Headscratchers / Wreck-It Ralph — Ralph

• You have to wonder why things weren't a little better for Ralph. After all, unless the game is programmed with a specific end (like many modern games are, but few 80s games were) Ralph would almost always win in the end. The game would keep giving him more and more power each round until he overcame the hero. In the 80s, there were a few people that learned games enough to keep playing them until they bugged out (Pac-Man being a famous example) but those were VERY few. Felix's job was, in the end, to lose, even if Ralph's victory was Pyrrhic in the worst way. As beloved as he was by the Nicelanders, you have to wonder if Felix's level of discontent wasn't higher than it appeared, and if it made him more sympathetic to Ralph.
  • That's especially funny, because the movie acknowledges the existence of kill-screens at the very end, when the final Disney logo is interrupted by one...
  • I thought the game did have a programmed end-when the Nicelanders throw Ralph off the building. Then the gamer wins and the next round starts.
    • The ROUND had a programmed end, just like most any 80s game (including Donkey Kong, of which Fix-it Felix Jr. is a spiritual counterpart). The next round, though, the villain would get faster/more powerful, there'd be more obstacles, etc. Difficulty would keep ramping up until it reached a certain point. There'd almost always be a Game Over, and it would be when Ralph finally overcame his nemesis (and the player).
  • Imagine what happens on rounds that Ralph wins. The Nicelanders would be extra pissed-off at Ralph, a big "GAME OVER" message would appear accompanied by a sad little game over noise, and the gamer would be annoyed. Basically, everyone inside and outside the game is unhappy when Ralph wins, so it's not going to make him any less lonely when he does.
    • Ralph is a "bad guy" but that doesn't mean he's a bad guy. While wrecking is what he does and he's good at it, that doesn't mean he necessarily enjoys it. Come on, the guy is a Gentle Giant and incredibly soft-hearted, the entire villain thing is just acting in character for him. Besides, he gets thrown off the building at the end of every round while he'd only get to "win" once per game. And if, like many games from that period, the game doesn't even have a scripted Game Over sequence when Felix loses all his lives (if it just cuts straight to the "Game Over" screen, for example) his victories wouldn't even offer him any sense of catharsis- he just hits Felix with one final brick, the game freezes and they all go back to the start.
  • You have to wonder why things weren't A LOT better for Ralph in particular and villains in general. Wreck it Ralph seems to treat the video games as a job, it doesn't really make sense why they all seem to keep kayfabe.
    • It seems that video game characters, especially NPCs, do internalize their roles somewhat. For instance, Calhoun knew that her fiancée never actually existed, but she still dumped Felix out of the escape pod to try to keep herself from getting too close to him. This would also explain why Felix was nicer to Ralph than the other tenants: he wasn't an NPC, so he wasn't subject to this as much (or at all).
  • It could be, in part, a form of Fantastic Racism. Just because you need a certain person or group of people around doesn't necessarily mean you'll be nice to them. From the view of the Nicelanders, it's not like Ralph could go anywhere. Gene probably wasn't taking Ralph's threat seriously; how many video game characters would actually go out and risk their own lives and their homes?
    • Continuing with the 'internalised role' notion, it's also possible, implied even, that for the better part of thirty years Ralph relished his villain role and was almost as mean to the Nicelanders during down-time as he was during gameplay and it's only in recent years he's personally distanced himself from his day job. This would also explain why 'bad guys' are feared and disliked amongst the arcade characters generally. His expectation that the Nicelanders accept him after years of brustishness would probably compound their resentment towards him, hence Gene's trenchant dickishness.
• Why did Ralph wait thirty years before doing anything about his cruddy situation in his game? Why didn't he go on his "Good Guy medal quest" long ago, if he knew that was what it would take to get respect? Or, even more so, why didn't he just high-tail it out of there and go live in another game? I'm pretty sure either The Legend of Zelda or Super Mario Bros. would have a ton of nice forests for him to hide in. Even Sugar Rush would have been better. He probably would have met Vanellope all the same and they could have hidden out together in Diet Cola Mountain. It really doesn't make sense. Ralph knows his options. Why did he stay?
  • His appearance suggests he's nearing his 40's, or he's even older than that. John C. Reilly compares his conflict to a mid-life crisis, something that's he's going through at the moment, which is why he relates to the character. Before than, he probably never got tired of being the bad guy because he did respect the fact that that's how the game is programmed. Of course, this raises the question of why no other character in other games who are the same age as Ralph got the same idea!
    • He may be the longest continuously working villain in the arcade. The other games might have gotten a reboot or sequel (which would make the villains the next generation) but it's the same Fix-It Felix Jr. machine that's been there for 30 years.
    • You also have to realize that the whole story kicks off after going through this for 30 years. The reason he snapped is because they were having a party to celebrate a huge milestone and didn't invite him. All he wants is friends; you can even see it when he tries talking to the Nicelanders after the arcade closes and knows all of their names. He didn't even consider that getting a medal would change things until he was challenged to earn one.
  • Also he's a responsible adult that realizes if he leaves, he puts everyone out of a job. He stayed because it was part of his job and people depended on him for it, even if they didn't realize it.
  • And also, if he did leave, all that would accomplish is his game getting unplugged... which he most certainly did not want to happen.
• At the Bad Anon meeting Ralph complains about not having any friends. This troper has to ask...why didn't he just go hang out with the other Bad Guys in the arcade? They seem like a decent bunch and they wouldn't judge Ralph at all. To me that would make more sense than standing around waiting for a bunch of rich, stuck-up assholes (a.k.a the Nicelanders) to change their minds about him. Speaking from experience...rich, stuck-up assholes rarely change their minds about anything and it's best to just go find friends elsewhere. So what's Ralph's deal?
  • It appears that the Bad Anon group is brand new and, admittedly, needs a LOT of improvement. If the end of Ralph's session is anything to go by, none of them give him any help in overcoming his status as a villain and he is no more happy about it than he was when he started. And if it were brand new, these villains would have only just met, so they're in the process of becoming close friends.
  • They mention early on that they've been trying to get Ralph to attend a session for ages, and that that was the first one he had attended. So maybe he was trying to reach out to others then, but got a little sidetracked by the whole "Medal" thing.
  • It might also be that he never really considered himself a bad guy and so never felt the need to go there. But the mid-life crisis made him feel like he needed people to talk to/made him question if he really was a bad guy.
  • It's also part of who you work with. You might have the best group of friends you hang out with on weekends but you still have to deal with the unfriendly ungrateful schmucks you know and hate during your 9-to-5 all week long. And even having the best of friends outside of work will wear down on you when you have to deal with bad co-workers all week long, which is why Ralph wanted the Nicelanders to treat him with some ounce of respect.
• Why did Ralph reveal his identity to Q*bert? All he had to do was say sorry for bumping into him and be on his way.
  • Ralph doesn't have that many friends. What he was doing was pretty cool and new, so bumping into Q*bert probably gave him a chance to gush and go "Dude, check this out!"
  • Also, he wasn't necessarily trying to hide from Q*bert (station was empty anyway). Plus, he's genuinely sympathetic to Q. All things considered, he probably felt bad for tripping over a dude who has no home to respawn in. Heck, he might have been concerned that tripping over Q*bert risked Q getting killed which is why he stopped and said sorry.
• Why didn't Ralph or Felix think of building a place for Ralph out of the freaking huge mountain of bricks before?
  • Before the events of the film Ralph wasn't really friends with Felix, and Felix was blissfully ignorant of Ralph's less than enviable situation.
  • It just seems so obvious though.
  • Right at the beginning, Ralph outright says that sleeping where he is is plenty comfortable for him. Hell, before then he was perfectly comfortable sleeping on an unadorned tree stump. It was Ralph's treatment that he didn't like, not his accommodations.
  • I guess it was a downside of his good nature. Bear in mind it took him thirty years to snap, so he might have been so used to the poor treatment and was so courteous about it that he didn't want to kick up a fuss about it. Alternatively, he could have been a bit concerned about messing with his pre-defined backstory, not really realising that he could just put it all off-camera, like he did in the ending.
• This borders on Fridge Brilliance and Wild Mass Guessing: Fix-it Felix Jr. is obviously a stand-in for Donkey Kong. While originally a villain, Donkey Kong was able to be a hero of his own game. Wouldn't it be interesting if Ralph had a talk with DK?
  • How much should we assume the DK cabinet is still in the arcade? Considering Bowser's at the Bad Anon meetings ...
  • Bowser's there because there was probably a Vs. Super Mario Bros. cabinet in the arcade.
• Gene was the one who taunted Ralph into retrieving a hero medal from another game in the first place. How come Ralph didn't call him out on that when Gene was giving him crap about how his desire to be a hero for once doomed the whole game?
  • Could be that he's too depressed to even bother caring anymore.
  • Also, Gene was probably just expecting Ralph to just quietly go into another game, pick up the medal, and go home. Which is exactly what would've happened...but because Ralph forgot about a Cy-Bug, it turned into a gigantic catastrophe. That's the part Gene is probably chewing Ralph out over, not over having gotten a medal at all.
    • No, Gene made it pretty clear he never expected Ralph to try it at all. As far as the movie shows no one else but Calhoun, Felix, and the rest of the Hero's Duty characters knew about the bugs getting loose into Sugar Rush. Ralph himself even thought the bug he brought in was dead, and Felix and Calhoun certainly didn't have time to tell anyone, so unless the rest of the Hero's Duty soldiers left the game to spread an alert (unlikely) there's no way Gene could have even known about it. He and the rest of the Nicelanders certainly wouldn't have calmly packed up and left their game if they knew about the threat of the bugs getting loose.
  • Ralph was already feeling lower than dirt after what he was forced to do to poor Vanellope, and was likely in the mindset to take the blame for anything. So when Gene basically says: "We're screwed and it's all your fault", Ralph very likely felt it WAS his own fault. Gene may have taunted him, but Ralph's the one who actually left to go get a medal.
    • Still. Makes you wonder where Gene gets off taunting and blaming Ralph, justified in the eyes of his fellow Nicelanders. The events of the movie almost avoided the whole plot when Felix invited Ralph in for some cake. Had Gene not turned spiteful and hateful, Ralph could have had his cake, walked out, and just continued going to Bad Anon meetings to deal with it. Instead, we get Gene outright challenging Ralph to go out and get a medal, complete with promised penthouse. Nobody calls Gene out on this when that challenge directly leads to Ralph game-jumping, and putting the entire game at risk. People, the reason your game is being taken down is not because Ralph was incapable of dealing with your nonsense! It's because the jerk sipping martinis told the secondary central character of the game to leave!
    • Gene didn't believe Ralph was serious, and he probably convinced everyone else that he wasn't serious either. And as for why no one calls him out later, well, that's probably because they were too busy panicking about their game being declared "Out Of Order."
    • As noted above, we don't know how things were for the thirty years prior to the story. It could be that Ralph fully-embraced his villain role and was hostile to the Nicelanders even outside gaming hours. There's a little bit of circumstantial evidence for this; he'd had no urge to visit Bad-Anon before, despite being invited for years, and seasoned arcade characters like Frogger and Dig-Dug seem to fear Ralph when they encounter him in Game Central Station. If this is the case, then it would be unreasonable to expect the Nicelanders to start treating Ralph like a friend just because he wants to turn over a new leaf. So when Gene snorts that Ralph could never earn a medal, it may have come across as him justifiably putting a bullying big-shot in his place by taunting his perceived limitations as the bad guy. It is Ralph himself who gets carried away with the significance of acquiring a medal, even resorting early on to just outright looking for one in a lost & found rather than earning one. For all Ralph's fantasising, if he had returned with the medal, Gene would just have grudgingly handed over the key and the Nicelanders would have gone on resenting him. So when Gene asks Ralph "What did you want?", he's really asking "What did you expect?" - to me Ralph's lack of justification seems less like giving Gene a free-pass on his provocation than Ralph realising how self-absorbed he'd become and how misconceived the whole medal quest was.
    • No matter how you slice it, Gene was the one who basically challenged Ralph to get a medal. As far as Gene was concerned, Ralph was "just the bad guy who wrecks the building," and that's all he would ever be. By this point, Ralph's so desperate for just a little bit of respect (all he really wants is to be on top of the "building" with the others instead of down in the "mud") that he jumps on Gene's challenge to prove that he could be a good guy and he could win a medal and sets out to find one so good it'd make all of Felix's medals wet their pants. Ralph was starting to have second thoughts about it though while digging through Tapper's Lost and Found ("What am I doing?"), but then a golden opportunity to get a medal presented itself when Markowski arrived, and Ralph jumped on it, out of the aforementioned desperation.
  • Actually, Gene never directly blamed Ralph for anything. He just sort of quietly explains what had happened since he left, gives him the penthouse key, and then leaves. It's true that it carries undertones of him partially blaming Ralph, but it is Ralph's fault.
    • Yeah, but Gene is just as much at fault as Ralph is. As already stated, Gene was the one who challenged Ralph to go out and win a medal in the first place. Ralph was probably just too bummed out about what went down with Vanellope to point this out.
    • Gene is not just as much at fault as Ralph is. If someone tries to goad you into doing something wrong (especially in the midst of a very heated situation) and you go along with it, you do not get to pin the blame on them. Plus, Gene didn't tell Ralph, "Go abandon your game and leave us all to be unplugged to try and get a medal." All he said was, "You'll never be able to get a medal, because you're just the bad guy who wrecks the building!" There's definitely a small amount of accountability there, in that he could've reacted differently, but he didn't do anything that forced Ralph to go off and prove himself. (Especially not during in-game hours — that part really was entirely Ralph's fault.)
    • I'm not saying that Ralph isn't at fault, but how exactly is Gene not at fault? When Ralph claims that he could win a medal, Gene says, "Uh huh. And when you do, come and talk to us." And then, when Ralph asks, "And then would you finally let me be on the top of the cake with you guys?!", Gene snaps, "If you won a medal, we'd let you live up here in the penthouse! But it will never happen!" Gene was the idiot who planted the idea of winning a medal in Ralph's head, and Ralph was fed up with everyone in his game aside from Felix treating him like garbage. What he did was stupid and irresponsible, but Gene deserves a little blame here too.
    • Like I said, Gene goaded Ralph into trying to win a medal, and is at fault for that. But he was blaming Ralph for abandoning their game and leaving it to be unplugged in order to get a medal. It's the "abandoning his game" part that Gene is upset over, and the part that isn't his fault. Ralph could've just gone into another game after hours to get a medal; instead he chose to do so when he was supposed to be on duty. And if you want to argue that the Nicelanders simply got what was coming to them for mistreating Ralph, that's basically what Gene is saying anyway. "Congratulations, Ralph. You left us when we needed you and now we're about to become homeless, but you got the medal like you said, so the penthouse is yours. I hope it's worth it."
• Why does Ralph's 8-bit sprite have red hair when inside the game it's dark brown?
  • Limited color palette typical of NES-era games like his?
• Why do Felix and the Nicelanders dislike Ralph so much at the start of the movie? Surely they are all aware that he's only doing what he was programmed to do, and that he doesn't really have a choice about it - if he stops wrecking the Penthouse, their game gets unplugged. Plus he's a really nice guy, all that "I'm gonna wreck it!" stuff is just him acting in character for his day job as a "bad guy." They aren't really petty enough to hold that against him when he has no choice about doing it and their continued survival depends on it, are they?
  • Yes. Yes they are.
  • Who says Felix dislikes Ralph at all? Also, even if it's his job to wreck the penthouse, doesn't mean everyone else likes him doing it. It's a police officer's job to give someone speeding tickets, that doesn't mean you like that they do it.
    • Felix really didn't want to invite Ralph to the party and only did so because he was too nice to straight up tell him to get lost, it's not hard to infer from that that Felix wasn't particularly fond of Ralph. And if your continued survival depended on that policeman writing you those tickets you'd probably be relieved when you saw those flashing lights and happy to pay the fee.
    • It didn't look like Felix was bothered by Ralph, more like he was concerned about how the Nicelanders would react. Felix is the typical nice guy, the one who aims to please. He's been doing it for 30 years, and is just hardwired to satisfy the Nicelanders on principle of it being both his "job" (in the game), and what he's done in all that time. If he had been more assertive at the party, he probably would have told Gene and the others to just give Ralph a chance.
  • I don't think the Nicelanders realized how much the needed Ralph until he left the game. He'd never missed a day of "work" in 30 years. The one days he's gone, they finally realize he's essential to their survival.
  • It's sort of like a class warfare thing. Ralph's job is seen as unrewarding and not requiring the same amount of skill or effort as Felix's. He's just "the bad guy who wrecks the building". Think about it - we depend on garbage men and cashiers, but they're not respected at all and they're typically mocked as failures. Ralph's the same way. The Nicelanders know he's not actually evil, they just think he doesn't deserve any prestige or respect.
    • But Ralph acts as a free agent during the game; Felix is controlled by the player. Whatever "skill" Felix may have doesn't enter into game-play at all.
    • I've never heard anyone mock the cashiers at the store I work at or heard anyone do that, period. However, I have complained up and down to my friends about some of my coworkers. My job probably involved less critical thinking than Ralph's and somehow I still have to spend the first hour of my shift fixing everyone else's mistakes, but I digress. In Ralph's case I think it might have less to do with class and more to do with "there's no second chance at a first impression". Ralph's job is basically to make a mess of the Nicelanders' lives, Gene's especially so. In a slightly messed up way, Ralph's a bit like Internal Affairs in a police department or internal auditors in a business, necessary but that job does not get you a lot of friends.
  • There just seems to be a general Fantastic Racism against certain types of characters in this world — glitches and villains are the two disliked, bullied classes we get to see, but there could be more. Fitting for the Who Framed Roger Rabbit-of-video-games. Ralph's a villain, and others just don't like villain characters, even though there's no rational reason to, even though it's not his fault, even though most of them are perfectly nice people just doing their job. Sad, but not the least bit unrealistic...
    • Also, the job of the villain is clearly not particularly glamorous. How many workplaces that celebrate their 30 years of being in business enthusiastically invite the janitor in addition to the guys with desk jobs (and who actually know each other on a first-name basis and hang out together)? It's not a perfect analogy, but Ralph is the janitor. The guy no-one really knows with a job that's anything but glamorous. No medals, no glory, no "pillar of community" stuff. Hence the Fantastic Racism.
  • Let's also not forget that Ralph wasn't exactly acting all chipper and friendly when we saw him interacting with the Nicelanders at the beginning. Yes, him having to do his job is one thing, and he has been treated this way for 30 years, but beyond the greeting he gave them all, he was behaving pretty passive-aggressively. Obviously, it's going to take more than one decent interaction with someone before they start to like you, and Ralph should've kept this in mind if he'd wanted to show the Nicelanders that he was a perfectly good guy when off-duty - he even admits that he has a bit of a temper! No, I'm not saying the Nicelanders are completely absolved of responsibility, but the events of the movie and their relationship with him may have ended up going in a very different direction if he'd just exercised some patience and restraint and was a little bit more polite, since that would've shown them who he was and what he wanted.
• If Ralph apparently waited the entire day before climbing the tower in Hero's Duty - since his first game is when the arcade opens and when we see him climbing, it's closed - why didn't he go back to Fix-It Felix, Jr. in the meantime and then come back after hours?
  • He probably suspected he couldn't get past Calhoun a second time. If you're trying to sneak in somewhere and realise your goal will be easier to obtain at a different time of day, are you going to sneak out and come back later, or hide until you get the time you want?

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