WMG / Wreck-It Ralph

Examples are not organized in chronological order. Sequel predictions have been moved to WMG/Ralph Breaks The Internet

Post-release theories/world development. WARNING: UNMARKED SPOILERS!

Turbo will return…

Someone with such familiarity to the source code can't not have thought of creating a backup of himself. Or several.

• Rich Moore stated that King Candy will most likely remain deceased, but Alan Tudyk himself is hinted to return given the tradition to include him in every recent Disney film. So let's think about it further: Assuming King Candy was just a single character created by Turbo, he is probably dead. But there are very likely other Turbo Time games out there; and what if the other Turbos are just as egomaniacal as the Turbo from the first film?
  • Tudyk did return in the sequel, but not as a villain.

The Final Boss of Hero's Duty is Dr. Brad Scott.

Just think about it: The Cy-Bug that in the movie assimilated King Candy/Turbo became the leader of the swarm, and declared himself the Final Boss, even fighting in a classic boss arena. The cutscene with the Dr. memories that gets triggered with "Wow, you are one dynamite gal" is likely something only he would have said to her. Considering that, it is incredibly likely that on the final level, you hear the phrase, said word-for-word by the Dr. Brad/Cy-Bug hybrid, sending Calhoun on a heroic BSOD, then it's up to the player alone to fight him. Likewise, the Widowed at the Wedding scene is likely to appear in-game, probably halfway the tower.

That would mean Calhoun has seen her fiancé get possessed by the Cy-Bug and get killed over and over.

Wreck-It Ralph shares the same universe as Mega Man Battle Network and Megaman Starforce.

It makes sense due to the EM-based entities in the games such as Gemini Spark, Omega-Xis and so on. Being a video game character is essentially like being another kind of sentient EM entity, like an early form of the Wizards or the Netnavis, which in this case are specifically man-made and serve a purpose — in this case, being actors as part of a show for the players.

Surge Protector himself is a powerful Netnavi that controls Game Central Station. This also implies that things like Noise exist and present a daily problem to the video game characters, and then there's the whole "ripping through reality" effect demonstrated by Noise Waves throughout Starforce 3... seeing as Megaman actually used Noise Waves to travel across different places in the Real World — who's to say a Noised Cybug Turbo wouldn't escape into the real world then?

While this does imply the video game characters are real, it also implies that things like Dread Joker, the Crimson Dragon, Le Mu, and everything like that are just as real and aren't some ploy of a video game — they're genuine threats to anything that lives on Earth.

Being a virus is like being a ghost.

Surge Protector has powers based on his emotions.

If he loses control he will hurt characters.

"Wreck-It Ralph" takes place in the year 2012, on Earth...

...in the Universe Gamma.

Turbo used Surge Protector to get the Konami Code.

Surge kicked his own butt for that for a long time.

Most of the characters' memories aren't coded.

30 years of abuse take more memory than the average arcade games', doesn't it?

The reason that arcade's characters come alive…

…is that magic (not coded in-game magic, but bona fide real life magic) was involved in some ways. Maybe the arcade owner was very lonely and a fairy (maybe the Blue Fairy, even) gave life to his machines' characters, Pinocchio-style. Which also explain why the arcade owner in question is the only human who seems aware of the characters' sentience.

The Surge Protector was the cause of everything that happened in the movie.

The Surge Protector always wears holiday-appropriate costumes on holidays.

His dead-serious demeanor doesn’t change a bit, though.

King Candy regenerated...Turbo didn't.

So now he's an Empty Shell.

Power surges are every surge protector's Enemy Without.

If Turbo hadn't been killed, at some point he would've tried to take over the physical world.

The Surge Protector is actually very loyal to the games and the characters.

And that's because games are the very reason for himself being plugged in.

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic takes place in the same universe, because electricity is magic.

Pony magic looks like electricity (sometimes) and Surge Protector...I don't think he is coded. I then concluded that magic/electricity is what makes character alive and that the whole movie is set loooong before ponies existed and took control of the rotation of the planet.

"Wreck-It Ralph" is Ralph's informal name.

His formal name is "Damage-It-Severely Ralph".

• And Felix's formal name is "Inexplicably-Put-It-Back-The-Way-It-Was Felix".

The Game Central Station as we see it in the movie is an illusion created by the Game Central Station itself (or Surge, since he's part of the illusion) because characters have still human-like minds and couldn't/wouldn't understand.

The station inside is exactly like "real" people expect it to be.

Surge Protector feels it when the Game Central Station gets touched.

Turbo wasn't stopped by Surge when he went Turbo for the first time because at the time Surge existed only as the Game Central Station.

He created the form we see in the movie after that.

The creator of Turbo Time is going to reintroduce Turbo.

It's not very rare for successful game designers to insert references from past glories into their later works. If Turbo Time used to be that popular, Turbo would be back legally in some new game or patch.

• If this happens via a patch for Sugar Rush, it should be very... interesting.

Wynchel and Duncan tortured candies under the rule of Turbo. And they never got punished in any way for that.

The tortured candies never said anything because they were too scared of the two donut cops.

Surge Protector is just like Courage the Cowardly Dog

It...wasn't really normal for Surge Protector to stare at Chun-Li's butt.

Surge Protector is a shapeshifter and his true form is invisible and intangible

He doesn't disappear, he turns back into his original form.

Surge met a video game character version of Rainbow Dash

Surge is faster.

Surge will team up with a Classical Elements Ensemble

Earth, Air, Fire, and Water (all programmed, of course) with Surge representing Energy.

Ralph and Surge are frenemies

Surge stops Ralph not because he‘s a Bad Guy, but because he reminds him of Turbo and Surge never liked Turbo.

Surge Protector is connected to the physical surge protector, but the two aren‘t exactly the same

Actually, Surge Protector is the life force that makes characters sentient and he wouldn‘t have chosen that surge protector if it had been used to power common appliances.

Surge Protector is a Humanoid Abomination

Or characteroid(?) abomination.

Surge Protector will have a "Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!" moment.

Technically, he's a rather important entity in the arcade. Maybe in the sequel he'll have to choose between following protocol and doing something to help the main characters when the fate of one or all of the games are at stake.

The Sugar Rush Racers did try to help Vanellope.

At first. But Turbo found out, and erased all their memories of the event with ones of them hating her, and continued to do so whenever any of them seemed to feel sorry for her. Those memories were all brought back with the rest of their memories, and is a big part in why Vanellope forgives them.

Wreck-it Ralph is in the same universe as TRON.

I can't be the only one to notice the similarities.

• Encom created the Hero's Duty games. The failed programming in the game was caused by the Master Control Program, thus the Cy-Bugs are the manifestations of the MCP.

Turbo is related to or was friends with Evil Otto

Otto is a giant smiley face, Turbo is practically one. They have both caused harm to others outside their game, Otto in the real world and Turbo within other games in the arcade. If Turbo Time is from the same year as the game it was influenced by, Rally-X, then both Berzerk and Turbo Time were released in 1980.

Litwak's Turbo is and always was Megabyte

At the end of the ReBoot series, Megabyte could assume the form of anyone he wanted, had become a Trojan virus, and wanted to infect everything.

• I thought he just wanted to get revenge on Bob and disguised as him just because he could.

Ralph was previously in a relationship with Lara Croft

When he was using her name in response to the surge protector, he was not only making a joke — he purposely made it at her expense. This would also explain why it was the first name he thought of. In addition, she also has something in her design that is bigger than normal, and the two could probably relate to each other. The relationship most likely distracted him from his unhappiness with his job until a particularly nasty breakup.

• WOOT WOOO
• Someone make this into a fanfic. Please.
  • Was Tomb Raider ever made into an arcade?!
  • http://blog.tombraiders.net/2011/04/signed-lara-croft-arcade-unit-to-be.html
• Note that he was glancing at the cherries when he said this.
• Alternately: It was a self-degrading dig at himself and how Lara Croft is conventionally attractive, while he's not so much. Although the fans certainly think he's cute!

The Cy-Bugs are the Changelings video game counterpart

Both races are insectlike (the Cy-Bugs being insect-like robots and Changelings being insect-like ponies). Both are gluttonous in different regards (Cy-Bugs eating everything due to programming, Changelings eat emotion out of wanting to survive, but still cause chaos anyway), both are shapeshifters (Cy-Bugs turn into anything they eat, changelings can turn into anything they see), and both share a venomous green and black as their main coloration.

• So, does this make Turbo Chrysalis then?
• Turbo IS Chrysalis. I mean, he's an egotistical maniac who can't stand being ignored.
  • Who impersonates royalty and entrances the masses with deceit while entrapping real royalty.

"Candle-Head" is not really her name, and Turbo is to blame.

As pointed out in the main page's Odd Name Out entry, she was originally Minty Zaki, and an unknown sour-apple-themed racer inexplicably took her name at the last minute. Why? When Turbo did all his mangling of the code to lock-out Vanellope, he must've pulled the wrong metaphorical lever while doing so, and botched some name-listings, accidentally erasing that of the sour-apple themed girl and giving Minty Zaki's name to her instead. He made up the moniker "Candle-Head" and gave it to the cake-karted girl as part of covering his tracks, as a nameless racer would stand out too much.When Vanellope's win rebooted all of Turbo's meddling, it obviously would undo that error as well... so "Candle Head" is again "Minty Zaki", and the renamed "Minty Zaki" now has her real name back, whatever it was.

• May I suggest Midori Ringo?
• Jossed, Candlehead's name is on the cabinet in the racer listing.
  • Not necessarily — the only screenshot we've seen so far of that part of the cabinet isn't clear enough to fully confirm the names.
• The name change could be caused outside the game's coding — characters are renamed from time to time. Maybe 'Candlehead' was a fan given nickname, which was made canon by the game developers.

Vanellope is an expy of Honey the Cat

Think about it, they both have black hair, they are previewed in both games in some form, they both have errors in their code, and just aren't used because of said errors.

Fix-It Felix Jr. is actually the sequel to Fix-It Felix where Ralph was, in fact, the hero saving his forest from destruction by Fix-It Felix Sr. Ralph was in fact the hero of his franchise all along.

This game is not an expy of Donkey Kong, but instead an expy of Donkey Kong Junior, with all that entails! Ralph was a hero all along.

• This would explain some lyrics from "Wreck-It, Wreck-It, Ralph" and why the song sang about him before Felix.
  • Wreck it, Wreck it Ralph as fast as you can. You know you can do it with your colossal hands

There are copies and copies of Ralphs, Felixes, Calhouns and others in other arcade centers who all repeat the same adventure.

This film only focuses on the innerworks of a single arcade center. Surely the characters from other arcade centers are also aware they are video game characters and are only doing their jobs.

• Kid Radd fan?

The movie takes place in the same universe as Kid Radd.

The "you can die forever outside your game" rule is why Q*Bert's game got unplugged.

Apparently, someone in the game made a foolish decision to wander the arcade, and was killed. Because the game needed that character, they couldn't resume, and thus the game was considered "glitched" and unplugged, leaving Q*Bert and his enemies homeless.

• Which might explain why Q*Bert risks entering Fix-It Felix Jr. to tell them where Ralph is. Not only does he care about Ralph's safety because of the kindness he gave them by giving them a cherry from Pac-Man, but he doesn't want another arcade machine to befall his machine's fate!
• It would have to be Wrong Way who was killed. He's the only Q*Bert character not shown in the movie so far.
  • One of the green hairy things (Slick or Sam) was missing also.
  • For Wrong Way, it's still alive according to this linked webpage.

Mighty the Armadillo died outside of a Sonic The Hedgehog game

This is why we haven't seen him in anything beyond a missing poster since 1995, and why it's Sonic giving the "you can die forever outside your game" PSA - he lost a friend that way, so he's personally invested in the cause.

• This can be applied to any character in a franchise that was Put on a Bus!
  • Just because he hasn't been used in a long time doesn't mean he's permanentally gone, he could reappear in a later game at anytime for nostalgia's sake. Super Smash Bros. proves that. Also, anyone remember Mach the Rabbit? He's been gone as long as Mighty, but a few years ago in the comics he resurfaced as a drummer in Mina Mongoose's Rock Band.

Fix-it Felix Jr. considers Ralph as his friend

Well, he knows it's his part to be the hero and Ralph's as the villain. He probably knew he wasn't a bad guy outside of the game. If you work with someone for over 30 years, chances are you'll start liking them in some way. However, Ralph never knew that Felix cared for him at all. If he did, he probably wouldn't have left.

• Felix will tell him this around the climax of the film, giving Ralph some much needed confidence.

Felix programmed Hero's Duty to recognize himself, Ralph, and Vanellope as characters.

At the end of the film, we see Felix and Calhoun getting married in the same church where Calhoun had her previous wedding, with Ralph and Vanellope as wedding party members. In the credits, we see Felix and Calhoun acting as a Battle Couple, shooting Cy-Bugs together. Given how dangerous Cy-Bugs are and how freaked out Calhoun is by her Dark and Troubled Past late into the story, it seems unlikely that she would let Felix anywhere near a Cy-Bug if she thought he would get killed. Felix programmed the game to recognize his code (and that of the others), just like it's implied he might have done for Q*Bert and his friends. He may still get killed, but as soon as the game resets, he'll be there to reassure her.

Candlehead is cousins with:

• On one side, Minty Sakura. It ain't so far-fetched, considering the two's similar appearances. This would be more realistic In-Universe.
• Annie Hastur on her other side. It would be where she gets her pyromaniac attitude. Quite far-fetched.

The characters are incapable of swearing

The reason Ralph said "Oh... no" wasn't just because he's in a family film, he wasn't programmed to swear. Only characters in games with certain age ratings can.

The Nicelanders are such jerks because they have the wrong idea about Ralph.

A bit of Alternate Character Interpretation here: when Ralph returns to the penthouse after destroying Vanellope’s kart only to find it empty, take a close look at how Gene addresses him; he’s not disappointed that Ralph won the bet, or surprised that he came back at all. He’s acting normal, for once, talking to Ralph on an equal level. You don’t talk to someone you hate like that, no matter what the circumstances are.

Now think about how the Nicelanders know Ralph: in the game’s backstory, and during the actual game, he’s the guy who destroys their homes just because he doesn’t like that they built it on his spot (Anti-Environmentalistic subtexts aside here). That’s the only way they know Ralph, since they never socialize with him, never got to know him outside of work. Now think about that figurine of him on the cake, which looked like a stupid madman. That’s how they see him.

The Nicelanders aren’t really mean people, they just have the same problem Felix had: they have a completely wrong image of Ralph. To them, he’s a selfish, arrogant bad guy, just like he appears to them in the game (and yes, I know that’s their own fault for not giving the guy a chance, but still).

So when Gene and Ralph have this conversation:

Ralph: Gene, wait… This isn’t what I wanted.

Gene: Well, what did you want, Ralph?

Ralph: I-I was just tired of living alone in the garbage!

Gene: Well, now you can live alone in the penthouse.

Gene isn’t telling Ralph to just go and die, he’s telling Ralph exactly what the scene is trying to point out: by abandoning his game for his own selfish reasons, Ralph has achieved absolutely nothing.The difference between us and Gene is that we know why Ralph thought he had no other choice. To Gene, Ralph being selfish was just Ralph being Ralph, and his antics putting the entire game at risk was nothing surprising. It’s just more proof to him that Ralph doesn’t care about anyone in his game other than himself.

Sugar Rush is mostly aimed at female players

Considering that out of the 15 playable characters (King Candy not included), only 3 are male.

• Yet, it has become popular with boys and adult males.

Felix didn't help out Ralph before the movie because he misinterpreted Ralph's behavior.

Felix is The Hero of a game whose inhabitants expect him to fix everything. Over time, Felix got used to this and so when Ralph didn't outright ask for help, Felix assumed he didn't need it. ("Y'know, I wonder why Ralph isn't bothered that he sleeps in a pile of bricks all the time. But, if he was really having trouble, he'd have told me — everyone else does.")

Video-game Creepypasta is what happens when characters in console and handheld games go rogue

It seems safe to assume that if arcade characters can game-jump and even go rogue like Turbo, so can characters in games played at home. Sometimes a game's characters get bored with doing the same humdrum routine, so they decide to mess with their players a bit — anything from Breaking the Fourth Wall in order to make verbal threats or otherwise directly address the player to completely re-tooling their entire games into something horrifying with new maps and grotesque monsters. There's even the rare case where they aren't even being malevolent, simply seeking to shake things up and entertain themselves and their players with new in-game sequences and stories. These cases tend to be isolated incidents and entirely unique from one to the next (and, due to the individuality of each instance of each character in each copy of the game, impossible to reproduce), so when people share their stories on the 'Net, nobody believes them.

There are other miserable Ralphs.

The one in the movie is the only one who finds happiness.

Presidential elections in Sugar Rush take the form of races

And Vanellope ends up being perpetually president because she's the most popular character among the arcade-goers and her glitch powers help her win the most races.

King Candy was the original ruler of Sugar Rush.

The actual character of King Candy, not Turbo!King Candy. I don't understand why people say that his name and design are a clue that he's not actually part of the game. "King Candy" is the same name of the ruler of Candyland, after all, and as a king, it makes sense to have him be an old man rather than a young boy because at the time the game was made, it was common for kings to be portrayed as old in animated things, and since he's an old man, of course his design would be totally different. King Candy's name definitely fits in with the universe more than Candlehead. King Candy stepped down as ruler when he felt his daughter could rule over his kingdom, but he's still a racer (just not a very good one).

• Or maybe he was an NPC; he was the one who signaled the start of the race, and just sat up in his booth, except for on the final level on Single Player mode, where he was the big boss.
• Alternatively, he was planned to be a playable character and Dummied Out in-universe and Turbo took advantage of that by making his new identity out of the leftover code, which is why there's a specific section of the Sugar Rush coding labeled "King Candy".

Nobody ever questioned about the raven-haired racer on the side of the game console.

It's likely because of the nature of the "chews-ing", that though there are random racers each day, ones like Taffyta, King Candy, Candlehead, and Rancis were there every single day, because Taffyta, Candlehead, Rancis, and King Candy were pretty bloody far ahead of the other racers and they're the four best racers. Everyone just assumed that the Random Number God was tilted into statistically picking those four and only five others, who probably didn't change much outside Gloyd, Jubileena, Crumbelina, Adorabeezle, Swizzle, Snowanna, and Minty. Racers like Citrusella, Sticky, Nougetsia, and Torvald were probably rarities on the roster, but still gave the illusion that there COULD BE a racer like the mysterious raven-haired racer (it could just be presumed she was a very difficult character to get). When Vanellope began to show up and King Candy faded into the ether, it's plausible they thought the game had reset (since, well, it HAD), and it changed the Random Number God choices around a little.

Wreck it Ralph takes place in the same universe as The Fairly OddParents!.

Here's the evidence◊. Didn't see it? Take a closer look◊...

When Felix calls Ralph "brother", he wasn't being metaphorical.

It's the classic tale: one sibling is well-liked and beloved by all, including their parents, the other is a black sheep and social outcast.

Markowski is related to Hudson

Different consoles have Different Game Centrals.

You know how you see those towers and cubes at the startup of the PS2? The Characters must reside in there. As they represent saved games. So there must be Local Game Centrals. And there is a Game Central Station found in each house that is the Main Game Central that looks like a Train Station or a Mall. So there are Local Game Centrals located inside the consoles, and Main Game Centrals located in the household power strips.

• im guessing PC would have Steam city

The internet in this world is based on the power grid instead of phone system.

A technician from an arcade discovered 'tiny bits of data' (characters) running through the power grid and was able to create a small-scale network using adapters that 'spit' tiny packages of data. This would eventually lead to it gaining attention from a number of universities and quickly outsizing ARPANET due to its comparative ease and speed.

When they're not actively being played or used, the characters (and the arcade world) run faster than real time.

When a game gets unplugged, (as shown in King Candy's explanation scene for what would happen if Vanellope were to be in a race), it's shown to be unplugged extremely slowly, allowing time for all of the game's inhabitants to evacuate to Game Central Station. Of course, this raises the question of how the characters keep time with the arcade customers.

Candlehead is not a real Sugar Rush Racer.

Well, if we're going to use the simplicity of King Candy as a way to say you can identify he doesn't belong, then surely Candlehead counts with her name sticking out even more than his does.

• Birthday cakes tend to be portrayed with candles, and as far as I can see, none of the other racers have cake motifs.

Litwak's Arcade has magical properties.

Maybe it was built on an Indian Burial Ground, maybe Litwak has magical powers he may or may not be aware of, but there's something uniquely supernatural about the arcade that turns the characters in the games into fully sentient beings. This makes being unplugged even more of a dire situation; even if the arcade game was plugged back in elsewhere, it wouldn't have that magical spark anymore, and the characters inside would become non-sentient again.

Instead of Litwak's Arcade being magical, Magitek is naturally present in videogames

With electricity being the source of said magic.

In the Fix-It Felix Jr. cartoon, Ralph wrecks the fourth wall

Come on, guys.

Turbo Time was an Obvious Beta.

Dying outside your game being permanent is all AndrAIa's fault

Supposing that putting her backup on Enzo's Icon did not delete "the original", and instead backed up her data on Enzo when the game ended (which seems supported by the ReBoot wiki), she removed herself from her game's code. Treasures of Atlantis no longer has her data at all. Somehow the arcade characters learned of the escaped game sprite, but they don't know about her Icon upgrade.

Locked characters are not even known by the other characters until the moment they are unlocked.

Memories of them are locked along with them in order not to make the other characters force their unlock.

Fix it Felix Jr is a kids game

It's easy for kids to play. That's why Ralph is always defeated in the end. Felix is an expy of Bob the Builder.

• No duh.
  • Well, they don't come out and say why Ralph never "wins", and bad guys usually do. He's always thrown off the building.
    • Ralph doesn't get thrown off at the end of the game, he gets thrown off at the end of the level. Notice how it says "Level 1 complete" the first time we see him get thrown off? Ralph may eventually "win" as the player has to run out of lives sooner or later, but he still has to take at least a few falls during the early and presumably easy levels.

The known Video Game characters in the movie were never in any real danger of being homeless if their games get removed from Litwak's Arcade.

Characters from games such as Street Fighter and Sonic The Hedgehog were never in any real danger of getting erased because if their games get pulled from Litwak's Arcade they have several other Arcades/Consoles to fall back to. However, the Fix-It Felix Jr game is openly referred to as an old Video Game in which it was quite possibly an Arcade-only game. Sadly because it's a 30 year old game that was probably Arcade only it is quite possible that Litwak's Arcade was probably the only place that still even has a working copy of the game anymore. So in other words if Litwak's copy of Fix-It Felix Jr was removed then the game's cast would most likely be really screwed.

• Unless someone got the code running under MAME...
• Fix-It Felix Jr. seems to be like Donkey Kong in this universe, and apparently had the same massive popularity, so I highly doubt it's rare enough that Litwak would have the only copy on Earth. In-universe it's probably one of those games that you can find in any arcade, like Pac-Man.

The real reasons why Zangief is in the Bad-Anon meetings.

He volunteers to be there to help support Video Game Characters who are supposed to play villains that dislike their jobs. While the Bad-Anon meetings normally don't allow good guys to be in the meetings he gets around this by bringing up how he was a Villain in most of the Street Fighter adaptations in the 90s (except for the Animated Movie where he was just a Cameo with Blanka).

The other reason is that he was appointed there to try to keep Bison out of trouble. Notice on how M. Bison is the only actual Street Fighter villain in the meetings? I mean yes he is the most iconic villain but he was never a sympathetic villain there to begin with. We'll assume he is still a Jerk with a Heart of Jerk anyway as well and has probably gotten himself into trouble plenty of times. (Especially since Bison is not exactly the most prudent of Villains, so he is probably quite the Womanizer when he is not playing his role.) Bison had no intention of wanting to go to the Bad-Anon meetings but the other characters in Street Fighter want him to behave when he is not playing his role. (Predictably, Bison has tried to get out of going to the Bad-Anon meetings in the past but something made him a little more willing to cooperate). They probably designated Zangief as Bison's baby-sitter to make sure he goes to his Bad-Anon meetings on time (and Zangief is probably one of the only Street Fighter heroes that would be willing to put up with Bison).

• A third reason is that maybe he just views himself as a bad guy because he enjoys "crushing man's skull like sparrow's egg between thighs".
• When you're depressed, you believe things that aren't true. Like, take it from me, that you're a bad person. How often did people pick the huge Cossack to play as in the Arcade? Zangief probably got depressed and started thinking it was because he was a bad guy, so he joined Bad-Anon, and while he still sometimes thinks he's a playable villain (which is why he still goes to prevent relapse) he feels much better about himself.

Spyro the Dragon has gone Turbo in real life.

How else do you explain Skylanders?

• So was there that one random case where something was up with him and the programmers decided to Throw It Out?

Candlehead is a pyromaniac.

I don't have a lot of evidence for this, aside from Taffyta telling Candlehead to "Light 'em up," like she does it all the time and Candlehead complying whilst giggling like a total maniac, but I find the idea oddly awesome.

The video game characters are more than just code: they're all real.

Watch the scene in which Ralph angrily throws his medal at the Fix-It-Felix screen, covered up by the Out Of Service poster. It makes an audible thunk upon impact, and at that exact moment, the poster loses its hold on one of the corners of the poster, which sets up a major plot point. In other words, Ralph was able to make a physical impact on the outside world, not just images on a screen. They are not just code, they are not just characters. They are as real as it gets, and with power enough to break out of their digital prison. ...Or at least knock on the glass, whatever.

Sugar Rush has achievements.

Or something like them. During the Random Roster Race one of the racers picks up an item that fires a giant scoop of ice cream. it hits a car and seems to turn the car into a slice of cherry pie with the ice cream on top while the announcer and the jumbotron both say "A La Mode!" That seemed odd to me, both that the item turns the car into cherry pie, and that they would have this special display for when it happens, but if you look closely, the car that the ice cream hits is already a cherry pie. It just loses its wheels. So maybe there are certain achievements for hitting certain racers or cars with certain items. I know this isn't an arcade game, but it could be like those things in Super Smash Bros Melee where you get extra points for doing certain things during the round.

The whole thing was just a massive Imagine Spot...

...resulting from a couple of games being out of order one day at Litwak's. A little kid, knowing nothing about how video games work, imagines some whole epic adventure as a result. Fix-It Felix Junior was out of order because Litwak was having it modded to include some old characters for the bonus levels, and was having Sugar Rush modded to replace King Candy with the Dummied Out Vanellope. He included the Turbo part because of a story his dad told about an old game glitching out (an early modding attempt by Litwak).

• You mean Moppet Girl? What must have happened was that seeing the game fail to load Ralph freaked her out so much that she had a dream the following night where Ralph really did leave, the Niceland characters went looking for him, and he was the one who ruined her Hero's Duty game in place of Markowski. Then her mind began to translate her experience of getting shut out of playing Sugar Rush as the character from the game's side-art getting shut out of participating.

This movie is set in the same universe as Summer Wars.

Someone at the arcade discovered that the AI in the arcade have a mind of their own, and saw what was going on during the events of the movie. When he was designing OZ, he made the Avatars, as well as John and Yoko, the Guardian Whales, behave like the users in real life. Hence, because the whales, and Love Machine, and the user controlled avatars, had a mind of their own, they could directly fight one another, and technically, OZ was also a game, and a service, so the avatars, and by staying in their game, Natsuki could free them with the Hanafuda Koi Koi game against Love Machine, and since Love Machine itself was an outsider bot, King Kazma could punch it out and kill/delete it completely and permanently, like how King Candy/Turbo was tricked into his own death by going into the light.

"The Code" is more user-friendly in Sugar Rush

Old 8-bit games have simpler code, but when you go into it it's just a jumbled, tangly mess and hard to edit without screwing up the program. Sugar Rush, being a more modern game had not only a better organized code, but also easier for Turbo to edit.

The reason Sugar Rush has so much extra stuff other than simply race tracks (castles, etc)...

...is because a certain number of racers are picked as avatars every day - this way the other characters have something to do on their off days.

• Alternatively...

The reason Sugar Rush has so much extra stuff other than simply race tracks (castles, candy canes, etc)...

...is because there are minigames besides the main game. The double striped candy canes are part of a platformer minigame. The castle... maybe that's where the credits roll?

It takes place in the same universe as Toy Story.

They even have the same rules. (no interaction around humans for example) only with video game charters rather then solid touchable toys.

Turbo crossed the Despair Event Horizon after what happened to Road Blasters and Turbo Time.

Turbo was insanely jealous of Roadblasters, so he game-jumped to wreck their time in the spotlight, but that was all he intended to do — he was so blinded by rage and envy he didn't think about what would happen to Turbo Time. The two other racers we see 1- who are they? A popular Fanon is that they're twins. Turbo's older brothers, maybe? When he crashed Roadblasters, he intended for Roadblasters to get taken away, but when Turbo Time got unplugged too, it not only took his home away, but his brothers died because of his actions. So he spent his time drinking himself into a stupor in Tapper's, when he heard about another racing game being put into the arcade. So he grabbed the code and entered the game, thinking that maybe he could hide himself in his new persona and forget about his past, but Vanellope got in the way. After having done away with his own kin (even if he didn't intend to), what was another kid's life ruined to Turbo?

The video games in Wreck-It Ralph are really real life Alternate Universes that are part of The Multiverse.

Ralph has his own successful video game franchise of which he is the protagonist

He IS based on Donkey Kong, after all. It naturally follows that his more recent in-universe appearances have him as being friends (or at least explicitly friendly enemies) with Felix.

Mr. Litwak knows the video game characters are alive

His euphoric reaction to Fix-It Felix Jr. being 'fixed' and his mournful reaction to losing two arcade games in the flashback, as well as his dialogue in general, it seems to suggest he knows more than he lets on. He's clearly worked at the arcade for a while, it figures he might've caught on somewhere along the road.

Not only that, but he tells some of his customers for the sake of the characters

Say someone vandalized a cabinet beyond functioning or repair, especially when Mr. Litwak can't just get a new one. Now you've got all these homeless characters with nothing to do but sit around Game Central Station and hope they get a break. Or how about those Small Name, Big Ego types who would go Turbo if they went too long without getting quarters^note If they're not getting quarters, then the gamers are ignoring them, meaning they've been left in the dust, which would lead to them going Turbo? Wouldn't he need to keep them satisfied to avoid another incident like that? If he tells this to his clients, they'll probably know better than to allow these sorts of hypothetical situations. Obviously, though, not all of them would believe him, so he probably only tells the ones he think would — like, say, the particularly young gamers and some long-time customers.

Surge Protector is Game Central Station. Not that he would tell that to the video game characters.

In fact, he was the one who named it "Game Central Station".

• He vandalizes the station, and thus himself. Make of that what you will.
  • Always wanted a tattoo...
    • He's actually...painting his own insides, you know.

When video game characters die outside their games, they go to either The Overthere or The Underwhere.

Video game characters that have died outside of their games can be brought back to life using the ABBA code.

Wreck-It Ralph takes place in the same universe as the Game Boy comics published in Nintendo Comics System.

The Nicelanders had gotten the cake ingredients from Sugar Rush.

Makes sense, seeing as there seems to be no stores or bakeries in Fix-It Felix Jr. So the Nicelanders may have a sort of barter system with King Candy in which he would trade them ingredients for cakes and such. It's different with Tapper, because his game was built to have unlimited Root Beer, meaning they likely just magically appear.

In-universe, Team Fortress 2 is an arcade game.

This is why the characters from the game look like they belong in a cartoon world.

• Also, "Sugar Rush" is actually the Pyro's "Pyro Land."
• Or maybe, Gang Garrison 2 is an actual arcade tie-in with Team Fortress 2.

Turbo has teamed up with Dreamworks to get revenge on Disney for ruining his image

Turbo might have died in Sugar Rush, but remember how people thought he was gone for good after Turbo Time? Well, maybe Turbo somehow traveled through worlds and somehow ended up in our world through a disc, similar to how Sonic.exe communicates through his victims. Maybe Turbo manipulated a Dreamworks employee to put him in a film ... and Dreamworks made him into a snail. Turbo felt very humiliated about becoming a snail, but he still had his personality... wanting to become the best racer in the world. HE IS TURBO REINCARNATED. And being a snail is the best part... nobody will suspect that it's him!

King Candy after Turbo's death

took over Candy Crush Saga because he wanted to scam customers.The "company" is called "King" and the game is about candy. King Candy knows about how the game convinces you to buy boosters and lives, and also wants to make Facebook people hate on each other as sending game requests is considered making you The Scrappy. He wanted to control more games than just the candy related Candy Crush Saga, and after getting all of the money, he'd probably make a giant casino in real life (Controlling machines and manipulating people) just so he could gain all the money, which he would ultimately use to build a doomsday machine to destroy all the racing machines and games in the world, like Mario Kart, along with destroying all the copies of Fix-It Felix Jr. and Sugar Rush so King Candy could get his revenge. After all of the racing games mysteriously disappear, King Candy would cause a racing game monopoly and force people to play Turbo Time so Turbo could be the greatest and only Racer of all time!

Wreck-It Ralph is set in the Mega Man Battle Network series.

• However, the thing is that all the arcades lack the jack in plugs so no Net Navi can enter through any arcade console. However, with the movement of technology in that universe, this troper assumes that there will be Net Navi jacks in the console eventually.

Calhoun fell in love with Felix because of their mutual sense of responsibility.

When Felix first argues his case to her about coming with her, he says that it is his responsibility to fix what Ralph wrecks. After he finishes, she doesn't argue any further and silently gestures for him to get on. Granted, she also seems to like Nice Guys, but it makes sense that a mutual feeling of duty wouldn't hurt.

In the next movie, another racing game will be installed in the Arcade and Vanellope will have to deal with it.

She'll have Ralph, Felix and Calhoun to help her through it, but it would be interesting to watch how Vanellope, a character who, up until the events of the movie, was ignored and cast aside, will handle having all this glory and attention that comes with being a princess, only for another came to arrive with new characters. Either she'll struggle not to become "the next Turbo", since she herself is quite a prideful person, or she'll take some of the new racers under her wing, so to speak, especially if one of them is an underdog character like she was.

An alternate take on the above-mentioned scenario

Kano from Mortal Kombat is shown telling Ralph that "You can't mess with the program, Ralph.", which may be a subtle way to say he's programmed to be the villain he is, which includes, of course, ripping people's hearts out. If the subtle interpretation is too subtle, then the movie might as well as say "screw subtlety" and have Smoke - his fellow MK cameo in the same scene - reply with "That's YOUR excuse to rip my heart out every time!"; then, in true "derailed alcoholics anonymous session", the two are about to have a fight and, right before the other villains keep the two from beating the everloving lights out of each other, they're shown by the side as if they were in an actual MK match. --> theory by Alex Sora 89

Wreck-It Ralph shares a universe with Toy Story

After all, what are video games but modern electronic toys?

• Plus, they seem to act in pretty much the same way. In the beginning, the characters are acting as we would see them. Then the arcade closes for the night, the girl on the DDR screen gives everyone the all clear, and everyone basically punches out and does their own thing. Just like how the toys act inanimate when there's no humans around, but act when they are all alone.

Fix-It Felix will keep fixing it (the building) ...

Until there's nothing left to fix. So the building starts to expand upward and outward until there's no room left in the game to move around.

• And once that happens... cue the Kill Screen?

Tapper is a ROM-hacked version of Root Beer Tapper.

Perhaps the arcade owners liked the bartender more than the soda jerk?

• Or perhaps it's an inversion, since the arcade cabinet is for the original Tapper. The arcade bought the original Tapper but had to get someone to modify it because of their underage clientele. That would also explain why the video game characters can get drunk on "root beer."

There is a recursive reality where the Nicelanders and the Sugar Rush citizens are the put upon heroes dealing with jerk versions of Ralph and co.

They have to play the unpleasant people in these movies to make the protagonists look good, and have to act that way to appeal to our distaste, like Ralph does in the game he's in. So, these characters end up becoming horrible people in our minds, making us (and the recursive reality actors playing the heroes) forget that they're supposed to be playing a role.

• And the recursiveness continues ad-infinitum.

In-universe Tobikomi is sued for copyright infringement.

The characters of Fix-It Felix Jr. allowed Q*bert and other unplugged characters in bonus stages in their game, but they probably didn't know what copyright was. So having copyrighted characters in it, would cause legal issues for Tobikomi if the company that owns Q*bert found out.

• Not sure if one arcade machine would be worth the money to sue. It's not like it makes millions of dollars in profits that would be worth all the legal fees involved in a lawsuit.
  • In real life, an arcade owner got away with hacking Tempest to make it more challenging, creating Tempest Tubes. The modified Fix-It Felix Jr. cabinet could easily be construed by a human as a similar case.
  • Also a decent number of games (such as Ms. Pac-Man) were created via altering existing arcade boards. Remember that at the time, video games and electronic IP weren't a thing (at best, it was the hardware). It wasn't until some time later that such precedent was set and by then, some things had already been cloned too many times.

Characters who are invited into other games by the natives are immortal.

Via the "hacking" process that King Candy/Turbo devised; however, the acceptance of "bonus stage" cameos means they have an accepted place. King Candy/Turbo was immortal...until Vanellope became a racer; then the position was put into limbo again because the game recognized it wasn't true acceptance.

• Inviting characters still has the risk of a Turbo incident, though, so it requires a lot of trust.

The same programmer worked on Fix-It Felix Jr. and Hero's Duty

The way that Felix reminded Calhoun of her dead husband, and the way he used his catchphrase "Dynamite Gal", one of the original programmers of Fix-It Felix Jr. ended up working on Hero's Duty and added in some of Felix's programming as an Easter Egg.

The original Fix-It Felix is dead.

Why is there a Fix-It Felix Jr. but no Fix-It Felix ever seen in the movie? The likely answer is Disney was saving him for an appearance in a sequel. However, it's possible that when Fix-It Felix Jr. first came out, it became so much more popular than the original that all the Fix-It Felix cabinets were unplugged. The original Fix-It Felix may be somewhere in Game Central Station, or he may not have escaped his game before it was unplugged, effectively killing him.

• Seeing as he's the hero of his game, it's likely that, if everyone was trying to escape, he would be one of the first out. However, what if he wasn't trying to escape? Maybe he accepted that his time as a hero was done and allowed himself to get unplugged with the game, safe in the knowledge that his son would carry on his legacy.
• Or, given that he's Felix's father, perhaps he didn't get out in time because he was busy trying to evacuate the other characters.

There are different measurement systems between games.

There is historical precedence for it. A Fix-It Felix Jr. foot isn't the same as a Hero's Duty foot. That's why Calhoun can be six feet tall and be taller than the nine-foot tall Ralph.

I got a theory on how the Big Bad got into Sugar Rush and did what they did.

As soon as Turbo saw the "Out of Order" sign on Roadblasters, he sped on out to Game Center Station, where he hit Tapper, and knocked out a Foot Soldier from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game for a costume, but kept himself to Game Center Station. He kept a watch on any new possible game, including his own game — but mostly he just saw new non-Racing games — until 1997, when Sugar Rush come in. He was annoyed by Princess Vanellope von Schweetz and wanted her out of his way. So he, using his Foot Solider costume, knocked out a few people for a disguise — and took the name of Carol Candy, and entered Sugar Rush game. Princess Vanellope started to get a crush on the new arrival and Turbo/Mr. Candy used it to his full advantage. By the end of 1997, via hints from the Princess, Turbo/Mr. Candy was able to find the code box for Sugar Rush and the code need to unlock the game — allowing him to become King Candy and reprogrammed the memories of the other racer and make them think Vanellope von Schweetz is a Glitch.

Encom owns Tobikomi.

Who knows? Maybe in the 80's Kevin Flynn purchases it and decides to make his own version of Donkey Kong thus creating the Fix-It Felix series.

Fix-It Felix Jr. is a sequel to another arcade game.

Ralph makes reference to Felix getting a magic hammer from his father, and then there's the fact that the game is called Fix-It Felix Jr. This indicates that Fix-It Felix Jr., the game in the film, is a sequel to an older game simply titled Fix-It Felix. However, the Jr. version became much more popular around the world, perhaps due to better gameplay, which is why it remains in the arcade.

• It's been officially revealed that a sequel may feature Felix's dad, the original Fix-It Felix.

There are other Game Central Stations. And they are just as awesome.

We've seen how the Game Central Station in the movie is like. Now, think about some of the others out there. Not just arcade games, but home consoles (how do you think Bowser shows up despite him never really being in an arcade game and Sonic and Eggman being in their modern looks when Sonic The Fighters shows them in their classic looks). Nothing says "What the hell?" like when the Ryu of Street Fighter II goes head to head with the Ryu of Marvel vs. Capcom series.

• They can travel between games via the power cord; it only makes sense that they could travel between power bars/stations via the electrical wiring, to other "central stations" in the building, or even other buildings worldwide, if they're willing to take such a long trip. Probably not a wise idea though, as they risk being late or getting stranded and not being present for their game.
• Hate to burst your bubble re: Bowser, but he was in Vs. Super Mario Bros. and Mario Kart Arcade GP.

At least some of the characters believe in a deity named AAA.

He must be important if he shows up on so many high score tables.

• It's an entire Pantheon; AAA, CAP, ASS, and TKO
• God Forbid they start worshiping Fry under the name ASS.

Time in the video game worlds and in Game Central Station goes slower than in the real world.

It must take at least a few minutes to travel from one game to another and depending on the complexity of the game, it could take a while to reset everything before a new player restarts the game. During gameplay, however, time in their worlds and time in the real world progress at the same speed.

• Correction: faster. If it were slower, there'd be less time in Game Central and the consoles for things to get set up after hours than if time just went at the same rate as in the real world (as in, 8 hours could pass in the real world and only one in GCS time, not nearly enough for the consoles to clean themselves up).

Diet Cola/Mentos Mountain was recoded just like Vanellope

.The boiling-hot diet cola hurt Ralph when some splashed him. If this was normal part of the rest of the game, one might expect the occasional racer to get doused, or worse, fall into the stuff. A regular racer has nothing to fear from this beyond falling behind, but it would kill an outsider such as Turbo, who has already re-appropriated the game code to his own ends. While there's clearly motive to have it removed, we know it can't be erased entirely otherwise Turbo would have erased Vanellope as well, so the best that can be done is to remove it from normal play.

• Except if Turbo recoded Mentos Mountain himself, then why did he never think to look there when he was hunting for Vanellope?

King Candy was a Dummied Out character in Sugar Rush.

However, characters who are Dummied Out in an arcade game aren't like the regular characters. Characters who are Dummied Out in the Wreck-It Ralph universe simply exist as skins that are only in the coding and cannot exist as characters in the game unless another character does what Turbo did and uses the skin to plug him- or herself into the game. So in theory, any Dummied Out character can be brought as playable into a game by a different character, even one from a different game.

In Mr. Litwak's world, Capcom went a different way with their ".VS." series starting at or near the end of the Nintendo GameCube era to a few years after the launch of the Wii.

• Sega Vs Capcom — About a six month before the GameCube's end. All systems and arcade. Justifying Sonic's modern look.
• Mortal Kombat Vs Street Fighter — About six months after the launch of the Wii. All systems and arcade.
• Nintendo Vs Capcom — About four years after the Wii's launch. Only for the Wii and the arcade. Justifying Bowser's modern look.

Ralph has Developmental coordination disorder.

This first occurred to me when I saw the comparison of writing on the car between him and Vanellope. DCD affects the subject's motor skills (both gross and fine). After re-watching the movie, it seems like this makes more sense. Ralph's general clumsiness (the cake scene), him constantly breaking things, and him not knowing at all what he is doing during Hero's Duty all seem to supplement this.

• ...Ralph has oversized hands and his job is all about breaking things. He's just not used to precision-based tasks, and it was pretty clear that was his first time in the penthouse (and him smashing the cake was just a burst of temper). He was overwhelmed in Hero's Duty by the sensory overload.
  • Additionally, he's a giant in his own game and still a pretty big guy outside of it as well. It's inevitable that he'd bump into things when moving around in a small space that's not programmed to accommodate him, and that he'd need to exercise a great deal of fine motor control to write with a tiny frosting applicator or avoid stepping on people in a crowded room. If you observe him throughout the movie (especially towards the beginning) he often walks a little hunched over as well, aware of his size, though this may be partly due to his downtrodden attitude early on.

Being Unplugged is Doomsday because Litwak's Arcade has a Night at the Museum effect going on

The source of the game characters' lives is the Surge Protector. They all hate his guts, but he's what gives them life.

And this may be because...

Surge Protector is Dr. Manhattan.

They're both bald guys made of blue energy, right? What must have happened is that after attempts to create life in outer space proved too difficult, Jon returned to Earth and brought some video games to life instead, then got himself a job policing them. Best of all, now that he's surrounded by fellow energy-beings not of his own design, Jon can finally feel like a regular schmoe again.

Video Game Characters temporarily lose their Medium Awareness during their games' production

The developers take it away at some point (possibly when programming in their in-game personality, or maybe their backstories?) for some reason depending on when it happens. They get it back sometime after A) their data is uploaded into the memory bank of their console (I'm not a tech person, correct me if I'm wrong about that) or B) they get plugged in, though, and what they make of this recovered knowledge affects their out-of-game personalities and interactions with other Video Game Characters. It seems possible Player Characters and seriously important NPCs (especially the former since, well, they're Player Characters) tend to recover it sooner, since the less important NPCs' out-of-game personalities resemble their in-game personalities considerably more than, say, Ralph and Felix, who would probably catch on sooner than later under that scenario and would thus more easily develop personalities affected by their Medium Awareness rather than their in-game roles, seeing as the VG Cs' out-of-game personalities develop independently of their in-game ones.

But maybe I'm overthinking all of this, so on a less confusing note...

Vanellope and her kart will appear in Mario Kart U/8.

We know sooner or later that Wii U is going to get a Mario Kart game, it would be Funny Moment if one character from Disney's Mario Kart homage end up in a real Mario Kart game.

• Oh god, imagine if Turbo had a cameo in Mario Kart. He and Waluigi would Troll everyone nonstop.
• Jossed. However, the track Sweet Sweet Canyon might be a ShoutOut to Sugar Rush.

The reason non-Arcade game characters show up is because Litwak's has Wi-Fi.

Hence, anybody who comes in with a portable, tablet, smartphone or laptop would allow for seemingly out-of-place characters to show up.

The Sugar Rush characters who appear human are still sentient sweets

Something about the glazed tone of Vanellope's skin makes it seem that she's made of marzipan.

• Does that make Taffyta a cannibal?

Lots of the characters in the arcade are bilingual

Think about it: lots of video games, like Sonic, start their lives in Japan. Then they're translated to English. But maybe the characters retain their original language and are able to switch back and forth at will. Also, with Sonic being some kind of PSA for the Game Hub, it would make sense for him to know multiple languages.

Litwak's Arcade is located in an alternate universe.

In this universe, console gaming never took off like it did in our universe. Here, arcade gaming stayed the big thing. All the console games we're familiar with were developed for the arcade in Litwak's world.

Vanellope is a Candymancer

It seems like some of the double stripes weren't double stripes until she said "double stripe".

• They are indeed all double-stripes from the moment we see them. They just don't all disappear immediately, particularly the one Ralph hangs onto before he falls in the mud.
  • That's right, if you look at the one Calhoun and Felix walk on, it's a Double-Stripe too.

Litwak's Arcade also rents time on consoles.

The other explanation for Dr. Eggman, Bowser, and other such console-based games.

Turbo is also The Skull in disguise.

Both are undead racers and seems to want to continue their legacy, no matter the cost. Even if it means being dead.

• When did it say Turbo was undead? Having pale skin doesn't immediately rule Zombie.

Fix-It Felix exists but no one really remembers it

It suffered from Sequel Displacement, similar to Mario Bros. compared to Super Mario Bros.. Felix Jr. became an icon while his father faded from the public eye.

History of the Fix-It-Felix games.

The original Fix-It-Felix game (starring Fix-It-Felix Sr.) was a Follow the Leader copycat of Super Mario Bros. After it failed to catch on, Tobikomi completely reworked the game into Fix-It-Felix Jr.

• Or a copycat of Donkey Kong, since Super Mario Bros. wasn't around until 1985, and was for a home console.

Candlehead was the local Bad Girl....

...but was modified into her present personality by King Candy/Turbo.

• Why Candlehead in particular, out of curiosity?
• Easy: Odd Name Out

Litwak's is the Last Stop for Arcade Games

Mr. Litwak gets the games last, after they're unpopular everywhere else. That's why being unplugged at Litwak's spells death or homelessness. You don't make it at Litwak's, your machine gets disassembled.

• But Hero's Duty is implied to, and appears to be, a brand new game, judging by the style and graphics. Games often get unplugged when they're deemed broken; if a game is broken, it gets thrown away. If the characters learn that their game is going to be unplugged, it could very well mean that Litwak thinks the game is broken and intends to throw it out.

All the female Nicelanders have a crush on Felix.

They probably still do despite the fact that Felix is married.

Using a handheld console and a charger cable plugged into the power bar...

It is possible for Ralph, Turbo, or any character in the arcade to game jump into a Game Boy/GBC/GBA/DS/3DS/PSP/Vita/Whatever game, and characters from those games to game jump into the arcade. This could have potential for crossover funtimes (the cast of Sugar Rush racing on Rainbow Road) cheating (having a Level 100 Lugia win Street Fighter by spamming Extrasensory), or just plain evil (kidnapping characters from the Arcade, potentially dooming them to being unplugged).

The Tapper bar is the same bar Dominic works at in Video Game Confessions...

...and the drawings in the hall of fame were drawn by him.

• Jossed... Dominic's Bar is called "The Pixel Palace" while Tapper's Bar is just called "Tapper's" as well as Tapper is the only Bartender there.

Litwak's arcade is also an arcade museum.

That is, Mr. Litwak buys and collects arcade machines, especially ones that are old and rare. Perhaps the Fix-It Felix Jr. machine is one of his oldest machines and perhaps the oldest working copy.

Sugar Rush will Spin-Off from the movie

In the same way that Buzz Lightyear of Star Command spun off from Toy Story, perhaps Sugar Rush will do the same (although it'll probably go under a different title due to it already being a title for another show. Perhaps it could be Disney's answer to My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic?

• A TV show on the Disney Channel aimed at preteens or for Disney Junior aimed at preschoolers sounds AWESOME! It would be like Jake And The Neverland Pirates, which is an interactive show like Dora that doesn't treat kids like they're dumb, and has a very irreverent villain for a Parental Bonus! Vanellope and her racer friends go on tasty adventures!
• A preschool show seems likely but just to cater to a variety of audiences they might make a series like My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. Or, better yet, give Wreck-It Ralph his own series.
• More areas of the land of Sugar Rush will be explored like an urban area, seas, and smaller towns, Vanellope and friends would learn good morals for children, and Ralph himself will make a guest appearance in an hour-long special!
• Heck, even the other two games in the film could be spin-off shows! Maybe Felix's show could resemble kind of a cheesy 80's cartoon but could actually be well-written and of course retain the same appealing characters, and Hero's Duty would be a CG show in the vein of either Buzz Lightyear or TRON: Uprising!
• I would love to see an animated series of Wreck-It Ralph where Ralph, Felix, Vanellope, and Calhoun end up lost and travel from game world to game world trying to get home. In the same idea as Sliders, or more closer, Reboot Season 3.

Cy-Bug behavior is the result of an unintentional memory leak.

Memory leaks build up and up and up until they use up all the memory available. Often in doing so, they tend to take over and over-write memory. Usually by the time they become noticeable, the best/only way to get rid of them is to reset the computer.

Surge Protector isn't a jerk, he's just doing his job.

Just like Ralph, when he's on the clock, Surge has to be overly protective to avoid slipping up and allowing someone going Turbo to pass.

• And in his defense, Ralph actually was stealing food from another game the first time he got stopped, and it's possible he's done it before. Now, if only the Surge had actually looked up...

A Beat 'em Up fangame will be made featuring the characters from the movie in the same vein as Captain Commando, Final Fight, and Streets of Rage.

Why not? The main cast can be easily be adapted to a Beat 'em Up game, ala from the olden days of the Final Fight and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time and among others. Ralph would be the obvious Mighty Glacier with a hint of Lightning Bruiser, using his incredible, fast wrecking ability. Calhoun would be either Jack of All Stats or a Lightning Bruiser, being tall and easy to maneuver. Felix and Vanellope would be something in lines of Fragile Speedster.

Vanellope is President-For-Life

That is to say, still princess in all but name. Note the lack of election making her president, the fact that while she mentioned being a constitutional democracy nobody did anything to make an actual constitution, as well as the fact that everybody is programmed to defer to her in any case. Chances are the "president" thing is just in-name-only.

• I think the President thing allows for a chance for all the racers to be as Game Breaking as Vanellope. This phenomenon is usually referred to as FOTM, or flavor of the month.
• It's not like any of the other racers would challenge her right after she just convincingly joked about executing everybody. It'll be quite some time before anyone is willing to challenge her, whether in an election or if they determine their leader by racing.
  • Vanellope is seen in her Princess regalia at Calhoun and Felix's wedding, so this seems likely.
• Well, there's the fact that it's a video game. Just look at every Mayor in every Harvest Moon game ever for how elected officials in video games generally are treated. Though really, you're not wrong, since Vanellope only changed her title to President because she decided that she didn't want to be called Princess.

Calhoun is the real protagonist of her game

...or at least, the home edition. The arcade version is basically an interactive advert, where Calhoun is your instructor, while in home edition you get to play Hero's Duty from the first person perspective of Calhoun to fully use her tragic backstory.

The old guy is the hacker, not Turbo. Vanellope glitches because parts of her code were deleted.

In one scene, an old guy enters the arcade. Later, Ralph crashes into Sugar Rush and that part of the plot starts. The old guy (I'll name him Bob) was a big fan of Turbo's game, and when it was taken out of the arcade, Bob downloaded a copy of its ROM. Unable to find an emulator, he decompiled the game and ported Turbo so that he would work on the newest racing game owned by the arcade: Sugar Rush.

To insert Turbo's code into Sugar Rush, Bob downloaded a copy of that game too and decompiled it. He put Turbo's AI into Sugar Rush, updated his graphics to fit the game, and made him a racer. But, because Vanellope used the same ID as Turbo would, Bob made her an NPC and moved her from the race to a Dummied Out area of the map.

Now that Vanellope no longer needed her racing AI, Bob Dummied Out those parts of the code. He also added new functionality, which would delete Vanellope's physics code from the machine's hard disk. Satisfied with the results of his hacking, Bob recompiled Sugar Rush and loaded it into the arcade machine's RAM.

Vanellope crossing the finish line fixed the game purely because it didn't know how to handle such an event. This resulted in a crash and reboot, resetting the game and restoring most of Bob's changes. The glitchiness remained because her physics code was completely wiped.

• This old guy managed to do all that, without getting caught? He would have had to have broken in overnight to do that, and I can't imagine he would risk going to prison to hack one arcade unit, just to glorify a character from 20 years ago. Either "Bob" has no life... or he knows the secret lives of videogame characters and deliberately knew what he was getting into.

Candlehead was a Dub Name Change.

Compounded by a Dub-Induced Plot Hole, no less — when working on the English translation, some of the staff started jokingly calling her Candlehead, and found the nickname so amusing they made it official. However, her original name was retained, but accidentally attached to another racer: the green apple-themed racer, aka 'Minty Zaki'.

Sugar Rush takes place within Magicant.

Doughnut officers? Candy all over the place? Whimsical and Sugar Bowl-ish atmosphere? At first. It's kinda surprising when you think this could all take place in Ness's & Ninten's mind at some point.

• Maybe it's what happens just past the edges of the CandyLand board.

Vanellope's glitch abilities will be "nerfed"

Although many players love her glitch abilities, some players and the racers will be sick of her being picked all the time. Vanellope will then decide to put limits on when she can pull off her glitch abilities while also giving the other racers character specific abilities to make it easier for them to compete. Her glitch abilities will still make her one of the better racers to choose, but the other racers will become viable choices.

• Makes sense, given that she may well be able to teleport in succession with any restrictions. Balancing the game probably wouldn't require buffing the other racers so much as limiting Vanellope's "glitching," maybe by giving her just three "charges" per race or a cooldown time or something. It wouldn't be fun for her competitive nature, but it might be an issue that forces her to make a responsible/queenly decision instead of just having fun/trying to win.
• Most likely, she just won't bother trying to really control the glitching while she's racing. So whenever she "glitches", she jumps to a random spot in the order. That would make it useful if you've messed up and are way back in the rear (because most or all of the places you could end up are further forward), but less useful if you're already doing well (because then there's a good chance it will move you backwards).
• Note that at least some of the characters already seem to have character-specific abilities (Candlehead being able to light the cherry bombs, for example).

This video explains that game-jumping is real.

Explained here. Crossovers make sense!

Magic is a common thing in Wreck-It Ralph's universe

The humans are aware of it and they can use it for their goals. But only "unicorn people" can control it consciously and even for them is highly impractical. The only reason why they don't know that it also makes video game characters alive is because they never paid too much attention to them and because they thought that technology like video games couldn't be affected by something as unusable as magic.

• Disney magic! * v *
• Video game characters don't know anything about magic because programmers don't think it's useful for them to know about it. And if gamers don't talk about it, they'll never know.
• Programming affects only the main trait of a character's personality (for example: Felix's fixing and Ralph's wrecking) and some of their memories. The rest is affected by magic.
• Turbo's jealousy let some "video game magic" possess him so that he could change the code of video games. He thought he did it all by himself, though.
• "Video game magic" is just magic plus electricity.
• Magic is the reason why characters can game-jump and keep their powers outside their own game. It's also the reason why they respawn with the same personality and memories in their own game.
• "So, unplugging is not a big deal, right"?

It would still be because magic affects characters in a different way every time. If you unplug and plug again a game, you get characters with different personalities (if you don't consider the main trait). It could happen that they are the same, but it's really rare.

• Magic doesn't cause glitching.
• Now that I think more about it, it's probable that magic can…"unleash its power" when it touches electricity and becomes "videogame magic".
• Um, magic? I think Applied Phlebotinum maybe the solution.

The Sonic from Sonic for Hire is responsible for Turbo crashing RoadBlasters

• I know this would never happen (as Turbo Time was made sometime in the early 1980s, years before Sonic was born), but maybe Turbo wasn't motivated by jealousy. Maybe he was alright with being lonely. However, the Sonic for Hire Sonic, who is an extreme Gamejumper, encouraged Turbo to break into RoadBlasters and jack it up. However, this Sonic thought that Turbo was dead, so he spread the word that people who die in their own games die for good.

Regular Show also takes place with the same universe.

• With anything unusal going on in that show it's perfectly logical that they are both in take place. Most specffically, Destroyer of Worlds as proof as it could.
  • Then we can say Adventure Time and Gravity Falls do too, since they have similar themes.

The staff of Hero's Duty were major fans of Fix-It Felix Jr.

Or maybe just a character designer, or even the creator him/herself. Notice how Calhoun's fiance Brad bears a strikingly similarity to Felix, if less stylized. Clearly they were fans of the original game, and when they had a chance for an inconsequential character, they fixed up a quick 'n' dirty design for him.

• Hero's Duty is made by Wreck-It Studios. It wouldn't be a stretch to say that the company was started by an old Tobikomi employee.

Surge Protector has a crush on Ralph.

That's why he always stops him.

• WOOT WOOO
• Well, you can say he's tsundere.
  • Kuudere would be more accurate.

Tobi-Komi also developed home consoles as well as arcade games.

Which would make sense as Tobi-Komi is an expy of Nintendo. Here is a list of the consoles they have developed and the year they were relesed.

• 1985: Tobi-Com Fun System=Nintendo Entertainment System
• 1990: Mega Tobi-Com=Super Nintendo
• 1995: Tobi-Com 3D=Nintendo 64
• 2001: Game Sphere=Game Cube
  • IT'S SPHERICAL!
• 2006: Tobi-ZOOM=Nintendo Wii
• 2013: Tobi-ZOOM WE=Wii U
  • Nintendo still exists in this universe though, so it's unlikely that their consoles would be expies of Nintendo's. If they did have consoles, they would probably have their own identity.

Tetris is a game that can be found in Litwak's arcade...

...And the L-block is the biggest, baddest mofo in the whole place!

The first videogames in this universe were programmed by Time Lords.

Explaining:

• Why it became the norm to have the characters regenerate into their original form indefinitely after death, no matter what shape their body is in when they die.
• Why the games are Bigger on the Inside.
• Why they can't regenerate outside their own games— Time Lords can't properly regenerate if they're not close to their own TARDIS.
• How the memories of Sugar Rush were really locked away: Sour Bill's Imagine Spot was inaccurate, what King Candy actually locked the subjects' memory in was a fob watch, opened when Vanellope crossed the finish line.

Surge Protector is omnipresent inside the Game Central Station

He can feel what happens to the GCS, but he's blind until he takes a visible form.

The reason why Fix-It Felix Jr. has stayed free of errors for so long...

• ...is because if something starts going wrong, Felix goes into the source code and hammers out anything that goes awry. That's how the game can continue to work for 30 years with seemingly no maintenance. It doesn't explain physical wear-and-tear, however.
• I don't really think his hammer can do that...

Sugar Rush is actually a spin-off of a video game series called, Sugar Land

It would make perfect sense for a racing game to have spun off from another game series. The game play and style of "Sugar Land" is a cross between Kirby's Dreamland and Ristar. In "Sugar Land", you get to play as either Vanellope Von Schweetz or Rancis Fluggerbutter where you go through challenging levels to protect "Sugar Land" from evil-doers.

• That would explain the Platform Game mechanics outside the tracks like the disappearing branches.
• Doesn't sound like a video game name!
  • The full title is Sugar Rush Speedway; thus, Sugar Rush could have been the name of the original platform game, probably named for a basis in speed and momentum as was popular in early-90's 2D platformers. The candy spectators could have started as the Mooks, and the other racers could be the fight-your-friends bosses.
    • Further WMG/alternate theory: It is against the rivals of the Von Schweetz house: the house of Zu Salzig.

The Surge Protector used to have some game consoles or a gaming PC plugged in

We know he wrote the graffiti in Game Central Station, which includes such gems like "Aerith Lives" and "All Your Base Are Belong to Us." How else would he know about those particular subjects? It's likely he may have even met characters like Aerith and CATS.

• It's either that or he can use the Internet because he can travel through the electrical grid.

Wreck-It Ralph is what happened before the machines enslaved the human race.

Interesting, I wasn't the only who thought about this. Maybe just before the robot war the Cy-Bugs used the same programing as the machines and were used.

The movie takes place in the Homestar Runner universe

If you've ever played 8-Bit Is Enough, you'll realize that the video games in that game work a lot like the ones in this movie, having a central location that connects to a bunch of different games and allows travel between them. And in both series, the video games can have some impact on the real world.

• Interesting note: Strong Bad played poker with Max, Tycho and The Heavy over at The Inventory, a place where videogame characters hang out in when no one is playing their games. The Heavy would later race alongside Ralph in Sonic and All Stars Racing Transform.

How the video game world works for non-arcade games

For games played through physical media like cartridges and discs that aren't installed on the system, the characters can't live in the game (because it can be taken out and put back in at any time) so when they're first put into the system, the system becomes their home while their game isn't being played. As a result, video game systems are more like cities than train stations. These characters, rather than fearing their game being unplugged, instead fear the system itself being unplugged, which would banish the characters to The Nothing After Death until the next time their game is put in the system.Games that are installed on a system, or digital downloads, have it easier, since the game is always connected to the system, so they can live in their games all the time, and if the system is unplugged, as long as the files are still stored in the memory, they come back immediately when it's plugged back in.For handheld systems, the characters don't disappear until the battery runs out, rather than the system being unplugged.

The setting of Sugar Rush is the same Level Ate land that appeared in The Cookie Carnival

Over 70-plus years, the anthropomorphic cookie folk evolved to appear more human, and among their people evolved many new types of living sweets and pastries. Vanellope is also a direct descendant of Miss Bonbon and the Gingerbread King.

Video game characters consider real people like ancient Greeks considered gods

Characters think real people are more powerful but no morally better than them.Their sacrifice to keep them calm is letting themselves be played with.But they don't really have a choice.

Surge Protector was very lucky

What if his job was protecting common household appliances?Unless he can travel through the power grid or unless appliances have something like him, he would be completely alone until the day he gets unplugged or breaks.

Calhoun is Meredith Vickers ancestor.

Let's see: Tall. Likes to take the lead on things. Kinda of hard-as-nails-Jerkass-by-not-so-much personality? Would that mean she's related to Weyland? Or, that just leads to more questions? For Prometheus?

Surge Protector and Zangief are fighting for Ralph's love

And Ralph is pretending to be clueless to see where this is going.

Felix's hammer is really just an Amplifier Artifact

The reason why Turbo looked like an 8-bit character in a 16-bit world and Ralph was in HD in Hero's Duty.

Roadblasters crashed because Turbo hacked the game to make himself look a 8-bit character, and he did it because he wanted to be recognised by the players.

Litwak got some sort of mod for Hero's Duty.

What it does? It "cleans up" the language used in the game. In the original (home version?) of the game, there's profanity, however Litwak either got his hands on a manufacturer's mod, or a hack that changes the language used to make it more kid-friendly for his arcade. That's why Calhoun is constantly saying things like curses that are really actually very mild; because her game's data has been changed to modify the original language.

Surge Protector is actually a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing.

And things will go Nineteen Eighty-Four when he decides he's had enough.

The games themselves are intelligent.

It's the reason why Turbo couldn't delete Vanellope for good: the game wouldn't allow it.

• Actually, it's implied that the only thing video game characters cannot change is anything outside the confines of their cabinet. The painting of Vanellope is on the outside, so King Candy couldn't do anything about that.
  • Just because she's on the outside, it doesn't mean that she can't be deleted on the inside. I mean, why wouldn't he have deleted her code if he had been able to? Unless Turbo held a grudge against Vanellope because of who knows what reasons.
    • He'd still have to get rid of her image. Otherwise the gamers would question why the cabinet shows a character that supposedly doesn't exist and Turbo's scheme would've been exposed much earlier.
    • But...was her being a glitch exactly like her not existing to the players?
    • Yes. But again, she'd still be on the cabinet. Why would the cabinet show a character that supposedly doesn't exist? And that is why they would ask.
    • It's implied that no video game character can alter anything beyond what's inside the cabinets. So no matter what, at least one gamer would notice that racer on the side of the game that they never seen before and ask about it. The code inside Sugar Rush is built so you can attach or detach wires, but not get rid of whole boxes all together. Otherwise, Vanellope's case wouldn't be left floating in the ether. King Candy's plan wouldn't be completely fool-proof no matter what he did.
    • If they can't alter stuff outside the cabinet, how could Ralph dislodge the Out of Order sign when he threw the medal at the inside wall?
    • There's a difference between altering the outside world from the inside world and going outside. King Candy, like the other characters, can't LEAVE the electronic universe. Wreck-It-Ralph just bumped the game when he threw the medal, but that doesn't mean King Candy could leave the game and take Vanellope's picture off the cabinet.

The game put Sour Bill in itself to counterbalance the sweetness of Sugar Rush and to be Vanellope's Guardian Angel.

Thus making him the true Eldritch Abomination of Litwak's Arcade and the reason why Vanellope wasn't treated even worse than she was, even though his memories were locked.

Sour Bill has the Sourstare

Yeah, like the Flutterstare, but more powerful.

The Real World Environment is toxic to the video game worlders.

That's why there's no real fear of video game characters escaping into the real world. One second of exposure and they go kaput.

The reason why game character die permanently outside their game is...

...their home game "thinks" they're still alive so it doesn't regenerate them, and the game they died in has no "image" of them to regenerate from. Does this count as "wild"?

Here is the premise of the original Fix-It Felix.

• You play as Wreck-It Ralph (Back then, he was known as Kid Wreck-It). Your objective is to stop Fix-It Felix from destroying the forest by smashing Felix's Construction Vehicles. Also, you must help Kid Wreck-It rescue his family from Felix.

Turbo could change his appearance at will.

King Candy existed as a NPC before Turbo took over

And he talked with Trrrilling Rrrs.

Surge Protector potentially can change games' code at will

"Potentially" because he's Surge Protector.

Surge Protector doesn't come from the physical surge protector

He's an energy being who applied for the job.

Electricity is air for game characters.

From our point of view, electricity is what makes games work (and keeps characters alive). And what makes everything alive on Earth? The atmosphere. This means the surge protector (and Surge himself) is a Weather-Control Machine.

If ever a franchise had an arcade game, their entire universe is accessible from GCS.

My random explanation for why Modern Sonic and Eggman show up in the movie. The few Sonic arcade games allowed anything and anyone from the franchise to enter any of the Game Central Station areas around the world. It also goes the other way around, meaning that Ralph could enter the entire Sonicverse from Sonic The Fighters.

Also, it's not just for Sonic, in case that wasn't obvious.

Somewhere out there is a fan-video/parody where Ralph stumbles in to Custer's Revenge.

Of course, you'd have to ignore the fact that it never had an arcade version. (I can't imagine why).

Calhoun isn't triggered by "dynamite gal" in particular.

Her programming, just like it sets off memories of her backstory when it's mentioned, is set so she has memories of Brad complimenting her whenever any male she's attracted to compliments her, and the memories are always altered so Brad is saying the same compliment. I.E., had Felix said she was an amazing woman, she would've had flashbacks to Brad calling her an amazing woman instead.

Turbo is Bubsy.

When you think about it, they have a lot of similarities: Mascot with Attitude? Check! White and red clothing? Check! Near-perpetual Cheshire Cat Grin? Check! Reputation as The Scrappy? Check!^note Though Turbo is only a Scrappy In-Universe. Plus, it would explain why Bubsy hasn't had a game in years: He's been too busy taking over other games, and now he's dead.

Viewtiful Joe will gain Medium Awareness

A movie that has a cameo where a game character that enters movies knowing full well that he is in a movie now knows he's actually part of a game just might be able to see that the events that occur in the plot are actually parts of a movie. Of course no one believes him.

Ralph's leaving will cause his future rendition of himself ceasing to exist in Wreck-It Ralph Jr., where Fix-It Felix will most likely Travel back 'in time' to the original Wreck-It Ralph machine to conquer the video game Multiverse, or at least his games

Think about it, the original plot of Donkey Kong was that Mario had a pet gorilla (DK) who he treated badly, so DK kidnapped Pauline/Lady so that he could protect her...but since Disney is known for making stories softer and less blatant, they concept some sort of storyline where Ralph was merely misunderstood with situations like tearing down his own home (and possibly squeezing in some sort of environmental impact).

Ralph leaving his own game causes himself to not exist in Wi R Jr, assuming that the film takes place in the present, thus actually a bunch of Ralphs hailing from games that was produced in the 80's and 90's, Felix goes mad with power, possibly stealing knowledge from other video game characters as he goes, possibly having Wreck-It Ralph Jr as a henchman.

Ralph saves the day, becoming Fix-It Ralph in the progress, becoming friends with the original Felix, repairing whatever destruction the "Future" Felix had caused, and remembering that although he was once a villain, he should know that villains are characters too.

• Possibly jossed. At the moment it seems implied that these are characters in individual cabinets, kind of like Kidd Radd. Of course, this now requires you to figure out why an arcade Sonic game with a modern Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik design, or possibly an arcade game with Bowser.
• Well there's Mario Kart Arcade GP games, which I'm pretty sure feature Bowser as a playable character.
• I've seen a Sonic and SEGA All-Stars Racing arcade machine...
  • In addition to the two Kart games mentioned above, Bowser also appears in Vs. Super Mario Bros. And that's not counting the console titles utilized by PlayChoice-10 or the Nintendo Super System.

Inversions of "I can fix it" and "Fix-It Felix" will appear.

Calling it when Felix has a Heroic BSoD he will say "I can't fix it", and when Ralph fights the final boss, the by standing crowd will cheer "WRECK-IT RALPH!"

• A Heroic BSoD looks very possible for Felix, judging from the trailer. He does get thrown into a prison cell at some point and literally cannot break himself out, and just before Ralph shows up to rescue him, Felix looks rather depressed. Expect tears to ensue.
• Could also lead to a double team effort. The entire terrain, at last one map in Sugar Rush, taken over by Cy-Bugs. Ralph can only wreck. Felix can only fix. Cue unison cries of "I'm gonna wreck it!"/"I can fix it!" with Ralph destroying the Cy-Bug infection and Felix fixing the Sugar Rush in his wake.

Ralph and Co. will become canon immigrants and become actual video game characters in real life.

After all, Ralph already makes an appearance in a Sonic Racer game. Not as a movie tie in but as a special character.

Calhoun, Felix, Ralph, and Vanellope will be unlockable characters in sequels to the games they visited

My idea works like this: although they will die for good if they die in a game that doesn't recognize them, they still left fragments of their code in the games they visited. As King Candy!Turbo had hacked Sugar Rush to recognize him, it was his transformation into a Cy-Bug that did him in: Sugar Rush no longer recognized him. Now suppose a game is pulled for some kind of minor maintenance, and the programmer finds these code fragments. Rather than deleting what seems like dead code, he or she expands it. Possible ideas:

• Ralph: Can level uneven terrain to overcome barriers in Sugar Rush II. Is the climber character in Hero's Duty II.
• Felix: Repairs broken track in Sugar Rush II.
• Calhoun: Only unlockable on the Sour Patch difficulty level of Sugar Rush II.
• Vanellope: Will use her glitching to cause pieces of buildings to disintegrate in Hero's Duty II.

Sgt. Calhoun's backstory groom was already named Calhoun

Specifically, Barney Calhoun because he was Put On A Bus after Half-Life 2 Episode 1

• Jossed, her fiance, Brad, had brown hair and a Lantern Jaw of Justice. Maybe Barney is his brother?
  • His name's Brad Scott, so unless someone changed their name...

The events of the movie will cause some political reforms in the arcade.

Obviously the events of the movie were a serious incident that nearly led to two games being unplugged, so the characters will make some changes to avoid such a thing in the future. More than likely, we'll see the following things: 1. A council of representatives from each game to share information and discuss issues in each other's games. 2. A group of special ops forces consisted of characters from each game that investigates things like rogue characters (so someone like Turbo being able to infiltrate and take over Sugar Rush doesn't happen again). 3. A hidden beacon is installed in each game to prevent a Cybug infestation in the future. 4. A "bad guy awareness" campaign to encourage people to treat the bad guys of their games with respect and not to ostracize them, possibly also educating people that bad guys can't actually kill someone outside of their game just by touching them. 5. A system of helping characters from unplugged games find work and a place to live in games that can handle them.

• I'd be interested in seeing what the beacon in Tapper would look like.

Electricity is magic.

That's why Surge Protector exists...and characters are alive.

Felix didn't know that Q*Bert had been unplugged, and it wasn't for selfish reasons.

You don't have to assume that Felix was unwilling to give up being the hero in order to explain this. It's pretty obvious from the film that the Nicelanders worship the ground that Felix walks on, and so it makes sense that they might continually have been asking him to social events. Because Felix couldn't say no, he found himself with no time to venture outside the game.

If Felix and Calhoun got married at the end...

...does that mean Felix's full name is now Felix Calhoun? Because I doubt Tamora would change her name (besides not being the type to do that, it'd mess with the game). Besides, did Felix even have a last name before?

• It would seem that Fix-It is just a title and not a last name, similar to the "Super" in Super Mario (Tamora probably just called Ralph and Felix "Wreck-It" and "Fix-It" because they have no last names and she was on a formal basis with them at the time, so she went with the only non-first-name component of their full names that they had). Also, given that Felix has no last name and yet has a "Junior" at the end of his given name, that would make for a strange combination (Fix-It Felix Jr. Calhoun?). In any event, I think that Felix would either take her last name at least symbolically (he'd still technically be Fix-It Felix Jr. "from the game Fix-It Felix Jr.", but would call himself Felix Calhoun) or neither of the couple's names would change.

Gill is the only character capable of bending the "if you die in another game, you can't respawn rule".

Gill has the ability to resurrect when he is knocked out (but only once per round), so technically he could resurrect himself if he went Turbo and dies in the game he Turbo'd.

Bad-Anon is for troubled Anti-Heroes too. And we'll see it in the Sequel.

That is why we see Zangief in it - his games did tend to portray him as having a less sympathetic backstory. I mean seriously, how often do you choose to play AS Zangief in Street Fighter? A guy like Shadow the Hedgehog, for example, would be perfectly welcome to come if he was having trouble coping with being expected to be gloomy and feeling like he was always playing second fiddle to Sonic. Or Wario might come because he's sick of being the bad guy even when he's a good guy. They might not be actively the villains of their games, but you do NOT want those kinds of guys going Turbo.

Freddy, Chica, Bonnie, Foxy, BB and the Marionette will be in the villain convention in the sequel.

And they will talk about how they are constantly being mistaken for bad guys, when they just want to play. They will also have a harder time being accepted than Ralph who decides to help them.

The reason Minty Zaki is named such:

The name is actually a handle that is passed on when the original bearer relinquishes it, a la the Dread Pirate Roberts.

The original Minty Zaki was a legendary figure. When he (or she) retired, Minty Zaki then relinquished the title, and then passed it onto the current Minty Zaki, who was known as Emmareld back then. Original Minty Zaki's current location is unknown, of no fixed abode.

It explains Minty Zaki's bio:

Minty Zaki, the queen of the ice cream set in jewel, always has an ace up her tasty sleeve, especially when it comes to racing. Refreshing and full of resources, Minty Zaki is a defender of good causes, but for the wrong reasons.

This, IMO, doesn't fit current Minty Zaki well, when gender-specific terminology is removed. An egregious example is the mention of ice cream. Current Minty is sour apple-themed.

Also, another WMG with this character's appearance: He is essentially a caricature of Hayao Miyazaki, nodding to Disney's statement about the name's origin, but with other Minty's general traits: green eyes, but not clad in pink or with green hair. His tunic might have been mint green.

The reason Vanellope abolished her Princess title in favor of being President:

...was just a convenient excuse for Disney not to have to add her to the Disney Princess lineup.

The end credits reference earlier, sprite-based games in the franchises of the more modern games, showcasing the past eras of each series.

• Four zombies weilding hatchets chasing two hotdog sheriffs who wear hats is an early example of a game in the Undead Apocalypse series. This may be the first game of the series.
• The sprite based military room briefing with alien eggs is an early entry in the Hero's Duty series.
• The side-scrolling candy platformer is an early game in a candy themed platforming series of which Sugar Rush is a racing spinoff.
• A pixelated depiction of Sugar Rush indicates Sugar Rush is the latest version of a spinoff series.
• A pixelated first person shooter against aliens with alien eggs on the floor suggests this is another game in the Hero's Duty series; it is either the same game with the briefing room or it is a sequel that came out after that game.
• The Tapper's bar in 3D may indicate a 3D spinoff of Tapper was created.
• The 2D pixelated depiction of the tower the Cy-Bugs infest may be from a handheld spinoff of Hero's Duty, perhaps a tie-in to the arcade game released around the same time as the game hit the arcades.
• The achievement system from Sugar Rush is displayed in less developed 3D graphics. This may be the first entry in the Sugar Rush series going to 3D, after the success of the earlier 2D game.
• A hallway opens with pixelated pre-rendered Hero's Duty characters. This is another Hero's Duty sequel, before the series moved to 3D.
• An even older version of Hero's Duty appears as a classic arcade game, with alien eggs throughout the level. Probably the first Hero's Duty game. Ralph collects medals on the roof like a bonus area of the Fix-It Felix, Jr. game, but its has the same Hero's Duty palette. Maybe this is an infected game. No, this is the first entry in the series.
• The Nicelanders dance with updated sprites, and there is an updated isometric view of the tower. This may be a later game in the Fix-It Felix, Jr. series, a handheld game, or an updated remake.
• Fix-It Felix, Jr. building sprites, more colorful than the original arcade version's graphics, represent another port, remake or sequel.
• Along with Fix-It Felix, Jr., Undead Apocalypse and Hero's Duty had games in the early arcade era. The Sugar Rush platformer began the next era, followed by a Sugar Rush 2D racing game on consoles, a Hero's Duty PC adventure game with shooting sequences, and a Hero's Duty FPS. To catch up, Fix-It Felix, Jr. had a 2D sequel with sprites on a graphics board that could support more colors. Just as everyone was getting used to more colorful sprites, developers began experimenting with 3D, despite the difficulty of displaying 3D on those systems, leading to a time of pixelated pre-rendered games, including a Sugar Rush game with a blocky achievements system that looked good for its time, and a Hero's Duty with pixelated pre-rendered cutscenes that would look dated years later. While full 3D was on the horizon, the handheld market began to release throwbacks to the 2D era, leading to a series of handheld sequels that were clearly 2D, but wanted to be 3D like their console counterparts, including a Hero's Duty 2D tie-in game to the fancy 3D arcade game that was about to be released, and an "updated" Fix-It Felix, Jr. handheld game with isometric graphics as a throwback to the earlier eras. But then, the newest Hero's Duty hit the arcades, and everything changed.
• The current Sugar Rush is the fourth Sugar Rush game, the current Hero's Duty is the fifth Hero's Duty game, and Fix-It Felix, Jr. is a series of at least three games, plus the original Fix-It Felix. Undead Apocalypse 2 is unaccounted for.
• When other game characters appeared in Fix-It Felix, Jr., they were considered glitches, until spontaneous crossover games became an acceptable part of reality. In the credits, Fix-It Felix, Jr. is now depicted with Sugar Rush and Hero's Duty characters, showing the game operating in its post-crossover-enabled state, and spontaneous crossovers show up in Q*bert, Sonic The Hedgehog, Street Fighter II, the platformer Sugar Rush was based on, the classic arcade game Hero's Duty is based on, and a Fix-It Felix, Jr. game with a dancing sequence, or a spinoff Nicelanders dancing game. Unlike our own crossover games, where programmers would have to decide to put the characters in, these games just happen to have crossovers, as if by magic. The usual explanations are "it's a glitch," in which case it's a welcome glitch, or, "it's the electricity," creating a new definition of how electricity works. Soon, the world's scientists and engineers admit, "Yes, video game characters can appear anywhere, as long as they run on electricity. That's just how electricity works."

The Final Boss of Hero's Duty is Cy-Bug!Calhoun.

In the cutscene leading up to the fight with the last Cy-Bug, Calhoun tries to use her most powerful weapon against it, but the Cy-Bug proves too quick for her and swallows her—and the weapon in question—alive, assimilating both and transforming Calhoun into a Cy-Bug hybrid that specializes in the kind of weapons she intended to use on the Cy-Bug. Once Cy-Bug!Calhoun is defeated, it triggers the death of all the other Cy-Bugs' deaths, and the player is awarded the Medal of Heroes by General Hologram.

Turbo gained his hacking skills by experimenting on Fix-It Felix Jr.

The key to this idea is Felix's statement that Ralph "probably fell asleep in the washroom at Tappers again". This wasn't the first time Ralph went missing during game hours. You'd think they'd have figured out the error of their ways after the first time. They must've been programmed to hate Ralph no matter what. It would make sense that this game would've been Turbo's guinea pig for hacking, as a way of venting his anger about the game outlasting his own, and maybe even get it unplugged in revenge.

Gene is the guy who contracted the Nicelander's penthouse to be built in-universe.

Think about it, he puts in tons of money and investment on making the perfect home, but then Ralph keeps barging in and, not only abusing him every game, but trashing his livelihood. Sure, it's just part of the game and if we want to get technical he's the one who kicked Ralph out of his home in the first place, but what Corrupt Corporate Executive doesn't run on petty Moral Myopia? Like Gene said "There's no room for you up here" but Ralph continues to be an inconsiderate nobody who "selfishly" makes a joke of his work every game. May also count as Fridge Brilliance, since Gene is just stuck in the pace of his programming, it's in his nature to be a petty antagonistic aristocrat that tries to get Ralph out of the picture.

The Sugar Rush palette swap racers (Nougetsia, Torvald, Sticky, and Citrusella) were also bullied.

Just not as much as Vanellope. Since they were not glitched, they were allowed to race, but they were looked down upon by their fellow racers for being Palette Swaps or "copycats". Notice how the announcer doesn't say their names at the beginning of the Random Roster Race, even though they have coins and are participating. They also don't have their own bleachers full of fans, or their own personal karts, but all the other racers do. So while they're not outright shunned, they don't get as much attention from the game, which the other racers picked on them for ("I'm the real deal, you're nothing but a cheap copy of me!"). Kids Are Cruel, after all.

Also, in the movie, when the other racers show up to destroy Vanellope's car at the junkyard, they are not present. While they might have sympathized with her as a fellow target of bullying, they couldn't help her get into a race or else they would risk their game getting unplugged. So they decided the least they could do was not be mean to her.

Urban Legend of Zelda in this universe are caused by characters in the games screwing around.

Luigi in Mario 64? Luigi 'went Turbo' one day; and snuck into a copy of Super Mario 64. Nude codes? Well, one day one of the characters in a videogame showed up naked when the game was turned on. Secret unlockable characters that don't exist? Non-existent Pokemon evolutions? Characters in the game getting access to the code. Or pulling the same thing King Candy did to Sugar Rush.

...though I'm actually not sure how this stuff works with game consoles. I assume leaving your game would be much harder with consoles; and near impossible with something like a Gameboy.

Vannelope is a Princess.

• Calling is probably as a Champion, given her competitiveness, physical skill, and direct approach to problems.
• Court is probably Spades. She's a bit of a Fragile Speedster and her signature power is teleportation, both of which fit with Spades' emphasis on mobility and freedom. Similarly, she puts a fair amount of emphasis on autonomy, has a very puckish disposition and enjoys pranks, and when she is declared Queen she promptly decides to try and create a democracy, all of which is in line with Spades ethos.

Pre-release guesses

This is Ralph's theme song.

Jossed This is

Ralph ends up winning against the villain, by taking advantage of the fact that the villain is operating as a video game villain

The villain will be completely locked into following the conventions of video game villains. It will be from the so-called 'glitch' that Ralph will learn that you can break the rules of the game, and it will be because of Ralph breaking them and thus cheating that the villain will ultimately be defeated.

• Yes and no. He doesn't really break the rules of the game, but takes advantage of a "unfinished level" to defeat the Big Bad.

Meta

Wreck-It Ralph was in Development Hell because it was originally planned as an adaptation of Super Mario Bros.

The Disney Animated Canon has always been known for adaptations of other material, and of video games, Super Mario Bros. is the best known. In addition, because Disney owns the rights to the film adaptation, Disney thought they still had the film rights to the franchise. However, Nintendo wrecked the idea at some point.

• Dang, that would have been incredible. An animated, true-to-the-source Mario adaption by Disney would have rocked!
• As much as I'd like to see a Disney Mario movie, I doubt it's the case. If they evidently have the rights to have Bowser appear, you'd think that they could do a Mario adaptation if they wanted to.
  • Unless Nintendo specifically objected to the way their characters were being used. Someone may have felt that making you feel bad about beating up Donkey Kong is probably not a good way to sell new games starring the guy who beats up Donkey Kong.
    • Except that Nintendo's already done that, and most new Mario games aren't about beating up Donkey Kong anyway.
  • As far as the If they have the rights to Bowser et al, why not Mario, it's because the license rights for Mario and Luigi was too high for the film's budget.
    • Untrue - Word of God is that the "too much for license rights" was a joke that got taken unintendedly seriously by the fanbase.
    • Also, the film makers apparently did want to include Mario but worried that such a high profile character would be really really difficult to put into the movie because 1) people would want to see him do something significant, 2) the film makers would want him to do something significant (interact with Felix for instance) but to do so would mean a prolonged appearance that might diminish the overall quality of both film and appearance. The same source also notes that even with the existing characters, there were nitpicking among companies - Capcom, Sega, and Nintendo all wanted their characters to be big(ger) such that at one point, they ended up looking bigger than Ralph! The producers had to find a compromise to appease them. Nintendo also nitpicked over whether Bowser was holding his coffee correctly. On the flip side, some companies were so enthused about the film in general that they allowed the film to include extra characters for no additional licensing.

If there is a videogame of this movie made, it will have multiple endings.

Based on choices made, Ralph can either learn to love his old job, become a hero in Hero's Duty, become an unusual sort of racer in Sugar Rush, or several other possible endings, the end result either way being that Ralph finds his happiness.

• What about the Bad Endings?

Norio Wakamoto, Kenta Miyake, and Jun'ichi Kanemaru will reprise their respective roles as M. Bison, Zangief, and Sonic The Hedgehog in the film's Japanese dub.

Since Gerald C. Rivers and Roger Craig Smith have done the same in the original English version, it's only matter of time before Wakamoto and Kanemaru return as Bison and Sonic in the Japanese version. As for Zangief, hopefully Disney will convince Anthony Landor to reprise his role, and Miyake will do the same.

• At least the Sonic part is confirmed

Q*Bert and Co will see a real life resurgence in popularity and start appearing in modern games, even FPSs.

Or as close to it as lawyers will allow. Q*Bert is currently owned by Columbia Tristar, a subsidiary of Sony.

• Sony makes games. Heck, if this film causes a resurgence in Q*Bert's popularity, he could become the mascot character for the Playstation 4!^note but probably not
• Confirmed. Q*Bert did indeed return in Q*Bert Rebooted.

Ralph will appear in Super Smash Bros. 4

It's only a matter of time. Maybe as Easter Egg of sorts...

• Does Sonic and All Stars Racing Transform do until then?

Wreck-It Ralph showing up in Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed is because of his antics and heroics.

Let's face it - Sonic's always one to buck trends and follow his heart. He told Merlina that he didn't care if he had to play the bad guy and he's told Eggman that no sort of copyright law was going to stop him. Despite everything that happened, what better way to reward a man that saved three video game worlds and so many more by giving him a spot in a new game?

• Might be also why Honey the Cat will show up in the re-release of Sonic the Fighters - after all leaving a potential character out in the cold is no good.

In the sequel, Fix-It Felix Sr. will be played by

• Alec Baldwin
• Ron Howard would be a better choice in this troper's opinion. Rich Moore himself even claimed that he would like to have him voice the character.
• Adam West. His voice conveys a sense of grim determination that Junior struggles to live up to, and he's done similar cameos in Disney films of the past decade.

Felix will become a Fountain of Memes

'Cause I see memetic potential in more than one of his lines...

Jimminy jamminy!
*dies and respawns* It's okay! I'm Okay!!
WHY DO I FIX EVERYTHING I TOUCH?

• Oh, it's already happened. Trust me. Thanks to him, there are enough memes from this film as a whole to possibly warrant its own page on here (if the YMMV page doesn't reopen anytime soon).
  • ...Well then, I guess I can say I Knew It!.
  • I think "Felix struts/dances while I play fitting music" (not under that name) may already be one.

This movie will boost the sales of games showcased in it

Maybe certain games will be rebooted or get sequels. At the least it'll prove profitable for series that are already big.

Dr. Wily wasn't in the movie because Mega Man wasn't either.

Note how for almost any given villain, their hero is also in the movie (perhaps has a parallel to Felix and Ralph). Perhaps similar to Mario, they couldn't figure out how to get Wily in without Mega Man and Mega Man himself couldn't be fit in. Mega Man might not have fit in well because unlike Mario and Sonic, he's a pretty aggressive hero - he'd be able to take on Cy-Bugs pretty handily so including him might have induced Fridge Logic.

• But Bowser is in it and Mario isn't.
• Mario is in the universe, he just doesn't appear on-screen. He was invited to the Fix-It Felix Jr. 30th Anniversary.

There will be actual Fix-It Felix Jr., Hero's Duty, and Sugar Rush machines in real arcades at some point in the future.

• And, to play with Vanellope, you'll have to use some special move to "activate" the "glitch." Come ON, Disney! That's too awesome not to happen. SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!
  • Doesn't anyone remember that Disney made actual arcade cabinets of Fix-It Felix Jr.?? They were one of the first pieces of advertising for the film! It's just that they're in limited supply.

Wreck-It Ralph is a Disney adaptation of Bad Dudes

Now hear me out! Ralph is a bad guy who learned that being bad is good and he likes to wreck stuff. Vanellope is a princess (who becomes president) who has her position in the world taken by a mad man. Ralph is the one who saves the day.

• Thus, Ralph was a bad enough dude to save the president

There will be a Director Allusion for Rich Moore at the Bad-Anon scene.

Most of us thought that only Zangief and Clyde would talk in that scene, but that was quickly proven wrong by later trailers in which Kano delivers a line ("You can't mess with the program, Ralph."^note  (which is a fancy way of saying "I'm PROGRAMMED to rip people's hearts out myself".)). So probably the same will happen for everyone... except for Bowser (and Mario fans sure as hell know why). How does a potentially-dialogue-heavy scene deal with this? Simply put: Bowser can talk, but is constantly interrupted by the others (for example, he tries to say something but Eggman opens his mouth before he can). Now, where did this happen before? Teenager Maggie in "Lisa's Wedding", anyone? --> theory by Alex Sora 89

• Actually, Bowser can be seen talking during the "bad guy affirmation" near the end of the Bad-Anon scene. You just can't hear him in the crowded speaking.
  • Since you can't hear what he's even saying he could just be mumbling growls for all we know.

Captain Falcon will make a cameo in the sequel.

Only to serve as an inspiration for Vanellope during the races. And, yes. Giving his trademark Falcon Punch.

Ralph will appear in a future Kingdom Hearts game

Which will present an opportunity for plenty of lampshade hanging and meta humor.

One of Surge Protector's duties is to make sure all older video game characters periodically receive 'patches' to allow them to enter newer games.

The arcade's been around for 30 years, and technology has moved on a great deal since it first opened. In order to allow older characters to enter into the newer games without any chance of causing game-breaking glitches that might lead to an Out of Order and Unplugging, Surge took it upon himself to study the code of newer games and will periodically hold mandatory 'upgrade' meetings in which characters whose games were plugged in before a certain date will have new code patched into them to help keep everyone safe.

The only reason Turbo never got caught out by this (being "dead" and all would have made it hard to appear at those meetings) is because in between his original takedown of two games and Sugar Rush being plugged in he invaded other games and learned how to access game code through them - as well as how to alter it to his own purposes. He began stealing code from other games and essentially frankensteining his own, which made him indirectly responsible for many Unpluggings. As the games got newer, the additional code also got newer and acted similar to Surge's own, much safer patches.

The Sugar Candy Racers are adults too

• There's nothing creepy about a Shipping between Ralph and Vanellope - the game is fifteen and Vanellope has 15 years of life experience. It's just her programming that makes her look like a kid, and the Candy Racers were programmed to be kid-like. They learn, it's just that they don't age like a human would.

Unplugging isn't always bad

A game being unplugged or turned off for the weekend doesn't destroy the world. The world can still be plugged back in again and usually is. But if somebody is missing when it's unplugged and still missing when plugged back in, that's when it's all destroyed. It's like when turning off and restarting doesn't fix the problem.

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