Portal (series)/Characters: Difference between revisions

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{{quote|''"Subject is abnormally stubborn. She never gives up. '''[[The Determinator|Ever]]'''. [[Spanner in the Works|DO NOT TEST.]]"''|'''Aperture File''', on Chell}}

{{quote|Modeled after Alésia Glidewell, voiced by Mary Kae Irvin}}

 

{{quote|'''Proctor's note:''' Test subject is abnormally stubborn. She never gives up. '''Ever'''. Do NOT Test.}}

* [[Guile Hero]]

** [[Word of God]] from writer Erik Wolpaw: "She just chooses not to, what with the robots all being dicks. Why give them the satisfaction?".

** "Why should Aperture Science accept you as a research volunteer, and would anyone file a police report if you went missing? HR Note: Subject refused to answer."

 

 

{{quote|Voiced by [[Ellen McLain]]}}

 

* [[Back from the Dead]]: In ''Portal 2''.

* [[Bad Boss]]: GLaDOS treats her custom robots the same way she treats everyone:

* [[Bad Liar]]: GLaDOS is ''very'' surprised you successfully completed the test, and it shows.

* [[Big OMG]]: {{spoiler|''"Oh. My. God.'' [[Crowning Moment of Funny|It's the bird! Run! I have no plan for this! Abort! Forget your training! RUN!"]]}}

* [[Black Comedy]]: GLaDOS's sense of humor.

* {{spoiler|[[Haunted Technology]]}}

* {{spoiler|1=[[Heel Face Turn]]: Arguably in the second half of ''Portal 2'' as soon as Wheatley betrays Chell, takes over GLaDOS, and puts her core into a potato. She and Chell [[Enemy Mine|reluctantly team up]], and once the facility is restored, she saves Chell's life and lets her go along with the original [[Companion Cube]] - although she claims it's just because killing Chell is too much trouble.}}

** In the sequel, {{spoiler|her taunting Wheatley after he becomes the central sphere enrages him so much that he puts her into a potato, barely able to function without using up the tiny amount of power it generates. She gets better.}}

* [[Humans Are Special]]: Sort of acknowledged in a cut line from ''Portal 2'':

* [[Ignored Epiphany]]: From ''Portal 2's'' ending:

* [[In Love with Your Carnage]]: Gets especially excited at Cave's maniacal [[When Life Gives You Lemons]] rant, particularly when he talks of burning houses down.

* [[Inspirationally Disadvantaged]]: When trying to boost the self-confidence of P-Body and Atlas, GLaDOS informs them that she was born with a crippling imperfection—too much sympathy toward human suffering. She proudly informs them that she overcame that weakness.

* [[Killer Game Master]]: GLaDOS acts similar to this, throwing difficult scenarios at you, lying in order to confuse and torment you, and live-ammo courses in place of the original courses. When you go [[Off the Rails]], she tries to lasso you back in with lies before resorting to overkill methods.

* {{spoiler|[[Unwilling Roboticisation]]: See [[Was Once a Man]] below.}}

* [[Villainous Breakdown]]: When you try to invoke [[This Is My Side]] <ref>Refers to a [[Dummied Out]] line that still remains in the source files.</ref> ''during the final boss fight'' and spend most of said fighting making petty insults, you're broken. It probably doesn't help that Chell spent the fight ''ripping her mind to pieces and setting them on fire.''

* [[Villainous Rescue]]: {{spoiler|1=At the end of ''Portal 2'', GLaDOS [[Take My Hand|pulls you back]] out of the Moon portal.}}

* [[Visual Pun]] / [[Stealth Pun]]:

** As the effects of GLaDOS's morality core begin to wear off, her monitors display a small pile of screws. {{spoiler|She ''does'' have quite a few screws loose by this point. On top of that, she's about to screw you, and not in [[Cargo Ship|the fun way]].}}

* {{spoiler|[[Was Once a Man|Was Once A Woman]]: She was created to fulfill Cave Johnson's wish to leave Caroline eternally in control of the facility. This [[Gone Horribly Wrong|did not go well]].}}

* [[Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?|Why Did It Have To Be Birds?]]: GLaDOS {{spoiler|as a potato}} quickly develops a massive fear of birds.

* [[Worth It]]: Says this about {{spoiler|tricking Wheatly into trying to give a hint about a test chamber, giving him a painful shock.}}

* [[You Are Fat]]: A good amount of her insults towards Chell in the sequel are about her weight. She helpfully informs ATLAS and P-Body that humans are very sensitive about weight variances.

* [[Your Mom]]: In the Peer Review DLC, GLaDOS attempts one of these to turn the robots into killing machines. However, she stops mid-sentence because she finds it too [[Even Evil Has Standards|disgusting]].

 

 

{{quote|Voiced by no one as it, in fact, cannot speak.}}

A large, (apparently) inanimate cube with hearts printed on each face. That's it. GLaDOS tries to get Chell to form an emotional attachment to it, then forces her to incinerate it.

 

 

 

A mysterious person who left clues for Chell to find scrawled along the course of the testing center. His identity is never really touched upon in-game, but the promotional [[Viral Marketing|Alternate Reality Game]] to promote ''Portal 2'', as well as the new comic to bridge the gap between the two games, gives us more about him.

 

 

 

{{quote|Voiced by [[Ellen McLain]]}}

 

 

* [[A.I. Is a Crapshoot]]

* [[Cartridges in Flight]]: As pointed out and [[Lampshaded Trope|Lampshaded]] in [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGPIQ72-2Vg this trailer].

{{quote|'''Cave Johnson:''' We fire the whole bullet! That's 65% more bullet per bullet! }}

* [[Cute Machines]]: Well, until they pepper you full of lead. That doesn't stop them from being so damn adorable.

* [[Enemy Mine]]: {{spoiler|A mild version in 2, after Wheatley takes over the facility, the turrets seem just as eager to shoot at him (or at least his monitors) as they are at Chell.}}

* [[Grotesque Cute]]: Such cute voices. Such infantile dialogue. So polite and apologetic while they [[Dummied Out|dispense product]]. So much [[More Dakka|dakka]]. {{spoiler|1=[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbzUT-99w88 AND THEY SING!]}}

* [[King Mook]]: The Animal King turret, a massive, cheetah-patterned turret with a crown used to illustrate what to do in one of many apocalypse scenarios Aperture anticipated. It also plays bass, just because.

* [[Laser Sight]]

 

 

The Party Escort Bot, alternatively known as the Party Associate, is a robot appearing in the retconned PC version of Portal, as of the March 3, 2010 patch. It's only role in the game is to {{spoiler|drag Chell back into the facility after she defeats GLaDOS, so that she can have new adventures in the sequel.}}

 

* [[The Voice]]: {{spoiler|Although it is obviously very close to Chell in the ending, it is actually never seen as it drags her back in-game. No-clipping reveals merely a placeholder box with the text "beens" on it.}}

** Ironically, in the Lab Rat comic, the robot becomes {{spoiler|[[The Voiceless]], as it is revealed for the first time, but has no dialogue.}}

 

 

 

{{quote|Voiced by [[Stephen Merchant]]}}

 

An artificially intelligent "personality core" reassigned to ensure the well-being of the test subjects. Practically a polar opposite to GLaDOS, Wheatley appears friendly and [[Cloudcuckoolander|slightly scatterbrained]]. He helps Chell in her second run through Aperture Laboratories, but accidentally revives GLaDOS.

 

* [[Adorkable]]

* [[Artificial Stupidity]]: His sole reason of existing {{spoiler|is to consistently give [[GLaDOS]] stupid ideas and take bad decisions.}}

* {{spoiler|[[The Atoner]]: Becomes this in the final scene of ''Portal 2''. He's a little too late for that, however.}}

* [[Big Stupid Doodoo Head]]: When he tries to imitate GLaDOS's style of insults, the best he can do is "fatty fatty no-parents."

* [[Blue Eyes|Blue Eye]]

* {{spoiler|1=[[From Nobody to Nightmare]]: He started out as an [[Idiot Ball|intelligence-inhibitor]]. Then he gets plugged into GLaDOS's mainframe, and becomes even more unstable and destructive than she ever was.}}

* [[Genius Ditz]]: Even GLaDOS is forced to admit it at one point {{spoiler|1=as he's bringing Chell and GLaDOS to the "surprise"}}.

* {{spoiler|[[A God Am I]]}}: Becomes this after {{spoiler|1=being plugged into GLaDOS's mainframe}}.

* {{spoiler|1=[[Heel Face Turn]]: After Wheatley is removed from GLaDOS's body, he feels genuinely sorry. Too bad he's stranded in space now.}}

* [[Motor Mouth]]: His utter inability to shut up is one of the highlights of this game. So much so that even if you just sit there for a few minutes, he'll ''still keep talking''.

* [[Oh Crap]]: When he learns of GLaDOS and Chell's history.

'''Wheatley''': You know her?

'''Wheatley''': I think she likes you.

'''Wheatley''': You did '''WHAT!?'''

* [[Percussive Maintenance]]: Uses this approach to hacking a few times, such as when he attempts a "manual override" of a "docking gate" by slamming Chell's relaxation chamber into it.

* {{spoiler|1=[[Psychopathic Manchild]]: When he starts ranting at GLaDOS and Chell he sounds distinctly like a child throwing a tantrum at an elder.}}

* {{spoiler|1=[[Stupidity-Inducing Attack]]: Literally. As a personality core, he's spherical and he was built to make GLaDOS dumber. He also grabs onto one after going insane; he informs you that he won't make the mistakes GLaDOS did, having made all surfaces in his lair unsuitable for applying portals. He has also rerouted three gel tubes into his room, including one that supplies Conversion Gel allowing you to apply portals in his room. This alone wouldn't be so bad, but he also doesn't bother to wait for the neurotoxin to kill you -- he throws bombs too, breaking the tube and providing you access to the Gels.}}

** {{spoiler|1=What's more, he rerouted the conversion gel pipe through the room ''even though he had previously seen you use it right in front of him'' to escape from his anti-portal trap at the beginning of the chapter. If you wait long enough at said trap, GLaDOS even tells Wheatley ''to his face'' exactly what the conversion gel does!}}

* [[Too Dumb to Live]]: {{spoiler|His idea of dealing with an imminent reactor core meltdown caused by his own incompetence is to ''yell at the alarm to shut up.''}}

** [[Too Dumb to Fool]]: {{spoiler|1=AI brains as simple as those of the Frankenturrets short out in response to hearing a simple logical paradox. Wheatley's idiocy prevents him from even noticing it.}}

 

 

 

 

{{quote|Voiced by J.K. Simmons}}

* [[Undying Loyalty]]: His employees followed his every word, no matter how crazy. Anyone else acting like this would have been thrown in jail, possibly murdered.

** Even {{spoiler|Caroline}} seems to have some of this—even after {{spoiler|1=he inflicted involuntary [[Brain Uploading]] on her, she still seems to hold some affection for him, if GLaDOS's response to his final prerecorded message is anything to go by}}.

* [[Unreliable Narrator]]/[[Retcon]]: The "official" timeline of Aperture Science on the website when the first game was released doesn't quite jive with Cave's speeches.

** Among other things, his illness wasn't apparently due to mercury poisoning, but an allergic reaction to ground-up moonrock gel used to make stable portal-surfaces. He appears to have lived at least until early 1980's. The Portal Gun appears to have been one of Cave's ''first'' inventions at Aperture (since all of his Enrichment Spheres basically require its use, and a poster in the 50s era test chambers depicts a test subject with an enormous early version of the portal gun), rather than an idea he imparted while on his deathbed... although since he was, according to the 'old' timeline, convinced time was going backwards, it could be both.

 

 

 

 

{{quote|Both voiced by [[Dee Bradley Baker]]}}

* [[Cute Machines]]: Again, like the turrets and Wheatley, they are cute and silly.

* [[Death Is Cheap]]: The two robots are uploaded into a new body whenever they die, as illustrated by the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkATYz_tF-U trailer.] P-body dismisses its destruction (and Atlas's role in it) with a wave of its hand. Then gets him back [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tvx5XBS3cwY later]. In fact, they are transported to other test chambers by being disassembled and later reassembled.

** The ''Portal 2'' team say this is a major reason for using robots as the co-op mode characters. They wanted [[The Many Deaths of You|your (many) deaths]] at the hands of badly-planned maneuvers, incompetent or jerky co-players, and just larking about, to be funny and more consequence-free than showing humans being crushed, shot, or falling in acid and so forth.

* [[Electronic Speech Impediment]]: Although their general dialogue is mostly unintelligible, if you listen hard enough you can make out specific word-analogues, such as them saying "Hello" to each other in the intro cinematic.

* [[Red Oni, Blue Oni|Orange Oni Blue Oni]]: [[Color Coded for Your Convenience]].

** Also illustrated during the introductory cutscene where the two are assembled for the first time. P-body is happy enough to let the robotic arms weld it together, while Atlas is shown anxiously trying to dodge them and escape from the construction area.

** Depending on how you view their personalities in gender terms, it can also be an example of either [[Tomboy and Girly Girl]] or [[Sensitive Guy and Manly Man]]. The fact still stands that P-Body is far more feminine-looking than Atlas, while the trailer mentioned above puts their personalities in a far different manner.

* [[True Companions]]: GLaDOS learns that as much as she tries, she cannot drive them apart and pit them against each other.

 

 

{{quote|Voiced by [[Nolan North]] and [[Ellen McLain]]}}

 

 

 

 

A hybrid of two turrets and a Weighted Storage Cube.

 

 

{{quote|Voiced by [[Nolan North]]}}

 

 

 

{{quote|Voiced by [[Nolan North]]}}

 

 

 

{{quote|Voiced by [[Nolan North]]}}

 

 

 

{{quote|Voiced by Joe Michaels}}

 

 

 

{{quote|Voiced by [[Ellen McLain]]}}

 

* {{spoiler|1=[[Virtual Ghost]]: Some remnant of Caroline's personality still exists within GLaDOS. While GLaDOS claims to delete her, there are some hints that she's still around.}}

 

 

The chief antagonist of the ''Peer-Review'' co-op DLC, who has taken over an older version of GLaDOS's body and is using it wreak havoc.

* {{spoiler|1=[[The Dog Was the Mastermind]]: The antagonist taking over the facility, causing chaos and ruffling GLaDOS's cool is... the bird who bothered her and Wheatley before, inadvertently building her nest on a crucial keyboard.}}

 

 

{{quote|''"Hold on. (Unintelligible Muttering) Alright, my assistant Greg tells me none of that's true. Got excited.''|'''Cave Johnson''', on Greg}}

 

 

* [[Creepy Child]]: Greg has a daughter who likes to sneak into Cave's office and talk to the test subjects. Cave calls her "Greg's Creepy Daughter".

 

 

 

* [[Ancient Tradition]]: Cave of Aperture Rituals is presiding over one of these in order to prevent the end of the world. It involves hiring astronauts, war heroes and olympians to make love to a giant bird.

* [[What Could Have Been]]