Headscratchers / Wreck-It Ralph — Arcade

• Before the events of the movie, why were the Q*bert characters being ignored and left to wallow in the Game Central Station? You'd think a game being unplugged is something that the arcade community would be prepared for, and that they would have some sort of program set up to help them. They have therapy groups for villains, but there's nothing for homeless characters? For that matter, if a game being unplugged is common, how come the Q*bert characters appear to be the only ones living homeless in the Station in the trailers?
  • Homelessness is a real thing in real life too, and while there are programs in place, it's not like we can just give every homeless person a free house.
  • Perhaps it's because they weren't in their game when it was unplugged, hence being stuck in Game Central Station like a video game character version of Limbo. It's possible that they were the very first characters this happened to, so when everyone else saw what happened to them they decided to stay in their game when it was unplugged. Also maybe the "will NPC for food" sign indicates that if a character's game is gone, they can integrate themselves into a another without falling into the "dying in another game" problem so as long as they fit in, which means the humanoid characters can simply gamejump but Q*bert and co. are too specific in appearance to jump.
    • NPCs don't get killed in most games, so they'd be perfectly safe. Only acting as a player character or monster would be dangerous; as a background character, there'd be no danger.
    • Ralph and Felix fix the problem by hacking their game's code to include a bonus level, where the Q*bert cast and other homeless characters make cameo appearances as Nicelanders, giving the game a huge new burst of popularity.
  • Not to mention that after the incident with Turbo, many games became wary of letting outsiders in.
  • It's probably also something to do with the video game crash which Q & Co would have been in the middle of.
  • It may have been that no one know how to give them a new home eg how to hack. But it's unlikely that they were completely ignored since we do see Peter Pepper giving them a meal in the background. The begging may have been less... well... begging per se and more a way to remind people to help them out since not every game focuses on food (Hero's Duty for instance) yet they might still be able to bring something with them.
• If it's so easy for any character to just travel to another game and possibly get killed, why do they allow that in the first place? Wouldn't Game Central Station put some policy in effect that prevents migration among the hub, or even rebuild the architecture?
  • The film establishes that characters travel from game to game for various reasons. With the exception of the Cy-bugs, all of the characters are aware that they can die in other games, so as long as they're careful, they can go out for a beer in Tapper or have a meeting in Pac-Man. Also, Surge Protector acts as a guard, checking on characters crossing games.
  • It's possible that the whole reason the guard is there in the first place is said game-jumping.
  • Ralph sneaks into Hero's Duty, so it's clearly not allowed, but other than that, how often are you told you can't do something in real life because you might potentially at some point die of something?
  • Visiting out-of-hours is allowed. He has to sneak because he's abandoning his post at his own game so as to take part in another during game hours.
  • Also, Hero's Duty is full of Cy-bugs, and is only safe when the beacon is up. Calhoun and her team don't let people in for their own safety, and the other characters steer clear of it.
  • All of the games shown being visited by other characters are not hostile out of hours. It's clearly shown that characters call truce, if not hang out as buddies, once they're not on the clock as enemies. Hero's Duty is an actively dangerous world, with or without the Cy-Bugs, but places like Pac-Man and Tapper's are safe. You're as likely to die at Tapper's as you are in a normal bar.
• Wait... do the crossovers happen with EVERY copy of that character, or only the ones from those specific machines in that very arcade? Because it seems odd for these machines- all plugged in and interacting, to be magic portals to every copy of that game in existence. If THIS Ralph feels this way, do all the other Ralphs from every functioning copy feel the same? And seeing as Ralph's absence in that one copy broke the game code... does every copy of that arcade machine on Earth no longer work? What about home versions, ports, updates, series retcons of games...
  • It can be assumed that this movie takes place in just ONE arcade; ergo only one cabinet of every game exists; ergo there is only one Ralph THAT IS SHOWN. However, certain games (i.e. Sugar Rush, a racing game) have more than one cabinet. That can possibly be Hand Waved by character locks (i.e. Player One picks a character from the roster; said character cannot be picked by the other players.) Fix-It Felix Jr. is a (presumably) popular game. There would exist several cabinets of said game, each in a different arcade, each with different (but sentient) copies of Ralph and Felix. The same rule would apply to all the other arcade characters. So while the movie focuses on this particular Ralph, the other versions of Ralph are doing their own things. This movie focuses solely on arcade games, so home ports, etc. will most likely not even be mentioned.
  • Probably similar to the situation in Toy Story where Buzz meets another Buzz. They exist and have their own identities in so far as they're independent people.
• Here's a question specifically about Fix-It Felix Jr.: Why are the characters all so concerned about being unplugged? Well, granted, they saw the malfunction slip on the screen after Ralph left. But even if their game was glitchy, it still is a (profitable) retro game. The characters themselves even celebrate the 30th anniversary! Wouldn't they presume Mr. Litwak would try to fix the game or at least keep the cabinet at hand rather than chuck it into the garbage? On a similar note, does being outside of your game lead to homelessness like Q*bert? Or does it happen regardless if you're inside or outside of your game that is being unplugged?
  • You're forgetting a rather big point here: Ralph's gone. The entire premise of the game hinges on his presence. In this universe, the characters can remove themselves from their games and, by all appearances, it's a fundamental alteration of the code. Arguably, resetting the entire console wouldn't have repaired it. He'd have to retire the console, which would spell their effective deaths or homelessness. The only way to repair it would be to install a replacement copy, either doubling the characters or just killing anyone still inside. To address the second question, the characters escape their games if they're due to be unplugged, which results in homelessness. Being inside is death.
  • It's actually very simple: when a game is unplugged or turned off, the game world inside it is also shut down. It doesn't exist. When it's plugged in, the characters and their world pop back out. Now, whether this means they and their memories are reset to "factory settings" every time, or if they get to keep their memories, that's up to you. But if they're shut down, they don't know if they'll ever be turned on again, and even if they are, they don't know where they'll be plugged in next. So to them, it's either a mind wipe every time they're reset, or the possibility of "never waking up again." Not exactly death, but not something you want to experience.
  • Also even if Litwak did want to repair it, if Ralph is outside the game when unplugged, there might not be any way for him to get back to the cabinet making the game impossible to fix.
  • Litwak WAS going to try to repair it. The guy he has with him at the end when Ralph and Felix come back was the repairman. But the implication is with Ralph gone from the game nothing the repairman could do would "fix" the game so their doom was inevitable unless he returned.
• What does being "unplugged" mean exactly? In the movie, they seem to treat it as death. But can't they just be plugged in again later and be just as alive as they were before they got unplugged? Or is it that when they are unplugged (since it's usually because the game malfunctioned), they never expect to be plugged in again and thus effectively "die" because they never "wake up" again? Or is it that if they're plugged in again after being unplugged, the game resets and they don't remember anything (so its like they just got plugged in for the first time)? In which case, it would be the death of their "current" self. But... the arcade has to have had a power outage sometime, so that doesn't seem likely. The movie isn't entirely clear on this point.
  • Some arcade games do reset after being unplugged, but even if that wasn't the issue... The main fear with being unplugged is that if a game is being unplugged, that means it's probably being taken out of the arcade. Sure, maybe the cabinet would end up in a different arcade or in a private collection, but they could also get thrown out, especially if the game was viewed as broken.
    • It would seem that being unplugged and then plugged back in is like being put into suspended animation and then waking up. In the opening time-passing sequence where we see the games that have been in the arcade over the past 30 years, the Pac-Man machine moves around a few times before settling next to Fix-It Felix Jr., so it's a safe bet it's been unplugged and plugged in again for the sake of transport within the arcade. By all appearances, Pac-Man and the ghosts haven't suffered any ill effects, so their memories are likely intact.
    • The thing about power outages is, the entire arcade would go out all at once, without warning. So they might not even know they happen?
    • It looks to me like a mini-armageddon - you can leave your game, but now you're a homeless bum and your entire world has been destroyed. And as for just being moved to another arcade - well, people aren't likely to buy an out-of-order Arcade game.
• What happens if the power strip itself is unplugged or if there's a power outage at the arcade? Is that armageddon for the characters in the games?
  • Since it is very likely one or the other has happened at least once in the thirty years preceding the film I'd guess not.
• What DID happen to the guys from Asteroids and Centipede?
  • Poof. Asteroids didn't have any characters (they were ships) and Centipede might not really have been intelligent since it didn't do anything other than bounce around. Or wasn't smart enough to escape before the plug got pulled.
    • You wouldn't think a zombie would be intelligent either, but there's one at a support group. The guys from Asteroids and Centipede are probably off somewhere we don't see.
    • And we see even the paddles and ball from Pong are apparently sentient enough to hang out in Grand Central. Maybe all mindless aggressors in the games are like the cy-bugs, and are not sentient characters but more like viruses?
• Yes, I understand the plot wouldn't have proceeded normally without this being the case, but who in their right mind plugs all of the arcade games into one outlet?
  • Someone who paid for a surge protector with that many outlets. There are real-life versions out there that are just as large.
  • Also, who said that all of the arcade games are in this one outlet? There could be many games in Litwak's Arcade that can't interact with Ralph and everyone else we see because they're plugged into a different outlet.
    • An unofficial reference.
    • Was it implied or why should it be that the game characters' capacity to interact with other arcade games in their electrical circuit stop at the surge protector they're plugged into? I'd assume that since everyone uses vehicles to travel between the arcade machines and the surge protector that the live current is dangerous to them. But couldn't they use one of those vehicles to go into the outlet the surge protector was plugged into? Then from that through the building's wiring into another outlet into another surge protector and then into whatever games that's plugged in there?
    • The way I see it, the outlets are bus terminals or subway stations and the outlet plugged into the wall socket was like a ramp into something akin to an expressway (i.e. the building's power grid). We don't see other outlets because the games were (relatively) close to each other.
    • Well, the place isn't called "Game Central Station" for nothing. If it's like a train station, then there may very well be trains leaving for other surge protectors. That does bring up the question of how far the characters can travel through the power system...
    • Theoretically, they could travel as far as they want to. But for practical reasons, they most likely don't. It's more likely the furthest they'd travel is to another power strip in the arcade to visit other games. Part of the reason is that they can't go too far from their own games because they have to be able to make it back in time for the arcade opening.
• So we've seen that the characters work all day, and at night they go to Game Central Station to hang out. So... when do they sleep? We see that they make beds for themselves. Do they only sleep when they want to, every other night, or is an hour or two enough for them to get by?
  • They don't have to spend all night at Game Central.
  • True, but we see Ralph has pretty much been totally busy and active during the movie, which takes place over the course of roughly two days. Unless he slept at some point during the driving montage...
  • Maybe not all of them require sleep. They're made of digital/electronic coding after all. But we do see Ralph and Vanellope's "beds" so we do know that sleeping exists in some way.
  • It's shown that the arcade games have locations that the players can't see.
  • It seems likely that sleep, while possible, is more of a convenient way to pass the time between games while characters have nothing else they'd like to do instead of a necessity for them to keep functioning. We are discussing a world that functions on videogame logic so it really isn't that far fetched.
• How does this "arcade-verse" work? Does each arcade have its own crossover-verse specific to it? Do Felixes in other arcades feel this way? What if Sugar Rush doesn't exist in their arcade? Does Turbo get jealous all the time?
  • I'm pretty sure it's only limited to this one specific arcade. When one arcade machine glitches or stops working, that doesn't affect one that's clear across the country. So I have to imagine there's hundreds of Felixes, Ralphs, Vanellopes, Calhouns, and Turbos out there that have their own stories and histories.
• Why is there a rule against taking fruit from one game to another? Is digital fruit as common a vector for computer viruses as real fruit is for parasites and plant disease or something?
  • It's probably a riff on border security, both the tediousness of it and its obvious incompetence.
    • I thought it was more of a joke at the expense of the TSA. Just look at Surge Protector's uniform.
  • Aside from being a bit of snark at border control, a reasonable WMG could be that fruit from one game carelessly discarded in another could take root and before long mess up the game's 'ecosystem', ultimately resulting in an unplugging. Can't have giant cherry trees sprouting up in the middle of the Qix playfield, can we?
    • And what if someone from Super Mario Bros. 2 were to collect five of those cherries? Then they'd be INVINCIBLE!
• Hopefully, the below is a misquote, otherwise the advice doesn't make sense ( why take something that isn't going to work?). All over the Internet, Sonic's PSA is quoted as
  Sonic: And if you leave your game, make sure to keep an extra life with you at all times. Because if you die outside your game, you don't regenerate, ever! Game Over!
  • I'm not 100% sure if the quote is accurate, but if it is, it might just be Sonic making a joke. Like, when someone's warning you about something but lightens the mood by saying something jokingly? Like, "Be sure to bring your water wings when you go swimming with the sharks." Or something, I can't really think of a proper parallel joke. That'd certainly be in character for Sonic, though.
    • It's a misquote.
  Sonic: And if you leave your game, be safe, be alert, and most importantly, don't die. Because if you die outside your game, you don't regenerate. Ever. Game over.
• What would happen if Ralph and Felix game jump into games that are licensed from shows and movies (I.E. The Simpsons, The Goonies, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Asterix, Willow, Superman, Batman, Aliens vs Predator, Micheal Jackson's Moonwalker, etc.) and yes these games exist! Also would it be possible to game jump into games that were never completed/ in a prototype state like Atari Games' "Primal Rage II", Data Easts' "Tattoo Assassins", and (YES IT DOES EXIST!) Atari Games' "MTV'S Beavis and Butthead"?
  • They'd have to be plugged into the outlet we see in the film. Otherwise none of those gamejumps are possible.
  • One of the outlets in Game Central Station is marked Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
• This may be the wrong place, but could the fictional universe of Tron meld easily to the premise of the movie? That could explain Tron only having a mention in the film. (Of course the Tron cabinet could openly be a licensed game, which would also bring problems.)
• Some games conduct themselves like businesses, selling goods and services to other characters in the arcade. Tapper becomes a bar that sells drinks while Burger Time works as a restaurant of sorts. So far, so good. So what kind of currency do game characters spend and more specifically, how do they earn it? There doesn't appear to be an extensive inter-game economy and serving one's function in-game appears to be everyone's full-time job at the arcade (to the point where if your game is unplugged, you're reduced to begging in Game Central Station), so what exactly do the citizens of the arcade use as money?
  • Why would they need money or economy? When they need something to eat, they should have something in their own game. And since (for example) Tapper's has an unlimited supply of (root) beer, there's not reason not to give it out for free, when someone pays a visit.
    • Places like Tapper's may have an unlimited supply of drinks, but the bartender still has to be there to serve his customers. Since he's effectively working on what's supposed to be his time off, it would be normal for him to expect some kind of compensation for his services. And if food was as easy as that to get, then Q*bert and company wouldn't exactly need to beg for it like they do in Game Central Station (going so far as to claim they'll "NPC in FPS for food"); they could just head over to a restaurant and gorge themselves.
  • Presumably they have a barter economy going, with trade in non-fruit subtle-enough-to-be-unnoticable-to-the-players items. Fix-It Felix Jr., for instance, is probably a prime exporter of bricks and construction material, Sugar Rush's and Tapper's exports/products should be pretty obvious, Pac-Man characters probably provide services rather than goods, relating to their extreme age and experience (such as the Bad Anon meetings), etc.
  • Let's just assume they use units as their currency. Maybe all creatures that live in electronics use units? Question is, would Surge's face be on them?
  • They might barter in power ups, icons, and other trinkets from their games. After all, look at some of what was in the lost and found at Tapper's - a mushroom and a !.
  • Or maybe Tapper accepts medals. If I remember correctly, Tapper is a game that keeps going until you lose, with no between-stage transitions like Pac-Man or Fix-It Felix Jr. and thus there are no medals to win. Presumably, all of the other arcade games in Litwak's provide medals. I doubt it though, since Ralph could get a drink. Now, what I wonder is what these characters do in an arcade without Tapper, like every arcade I've ever stepped into.
    • You don't remember correctly — Tapper had multiple stages. A stage is cleared when there are no customers in the bar, and the Tapper then moves on to the next bar. In the fourth stage you're in outer space serving root beer to aliens.
    • Most arcades I've visited have had at least one TMNT game, so it's a reasonable assumption that characters can get pizza and something to drink there. For the record, the arcade in this troper's town does have a Tapper machine, so perhaps it's just a more common game in some areas than in others.
• Game Central Station is depicted as a physical place located within the arcade's surge protector. Let's say, then, that someone in the real world cracked open the casing around the power strip. What would they see if they looked inside? Furthermore, what would the game characters see looking out? Could they theoretically leave through the hole that had been created, or would they be stopped by some sort of barrier at the edge?
  • I think breaking a power strip just to see if tiny video game characters live inside of it would be the last thing you'd do.
  • Similarly, since it's been proven that game characters can affect the real world through the screen (Ralph throwing the medal and dislodging the "Out of Order" sign), then what would happen in there, if someone out here broke or removed the screen?
    • They die because there's no electricity.
    • More likely, they go into a coma that stays until the glass is fixed. As mentioned by someone a few points below, it seems characters only panic when they think their game is getting unplugged forever and/or being destroyed. If the characters died whenever they were unplugged for maintenance or lost power in some other way, then all of the games would be rendered unplayable and would have needed to be replaced multiple times. It stands to reason that in 30+ years, Litwak's Arcade has seen at least a few power outages and the game residents have apparently survived them with no permanent issues. Also, the outer screen of an upright arcade machine is a plastic shield that protects the actual monitor screen, so unless someone was able to somehow break through both without drawing attention, it wouldn't be a big deal.
  • They'd see the inside of a surge protector. It's made pretty clear in the movie that the world of the characters isn't entirely the same as the world of the arcade. For example, in the arcade, Ralph looks like an 8-bit sprite in his own game, but in the game-world, Ralph is always depicted in 3D, even in his own game. And games like Sugar Rush are shown to be a lot larger than their arcade cabinets could logically contain. Thus, it stands to reason that "Game Central Station" exists in a similar way; not as a physical place, but as a mirror of the surge protector's function.
• So unplugging equals Armageddon, but what if it's being sold or transferred to another arcade? If all the character evacuate, does the new owner get a game with no characters in it?
  • Unlikely, the characters in the game only seem to panic when there is a warning, such as the 'out of order' papers. If it is suddenly unplugged with no warning the characters will have no time to evacuate so they won't be left behind. If they did manage to evacuate, the game wouldn't be functional.
  • Perhaps if they know they're getting transferred, they won't evacuate and just stand a few days in darkness. Of course, this assumes they're still alive when the game is unplugged and die later after lingering for a while, not instantly getting wiped out.
  • Keep in mind the implications of Out of Order. That doesn't mean transfer or anything. That means the game is broken - which means it's going into the dump. If the game was getting moved to a new location, Litwak wouldn't label it out of order and they'd have no reason to panic because they're not getting trashed.
  • So...That would mean that if Sugar Rush was unplugged with Vanellope locked inside it, and someone came across the trashed cabinet and decided to take it for themselves and power it back on...she'd be alone in Sugar Rush, wouldn't she?
  • There's a superstition among some older computer technicians ("older" as in, they were around during the heyday of the mainframe) that computers "get used to" where they are, and moving them might cause them to stop working. The thing is, there is a kernel of truth to this: for instance, there might be a connector that's been loosened by thermal expansion/contraction which falls out when the case is moved, a slight torsion on the case could crack a board that's brittle from age, or a rusted screw could be jolted out of its hole and onto a circuit board and create a short circuit. Maybe, in this universe, there's a similar feeling toward arcade games. If the characters think they're being unplugged for good, they'll abandon the game, causing it to mysteriously not work when it arrives at the new location. It's just viewed as one of the hazards of buying a used cabinet. In addition, if video game characters can travel over long distance transmission lines, they might be able to track their game through the grapevine, leading to some games that start working again just as mysteriously.
• If death outside one's own game is permanent, then how do you explain numerous instances of Death by Cameo (say, for example, in Duke Nukem 3D)?
  • Death by Cameo would fall under the "one's own game" rule, and the "dead" character would regenerate as usual.
• Ralph and other "native" video game characters know they live in a video game, but what about other fictional characters or real life celebrities in Licensed Games?
  • They may not be aware that they are the video-game counterparts of real life persons or fictional characters from other media. Their knowledge of the world outside of the video games in Litwak's Arcade seems to be limited to what they can perceive through the screens. If, say, Zangief were to hear two players talking about how he was portrayed in the Street Fighter movie, that might confuse him, but probably not cripplingly so. If a real-life celebrity were to come into Litwak's, and his video game counterpart were to see him, that video game character might develop an identity crisis or something. On the other hand, perhaps that character would feel special, and would redouble his efforts to bring honor to his real life counterpart.
• Surge Protector is Surge Protector. But we call the Game Central Station "surge protector". Does that mean that Surge is both himself and the GCS? Is he everywhere at once? How the fudge didn't it go to his head? And more importantly: is this the reason why he doesn't seem intimidated by Ralph?
  • Yes, yes, and yes.
    • I repeat: how the fudge didn't it go to his head?
    • I got the sense that the Surge Protector is less alive than the game characters. He's born of a piece of basic equipment, not a game, so he's not designed to have any personality beyond his job.
    • My interpretation is that Surge Protector cannot leave Game Central Station, despite him being Game Central Station and his job revolving around game characters who can travel freely in and out of his domain. His limitations instill some humility in him, but also frustration, since we see he's the one spraying all the graffiti on the walls.
• Why is it that when Turbo enters the other racing game, he appears as his 8-bit self, but when Ralph enters Hero's Duty and begins messing with the first-person POV he is the CGI version we see him as inside the games? Shouldn't he be 8-bit?
  • Turbo went in with the explicit purpose of sticking out and getting attention, while Ralph went into Hero's Duty to fit in (even though he really failed at that) and the game is overall more advanced than RoadBlasters, so all characters would show up as CGI instead of basically transplanted sprites.
  • I actually already asked this above. The best answer was that Ralph was currently in Markowski's armor, effectively giving him a new appearance.
    • Except that doesn't explain why everyone fit in on the screens of Tapper and Pac-Man.
    • The characters seem to appear onscreen in a form that can fit within the space depicted (hence why Ralph had a different sprite in Pac-Man despite being a fellow 8-bit denizen) and only up to the technological level of that game. Turbo seems to be the only exception. Most likely, Turbo did something to deliberately appear as an 8-bit sprite, since he was trying to get the attention of the players, and that's his appearance they'd be most familiar with.
    • My theory is that characters only fit if the graphics are similar enough (Ralph in pac-man and Qbert in fix-it-felix jr.) or if an existing character is replaced. Every time we see a character appear in a different game where the graphics are vastly different they were taking someone elses place. For example when Ralph was in Hero's Duty he was replacing Markowski. This also explains why King Candy had to remove Vanellope. It would have made more sense for him to just add himself as king and wipe everyones memory but this is what he attempted with Roadblaster and crashed the game. In Sugar Rush he took Vanellope's place and so his graphics appear correct.
• So, what exactly are characters from games like The Sims or Spore? Are they made when the player creates them, and do they act any differently on their "down time"?
  • Not sure. The film only addressed arcade games.
  • In Hero's Duty, it shows that the Player Character is personified by a TV monitor with arms and legs showing the gamer's face.
    • What about someone like Commander Shepard, whose appearance, backstory, abilities and personality are decided by the player, but are seen through a third-person perspective?
    • Animated Actors, they're just playing a part decided on by the gamer. As soon as they walk away, they drop character.
    • Also, these are arcade games, not PC games. Presumably PC games function under different rules.
• Why doesn't the arcade power down at night? It's a little wasteful of electricity to keep all those arcade units on.
  • Unplugging an arcade machine—especially older machines—means you lose the high scores and other settings. Most arcades wouldn't power them down at night for that reason.
• Surge Protector: how, when, why does he exist?
• When Felix stopped following the player's commands, why did the controls start moving on their own?
  • Because Moppet Girl started a game, and basically in Toy Story fashion, the characters can move on their own but just allow themselves to be controlled during gameplay.
• Ralph's and Q*bert's Take That! about the First-Person Shooter makes little sense. The genre is a distant minority in the arcade scene, where the only ones I can find are Doom, SNK's The Super Spy, and possibly Atari's I, Robot. (There is also ADK's Crossed Swords trilogy, but those are first person slice'em-ups.) Furthermore, shoot'em ups have a long and honorable history in the arcade scene. The rail versions dating back to Crossbow and Operation Wolf, and the scrolling versions to Commando, Ikari Warriors, and Jackal. Frankly he should be more bewildered at the way tournament fighting games have taken over.
  • The Take That! doesn't appear to be so much against the genre itself, so much as the sheer omnipresence they have in the modern market. Outside of Nintendo systems, FPS games are seen by many as the easiest way to make money in the game world; because of this, other genres get less attention. Q*bert, a character from a Platformer, is willing to settle for a cameo in an FPS.
  • Ralph's Take That! could also be referencing at how the market is flooded with "Darker and Edgier" type of games.
    • All he knew about Hero's Duty going in was that you have to climb a building and fight bugs to get a medal. He was expecting a game like Centipede. He even says as much just before the "When did video games become so violent and scary?" line.
• In one scene from the trailers, Dig-Dug quickly digs underground to hide from Ralph at the Game Central Station, i.e., the surge protector that all the games are connected to. What happens if he actually digs his way out of the device?
  • The floor could be made of Minecraft bedrock, so he can't break it.
  • That raises an interesting point: Ralph already showed that he could "wreck" pretty much anything during his time in Sugar Rush, cracking the supposedly unbreakable jawbreaker in half. Who's to say he couldn't break through Minecraft bedrock... or, say, the game's screen. If Turbo had thought of that, he might have gone MCP and set his sights higher than just the Arcade...
  • Ralph did affect the real world: he threw his Hero's Duty medal against Fix It Felix Jr.'s screen with enough force that a corner of the Out of Order Sign slipped. And what did he see when it slipped? Vanellope on the side of the Sugar Rush console.
  • It's probably the same principle that keeps glitches confined to their own games, that'd be my guess.
• Are there any real arcades that list the price on video games by number of quarters? I've definitely seen it that way on pinball machines, but most arcades I've played just say the price directly.
  • They might have changed that practice in recent times, but the x quarters thing is definitely real. Litwak's arcade seems to be a bit dated compared to what you might find in a mall or something, so it's more likely his machines would use such a pricing system.
  • I thought that was the only way the price was listed. But then it's been a while since I've been to anything resembling an arcade.
• Considering that Mr. Litwak only puts up an out-of-order notice when a customer notifies him of it (makes sense, as I'd assume he's very busy), and TurboTime was decommissioned at the same time as RoadBlasters, this means that people still cared enough about Turbo and his game to see if something's wrong with TurboTime almost as soon as RoadBlasters crashed. It fits with Turbo's nature that he can't stand being anywhere other than the top—people still loved him (and likely way more than Ralph had hoped for), but second-best made him furious.
  • Customers explicitly noted that it was Turbo that crashed RoadBlasters. Thus Mr. Litwak probably suspected that it was the TurboTime cabinet that crashed RoadBlasters game. So he removed TurboTime lest other games be crashed by it. And he was partially right, he just didn't count on Turbo surviving his game being unplugged.
• It's rather depressing to realize that Tapper is almost the only video game, ever, in which people show up just to hang out. If not for that one obscure 80's game about slinging suds, arcade characters would have nowhere to go to relax and unwind without the immediate threat of irreversible death. (Well, I suppose they could spend their time hanging out in Dance Dance Revolution, but personally I'd rather risk irreversible death.)
  • Perhaps Burger Time is also a restaurant?
• Are the arcade characters aware of whether or not there are multiple arcade ports of each game they're from, as well as updated sequels (not to mention the home consoles)?
  • Probably not beyond the level of "I heard somewhere that...". In general, the arcade characters don't seem to be aware of anything other than themselves, pretty much like you or me.
• How are the video games characters themselves sentient, when the Cy-Bugs aren't even sentient?
  • I imagine the Cy-bugs just aren't intelligent enough for sentience. They're depicted as mindless drones.
• How the hell did Skrillex get into the game world? Is it the real guy, or is he a game version of Skrillex that came from... somewhere? I'm fairly sure there's no Skrillex arcade game, so where did he come from?
  • Since he was just a cameo meant as an homage to the real Skrillex for making some of the music used in the movie (particularly in Hero's Duty), he was probably intended as somewhat of an Easter egg, since being the DJ at a party is something that Skrillex could reasonably do. Though, given that the rest of the movie's universe, rules, and logic are meticulously detailed and well-researched, this example stands out for its lack of explanation. Perhaps one of the games in the arcade lets players make custom characters, and somebody made one to look like Skrillex?
    • Does Skrillex have any tracks in DDR? Maybe he's coded as the DJ.
• So, what would happen if a game came into the arcade that had a character in it that already exists in another game? And for that matter, what if the manager of the arcade brought in extra copies of a few games so that the customers wouldn't have to wait to play the game they wanted? Would there just be multiple versions of the same character roaming the station?
  • Yes. Because every copy of the game would need its own version of each character to be functional.
  • See what happens when one Buzz Lightyear action figure meets another.
• I was sort of wondering about this and I wasn't sure where to put it...When you play games on home consoles, a lot of the areas outside of those intended for normal gameplay don't actually have solid ground programmed into them, as can be seen if you use cheats or glitches to gain access to places that are out-of-bounds and you just fall right through and respawn. My question is as follows: is this also the case in the games you play in arcades, and if so, wouldn't that pose a problem to in-game characters who like to explore around after hours?
• If Litwak's Family Fun Center has at least been in business since 1982, and the events of the movie take place in 2012, how is the arcade still in business? Especially when most classic arcades had shuttered by then? It's not like Japan where arcades live on. For example, in 2005, there were about 25 arcades in New York City, down from hundreds just a decade before. By 2011, there were fewer than ten (you need to be liberal and count places like Dave & Buster’s to even get to that figure), and one of them was Chinatown Fair. Even then, Chinatown Fair wasn’t flourishing so much as it was just continuing to exist, with mostly classics like Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat, and newer Japanese hits like Dance Dance Revolution. When Chinatown Fair did close its doors on a cold night in February of 2011, many of its hardcore customers declared it the "end of an era." It was seen by many as "the end of the arcade era". Additionally, Chinatown Fair survived as long as it did because the urban lifestyle proved more conducive to arcades than the suburbs. Litwak's Family Fun Center, on the other hand, is located somewhere along Route 83, going by the "official" commercials, along the interstate. However, many of the kids that visit the arcade seem to be local, using their bikes to travel there. In shots of Litwak's, on the outside, you can also see that the Family Fun Center seems to be falling into disrepair: letters are missing from its sign, and grass is growing in the cracks of the parking lot. Compared to other modernized and popular competitors, such as Chuck 'E Cheese and Dave & Busters, Litwak's looks rather run-down, falling into disrepair, and off the beaten track, being located under a major highway flyover. How, then, is Litwak's still open, and enjoying regular customers? Did Mr. Litwak make a Deal with the Devil in order to ensure that his arcade would never close?
  • To add fuel to the latter speculation, in the scene where Felix is recounting his memory of Turbo actually "going Turbo", Mr. Litwak looks exactly the same in 1987 - the year that Road Blasters was released - as he does in 2012, despite it being 25 years later. It makes one really wonder if Mr. Litwak is just Long-Lived, or if he truly is immortal...
  • There's a shot of the arcade's exterior that doesn't look too run-down...It's possible that the arcade's popular selection of games and an at least semi-steady flow of regular, local customers is enough to help keep it open...isn't it?
  • Maybe Mr. Litwak won the lottery in 1982 and kept the arcade open because he loves it, even if it loses money. Honestly, if this Troper had millions of dollars, he'd open an arcade in a second, and wouldn't care if it turned a profit or not.
  • Litwak's is a "Family Fun Center", which means it's probably more than just the arcade that it mostly takes part in. From a scene outside, you can see a fake dinosaur head stick up from the right and behind of the building. This is likely a miniature golf course, or something like that. The green-house or transparent tent looking building next to it is probably some kind of activity court, and there's a decent chance there's laser-tag in the basement, or something. Anyway, my point is that it's probably more of a kid's birthday-party, a-bunch-of-cool-stuff-to-do type location, rather than *just* an arcade.
• So the arcade has been open for 30+ years, and in that time, no one thought to implement any sort of...law enforcement, or a group of authority figures to oversee Game Central Station and the games connected to it? We have the Surge Protector who only seems to stop the bad guys, the Nicelanders who ostracize Ralph just for doing what amounts to his job, and a well-known game-jumper responsible for the death of two games who was allowed to skulk around the station for years before hacking into a new game's code and staging a coup against its 12-year-old ruler, brainwashing everyone to hate on her over nothing and forcing her to resort to what amounts to vigilante justice to set things right again.
  • Because in 30+ years, that's really not much. For one thing Turbo seemed to be a fluke, as it's usually in a game's best interests not to act out and break the game, and no one even knew that he'd survived his game being unplugged. There's also canonically at least one therapy group, so presumably people are willing to deal with problems between games, it's just not pressing enough to be an official, organized force for which possibly no one is qualified. Besides, everyone living in Grand Central Station is essentially employed at ridiculous hours and might not have time to officiate the activities of an entire arcade.
• Were exactly was Turbo able to hide from the time Turbo Time was removed to the time Sugar Rush was installed?
  • There were probably places in Game Central Station where he could've hidden, places where he would've gained his knowledge of game code, and it's also possible that he might've just hidden himself away inside some other game as an obscure NPC that nobody would take notice of. Or, a somewhat horrific thought...Sugar Rush might have been only the latest in a number of racing games that Turbo had taken over through the years, abandoning each game to move on to the newer, better one as soon as it was released, and perfecting his work with the code - adjusting and erasing memories, changing his character design, and such and such - in the process.
• Is it me, or does Litwak seem to have an insanely large budget for his commercials? I mean, I'm just watching the fake game ads for each of the games the movie goes to, and I don't think I've seen an arcade or family fun center that was able to create ads of that quality.
• So what is the "Base" state of a newly-activated game character? Do they fully believe they are real, ala Toy Story, or are they aware of their status as game characters? Do they begin with their character's normal personality and develop normally from there, or is it totally different? Does is vary by individual game? Many arcades in the late 90's/early 2000's had two or even three copies of particularly popular games. So if you had two Marvel Vs Capcom New Age Of Heroes cabinets, would their respective Captain Americas, for example, start out the same?
  • To take Hero's Duty as an example: It was plugged in about a week(?) ago in the movie and the characters are already fully aware of all the meta aspects of their game (and the Cybugs are unusual because they don't know.) Most arcade characters would probably have to be aware immediately anyway in order to understand the concept of their story repeating potentially multiple times a day, along with things particular to your game like the First Person Shooter. I'd say that most do start out with the personalities of their characters. Newly-made Calhoun is intense and badass and only cares about killing Cybugs, exactly like her character. Ralph has been around for 30 years but he still has a bad temper, rough manners, and doesn't get along with the Nicelanders at the start of the movie. Felix is kind and prone to fixing things, Turbo is obsessed with winning, etc. For those exceptions like the Bad Anon villains, having your story be a literal game and being able to interact with other game characters on a regular basis would allow for Character Development outside your character's original personality very quickly.
• For all the playable characters in the games, how does the button pressing work? Do they have instantaneous reflexes and move in accordance to player input, regardless of how dumb it is or is there some mystical force that possesses their body?
  • We see how it works with Felix when the girl tried and failed to play a game when Ralph wasn't there. Felix initially is dragged against his will trying to fix the undamaged building, then when Felix himself starts moving to go check on Ralph's spot the stick and buttons on the cabinet are shown moving on their own in accordance with him. So there's a link between the Player character and the controls, but presumably they're in much better sync when the game is running normally as opposed to what happened in that scene.

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