50 Fun Facts About Portal

Which company developed and published Portal in 2007?

It shipped inside The Orange Box alongside Half-Life 2 and Team Fortress 2.

What is the name of the silent protagonist the player controls?

Her face and body were modelled on the actress Alésia Glidewell.

What does the acronym GLaDOS stand for?

Her voice, by Ellen McLain, was altered to sound more artificial.

Who voices GLaDOS?

A classically trained soprano, she also sang the closing credits song.

What reward does GLaDOS promise for completing every test chamber?

The team chose it after 15 minutes of silence when asked which philosophy the game would follow.

What is the full official name of Chell's teleporting gun?

Its initials ASHPD resemble Adrian Shephard, the Opposing Force hero, so Valve planted a keyboard red herring.

Which student game did the mechanics grow out of?

Its original setting was a princess escaping a dungeon.

Which school were the student developers Valve hired attending?

Robin Walker spotted the game at a DigiPen career fair.

Who wrote the closing credits song sung by GLaDOS?

The idea of a credits song came from God Hand, one of writer Erik Wolpaw's favourite games.

What is the heart-decorated box Chell must incinerate called?

Players told Valve incinerating it felt worse than harming a BioShock Little Sister.

What colours are the two portal ends?

The colour scheme was carried over from Narbacular Drop.

What is the momentum-redirecting move of falling through one portal and flying out another called?

Rock, Paper, Shotgun praised how chambers teach it without explicit instructions.

What are the particle fields that erase portals at the end of test chambers called?

Objects carried through them are destroyed.

What equipment lets Chell survive long falls?

Turrets, energy projectiles and toxic liquid can still kill her.

According to the promotional site, Aperture Science was founded in 1943 to make what?

A person-sized quantum tunnel was pitched as a possible shower-curtain application.

Which fictional rival company was Aperture racing on portal technology?

GLaDOS's development began in 1986 to speed up the race.

Whose consciousness was uploaded to create GLaDOS?

Cave Johnson left instructions to back up his assistant by force if necessary.

GLaDOS flooded the facility with neurotoxin during which company event?

It happened in 1998, shortly before the events of Half-Life.

What illness drove founder Cave Johnson mad in 1978?

His three-tier plan included the Counter-Heimlich Maneuver and the Take-A-Wish Foundation.

Which famous phrase appears as graffiti in the backstage areas?

It became an internet meme and Valve merchandise.

What is the first sphere Chell incinerates in the final battle?

With it gone, GLaDOS regains access to the neurotoxin emitters.

How long is the countdown in the final battle?

Kim Swift noted that time pressure makes a simple puzzle feel complicated.

What kind of dessert is shown in the final scene?

Kim Swift picked it at the Regent Bakery in Redmond; its recipe is hidden in on-screen binary.

Who was the project lead of the original game?

She also wrote and drew the cake messages in the behind-the-scenes areas.

Which two writers did Valve hire to script the game?

Half-Life writer Marc Laidlaw opposed the crossover, saying it 'made both universes smaller'.

Roughly how many people worked on the original game?

Development took about two years and four months after the DigiPen team joined Valve.

Which film's clinical look was the reference for the sparse test chambers?

Testers had wasted time on decorative elements, so the setting was stripped back.

What joking nickname did the team give a scrapped rocket-redirecting boss fight?

Another idea had James Bond-style lasers, later repurposed for the turrets.

Which actress was Chell's face and body modelled on?

Valve found her through a local modelling agency.

The cut character who left the backstage messages was developed in which tie-in comic?

It bridges the two games and explains why Doug Rattmann moved Chell up the test queue.

The credits song came to which music game as a free download on April 1, 2008?

A Latin-style instrumental of it also plays on in-game radios.

On what date was The Orange Box released for Windows and Xbox 360?

The PlayStation 3 version followed on December 11.

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

It included test chambers 00 to 10 and was bundled with Peggle Extreme.

What was the standalone Xbox Live Arcade version called?

Its 14 extra challenges came from the fan-made Portal: The Flash Version.

How many copies were downloaded in the first week of the free Mac-launch giveaway in 2010?

It was the first Valve game on the Mac Steam client and supported Steam Play.

Which Nvidia studio built the free 2022 remaster Portal with RTX?

It was released on December 8, 2022 to show off path tracing on GeForce 40 cards.

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

It bundled both games plus the Still Alive levels.

What Metacritic score did the standalone PC version receive?

Critics loved it but many faulted its short length.

How many retail copies had sold by 2011, excluding Steam downloads?

Merchandise included a model portal gun and plush Companion Cubes.

What did the team name the giant hoop that rolls on screen in the final scene?

Wolpaw expected it to become a fad; fans ignored it.

A 2010 update changed the ending so Chell is dragged away by what?

The patch was part of the alternate reality game that teased the sequel.

What is Mari0?

It is a fan-made four-player co-op game.

Why was the fan-made Nintendo 64 port taken down in January 2024?

James Lambert said its reliance on Nintendo's proprietary libraries was the reason.

Which director's company Bad Robot has long been attached to a film adaptation?

A script was reported written in 2021; Kane Parsons voiced interest in 2026.

Which actor voices Wheatley in the sequel?

J. K. Simmons voices Aperture founder Cave Johnson.

What are the two co-op robots in the sequel called?

Dee Bradley Baker voices both.

Which gel in the sequel lets portals be placed on any surface?

Orange Propulsion Gel speeds you up and blue Repulsion Gel bounces you.

Which band's song 'Exile Vilify' plays in one of the Rat Man's dens in the sequel?

Jonathan Coulton's 'Want You Gone' closes the single-player campaign.

What was the sequel's alternate reality game with indie developers called?

It launched on April 1, 2011, weeks before the April 19 release.

What was the 2012 free update adding a level editor and Steam Workshop sharing called?

Players built 35,000 maps within days of its release.