Portal (game)

This article includes quotes from the video game Portal. For portals inside Wikiquote, see Wikiquote:Portal.

Portal is a first-person action/puzzle video game that was released as part of The Orange Box in October 2007. The game consists primarily of a series of physics puzzles that must be solved by teleporting the player's character and other simple objects using the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device (dubbed the "Portal Gun"), a unit that can create an inter-spatial portal between flat planes. The player character is challenged by an AI named "GLaDOS" (Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System) to complete each puzzle in the "Aperture Science Enrichment Center" using the Portal Gun, with the promise of receiving cake when all the puzzles are completed.

GLaDOS

Test Chamber 06

• Unbelievable. You, [subject name here], must be the pride of [subject hometown here]!

Test Chamber 10

• Spectacular. You appear to understand how a portal affects forward momentum, or to be more precise, how it does not. Momentum, a function of mass and velocity, is conserved between portals. In layman's terms: speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out.

Test Chamber 11

• The Enrichment Center promises to always provide a safe testing environment. In dangerous testing environments, the Enrichment Center promises to always provide useful advice. For instance, the floor here will kill you. Try to avoid it.

Test Chamber 17

• The Enrichment Center reminds you that the Companion Cube cannot speak. In the event that the Companion Cube does speak, the Enrichment Center urges you to disregard its advice.

Test Chamber 19

• Congratulations. The test is now over. All Aperture technologies remain safely operational up to 4000 degrees Kelvin. Rest assured that there is absolutely no chance of a dangerous equipment malfunction prior to your victory candescence. [The player's platform is lowered into a fire pit] Thank you for participating in this Aperture Science computer-aided enrichment activity. Goodbye.

Main Hall

• Have I lied to you? [Pause] I mean, in this room?

• [After burning the morality core] You're kidding me. Did you just stuff that Aperture Science thing-we-don't-know-what-it-does into an Aperture Science Emergency Intelligence Incinerator? That has got to be the dumbest thing that … whoa. Whoa, whoa … [Cackles, voice changes] Good news: I figured out what that thing you just incinerated did. It was a morality core they installed after I flooded the enrichment center with a deadly neurotoxin, to make me stop flooding the enrichment center with a deadly neurotoxin. So get comfortable while I warm up the neurotoxin emitters.

• Keep doing whatever it is you think you're doing. Killing you and giving you good advice aren't mutually exclusive. The rocket really is the way to go.

• Oh, you think you're doing some damage? Two plus two is [static] … ten. In base four! I'm fine!

• That thing you burned up isn't important to me. It's the fluid catalytic cracking unit. It made shoes for orphans. Nice job breaking it, hero.

• I'd just like to point out that you were given every opportunity to succeed. There was even going to be a party for you. A big party that all your friends were invited to. I invited your best friend, the Companion Cube. Of course, he couldn't come, because you murdered him. All your other friends couldn't come either, because you don't have any other friends. Because of how unlikeable you are. It says so here in your personnel file: unlikeable. Liked by no one. A bitter, unlikeable loner whose passing shall not be mourned. "Shall not be mourned." That's exactly what it says. Very formal. Very official. It also says you were adopted. So that's funny too.

• Speaking of curiosity, you're curious about what happens after you die, right? Guess what? I know! You're going to find out first-hand before I can finish explaining it, though, so I won't bother. Here's a hint: you're gonna want to pack as much living as you can into the next couple of minutes.

• I have your brain scanned and permanently backed up in case something terrible happens to you … which it's just about to. Don't believe me? Here, I'll put you on. [Silly voice] "Hello!" That's you! That's how dumb you sound! You've been wrong about every single thing you've ever done, including this thing. You're not smart. You're not a scientist. You're not a doctor. You're not even a full-time employee. Where did your life go so wrong?

Wall graffiti

In the later stages of the game, the player comes across graffiti written by Doug Rattman, a scientist who survived the initial wave of personnel killings by GLaDOS.

---

The cake is a lie

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Not in cruelty, not in wrath
The Reaper came today
An angel visited this gray path
And took the cube away.

• Satire of "The Reaper and the Flowers" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The cube had food and maybe ammo.
And immortality.

• Satire of "Because I could not stop for Death —" by Emily Dickinson

See also

• Portal 2
• Half-Life

External links

• The Official Portal Site