals, while Freeman plays like a standard FPS protagonist but is unable to place portals. It will be a combination puzzle game and FPS, allowing you to use portals and Aperture technology against your foes while also just shooting them. ''And it will be [[RuleOfCool amazing]]''.

* Somewhat, sort of confirmed. When the The Final Hours of Portal 2 was updated to contain content on Peer Review, it was mentioned that one of the early ideas for the new co-op course was to have ATLAS and P-Body go to space to get Wheatley (presumably so [=GLaDOS=] could torture him some more). So at least Valve is thinking about bringing him back.

* ...somehow related to Chane Laforet from LightNovel/{{Baccano}}. Think about it: neither one of them can talk, they're both extremely bad-ass, and they even kinda look a like.

That way they can call it [[IncrediblyLamePun Portal Cubed]].

** [[spoiler: Is the daughter of Cave Johnson and his wife, but due to Cave not giving a Rat[[IncrediblyLamePun tman]]'s ass about work safety he can't father children (some fucked up chemical made this poor bastard sterile), nor can his wife due to... some other stuff, maybe illness or something. So he asks some employee of Asian ancestry for the sperm (that's why Chell looks Asian), Caroline for the egg (that's why she resembles Caroline. Caroline had clearly a great admiration for Cave Johnson, probably romantic feeling and thought to have his child, by proxy), does an in vitro fertilisation and lets the egg implant into his wife. She carries her to full term, gives birth and, coupla years latter, brings Chell to her workplace (probably his wife remarried to a scientist in the biology department, that's why the "special ingredient from Dad's work" made Chell's potato grow to such proportions or the stuff is from Cave's old experiments, continued by his daughter). From the perspective of Caroline, Chell is to a certain degree also her daughter, probably she also became the godmother, because the Johnsons were so insanely grateful to her for giving her the opportunity to have a child.]]

Dysarthia is (this is a rough summary; check Wiki/TheOtherWiki for a better description) a brain injury that affects the ability to control the muscles that allow you to speak .... which actually makes a good deal of sense, when you think about it Perhaps in the first game, as WordOfGod says, Chell is just stubborn, but by the time the second game rolls around the time spent in suspension has given her some brain damage.

[[WMG: Cave Johnson got the Portal technology form the magician of the Pixar short "WesternAnimation/{{Presto}}"]]

* ''A Psychotic {{Cloudcuckoolander}}.'' See [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xgncUYbzMA Chell’s]] [[Machinima/FreemansMind Mind.]]

[[WMG: Following on from the above, the ''Portal'' series is [[UpToEleven deliberately and outrageously]] [[FreudWasRight Freudian]].]]

* [[http://www.dorkly.com/picture/15029/chell-freeman-eve-wall-e This]] may be relevent.

[[WMG: The test subjects at the Aperture Science Enrichment Center are injected with NanoBots before entering the testing area.]]

* A robot: it would explain the healing factor if she had some kind of subdermal armor, like a T-101.

[[WMG: [[Franchise/{{Halo}} Cortana]] is the end result of the technology researched by [[{{VideoGame/Portal}} Aperture Science]] ]]

[[WMG: [=GlaDOS=] gassed the Enrichment center because she was upset about what Cave did to Caroline.]]
[=GlaDOS=] woke up angry and gassed the Enrichment Center not because she was just some insane AI, like we're led to believe, but because the last thing that happened before the personality download was her being "raped". Judging by the deleted audio, she was quite upset. She wanted vengeance, and though she wasn't sure why she was upset, she decided to kill everyone inside the Enrichment Center.

[[WMG:As a corollary to the above, it turns out that bird [[TheChessmaster is really the one pulling all the strings]], and tried to destroy the facility.]]

[[WMG:Portal 2's relocation of the setting is not strictly a retcon.]]

[[WMG:Further speculation.]]

[[WMG:Portal 2 only takes part 30 years after Portal 1]]

[[WMG:At one point, [=GLaDOS=] planned on uploading Chell's brain into an AI.]]

[[folder:General II]]

* Glados mentions that Wheatley was added to make her stupid and give her bad ideas. It was after Wheatley was added that she cracked completely and had the terrible idea of testing everybody all at once. This explains why Wheatley is in such denial when she tells him - she's not just telling him he's stupid, but that he's the reason everybody's dead.

* [[spoiler: Since Caroline is part of [=GLaDOS=], that "eager" act was all a facade. That "Goodbye Caroline" quip was her sarcasm leaking. After Caroline uploaded, [=GLaDOS=] snapped, fed up with all of the pent-up anger, and tried to kill the people who had forced Caroline's head into a computer, as a result of her rage at trying to force a human into her mind. After a while, she was so bent on revenge on the staff that she started testing them, but got so into it she forgot her purpose. Chell helped her remember it, but Caroline, now a little more rational and emotional, reasoned it's best not to pursue killing her. [=GLaDOS=] lied about deleting Caroline, but she's still a sadist. This of course means that Caroline has much more control over [=GLaDOS=] than we thought, and that it was always Caroline who was sadistic.]]

** Glados deleted the insane Caroline so that Caroline could have peace and so that Glados could be free of the desire for revenge, and let Chell go.

[[WMG:Aperture Science kept itself afloat through conventional means while testing absurdly advanced hyper-tech]]

[[WMG:Aperture Science sold ''some'' of its products, but not many]]

[[WMG:Aperture Science is Dilbert's ideal work environment]]

[[WMG:Portal 3 will be an MMO]]

[[WMG:Portal takes place in a parallel history, like ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2''.]]

[[WMG:Caroline is still alive.]]

[[WMG:In universe, [=GLaDOS=] didn't sing Still Alive until after Portal 2.]]

''Portal 2'' takes place only 20 or 30 years after ''Portal'', allowing Chell to meet Freeman without time travel. They'll team up and fight the Combine. Gameplay will be similar to ''[[VideoGame/FirstEncounterAssaultRecon F.E.A.R. 3]]'', with the ability to switch between Chell and Freeman; Chell is unarmed or equipped only with a sidearm but can place portals, while Freeman plays like a standard FPS protagonist but is unable to place portals. It will be a combination puzzle game and FPS, allowing you to use portals and Aperture technology against your foes while also just shooting them. ''And it will be [[RuleOfCool amazing]]''.

Fastforward to game time, and Caroline/ [=GLaDOS=] both hates Chell as what she percieves as the destroyer of the man she loved, and loves her as the only surviving remnant of him.

[[WMG: [=GLaDOS'=] will send Atlas and P-Body to find a new human test subject]]

[[WMG: [=GLaDOS'=] body is hardcoded to give humans a chance to shut her down]]

Chell's the "last bag of real confetti", meaning she is the last available human test subject. The rest of the quote, "Part of me's going to miss it, but in the end it was just taking up space", would apply to Chell as much as it would to a bag of confetti, especially considering [=GLaDOS'=] attitude towards Chell at the end. Also, notice how she specifies that the surprise has ''tragic consequences''.

[[folder:General III]]

[[WMG:Portal 3 will feature Mel.]]

We know so little of Test Subject 234, except one thing: they are the only successful test subject outside of Chell. It could be possible that the reason why GlaDOS keeps mentioning cake is because while in stasis, test subjects are subconsciously brainwashed to where the promise of cake is meant be used as a psychological term to cause test subjects to continue to test, even against their own reservations or self-preservation. Test Subject 234 may have figured this out and started scribbling the message not only as a means to try to break the programming in their own head, but to also warn other test subjects of the programming as well prior to their escape from the facility. Rattmann then came across the message, to which he then adopted the message and continued with it for a bit, as well as providing more information for any test subjects that are awaken.

[[WMG: The Earth Chell escapes up to is [[VideoGame/Destiny after the collapse]]

* Wheatley is not an Intelligence Dampening Sphere; we saw that one flushed in Portal 1. He is a COWARD sphere. He was created to make Glados too scared to rebel. Wheatley was certainly a little voice in her head holding her back and saying stupid things. But not quite the way she thought. Of course when you've just been ripped out of your CPU and are pushed into a potato, you're not really in a position to get the fine details right.

He fully intended to take over the facility from the start because he thought he was better than Glados. Clearly he wasn't. He just didn't expect to be driven insane by the experience and become addicted to testing.

While lesser mass produced machines such as turrets and extension frankenturrets are vulnerable to Paradoxes, Personality Cores like Wheatley and [=GlaDOS=] can not be taken out by them. [=GlaDOS=] read those Paradoxes on the sign and understood them. And why did not someone say "everything i said is a lie, in fact i am lying right now" when [=GlaDOS=] took over. Even if Wheatley Understood [=GlaDOS=]'s paradox, it would not have killed him and [=GlaDOS=] is just a big wimp around them.

*** I propose another theory - that When [=GLADOS=] was first activated, it was when Chell was a child, and she, like other scientists etc. had been put into stasis. Chell is about 25-35 in the game, which means that, if the game happened in about 2003 (which standing evidence of the December calendar points to) then that means Caroline was put into our favorite passive-aggressive AI during the eighties. Which means that, if Caroline started working with Aperture when she was 16 (not heard of in those days), then in 1978-80, she would have been about 36 by 73. Females can have kids all the way up to their late fifties and some to their sixties (though rare). Given this, it is likely that in the eighties, she had Chell at about forty-one-ish. This is taking into account that the facility was built in 1943 and the accompanying signage - this was likely when the cornerstone was laid, but it could actually take about ten years to get the initial hollowing-out and building of the facility done.

* ''Caroline... and nobody else.'' Aperture Science was miles behind Black Mesa, making the creation of a true artificial intelligence utterly infeasible. Cave Johnson doesn't even mention AIs in-game... but he (along with [=GLaDOS=], in the first game) sure does talk a lot about BrainUploading. When Cave Johnson specified that Caroline was to be uploaded into a computer and put in charge of the place, he meant it. Caroline's soul is the only animate force within the computer that is [=GLaDOS=],[=GLaDOS=], is merely the name of the computer system into which she was uploaded, but Caroline developed dissociative identity disorder as part of the uploading process, and stopped responding to the name "Caroline".

* [=GLaDOS=] is Echo from ''{{Series/Dollhouse}}''. Or rather, ''Caroline'' a part of [=GLaDOS=]], and since Echo is Caroline...of course, you may be wondering; don't they have completely different personalities? Aren't they from different time periods? The very premise of the Dollhouse is about programming dolls into specific personalities, and it is possible that Apeture's Caroline was simply a personality contruct. The different time period was due to the time travel mentioned in Portal 2. Seeing how the crazy science of the Dollhouse universe already brought about the 'thoughpocolypse' its not much of a stretch to see how the Black Mesa one could have happened around the same time.

* Not done with Chell. More specifically, [=GlaDOS=] wants Chell to WalkTheEarth and throw a SpannerInTheWorks of her enemies, whoever those are. She's literally counting on Chell to be someone else's problem and make some new disaster.

*** [[spoiler:{[LateToTheTragedy Bingo.]]

* "She was a lot like you / (Maybe not quite as heavy)" actually refers to [[Videogame/TeamFortress2 Heavy Weapons Guy]] rather than Chell's weight. Mainly because both Chell and Heavy can cause disaster, and Heavy comes in two varieties - RED and BLU, similar to how Valve was going to color-codify ''Portal 2'' Chell blue.

* Glados wants Chell to be free - but she still has real trouble being sincere about things. So she phrases it this way - she used to want Chell dead, but now they've worked together, she wants to set her free. Without the human Caroline to fuel a desire for revenge, the AI Glados can accept that living forever isn't so bad. Chell will die in her own time. Chell is just too insignificant to want to kill.

He's built to be the dumbest moron who ever lived, producing an endless stream of terrible ideas. However, just making a stupid AI that tries the first idea it thinks of is not only too simple for Aperture to even bother with, it's not a terribly great strategy because even the stupidest of people can have a good idea now and then. No, in reality, Aperture's greatest minds created an AI with programming that works much faster than it's own thought processes, calculating precisely the worst thing to suggest (and calculating the most likely short and long term consequences) while also sounding not entirely unreasonable. If what he says in the final battle about trying another 5 people before Chell, then his terrible idea was attempting to wake these people up to help him escape, as the escapees would be disoriented and willing to take suggestions from the talking robot because he's a computer. The only reason Chell didn't get killed when she followed his suggestions is because Chell is Chell, [[MemeticBadass she eats bullets and doesn't afraid of anything.]] This of course technically makes Wheatley the smartest AI in the whole facility, but his genius is directed into coming up with terrible plans rather than workable ones.

*** The fact that most humans can't survive in the vacuum of space? Admittedly, Portal [[RecycledInSpace in space]] would be awesome, but the logistics would be difficult to work out. Maybe if it were entirely robots like Atlas and P-Body... Would remove some of the questions, anyway.

** Or Rachel. FandomVIP Makani (who worked on Portal2) mentioned one of the designers' daughters is named Rachel, thus the inspiration for the name.

** A bit of more wild mass guessing here: Originally, Cave ordered the baby to be aborted, but Chell's somehow stubborn enough to survive and Still Alive. Want You Gone could be interpreted as how Chell is unwanted child, and You Wouldn't Know refer to how Chell wouldn't ever find out the blood relation.

YMMV on how likable Wheatley actually is, of course, but looking at fan reception, it’s undeniable that a lot of people think his silly antics are charmingly awkward. Think about it — an intelligence dampening sphere could easily be dismissed and ignored if all it did was spew bad ideas, but when it has a likable personality, it’s dangerously easy to want to go along with what it’s saying. That didn’t work on GLaDOS, of course, but it could be what Aperture had in mind when they designed him.

*** [[spoiler: Not at all {{Jossed}}. The Last Transmission easter egg shows he most likely ''[[CrazyAwesome went to the moon,]]'' and brought the CompanionCube with him. ]]

Rather than Cave dying from mercury poisoning, he got mercury poisoning sometime before creating Aperture. The mercury poisoning turned him into the CrazyAwesome guy we see in game, so he believed his "science" was doing good.

''Portal 2'' takes place only 20 or 30 years after ''Portal'', allowing Chell to meet Freeman without time travel. They'll team up and fight the Combine. Gameplay will be similar to ''[[VideoGame/FirstEncounterAssaultRecon F.E.A.R. 3]]'', with the ability to switch between Chell and Freeman; Chell is unarmed or equipped only with a sidearm but can place portals, while Freeman plays like a standard FPS protagonist but is unable to place portals. It will be a combination puzzle game and FPS, allowing you to use portals and Aperture technology against your foes while also just shooting them. ''And it will be [[CrazyAwesome amazing]]''.

* Let's assume that Cave-Prime is right and that he IS actually Cave-Prime. It doesn't seem that far-fetched, really. Most alternate universe counterparts of Cave are CrazyAwesome ComedicSociopath BadBoss leaders of their versions of Aperture, each with their own Greg. Assuming all Caves follow this template, the Cave in the main story seems like a perfect fit... save for the fact that he doesn't have a Greg. However he DOES have an assistant: Caroline. Perhaps this [[ForWantOfANail one small factor]] is what caused our Cave to diverge from the Cave-Prime timeline, especially since most of the other alternate Caves seem to be alive and well in their universes, unlike our Cave.