Portal 2/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions

** Non-canon? The original cave labs are ''filled'' with awards for Cave Johnson's excellent sales career in shower curtains.

***** What were they testing for? The gun '''''warps the fabric of reality'''''. I'd imagine there'd be a number of testable connotations that come attached with that sort of thing, some of which are mentioned above, not least of all Health & Safety.

**** Hell, ''Nintendo'' started making card games before shifting its focus to taxi-cabs and [[Love Hotels]]. Aperture starting as a shower curtain company doesn't seem so ridiculous.

 

** Alternatively, his bad idea was trying to win. If he won, he couldn't survive the collapse of the facility.

** It seems to me that ultimately, Wheatley wasn't actually actively stupid. Poor decision maker? Yes. Occasionally thick-headed? Yeah. But he's still capable of stringing a coherent train of thought together. Also, it seems that as his reign over the facility continued, he slowly became more and more capable. From having trouble with his horribly built walking boxes to designing some formidable death-traps (the mashers), it's possible he was getting smarter just from having to do the job.

** Also, it might have been that his role was, whenever GLaDOS tried to come up with a plan, try and derail it in such a way that neither she nor Wheatley would notice until it was too late. Evidence in favor: "Talking outside her range" i.e. with a bad American accent, failing to notice or remove the vacuum pipes containing Gel of various types on at least three separate occasions in the boss fight alone, forgetting about replacing the "crap turrets" after coming into power, GLaDOS mentioning that he was designed to come up with "stupid, unworkable plans", the list goes on.

** It's important to note that GLaDOS describes Wheatley's purpose not to be an idiot but to make bad decisions (so that, by proxy, GLaDOS would also make bad decisions and be flawed). This doesn't mean he's an idiot (though GLaDOS calls him such so that he gets angry) just that he's the type that does not always consider his options, does not consider the big picture, and does not always have the best self control (procrastinate on homework or actually do it). This also means a lot of his behavior is the result of simply a string of intentionally poor choices; of superstition, of deciding to trust the wrong people, and so forth. As a result, this doesn't mean he isn't smart or clever... just that he ultimately causes more harm than good. He ignores the reactor AI warnings for instance and decides that six minutes is enough to kill Chell and fix everything. Beyond that, he also comes across as the devil's advocate in the mainframe - the personality core that would question and present odd solutions not just to create a flawed GLaDOS but to allow her to occasionally think outside the box.

* How did the defective turrets all come out the same way? If they're based off the real turrets, how'd they lose the cute little voice and personality?

** That facility is pretty damn old. Sure, you have test chambers that can be rebuilt and machines that build turrets, but I doubt that you have specific factories that manufacture the machines for building turrets and as future-proof as this facility is, something will break beyond repair at some point. Chances are that at least a third of the manufacturing stations is just screwed beyond repair, making the same faulty model.

** They're not all the same. Some have most of their casing still on, some are skeletons, some are still in their boxes and some are assembled partially sideways.

*** But you're [[Completely Missing the Point|missing the point]] — they're all missing the cute voice and they all are more self-aware than the normal turrets. How'd they end up like that?

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[[Category:Headscratchers]]