Headscratchers / Wreck-It Ralph — Calhoun

• Looking back, Calhoun really should have realized that Markowski, who she had 'just berated' for acting so weird, as if he suddenly didn't know how the game is played, was this Ralph guy who was seen coming into the game. King Candy figured out how Vanellope got her entry fee pretty quickly without being told such, considering, and he's insane!
  • King Candy's also a genius; I mean, when you add up all the schemes and manipulations he successfully pulled off, he's basically the gorram Lex Luthor of Litwak's Arcade. Calhoun OTOH, while not stupid, is also not particularly imaginative and slightly prone to professional tunnel vision.
  • Also, the real Markowski might actually be the squad's 'designated loser' character; after all, his entire intro in Tapper's outlines him as a man on the edge of a complete nervous breakdown. And notice the two marines joking to each other and going "Did you get a load of Markowski?" in a mocking fashion as they were marching back to start positions after Ralph ruined Moppet Girl's game. The way they were talking was the way people talk about seeing yet another repetition of an old old joke instead of people puzzling over something new and shocking; apparently, seeing Markowski make an ass of himself is just another Tuesday for the Hero's Duty platoon. Granted, the real Markowski presumably doesn't do it to the point where it ruins the game, but that was why Calhoun pulled "Markowski" aside for a brief NCO-to-grunt attitude adjustment; she gave him exactly the sort of 'your personal life is starting to slip to where its actually interfering with the mission; last warning, straighten your shit out before I have to get officially pissed off about it' warning that real troopies have heard under similar circumstances.
    • In addition, during the scene where Ralph is leaving Tapper's and is trying to figure out how to get around in Markowski's armor, you can see a text conversation in the HUD between Calhoun and another soldier regarding Markowski's behavior. Here's a transcript, and a reference shot◊.
  • Another explanation is that she's actually only a week old (experience-wise, obviously not physically), and is still new to the whole "sentience" thing, and thus doesn't have a lot of experience in drawing logical conclusions from disparate pieces of information. Although, that would add a really weird note of Squick to her marriage to Felix.
  • Ralph flew by on the escape pod almost immediately after she found out about him sneaking into Hero's Duty anyways, so it's not like putting two and two together right away would've helped any.
  • I think the reasoning is that King Candy knows that it's not possible for Vanellope to have gotten a coin anywhere in Sugar Rush to pay her racing fee, considering how she's never actually won one before. Therefore, when Ralph comes in claiming his medal was stolen by one of the Sugar Rush characters, Candy would probably pretty easily deduce that only Vanellope would've had any use for it. Calhoun, why she did know that 'Markowski' was acting a little bit out of line, wouldn't have had any reason to suspect that it wasn't really him. Maybe if someone had let her know before Felix came that he'd been found in the closet where Ralph left him, it would've made sense had she immediately guessed where Ralph was.
  • Going by her backstory, she is prone to failng spot checks.
• If game characters are all just playing roles, why is Calhoun's off-time attitude so affected by her back story?
  • Could be because she's still relatively "young." She's only been plugged in for a week and hasn't had enough time to get some real experience outside of the game and form her own personality independent of what she was programmed with. That, or because for just about the entire movie, she's not really doing anything outside of what she was programmed to do anyway. In Hero's Duty, she's meant to be determined to eliminate and contain any and all Cy-bug threats, and in the movie, she's out to contain and eliminate a Cy-bug threat. In a way, she's still effectively playing her role.
  • Their backstories are real to them; in fact, presumably they actually happen inside the game when they're being programmed and going gold. We know for a fact there's more inside a game than what a player can see. Ralph's motive for destroying Niceland is that they destroyed his home, so he can choose how he feels about that. Calhoun's backstory and motive for hating cy-bugs is that they killed her fiance.
  • Some people are also just workaholics, and struggle to find a balance between their work lives and their off-duty lives. Calhoun is presumably one of them.
  • Unlike the characters of, say, Street Fighter, Calhoun's prime-time and off-time are severely blurred, because the Cy-Bugs represent a legitimate threat to the other games in the arcade, so she and her Space Marines have to remain vigilant and armed even at nighttime. Presumably they have a rotation to determine who gets to go and take some downtime at Tapper's or wherever, and those who have to remain on-post. That would probably retard their assimilation - the Hero's Duty characters aren't just actors playing as Space Marines in a Bug War, even during their off-time, they remain Space Marines fighting a different Bug War against the same enemy on behalf of a different population of nearly-defenseless civilians.
  • Maybe the programming of Hero's Duty generally makes characters to be more in-character - including Cy-Bugs. Note that Pac-Man ghosts or Koopas from Mario aren't threatening to overrun the arcade.
  • In keeping with the 'Calhoun is new', remember that older games seem to have adjusted slightly to the idea that they can be somebody else as well as their game. In the past, characters had simple backstories All There in the Manual. It's easy to develop a life outside of that, or mould it. Modern games often endeavour to engage players in the game with a deeper backstory. And they have cutscenes. It's more prominent in her mind, and she hasn't really developed a life outside of it.
  • And Calhoun's backstory was a lot more serious than anyone else's that we've seen. She was programmed with the backstory of falling in love with this man, only to having him eaten alive due to her own mistake. Having to live with those vivid memories of how you got someone killed, even if you know they didn't actually happen, would be a difficult burden for anyone to bear. It's nothing like Ralph's stump getting moved a few feet to the side or anything.
• Why was Calhoun surprised when Felix says he doesn't know what a Cy-bug is? I mean, Hero's Duty was only plugged in for a week.
  • Because in her world, everyone knows what a Cy-bug is. She's still in the mode of thinking of herself as being her character rather than as being part of one of the many games in the arcade.
• Did it seem at least slightly odd that Calhoun chose Vanellope to be her bridesmaid during her wedding to Felix? ('Bridesmaid' is the proper term, right?) I mean, her adventure in Sugar Rush didn't really intersect with the one Vanellope was on until literally at the very end, and I know she seemed willing to go to great lengths to protect her, but...would that really justify making her a bridesmaid? It seems at the end of the film that she still hardly knew her.
  • They must have gotten closer on their adventures (see the end credits), particularly between the end of the film's story and the epilogue (the latter being when the wedding takes place). Who else would she have chosen? It's not like we ever see Calhoun surrounded by female friends (from any game).
• Where did Calhoun's and Felix's wedding take place? It looks like a chapel, with the ceremony presided over by a priest or minister, but what game would have an environment like that?
  • It's the same chapel as Calhoun's backstory — ergo, it's an environment in her game, probably rendered for the cutscene in which said backstory would be revealed to the player.
• Why does Calhoun go by herself into Sugar Rush to hunt down the Cy-Bug? If the fate of the entire arcade is at stake once it lays its eggs and reproduces, wouldn't it be better to bring at least one or two other people from her game to help her?
  • Most likely she left everyone else to make sure no other Cy-Bugs got out, and she figured that a single soldier would be enough to track and destroy a single Cy-Bug.
  • She's also aware that if you die outside your game, you don't regenerate. And she didn't want any of her soldiers (or even Felix) to die forever because she let a Cy-Bug escape.
• How did the Cy-Bug that crashed Calhoun's wedding get there? Didn't the intro for Heroes Duty show that the lab accident that created the Cy-Bugs happened immediately before the events of the game, because the space marines were there to contain the problem?
  • What's meant to be taken is that the wedding is just a part of Calhoun's backstory, meaning even if it was shown in the game (which on its own would seem a little weird, for a game like that), it would probably only be a cutscene, with the Cy-Bug therein being programmed specifically to fly in and eat the boyfriend. Chances are, there is no real timeline with the regards to Hero's Duty - the basics of its continuity are "Cy-Bugs were created during a freak lab experiment, every day you can play alongside the soldiers to fight them off, and Calhoun's wedding took place sometimes in between the accident and when people play the game.
  • The soldier telling this story said her wedding was the one day Calhoun didn't perform a perimeter check. Presumably, the Cy-bug slipped past defenses because she Failed a Spot Check.
• Why is Calhoun's past referred to as "the most tragic backstory ever"? Your fiance being eaten on your wedding day certainly isn't a walk in the park, but I could easily think of a few other characters with histories just as tragic, if not more so.
  • The other soldier could have been referring to her having the worst out of their game's characters, or, you know, exaggerating. They could also see it as more tragic because it actually affects her. For instance, Ralph had his home destroyed in his backstory, but that isn't why he is mad at the Nicelanders.
    • Referencing part of the above, it's "the most tragic backstory ever" in the meta sense because of the way it affects her. She's programmed to have real PTSD due to an event that she knows didn't actually happen, but she still reacts viscerally to that event because she can't help being programmed that way. It goes beyond her playing a tragic role; her actual real-life suffering is part of the entertainment/immersion for the player, who isn't aware that she's an actual sapient person feeling legitimate pain.
• If the chapel in Hero's Duty exists for Felix and Calhoun to have their wedding in, despite not appearing in normal gameplay, wouldn't that mean that Calhoun's fiance also exists somewhere in the game's code?
  • Possibly. But if Calhoun's backstory was a cutscene that was "filmed" once and then plays during the game, rather than something that she has to go through every time, he wouldn't be around to talk to or have a relationship with. His code might even exist merged with the Cy-Bug that ate him and all the horrifying implications of that. (I believe someone once suggested he be a final boss for the game; if that were the case, it would make sense for Calhoun's backstory to be an actual cutscene introducing him.)

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