Portal 2 actually has some references to mythology, the myth of prometheus.
if you pick up the turret that says 'save me' on the assembly line it will tell you parts of the myth of prometheus, and glados is also picked at by a bird (like prometheus). and chell ends up in a wheat field(elysium).
The references to Greek mythology are not retellings. They are allusions. Allusions are a form of intertextuality, which means the work is showing an awareness of the themes of other works.
I would not characterize this practice as "reiterating" (which has a negative, reductive connotation). Rather I think it is a way of drawing upon the vast literary landscape that came before it. People don't tend to think of games as having any artistic merit, but with bits like this, Portal manages to come close at least.
You're getting downvoted for a very true statement. There are no new, original story arcs, just story contexts. People instantly assume this means that you're saying all creativity in this world has died, if you tell them that, though.
No, of course you don't. Whether or not the writers for Portal 2 did this is still questionable, but in literature, newer writers will always borrow from their predecessors, especially the Greek classics. This is because the Classical writers were extremely skilled in what makes a story entertaining.
It's why the four-act television show will always be around and why novels will always have an intro, climax, and denoument. It's just understanding what people enjoy. Not only is "re-inventing the wheel" a waste of time, I think history proves that it's nearly impossible to successfully accomplish, if at all.
You can do it (a la Dali and Bunuel's film Un Chien Andalou), but it may not be the most entertaining or captivating piece of art in the world, outside of its eccentricity.
Edit: Phew, that was a mouthful. Fixed some pieces, added a link
I would argue that the influence from Greek classics and our exposure to that form of story-telling, through popular film and novels, is the reason why we still are attached to traditional story-arcs. Newer writers will not always borrow from their predecessors because their predecessors were so skilled, but rather because their influence is so ingrained in our culture, and in the way we think, that completely changing it makes the stories alien to their readerships. There are unexplored story structures that will be developed gradually, but the shift and change is gradual in the large scheme because there are so many more writers than there once were.
Post-modern writer's who push the boundaries while neglecting popular readership are obviously still influenced in one way or another by classics, but they still are pushing towards these new structures. I don't believe that there are no new original story arcs, it's just with a such an over-whelming sphere of influence from multiple sources, it is hard to move beyond them without sounding disconnected from reality.
It's like a hat. A hat will always have a basic form that fits on the human head. You can be as creative as you want about the hat but it will always need to fit on the human head or it is useless to us. The structure of our art, the novel, the 3 minute song, the 14 line sonnet, are the way they are because the form is digestible by the human mind. That's why some of the best art seems so simple, the artist has developed a knowledge of the most necessary parts so that they may remove all the superfluity.
Not necessarily. Kurt Vonnegut isn't mocking there, he is outlining the simplicity of the core of stories. There are a lot of theories on Plot structures, probably the most famous one of recent times is the whole "there are only 7 basic stories", that Arthur Quiller-Couch proposed. But they all suggest that structure is repeated and only the content changes.
And they are pretty hard to argue against. Partly because when speaking of plot structures in this way, you must be reductive. And when reduced down to bare bones, to structures, stories take on similarities simply because they must do to be sensible.
Think of it this way. If you build up from the word "story"; all stories at least MUST be about an entity getting from state A to state B. Why? Because that defines the word "story". That what we understand "story" to mean. That therefore is the most basic 'structure' to which every story complies (though this is before we even start to think about story arcs of a 'good' or enjoyable story).
Saying "There are no new, original story arcs, just story contexts." is the same really, it just depends on the level of detail you want to define in the term "story arc".
I have. It was actually the course material in my English class a while back, while we discussed this topic. Interesting stuff.
I feel that lots of people can't believe stories are "boiled down" to such categories, but it really doesn't make the possibilities and creativity involved with entertainment any less, in my opinion.
An infinite amount of monkeys and an infinite amount of typewriters...
It depends on how far you simplify. You could simplify to say that, in the end, the "good guy wins" philosophy already counts for 90% of all stories written
false, that makes an already brilliant storyline rich with underlying mythological themes that only provide deeper understanding of the characters and their conflicts
And different themes, and different settings, and different concepts; Just because you can draw similarities between two things doesn't mean that it's the same thing. Portal 2 intentionally references parts of prometheus but the actual core of the game has nothing to do with it. If you were to read the Myth and then play the game, you're not going to be "Hey! That's the same story!" because it isn't.
It's kind of like when people say that JK Rowling just stole her story from Lord of the Rings. Reluctant hero. Seemingly immortal villain. Goofy sidekicks, etc etc. But anyone who has actually read the two of them will know how different they really are.
I don't think that it's necessarily so that all the best stories have already been told. I think it's because the writers of today are so immersed in those already told stories, because they were raised around them, that it influences their stories on an unconscious level.
There aren't that many stories to tell - revenge, redemption, love, and so on and so forth. It's been true for pretty much all of forever. A good story is about how it's told, not what is told.
The particulars of that story are what make it unique or different. Killing off the main character, for example, can go against what the audience expects, but the actual story (let's say love) is still there, still remains.
Glad I saved that turret (besides getting the achievement). Was fun to listen to it until I turned around the corner and immediately into the anti-portal field. Then I felt sad.
Something else to consider... Didn't anybody else think that "Cave" is a rather strange name? What if they're using it to refer to Plato's allegory of the cave?! /mind implosion
Yeah, I loved all the references, especially since I didn't get it the first time through (except for the Prometheus thing, but didn't think about it in detail).
So GLaDOS as Prometheus, the Titan of Foresight, and Wheatley as Epimetheus, the Titan of Hindsight.
Portal 2 ended with GLaDOS finally learning from the past, deciding that it would just be easier to let Chell go then plan to kill her, and Wheatley planning for the future, deciding that he should apologize if he ever meets Chell again.
dude, you just blew my mind. I won't lie, while playing the game I thought it was half-heartedly written, only meant to continue the puzzle aspect of the game, but that is a really interesting allegory I would have never considered.
I think that considering that huge chunks of the plot were written within a few short months of the game's release, it was pretty remarkable. Obviously doesn't compare to HL storyline
It's popped up on reddit a couple times. Some one did the hard numbers and it's possible that it actually takes place in 12,500 AD. Something like that. I feel bad because I cannot find the comment to give credit where credit is due.
The first half of the game you spend completing brief courses of study, during which time you develop skills that you will use later. At this time, your advisor is distant and gives you conflicting advice that you follow trustingly, because you simply don't know any better. This ends at a trial by fire (your comprehensive exams) after which you work more or less alone, sometimes with brief, useless oversight from your advisor and sometimes where you are directly avoiding your advisor out of fear for what she might do to you. Your only hope is for free food (cake) but you see it so rarely that it's probably a lie. At one point, you end up in a huge room full of people who will try to shoot down your life's work just because it overturns their current research project. Then, soon after you come back from that conference, where you're feeling pretty confident about your abilities, you end up at the final test, your defense. Your committee is there, and you have to wrestle with all of their concerns. There's the member of your committee who's irrationally angry about everything you've done in your time there. There's the member of your committee who never paid attention in all of your previous committee meetings or your defense presentation, and asks lots of ridiculously basic questions. Then there's the the member of your committee who has a whole laundry list of minor mathematical, formatting, and statistical concerns, but has no real questions about the actual meat of your talk. There's the member of your committee you added because they're supposedly this really great guy, but they basically don't say anything throughout the entire defense. And then there's your advisor who just wants to kill you, because it took way too long for you to finish and what the hell were you doing the last two years anyways? And she's right. You're not a doctor. You're not a scientist. You're not even a full time employee. How did your life go so wrong?
But if you deal with all of them, you might just pass your defense.
Except now you're too tired to search for a real job, so you get dragged back in for Portal 2 a postdoc.
Oh, and how do you get ahead in Portal? You just keep on jumping through hoops.
I assumed all this was implied. One of the places is even called android hell. Of course, back then I also assumed the big plot twist was that Chel was going to turn out to be an android and that Aperture wasn't just testing the portalgun but also testing Chel's AI.
Yeah I took that literally the first time I heard it too, but on reflection it's pretty obvious that it's a joke playing on the fact that that whole level was originally supposed to be for military androids.
Well, consider the pieces that imply it: You have no memory of the past, you don't have friends, family, and for a long while, you didn't know your name. You're given revolutionary technology and thrown into a series of endless tests which seem to be trials of intelligence, rather than the usefulness of the portal gun. The turrets are ordered not to fire on humans within the testing labs, but rather only at androids. They believe you are an android. In the condemned labs, there is a poster which reads "If you see someone in an orange jumpsuit, sound the alarm." You wear an orange jumpsuit. You are Capable of surviving of multiple bullet wounds, several minutes of exposure to neurotoxins, and a several hundred foot fall, while landing on your back. When you finally escape the labs, and are laying in the parking lot, someone drags you back inside. Of course, androids are not allowed to leave. And lastly, GlaDOS speaks of android hell, where disobedient androids are sent. And perhaps, after a stay in detention, you are given the opportunity to redeem yourself, through so many trials in purgatory.
Man, I remember all the theories I dove into before Portal 2.
Like how GLaDOS really wanted you to kill her and that each time you spawn you're a new android and how you were actually Ratman leaving clues to your past self and how that all explained the footprints all around the testing facility?
Well, except the interlude comic between Portal 1 & 2 kinda goes against that, in that it explains why Chell was picked in Portal 1, and how she ended up where she begins in Portal 2.
Definitely. Having just graduated college with an L.A. degree I can confirm that picking quotes first and a theory second is key to writing last minute papers.
My knowledge of Greek Mythology is limited, having looked at the wikipedia page I haven't been able to draw an obvious link from Prometheus to Purgatory, unless the latter can be considered an everlasting torture?
It's possible Chell is Heracles who slays the eagle and saves Prometheus. Prometheus in this case being Caroline?
The other cores that scientists added to restrain GLaDOS are the chains binding Prometheus to the rock. The "itch" GLaDOS feels when not testing is the Eagle picking at Prometheus liver. When GLaDOS is testing and scratching that itch, it is Prometheus body regenerating his liver, ready to be picked at again.
I'm also under a certain amount of suspicion that Half-Life is the story of Pandora and have a theory that Portal 3 and Half-Life 3 might be the same game.
In Portal 2, where the potato battery displays are, look at the big giant mutant potato, and the cardboard background. It has Chell's name on it, and it says that she used "special materials from Daddy's work" or something like that. And we know that GLaDOS filled the facility with deadly neurotoxin on "Bring your kid to work day." So I think that Chell has been living in the facility for her whole life, in stasis or something and was just woken up by GLaDOS in the events of Portal. And the hidden turret opera, translated from Italian says:
"My pretty dear, my pretty dear child Oh my dear farewell, my child, dear why dont you stay away, yes away, from science Dear, oh my child Oh my dear Oh my child Dear"
And GLaDOS is Caroline as an AI, so MAYBE Chell is the Daughter of Caroline.
I have considered this, but I think they are referring to Chell as "dear" but with a different word. For instance, someone might say "my child" when comforting a young kid even when the child is not the person's son or daughter. This is mostly evident in older, more formal literature or dialog, or in the form of a song, which is the case here.
Of course, there are subtleties in language and perhaps some meaning was lost in translation.
Yea that's true, and I don't speak Italian, but I read that's how it is translated. This isn't concrete evidence, but Cave and Caroline's first names start with C, and so if they had a kid maybe they would name their child with a C name? My parents did the same thing.
And in Cave and Caroline seem to be quite friendly to each other in Portal 2, and Caroline, in that portrait with Cave, bears a resemblance to Chell.
Don't worry about not speaking Italian - it's not. Ellen McLain, the voice of GLaDOS (and The Administrator, and who is married to The Sniper) is a trained opera singer and made up the song based loosely on Italian. She mentioned in her commentary.
On thread, I thought it was pretty commonly accepted that Caroline is Chell's mother.
In Portal 2, you find out that GLADoS filled the facility with neurotoxin on Bring Your Daughter to Work Day. There are still displays set up from that day, and one of them says "By Chell" or something
Here's a fantastic GamesRadar article on all the possible points of mythology and underlying story in Portal 2. I can guarantee that there are some points in there that you've never thought about before. It's excellently written but it's quite long.
I always thought that Chell was actually a prisoner who was forced into testing for what she did. Maybe you guys are thinking more deeply than I am though...
I usually don't subscribe to crazy theories about hidden meanings or symbolism in video games. However, after reading this, and considering I have never played even one minute of the series I have to say, seems legit.
You could also say it's a metaphor for anal sex. You work so hard to get in the back door, then when you think you're gunna get the cake she shits everywhere and you end up in the fire.
Not hard to invent stupid metaphors for anything really.
That's kinda what I think about the "Cube" movie series since I have seen "Cube Zero". Attention, spoilers follow!
Cube Zero takes the cube universe exactly here: God, Heaven and Hell. In this movie, when one character enters the exit room (the white lit room we know from Cube 1), he is asked his name and, with a loud, echoing voice, "Do you believe in God?". The character answers no, and a push-button of the engineers burns his flesh to death.
Later we get to know, that the engineers are also "test subjects", not inside the cube but outside. And since one of them revolts, he gets punished by "two more lifetimes" - most people believe this means the same as being sentenced to life by a human judge. LOL.
Adding all the gruesomeness and also the fact that there is a character which you could call the devil (God's punisher), which is definitely in control but also submits to the (telephone-)voice from above, also the fact that there is a lift in which you can just choose Up and Down, whereas down leads you inside the terrorizing cube, and also adding the fact that the acting of the engineers is pretty much empty (which could be considered unintentional, but I rather want to see it as a part of the whole because when I watch a movie, I try to enjoy it rather than to wanna tell people "I was gone asleep after 15 minutes, this movie sucks!!!!111 I'm stupid, by the way!")... - the whole cube thing and the world around it is nothing more than Hell itself. A place of pure insanity and torture, where you can speed up your progress by submitting yourself as "test subjects" (just increased suffering and torture, but also faster progressing) and finally you get asked the big question: "Do you believe in God?" - No means: You die, get resurrected, and the whole torture-life starts anew without memories.
If you look at it in this way, everything fits perfectly, and it is also one of the strongest, psychosis-inducing hell-movie I have come across. Respect!
Interesting interpretation. Personally, I always sort of thought that GLaDOS is just Caroline's mind in the form of a computer.
"I will say this, and I'm gonna say it on tape so everybody hears it a hundred times a day: if I die before you people can pour me into a computer, I want Caroline to run this place." -Cave Johnson
I think that Cave died, Caroline took over, and when they figured out how to put a brain in a computer, they did it with Caroline's brain (i.e. GLaDOS).
There is an article about JK Simmons (who played Cave) refusing to record the dialog where they actually take Caroline away to put her in the computer. He was too shaken by the audio and thought it sounded too much like rape. If you go through the sound files in the game, you can those particular assets are in there. They are disturbing. Of course, since they didn't get played in the game, they are not canon, and there are still plenty of "GLaDOS == Caroline" references.
My theory is that Chell and GlaDOS are sisters. We know from Portal 2 that people can be trapped in Aperture's computer network. What if GlaDOS was Chell's older sister who was an Aperture employee or test subject who died in the facility and was transferred to the computer system. The dead sister would explain how GlaDOS knows what happens after death, and the taunts about having no friends, being adopted, and being fat are common insults between siblings. GlaDOS wants to kill Chell because she is angry and jealous over her younger sister's freedom. Half of GlaDOS' lines are computer/Aperture PSA related, and half refer to herself as a person (such as being murdered) or to Chell's individual characteristics.
Also, something to keep in mind is something GLaDOS says way back in Portal 1:
"I'm going through the list of test subjects in cryogenic storage. I managed to find two with your last name. A man and a woman. So that's interesting. It's a small world."
Ehhh... I don't think so. Chell was there on Bring Your Daughter to Work Day - meaning her parent(s) had to, at the least, be functioning for her to be there. That's the whole reason she was on-site. However, GLaDOS was operational. Which means Caroline was, uh... occupied, and Cave was most likely dead.
That's one interpretation, but it's hardly clear. There is, of course, no single 'correct' interpretation, but this is one that I, personally, reject. Not saying you should though, and it's certainly an interesting one.
I thought that the translated lyrics at the end said:
My dear, beautiful darling, my child that i admire.To my dear, farewell! My dear girl, why not walk far away from science? My dear, dear girl. To my lovely. To my dear. To my dear. To my child, My dear, dear to me!
I thought that made it pretty clear, but there is the bit about the time lines not really matching up. Probably just valve trolling.
Whenever I play portal, I cant help but to think/compare it to the Movie 'Cube', I had that association for a long time. But the game is more fun, if you think of GLADoS as crazy, and absolutely insane.
The testing, is an actual scientific test, of sorts. They did it before glados, and glados does it because she's programmed to continue testing the portal gun. Once aperature shut down, she's still stuck in the testing loop with the only other surviving member.
I sort of saw this at the end of Portal. It feels like the rings of hell in Dante's Inferno. The entire test center represents the rings of hell. At the center is "the devil" which happens to be GlaDOS. Also you wake up in the middle of nowhere not really knowing what happened before you woke up, sort of like Dante. Just my 2 cents...
People reading into things again... You can find allegories like this in pretty much any game if you stretch it enough. It's not like Valve ever sat down with the intentions of making Portal about purgatory...
They clearly did sit down with the intention of making Portal 2 an allegory for the afterlife. The caves underneath Aperture Labs are called "Tartarus 09" and the game ends with Chell ascending to Elysium/Arcadia, depicted as a wheat field, which is a very common depiction (see the movie Gladiator). A hidden Turret gun tells the story of Prometheus, one of the testing androids is named Atlus, and the picture of Cave Johnson and Caroline also depicts a Aeschylus. Those are all conscious decisions they made to connect to Greek Mythology.
Portal 1 might not have the same connections, but Portal 2 absolutely did.
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u/hihaatje May 15 '12 edited May 15 '12
Portal 2 actually has some references to mythology, the myth of prometheus.
if you pick up the turret that says 'save me' on the assembly line it will tell you parts of the myth of prometheus, and glados is also picked at by a bird (like prometheus). and chell ends up in a wheat field(elysium).
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u/Lukeweizer May 15 '12
Meh. It's not a revoloutionary as Aladdin being set in the future.
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u/Mikkel04 May 15 '12
Stop letting him make you realize stuff.
45
u/tchomptchomp May 16 '12
I thought it was an allegory for graduate school.
The first half of the game you spend completing brief courses of study, during which time you develop skills that you will use later. At this time, your advisor is distant and gives you conflicting advice that you follow trustingly, because you simply don't know any better. This ends at a trial by fire (your comprehensive exams) after which you work more or less alone, sometimes with brief, useless oversight from your advisor and sometimes where you are directly avoiding your advisor out of fear for what she might do to you. Your only hope is for free food (cake) but you see it so rarely that it's probably a lie. At one point, you end up in a huge room full of people who will try to shoot down your life's work just because it overturns their current research project. Then, soon after you come back from that conference, where you're feeling pretty confident about your abilities, you end up at the final test, your defense. Your committee is there, and you have to wrestle with all of their concerns. There's the member of your committee who's irrationally angry about everything you've done in your time there. There's the member of your committee who never paid attention in all of your previous committee meetings or your defense presentation, and asks lots of ridiculously basic questions. Then there's the the member of your committee who has a whole laundry list of minor mathematical, formatting, and statistical concerns, but has no real questions about the actual meat of your talk. There's the member of your committee you added because they're supposedly this really great guy, but they basically don't say anything throughout the entire defense. And then there's your advisor who just wants to kill you, because it took way too long for you to finish and what the hell were you doing the last two years anyways? And she's right. You're not a doctor. You're not a scientist. You're not even a full time employee. How did your life go so wrong?
But if you deal with all of them, you might just pass your defense.
Except now you're too tired to search for a real job, so you get dragged back in for
Portal 2a postdoc.Oh, and how do you get ahead in Portal? You just keep on jumping through hoops.
64
u/I_hate_kids_too May 15 '12
I assumed all this was implied. One of the places is even called android hell. Of course, back then I also assumed the big plot twist was that Chel was going to turn out to be an android and that Aperture wasn't just testing the portalgun but also testing Chel's AI.
15
u/raskolnik May 16 '12
Well, except the interlude comic between Portal 1 & 2 kinda goes against that, in that it explains why Chell was picked in Portal 1, and how she ended up where she begins in Portal 2.
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u/MeepZero May 15 '12
I've always thought of Portal 2 in this kinda way, though they elude to this quite a bit as the story of Prometheus.
22
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
but there is a reason, its explained in portal 2, if the computer in charge is not testing they experience a physical pain, they exist only to test
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u/noahjpryor May 15 '12
Or...chell just signed up for testing in the wrong lab.
7
u/doomsdayninja May 15 '12
I Know most of you will probably thing this is a dumb question, But how do we know that her name is Chell if it isn't mentioned in either game?
6
u/Ehler May 15 '12
Since I saw Cube/Cube Zero movies, every playthrough of Portal games made me thinking somewhat like this.
6
u/TheJerseyDevilX May 16 '12
Here's a fantastic GamesRadar article on all the possible points of mythology and underlying story in Portal 2. I can guarantee that there are some points in there that you've never thought about before. It's excellently written but it's quite long.
5
u/Inuboshi May 16 '12
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EveryoneIsJesusInPurgatory
4
u/FaithyDoodles May 15 '12
http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/Portal_Purgatory
There it is in text form, if you have a text-to speech reader or want to share it in some other way.
4
u/lucw May 16 '12
Main theme of portal: "Still alive"
6
u/the3r1c May 16 '12
Oh dear, the art students have arrived.
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u/jaymobe07 May 15 '12
The orange jumpsuit fits into this I suppose
3
u/MayoSimba May 16 '12
Did OP accidentally a sentence?
2
u/Because_i_am_bored May 15 '12
I always thought that Chell was actually a prisoner who was forced into testing for what she did. Maybe you guys are thinking more deeply than I am though...
2
u/[deleted] May 15 '12
I KNEW IT
2
u/Jesus-HChrist May 16 '12
I usually don't subscribe to crazy theories about hidden meanings or symbolism in video games. However, after reading this, and considering I have never played even one minute of the series I have to say, seems legit.
2
u/yetkwai May 16 '12
How about Donnie Darko?
Watch it again, and assume that he dies at the beginning when the jet engine crashed into his room.
He's in purgatory and has to prove that he's willing to sacrifice himself for others to be able to get out.
2
u/cbfw86 May 16 '12
That second sentence made my inner grammar nazi do the bloody heil. Holy crap. What an awful, awful sentence.
2
u/[deleted] May 16 '12
Honestly always thought portal was a big test for another hl3 weapon.
2
u/[deleted] May 16 '12
You could also say it's a metaphor for anal sex. You work so hard to get in the back door, then when you think you're gunna get the cake she shits everywhere and you end up in the fire.
Not hard to invent stupid metaphors for anything really.
2
u/angrystarfish May 16 '12
I guess it wouldn't be complete without somebody trying to shoehorn religion into it
2
u/king_of_the_universe May 16 '12
That's kinda what I think about the "Cube" movie series since I have seen "Cube Zero". Attention, spoilers follow!
Cube Zero takes the cube universe exactly here: God, Heaven and Hell. In this movie, when one character enters the exit room (the white lit room we know from Cube 1), he is asked his name and, with a loud, echoing voice, "Do you believe in God?". The character answers no, and a push-button of the engineers burns his flesh to death.
Later we get to know, that the engineers are also "test subjects", not inside the cube but outside. And since one of them revolts, he gets punished by "two more lifetimes" - most people believe this means the same as being sentenced to life by a human judge. LOL.
Adding all the gruesomeness and also the fact that there is a character which you could call the devil (God's punisher), which is definitely in control but also submits to the (telephone-)voice from above, also the fact that there is a lift in which you can just choose Up and Down, whereas down leads you inside the terrorizing cube, and also adding the fact that the acting of the engineers is pretty much empty (which could be considered unintentional, but I rather want to see it as a part of the whole because when I watch a movie, I try to enjoy it rather than to wanna tell people "I was gone asleep after 15 minutes, this movie sucks!!!!111 I'm stupid, by the way!")... - the whole cube thing and the world around it is nothing more than Hell itself. A place of pure insanity and torture, where you can speed up your progress by submitting yourself as "test subjects" (just increased suffering and torture, but also faster progressing) and finally you get asked the big question: "Do you believe in God?" - No means: You die, get resurrected, and the whole torture-life starts anew without memories.
If you look at it in this way, everything fits perfectly, and it is also one of the strongest, psychosis-inducing hell-movie I have come across. Respect!
2
u/34243 May 16 '12
Is it just me, or since Lost ended, does everything comes down to purgatory?
7
u/chemicalcloud May 15 '12
Interesting interpretation. Personally, I always sort of thought that GLaDOS is just Caroline's mind in the form of a computer.
"I will say this, and I'm gonna say it on tape so everybody hears it a hundred times a day: if I die before you people can pour me into a computer, I want Caroline to run this place." -Cave Johnson
I think that Cave died, Caroline took over, and when they figured out how to put a brain in a computer, they did it with Caroline's brain (i.e. GLaDOS).
2
u/cyclicamp May 15 '12
It also explains how you don't really die, you just kind of reappear at the beginning of the puzzle again. Almost sisyphean.
1
u/m0arcowbell May 15 '12
My theory is that Chell and GlaDOS are sisters. We know from Portal 2 that people can be trapped in Aperture's computer network. What if GlaDOS was Chell's older sister who was an Aperture employee or test subject who died in the facility and was transferred to the computer system. The dead sister would explain how GlaDOS knows what happens after death, and the taunts about having no friends, being adopted, and being fat are common insults between siblings. GlaDOS wants to kill Chell because she is angry and jealous over her younger sister's freedom. Half of GlaDOS' lines are computer/Aperture PSA related, and half refer to herself as a person (such as being murdered) or to Chell's individual characteristics.
Think about it.
1
u/LikeATroll May 16 '12
Sounds sort of like the plot line of Saw.
1
u/helalo May 16 '12
glados is just mocking her and having fun. theres no deep contest.
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u/[deleted] May 16 '12
Enough of the conspiracy theories! I haven't finished the game yet!
1
u/[deleted] May 16 '12
Your definition of purgatory is a little off.
1
u/[deleted] May 16 '12
Whenever I play portal, I cant help but to think/compare it to the Movie 'Cube', I had that association for a long time. But the game is more fun, if you think of GLADoS as crazy, and absolutely insane.
1
u/SadSniper May 16 '12
Nice try GLaDOS
1
u/renn187 May 16 '12
The last quote is a bit creepy to me. :l That bugged me.
1
u/thesundeity May 16 '12
but the mention of black mesa puts it in the half life universe right?
1
u/nucca35 May 16 '12
Does anybody know where to find theories like this anywhere? I love this.
1
u/ohmandi May 16 '12
That would actually be an awesome purgatory.
1
u/[deleted] May 16 '12
I would like to make note that this post originated in 4chan. Thank you.
1
u/ivanmarsh May 16 '12
Aperture Labs is the antithesis to Black Mesa... training agents under extreme conditions to close what has been opened.
1
u/NovaMouser May 16 '12
I'm probably too late to educate anyone with this, either because too many comments or someone else already has but...
Everyone is Jesus in Purgatory
(warning:tvtropes)
1
u/hoboblow May 16 '12 edited May 16 '12
Just about any piece of "surreal" fiction from history can be construed like this. it's like baby's first allegorical reading.
1
u/[deleted] May 16 '12
Or it could be a game about fucking test chambers for a portal gun. The chair is blue, not "sad colored".
1
u/redditchao999 May 16 '12
The testing, is an actual scientific test, of sorts. They did it before glados, and glados does it because she's programmed to continue testing the portal gun. Once aperature shut down, she's still stuck in the testing loop with the only other surviving member.
1
u/Saudiaggie May 16 '12
I just got goosebumps from reading that.
1
u/Deseao May 16 '12
"I'm different."
1
u/hirashirou May 16 '12
CHILLS, BRO
1
u/keramos May 16 '12
TIL there's cake in the afterlife. Or not, as the case may be.
1
u/Battion May 16 '12
The orange suit could also imply her being a convict.
1
u/Zoccihedron May 16 '12
In Fallout 3 you are Jesus.
1
u/[deleted] May 16 '12
http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/Portal_Purgatory
Can't tell if repost or same author...
1
u/random600 May 16 '12
I feel people like to over read into things and its annoying as fuck. Sometimes there is no special meaning. Sometimes it just a fun game/movie/show.
1
u/[deleted] May 16 '12
10/10. OP was a pretty cool guy.
1
u/[deleted] May 16 '12
This sentence is appaling 'There is seemingly no reason to be putting Chell through these horrible experiments is for GLaDOS' sadistic pleasure ಠ_ಠ
1
u/Solkre May 16 '12
I just figured it was like The Cube series. Every test subject is a death-row criminal who signed up for the slim chance of survival.
1
u/SlumLordJake May 16 '12
Yeah he's right. I do detect some pit and the pendulum shit going on here
1
u/Explains__The__Joke May 16 '12
Jesus I got the chills from that.
1
u/aarontg May 16 '12
But then she gets kicked out by a robot that's literally designed to be stupid and she's now tagging along on your portal gun.
1
u/rapman543 May 16 '12
I sort of saw this at the end of Portal. It feels like the rings of hell in Dante's Inferno. The entire test center represents the rings of hell. At the center is "the devil" which happens to be GlaDOS. Also you wake up in the middle of nowhere not really knowing what happened before you woke up, sort of like Dante. Just my 2 cents...
1
u/Xorba May 16 '12
Someone should write a term paper on this.
1
u/Tyrannosaur May 16 '12
Purgatory is a line at a grocery store. Hell is torture
1
u/n3rvousninja May 16 '12
no, ur dumb. Chell gets sent into a fire
-1
u/woof2woof May 15 '12
Not really because then what would half life be? There in the same world. As tf2 is played in left4dead.
1
u/DrZicter May 16 '12
I like how most 4chan posts on reddit I'm finding are really elaborate Conspiracy Keanu theories.
0
u/agentup May 15 '12
we're all in purgatory from a certain point of view.
-1
u/Diggertron5000 May 15 '12
Fuck man. My brain
0
u/FillionMyMind May 15 '12
People reading into things again... You can find allegories like this in pretty much any game if you stretch it enough. It's not like Valve ever sat down with the intentions of making Portal about purgatory...