Portal (series)/Trivia

• Creator Backlash: Portal's writer, Erik Wolpaw, is sick of the non-stop cake jokes. In this interview, he claims there won't be any references to it in the sequel. However, with one of Doug Rattmann's drawings in the sequel depicting the cake (at 1:07 in the video), and the binary code in Part 1 of the comic translating to "the cake is a lie", Valve seems to have gone back on that. Wolpaw even said they couldn't resist putting one joke.
• Defictionalization: The Portal Gun
• Fan Nickname: For GLaDOS, potato form, PotatOS or other capitalizations thereof, though it is also mentioned in the developer commentary.
• Hey, It's That Voice!:
  • Ellen McLain is the voice of GLaDOS, the Team Fortress 2 announcer, and the Half-Life 2 Combine Overwatch. Due to how the Overwatch sounds in HL2: Episode Two, it leads to a lot of Epileptic Trees.
  • She's also an opera singer in real life.
  • Mike Patton plays the aggression core; see his page for what else he's done.
  • Also, her Anger Core is literally The Darkness. That explains a lot.
  • Portal 2's "Adventure Core" is appropriately voiced by Nathan Drake, also known as Nolan North.
• Prop Recycling:
  • The "High-Energy Pellet" is the same sprite and sound effects as the Combine's energy orbs. Its effect on living beings is pretty much the same as well, although Gordon's suit seems to block its damage.
  • Chell's leg-springs were part of an unused model for an enemy in Half Life 2.
  • The sentry turrets have largely the same behavior as Half-Life 2's combine turrets.
• Throw It In: In this interview, Word of God reveals that the blood splatters weren't meant to be in the game at all. However, they weren't even noticed until too late in development, and were so ingrained into the engine that, by that point, it would have been better to just leave them in the game. Valve went out of their way to remove the blood splatters for the sequel, however, hence its lower rating compared to the original.
• Trope Namer:
  • The Cake Is a Lie
  • Companion Cube
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero, and by association, its Snowclones:
    • Nice Job Breaking It, Herod
    • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain
    • Nice Job Guiding Us Hero
• What Could Have Been:
  • In earlier concepts for a sequel to Portal, Cave Johnson was positioned to play a significantly larger role, including being subject to Brain Uploading (which, in the final release, he wanted, but he likely died before it could happen), and undergoing an existential crisis concerning the fact.
  • According to the Final Hours of Portal 2, Peer Review was going to contain a single player campaign as well. The original plan was for players to be either ATLAS or P-Body, who would be recruited by Rick to stop a brain-uploaded Cave Johnson from taking over the enrichment center. VALVe decided it would require too many resources for just a DLC...
• The Wiki Rule: The Portal Wiki