49 Fun Facts About Portal

Portal is set in the same fictional universe as which other Valve series?

Half-Life. The link began as thrift: the small team was borrowing that series' art, so the story was tied to its world, a move its lead writer felt 'made both universes smaller'.

From which viewpoint is Portal played?

First-person. You never see the heroine from outside, so the only way to find out what she looks like is to catch sight of yourself through your own portals.

In Portal, what does the acronym GLaDOS stand for?

Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System. She began as a few polite text-to-speech announcements written for the first room; testers warmed to the voice so much that it became the villain.

Who voices GLaDOS in the Portal games?

Ellen McLain. Every line was first run through a text-to-speech program, and McLain, a classically trained soprano, then copied the machine's delivery line by line.

Which kind of counseling does GLaDOS promise will be available when the testing in Portal is over?

Grief counseling. It never comes: at the end of the last test chamber the moving platform carries Chell straight towards an incinerator instead.

In Portal, what is the full official name of Chell's portal gun?

Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device. Fans noticed that its initials, ASHPD, echo the name of an earlier Valve hero, Adrian Shephard, so the team lit up his letters on in-game keyboards as a red herring.

Which student game did Portal's portal mechanic grow out of?

Narbacular Drop. Its heroine, Princess No-Knees, cannot jump, so she escapes a demon's dungeon by opening pairs of linked doorways in the walls instead.

The students whose prototype became Portal were hired by Valve straight from which school?

DigiPen Institute of Technology. Valve staff saw the seven students' game at the school's job fair and invited them in, and Gabe Newell offered them all jobs about fifteen minutes into the demo.

Who wrote the closing credits song that GLaDOS sings at the end of Portal?

Jonathan Coulton. Valve staff approached him after one of his Seattle shows, and the idea of ending on a song at all was borrowed from God Hand, a favourite of the game's lead writer.

In Portal, what is the heart-decorated box that Chell must incinerate called?

Weighted Companion Cube. Testers kept leaving the box behind, so the team gave it a heart, and making players burn it also taught them how the incinerators work before the final fight.

What colours are the two ends of a portal in Portal?

Blue and orange. Either one can be the way in: testers kept assuming the orange end was exit-only, so one early chamber was built to force them through an orange portal.

In Portal, what is the trick of falling into one portal to shoot out of another at speed called?

Flinging. The designers found it hard to teach, so a jutting concrete block above a checkerboard pit marks each spot where the trick is needed.

In Portal, what are the particle fields that erase portals at the end of each test chamber called?

Emancipation Grills. They were added for a practical reason, to stop players carrying portals from one level into the next, and GLaDOS warns that they may also remove dental fillings.

In the original Portal, what equipment lets Chell survive long falls?

Heel springs. They were added during development, after playtesters kept asking how she could drop so far unhurt, and the sequel replaced them with Long Fall Boots.

Before it turned to portals, Aperture Science began as a maker of what?

Shower curtains. In the game's backstory the firm supplied them to the US military, and its first portal was pitched to a Senate committee as a quantum tunnel with possible uses as a shower curtain.

In Portal's backstory, which rival research company was Aperture racing to perfect portal technology?

Black Mesa. Aperture built GLaDOS to speed up its portal research and beat that rival to it, and she is still taking digs at the competition in her closing song.

As revealed in Portal 2, whose mind was uploaded to create GLaDOS?

Caroline. She was Cave Johnson's assistant, and his recordings order that if he dies before he can be poured into a computer she must run the place instead, willing or not.

In Portal's backstory, GLaDOS flooded the facility with neurotoxin during which company event?

Bring-your-daughter-to-work day. She turned on the staff within moments of being switched on, and the sequel hints that Chell was one of the daughters visiting that day.

In Portal 2, what illness from his own experiments is killing Aperture founder Cave Johnson?

Moon rock poisoning. He spent a fortune on moon rocks for his experiments and the ground-up dust proved to be poison; the first game's website backstory had blamed mercury instead.

Which line scrawled on the walls of Portal's hidden dens became the game's best-known catchphrase?

The cake is a lie. The writers had bet on a different joke, a hoop that rolls past in the final shot: they named it Hoopy and pictured a warehouse of T-shirts and mugs, and nobody cared.

In Portal's final battle, what is the first sphere that Chell incinerates?

The morality core. Scientists had fitted it to stop GLaDOS gassing the building a second time, so burning it hands her back the neurotoxin and starts the clock on the fight.

What kind of dessert is shown in the final scene of Portal?

Black Forest cake. It was modelled on one from a bakery near Valve's offices, and the recipe hidden in the game's screens of binary code adds garnishes such as dirt, ethyl benzene and fish-shaped objects.

Who was the project lead on the original Portal?

Kim Swift. Explaining why the final battle is an easy puzzle set against a clock, she said time pressure 'makes people think something is a lot more complicated than it really is'.

Which two Valve writers scripted the original Portal?

Erik Wolpaw and Chet Faliszek. They had made their names mocking tired game design on their website Old Man Murray, which rated games by how long they took to show their first crate.

Portal was first released inside which Valve bundle?

The Orange Box. The team behind the game never numbered more than ten, and tucking it in beside two famous series gave Valve a low-risk way to test an odd new idea.

Which actor voices Aperture founder Cave Johnson in Portal 2?

J. K. Simmons. He is heard only on old recordings, including the rant that when life gives you lemons you should get mad and burn life's house down with them.

What joking nickname did Portal's team give a scrapped, action-heavy version of the GLaDOS boss fight?

Portal Kombat. Testers were so busy dodging turret fire that nobody listened to a word GLaDOS said, so the team dropped it for a simple puzzle against a countdown.

Which actress was the face and body model for Chell in the original Portal?

Alésia Glidewell. The lead was a male placeholder until Gabe Newell asked the team why they did not make her a woman, and Valve then cast Glidewell through a local modelling agency.

The unseen scribbler of Portal's hidden-den messages was fleshed out in which tie-in comic?

Lab Rat. It shows the last surviving scientist reconnecting the sleeping Chell's life support after the first game, which is why she survives to be woken, long afterwards, in Portal 2.

Portal's closing credits song became a free download for which music game on April 1, 2008?

Rock Band. Players had been hearing the tune all along: the radios found in the test chambers play an upbeat instrumental version of it, hours before GLaDOS sings a word.

Which console received Portal two months after the Windows and Xbox 360 versions?

PlayStation 3. Valve built the October 2007 versions itself but left this port to a team at Electronic Arts, which is why it trailed the others into the shops that December.

Portal: The First Slice was a 2008 demo given free to Steam users with which hardware?

Nvidia graphics cards. The demo held the first eleven test chambers, and within months Valve dropped the hardware condition and handed it to every Steam user for nothing.

What was the standalone Xbox Live Arcade version of Portal called?

Portal: Still Alive. Its 14 extra challenges were not Valve's own work: they were adapted from a fan-made Flash version of the game by a group called We Create Stuff.

Portal was given away free in May 2010 to mark Steam's arrival on which platform?

Mac. More than 1.5 million copies were claimed in the first week, and from then on a single purchase unlocked the game on both Mac and Windows.

Which free Portal spin-off did Valve release in 2022 to show off the Steam Deck's controls?

Aperture Desk Job. Valve built it as a hands-on tour of the new handheld's controls, in the same way its earlier Aperture demos had introduced its virtual-reality hardware.

The Nintendo Switch release of Portal in June 2022 came as part of which bundle?

Portal: Companion Collection. It includes the bonus chambers once exclusive to the Xbox 360 edition, so levels that began life as a fan's Flash game ended up on a Nintendo console.

Which museum included Portal in its 2012 exhibition The Art of Video Games?

The Smithsonian. The public chose the line-up: 119,000 people cast more than 3.7 million votes, and Portal was among the games they picked for the American Art Museum's show.

Where does the treacherous core Wheatley end up at the close of Portal 2?

In space. Chell fires a portal at the Moon and the vacuum drags him out through it, and a scene after the credits finds him drifting there, wishing he could say sorry.

According to Valve's tie-in comic, why was Chell first rejected as a test subject for Portal's test chambers?

Too much tenacity. Her file warns that she never, ever gives up, and that is exactly why the lone surviving scientist moves her to the top of the queue: he needs someone who will not stop.

A 2010 update changed Portal's ending so that Chell is dragged away by what?

A Party Escort Bot. The patch set up the sequel and paid off an old line: after her first murder attempt, GLaDOS had told Chell to assume 'the party escort submission position' and wait to be collected.

The fan game Mari0 hands a portal gun to the hero of which classic Nintendo game?

Super Mario Bros. Its makers rebuilt the 1985 game from scratch, not as a mod, and added simultaneous play for up to four people, each carrying a portal gun.

A fan's demake of Portal, taken down at Valve's request in January 2024, ran on which 1990s console?

Nintendo 64. The port ran on the real hardware, and that was its undoing: developer James Lambert said Valve asked him to pull it because it leaned on Nintendo's proprietary libraries.

Which director announced in 2013 that his company would develop a Portal film with Valve?

J. J. Abrams. He and Gabe Newell revealed the plan together at the 2013 DICE summit, and eight years later Abrams could report only that a script was at last being written.

Which actor voices Wheatley in Portal 2?

Stephen Merchant. The writers had his voice in their heads from the sitcom Extras but assumed they could never get him, and were weighing Richard Ayoade until they finally rang Merchant's agents.

What are the official names of the two co-op robots in Portal 2?

Atlas and P-Body. GLaDOS builds the pair because robots, unlike people, know neither pride nor fear, and she never uses their names, addressing each only by the colour of its eye.

Which gel in Portal 2 lets portals be placed on any surface it coats?

Conversion Gel. It was a late substitute: an earlier gel that let players walk up walls made testers queasy, so Valve swapped in one that worked with the portals instead.

Which band's song 'Exile Vilify' plays in a hidden den in Portal 2?

The National. The band's music publisher mentioned to Valve that the group might be interested, and the studio jumped at the chance; the song plays on a radio in a scrawl-covered hideout.

What was Portal 2's pre-release alternate reality game, played across thirteen indie games, called?

The Potato Sack. Players were told that every hour spent in the thirteen games was 'powering up' GLaDOS, and their efforts unlocked Portal 2 about ten hours ahead of schedule.

What was Portal 2's free 2012 update, which added a level editor and Steam Workshop sharing, called?

Perpetual Testing Initiative. In its story a near-bankrupt Cave Johnson farms out chamber-building to the Apertures of other universes, which is the game's excuse for playing strangers' maps.