Doug Rattman - The Debate Of His Fate (Portal)

What is there to say about Portal's most mysterious character, Doug Rattman? Well, a lot actually, he's so shrouded in a fog of mystery that we don't even know if Doug is still alive by the time Portal 2 takes place. Let's answer that.
0:00 - Intro
0:45 - Video Preface
1:20 - Intro (cont.)
2:09 - Lab Rat
4:26 - Doug Rattman is Still Alive
7:53 - Doug Rattman is Gone
12:20 - A Third Option...?
15:17 - Outro
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[@DaRealBruner]

I would love a Portal mod playing as Rattman during the events of GLaDOS killing Aperture Science personnel with neurotoxin.

[@Parkdum]

check out Portal Prelude, you don't get to see Rattman but you DO get to see the day GLaDOS awakened

[@CaptainJZH]

@@Parkdum honestly prelude is kinda crappy from a gameplay and design standpoint but I love the lore aspects - it really needs a remake of sorts

[@Axodus]

​@@CaptainJZH I played the entire game myself and I've gotta disagree with you, it's certainly much more difficult (advanced players only), but the setting, the tests, the writing, and the new elements were all pretty entertaining for me and it was an overall fun experience! Some areas in the game also looked pretty cool, and it's not nostalgia tainting my vision, I quite literally played it only a couple years ago, (but I had watched let's plays of it far before then, just hadn't played it until then, but I had forgotten all of the solutions to the puzzles by that point).

[@Omega-jg4oq]

But you gotta really think about both gameplay and story, you play as Doug Rattman TO DO WHAT? you are a scientist with a talking companion cube, honestly Rattman is special because he is unseen character who leaves some Easter eggs for you to discover, it's would be weird to see him as an actual 3D character model and Portal 1 and 2 did a good job at making you feel you're the only human alive in this entire facility facing some AI robots all by yourself

[@jc_art_]

​@@Omega-jg4oqit lends more to the idea of an animated short, or even an animated series. I may be biased as an animator, but i feel the art of Rattman is integral to the story, and porting it to a realistic 3d or even live action setting would ruin that. I do think it would be an interesting visual concept to have realistic 3d mixed in with his frantic scribbles, as it would feel like either bits of reality breaking through to him, or less optimisticly, his brain falling deeper into itself, turning his visions into his 'reality'. I imagine how it would work would be a mix of four distinct styles overall, live action for the real actual events, likely when he was medicated, then scribbly and scratchy 2d (or perhaps using spiderverse style 3d where it looks like a comic, just instead for portal 1's den art style) for when he is anxious and unmedicated, then painterly yet still a bit frantic (think; the beautiful murals from portal 2) for when he thinks about chell, or just when he feels optimistic, and lastly, source engine style (uncanny) realistic 3d for if he becomes consumed by his illness, and begins to believe what he sees is what is real, perhaps if he believes hes on medication when he isnt, this would likely be towards the end, leaving opportunity for the same ambigous ending, wondering wether he ever escapes or wether he gets absorbed by his delusions. I feel like it would do best as a short multi episode series, but keeping it short and sweet, maybe 4 ish 30-40 minute episodes, maybe an hour each if i rub the right lamp. A single short wouldnt do it justice, yet a whole 10 or more episode series would simply stretch it out too long. A goldilocks zone of animated media length is required lol. Anyway, thats enough fantasy for now, bye

[@delaneyelekes8660]

Fourth option: He survives and leaves the pod, but due to not being immortal, is dead by the time Portal 2 happens. This gives him time to make new murals (ones that can only have happened after the events of the lab rat comic too, like the ones pointing towards where the Portal Gun are), but also explains the whole ghost thing.

[@lazy_gravity6088]

i have had the same thoughts about Doug since reading the comic a few years ago. i’d like to think that maybe he was woken up by Wheatley (he does mention other subjects he tried to escape with), but then abandoned by Wheatley on account of his schizophrenia and leg wound being to much an obstacle for him to deal with. it explains the new murals, and his voice being present in pull the rug.

[@scarlettNET]

I tend to agree with the Schroedinger theory, but I'm surprised you didn't mention the whole "turrets fire the entire bullet" thing. Given how Doug was only hit by like one bullet, he could have easily survived and just assumed he was bleeding due to being in a panicked state from being shot. I still don't think that's the intention of the comic but it would be kinda funny to imagine him dragging himself around on the floor being all dramatic despite being fine in reality.

[@loganisanerd5566]

That is funny, but it looks like he was shot in the thigh, possibly rupturing an artery, maybe even breaking his femur. Also, "More bullet per bullet!" makes them slower for sure, but it does still mean a bigger bullet.

[@Delikatessen__]

I'm confused on the "easily survived" notion, bullet wounds are extremely lethal without immediate treatment, even if it doesn't hit anything vital, blood loss is a very easy way to die.

[@crokobos]

@@Delikatessen__ The wounds wouldn't be the same as real life bullet wounds

[@CauseOfBSOD]

For reference: turrets in the Portal franchise shoot bullets with springs rather than igniting the powder. The "whole bullet" refers to the fact the shell casing is fired with the bullet instead of being ejected when the gunpowder is ignited.

[@Padgriffin]

@@loganisanerd5566 Turret bullets are shot with springs. The muzzle velocity is likely akin to a (high-powered) Nerf blaster, but the nature of physics makes it practically impossible at firing a full cartage at anywhere close to deadly velocity. This is why Chell can eat so many shots with no real long term consequence.

[@DessDragon]

I am somehow reminded of the plot of Psychonauts 1, where a character is sleeping but accidentally broadcasting their consciousness everywhere, causing interference with other people's brain tumbles. again, no evidence this could happen with stasis pod inhabitants, but an interesting thought nonetheless...

[@asocksual4910]

Hell yeah, I love Psychonauts! Fun fact, Erik Wolpaw also wrote stuff for Psychonauts 1!

[@salmon_wine]

that entirely makes sense in connection with a bunch of OG Half-Life 2 lore, the "dreamers"

[@jc_art_]

​​@@salmon_winei know basically nothing about half life lore, and ive never played more than like 5-10 minutes of half life 2, so im just going to guess "the dreamers" are neither, "3 beings designated the position of keys to a prison where a single prisoner waits, holding back the life force of a god", or, "someone who believes in no religion, lives for no country, seeks world peace, wishes for the end of world hunger, wants to destroy greed, and for the world to exist united, equal, and free", though that second one is debatable wether one actually holds that position, or even if many hold it at once.

[@Protoplosion]

"catboy companion cube" never have I heard such a thing before.

[@MacheTheFerret]

one could argue that a lot more of aperture and its personnel embody schrodinger's cat chell and doug are/were alive and dead simultaneously in their storage locations, of course, but also: -glados, broken and asleep but still capable of being woken up, which chell does, thereby opening that box -caroline, her body and proper self long gone but kept alive within glados, up until she's discovered and deleted -cave johnson, his body and self not only long gone but probably actually dead, yet kept alive through his voice recordings, his fate unknown until chell wakes up old aperture and listens to him -the entire facility itself, by similar logic to glados just to name a few things the point of bringing this up being that imo it definitely lends more credence to that "third option" thing; doug's death is intentionally ambiguous, there won't be a correct answer unless somehow in a future portal/halflife/etc game we stumble upon him or his corpse; if his fate weren't ambiguous, it'd fly in the face of one of portal's biggest themes

[@joplayer1995]

Another thing related to this, which i always seemed to wonder? Is Caroline really deleted i mean if you think about it, her personality didn't change at all in the co-op campaign compared to single player. If you ask me i believe strongly that Caroline and glados are one and the same and that deleting her was just a troll by glados. Also how cara mia was sang at the end of portal 2 makes me believe glados has more "human" to her than she would like to admit.

[@arekrekas213]

@@joplayer1995 well, the thing is: her personality DID change, at the end of singleplayer during the old aperture track, the Caroline part of GLaDOS gets re-awakened, brought out because of her low power consumption and Cave Johnson's voice, she grows and starts helping Chell but in the end, GLaDOS deletes her old self. All the character development is erased, and she comes back to how she used to be

[@joplayer1995]

​@@arekrekas213 Thats where the argument could be made that when glados played cara mia it was after she deleted caroline so clearly she still had human emotions like sadness which have to come from somwhere, plus she gave Chell the companion cube back at the end. Also P-body and Atlas are robots who she has no regard for other than testing. Chell is a human being which is clearly different. Yeah but of course we will probably never get to know the truth same with rattman.

[@quote6013]

@@arekrekas213 actually you do see some of Caroline resurface, at the end of coop she first freaks out about the eggs before suddenly taking them in and coddling them, seemingly turning her chamber into a nursery, she has no ulterior motives with the crows until one of them cracks the glass and she notes how murderous they really are, i guess you could call this another Schrodinger's cat, we never know if Caroline was really deleted until someone opens the box

[@TheCatOfAges]

during a tech demo he is found to be a giant head so yes cave is alive

[@NoahGooder]

I for the longest time thought he died and I saw the "newer" murals as recycled panels that glados didnt see that Rattman drew during the events of portal 1. In essence a kind of lore accommodating way of making use of unused assets.

[@asocksual4910]

MY MAN!! This guy is my absolute favorite character in the Portal/Half-Life universe, thank you so much for dedicating a video to him! I find his story so fascinating, yet also heartbreaking, he really is an unsung hero who helped Chell so much, but they never actually got to meet and thank each other. Plus the dude is such a good artist, and while I'm not really sure if the depiction of his schizophrenia is accurate or not- I don't think it really is, but I also don't have it myself, so I can't really say- I do really appreciate the choice to use the Lab Rat comic to make him a sympathetic and really admirable character who isn't just some creepy evil weirdo, like most characters with it are portrayed as. It's not perfect, but it's one hell of a lot less demonizing. Also, I had no idea that the mug den was so infamous, but I always had a big soft spot for it. Imagine Doug wandering around the empty offices, collecting all of his old co-worker's mugs and hiding them somewhere where GLaDOS couldn't see so that at least a little bit of their memory remained... anyway, Doug is best boy, awesome vid.

[@Silicon14YT]

One thing I wonder though is that in Portal 2 Co-Op, when you get to the rooms where the disks are being kept, you can see on whiteboards messages telling people to not give her the disk, with the implication that whoever wrote them is aware that GLaDOS is trying to get greater control of the facility, and telling them not to listen to her. It isn't mention aware in lore (that I'm aware of) that she has done this before, meaning the messages might have been towards Atlas and P-Body. Though this might be a stretch considering on those whiteboards, it mentions implementing a human-verification system, which is done with the human vault so these might have been written before she killed everyone. Also, if I remember correctly, I think they might have been some unused Rattman drawings that show Atlas and P-Body going through the tubes. Also, with the whiteboard writings and potentially the companion cube easter egg, the Disc-retrieval testing tracks might be the only remnants of humanity to survived GLaDOS repair's. (While not related to my argument, one interesting fact about him is that the closet we have ever gotten to see Doug Rattman in some physical form outside of the comic is, interestingly enough, in Lego Dimensions where he can be seen in some of the story mode rooms barley in view and if approach, quickly runs away. Of course, though to this happening in a Lego game, this isn't cannon).

[@bekkayya]

9:00 ghosts arent real but every person that lays down in a relaxation bed has their brain scanned. GLaDOS even presents you with a functionally alive virtual copy of yourself that says "hEllLo". The ghost of doug is a ghost in the machine, like every other ghost at aperature

[@burrconnie8716]

That GLaDOS line could be merely but a troll towards Chell. Its credibility is very questionable

[@codaboi138]

I think there's a fourth option. Doug woke up after his injuries enough to get onto the pod. It's possible that he survived being shot in the leg and after getting into the pod, woke up afterward, except not at the same time as chell. I suppose it makes sense that he'd wake up during the time that the reserve power went out, but you can see that he's not in the same test subject storage as chell, it looks like he might be in the first test chamber from the game. That changes things a bit, and means something else could have woken Doug up. What I'm saying is, the murals aren't fresh, they're very old. Old enough for Doug to be long gone. What we hear through the walls is literally his ghost. But after some thought, I think shrodinger's cat theory makes more sense. It seems like such a thematic through line in the comic, I think there's a reason it's brought up to much. Good work Ossy.

[@Blaz_Haz_KATZ]

I remember this one Doug Rattman video I watched as a kid And boy did it freak me out Especially the intro and outro, they always gave me a heart attack

[@Blaz_Haz_KATZ]

@circus Yup !!! That was it

[@randomguy-kq4qy]

​@@Blaz_Haz_KATZ what was the video?

[@Blaz_Haz_KATZ]

@@randomguy-kq4qy The video's name is: Portal 2: Doug Rattmann - THE DARKER SIDE OF THE DISC

[@pyrosimba2014]

It's worth noting that many things in the Rattmann Comic, including his blood loss potentially, are vastly exaggerated. Outside of the flashback scenes, in which he's not yet succumbed to his schizophrenia, much of the visuals we see in the comic cannot be taken as 100% true. Keep in mind, Rattmann himself states that "the mind can lie", regarding the perception of reality and if the comic is a representation of his perception, then it's very possible that his injury was not as horrible as it seemed. Another thing worth noting: the health chargers from both Half-Life & Half-Life 2 are seen in the comic. It's very likely they're scattered about the facility (just not in the maintenance sections that the player visits) and he could have made use of them.

[@tuppot]

I have a theory and it drives me mad that it's not universally accepted! First of all, we can't forget that in Valve games plot and lore always come last. No theory is going to be perfect because there probably wasn't any intention for it to be. They just don't tie up every detail like other lore-oriented games would, it all serves the gameplay and the main storyline. I think part of the beauty of their games and what keeps their userbase so active is precisely that rather than having plotholes there's lots and lots of space open for interpretation and fanon. There's not one answer for many of these questions because there just wasn't supposed to be (sometimes writers may say "I believe this happened" but it doesn't necessarily make it into the game or is shared by the whole team). With that out of the way... I believe Rattman escaped Aperture Science by portaling himself to the moon. How did he survive the bullet wound? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ not important. I think he left the pod some time after the facility began to decay but way before Chell woke up. During this time he rambled through the facility leaving new murals on his way, including the one depicting the events of Portal 1. Now notice there's a theme in these new paintings: the moon. It's everywhere, along with lots of numbers, equations, etc. Now, the game has a lot of parallels with Greek tragedies (more on that here kzbin.info/www/bejne/f5O9lISed5iCmMU) so it certainly is a nod to the inevitable ending of the game, Wheatley's fatum. But also, I think he's making the calculations to portal himself to the moon, that's why there's studies of the moon phases and such. There's not much room for him to look at the night sky, so through math and astronomy he has to do "this thing like seeing, only not with [his] eyes" to determine when the moon will be on sight. Where's this opening? Well, in the chamber with the murals, where you see the Portal story paintings, there's a hole just over where you find the portal gun. A hole from where you should be able to see the moon during a full moon night. Now you'll notice the stasis bed in the first test chamber is missing, I think it's because he used it as an escape pod to survive for a while in space, just long enough to witness his last wish come true ("I'd rather have gone to the moon", Lab Rat page 11). With the time it takes for the portal shot to make it to the moon, he gets in the pod and flies through the portal. The Companion Cube photo you get from the Last Transmission achievement is proof of his success. How did he take it and send it? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ not important. How did the portal close before it swallowed the portal gun? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ not important, it just need to be there for you to find it in Portal 2. But I don't know. It's just a theory. A g

[@tuppot]

Also the painting of a cat jumping over the moon (a reference of The Cow Jumped over the Moon) can then also be interpreted as him also being like Schroeder's Cat.

[@SixtyFourJr]

Wouldn't he die though? He wouldn't be able to breathe. (I know that this is from 2022 but whatever)

[@tuppot]

@@SixtyFourJr Well... yes.

[@SixtyFourJr]

​@@tuppot imo I think he might be that oracle turret you see on the turret redemption line. (Nice theroy tho)

[@Minty1337]

i have a wacky 4th option he's still alive, but in a permanent coma in the stasis pod since glados has no reason to wake him up, and no one else does it, and he can't do it from the inside, but he's kept alive by it. so he'd be alive, but forever trapped.

[@HigherQualityUploads]

I think Doug will be the character we play as in Portal 3. He would lead well into a gameplay mechanic change. In Portal 1, we spend most of the time solving puzzles and a bit of it navigating the facility. In Portal 2, time is about evenly split between both. In Portal 3, I don't think GLaDOS would even bother to test him. She'd either try and kill him or, perhaps more interestingly, she'd try to offer him to leave, but Doug's schizophrenia would never allow him to believe that she was offering him to escape. So most of the gameplay would be navigating the facility, attempting to avoid cameras. I think it would lead to a scenario in where both characters face off: where GLaDOS tries to defend herself, but Doug attempts to eliminate her to ensure his escape, and perhaps to "avenge" Chell (he'll probably think she's dead once he sees her missing and the rest of the test subjects deceased.)

[@vergil_vt]

Sadly valve dosent make game with the number 3 in them.

[@ENCHANTMEN_]

reverse fnaf portal bottom text

[@lydierayn]

The music from 2:22 is Exile Villify. Its used ingame in a ratden's radio. Efforts appriciated

[@Xezian]

while we don't have proof of a relaxation chamber like the one we see Doug get into having medical capabilities, we do actually know that the extended relaxation vault Chell is put into does have life support functionality, enough to help her survive far far into the future, with the assistance of cryogenics as suggested by the comic, but we see Chell sucked out of Aperture at the end of Portal 1 surrounded by the facility imploding and collapsing on itself, and considering the other debris she could've been sucked pretty high into the air before the implosion ended and she landed. All this to say it's incredibly unlikely, and pretty much fact that Chell sustained some damage at the end of Portal 1 which the relaxation vault managed to mend and heal. This is also supported by the fact that when Doug redirects all backup power to Chell's relaxation vault, he says "It's the long sleep... or the long sleep." implying that Chell more than likely would've died if power to her vault's life support wasn't restored.

[@yndranth]

the whole point about the schrodinger's cat experiment regarding quantum mechanics is quite interesting and imo leads into ANOTHER property of quantum mechanics. Quantum entanglement, overly simplifying here, if you for example have 2 protons entangled together which can have a "spin" of up or down, until you measure them they are in a superposition which is what the schrodinger's cat experiment is sought out to prove, both are neither up or down, they are at once up and down. BUT once you measure one of the particles instantly the other particle changes its state, if you measure that 1 of the protons has an up spin you can be 100% certain the other one is down. Taking it further you can make the connection here, since Chell is alive rattman must be dead. That basically fully convinces me he's dead.

[@lukakrog]

Portal seems to have quite a theme for paradoxes, so there may well be a third option. Examples include: "This statement is false", there is no answer. "New mission: Refuse this mission", you're destined to fail. "Does a set of all sets contain itself?", answer might lie beyond 3 dimensions? It's quite the head scratcher. Schrödinger's Cat and quantum mechanics, both seem like valid arguments. Then again, what do I know? I'm just throwing my thoughts out there. ^^;

[@sebastianpoulson3543]

I like the theory that ghosts might also exist and want to say that Doug could be a companion cube (leaning on the theory of companion cubes being former employees) Could be that Aperture created some sorta way to fuse souls with cubes

[@Omega-jg4oq]

I mean we can hear voices and screams in the citadel and in other areas in HL2 and HL1 and since the soundtrack's name is Ghost of Rattman, he could most likely be a ghost

[@Lunarcreeper]

i used to think that he was alive, but the sound of the ramblings was us hearing him inside of a relaxation vault, being woken up, but without the bed opening. causing him to be stuck in side and eventually die. as much as i wish this was the canon fate. it's probably schrödinger's ratt.

[@LB_]

5:57 oh, I always thought it was "the ship is gone"

[@jdwithaddinhd5811]

I think that Doug is 'linked' with Chell as a Schrodingers cat. As long as Chell is able to wake up from her stasis and continue testing, Rattman will wake up as well and will be there to guide her to the surface... again :)

[@braynap8283]

I remember hearing that you could see Doug in the credits dead against the wall as you enter the surface. But due to how fast it goes, it's probably not.

[@cosmic_rival]

Doug didn’t have time to depict Portal 1 on murals before entering the stasis chamber so he couldn’t have died.

[@DarkstarArchangel]

I went back to Portal 2 and I don't see any events of Chell's Portal-1 movements in any murals of Portal 2, they mostly look like those drawings depict what took place before Portal 1. The only thing I can guess that Rattmann being alive after Portal 1, is the arrows leading to the breakers under GLaDOS but I would guess that he would die later on of old age because Portal 2 could be many years after drawing new murals.

[@mydude249]

That image of Doug's skeleton next to the companion cube really hit me hard

[@acemagalor2519]

Personally I’d love an Entropy Zero: 2 style mod where we get to play as Doug after the events of Portal 2

[@NuttersIncorporated]

I like the theory that Doug is both alive and dead until the box is opened. We’ll probably never get conformation one way or the other. There are two things you didn’t mention that hint at Doug possibly surviving the events of the comic. 1. According to the lore, turrets don’t fire bullets like a gun. They use a spring to fire the whole bullet. This means they act more like large nerf gun pellets rather than bullets fired from a gun. It makes them a lot less effective and is the reason Chell can survive so many bullets. We know that Doug struggled to know what was real and what wasn’t so it’s possible he thought his injury was a lot worse than it really was. 2. Near the start of Portal 2 Wheatley says, “Can you see the portal gun? Also, are you alive? That's important, should have asked that first. I'm… do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to work on the assumption that you're still alive and I'm just going to wait for you up ahead. I'll wait… I'll wait one hour. Then I'll come back and, assuming I can locate your dead body, I'll bury you. Alright? Brilliant! Go team! See you in an hour! Hopefully! If you're not... dead.” During the final fight, Wheatley says that Chell wasn’t the first human he woke up but all the others died. “Remember when I first told you how to find that little portal thing you love so much? Well, I thought you'd die on the way, if I'm honest. All the others did. You didn't think you were the first, did you? [laughs] No, no, no. Fifth. No, I lie: Sixth. Perhaps it's best to leave it to your imagination what happened to the other five... You know what? I think we're well past the point of tasteful restraint. So, I'll tell you what happened to them: they died. Horrifically. They all died horrifically. Trying to get that portal device that you're gripping in your meaty little fingers there.” Assuming that Wheatley was telling the truth about Chell not being the first, it’s entirely possible he woke Doug up. Then Doug ran and hid the moment he could and Wheatley just assumed that he had died.

[@Danche925]

I kinda like the idea that they made that track to simulate impaired reality. I feel like Laidlaw wouldn't want to spoil anything if there was comprehensible information in his rambling but if Mark himself really was just spouting off nonsensical scientific babble and they touched it up to be more so yet we still hear phrases like the 'ship is stolen' (which btw I feel like that has to what he actually said I mean it's just gotta be lmao) then maybe they ACTUALLY created a sweet track that fucking simulates the madness. Sort of like how the music of the spheres simulates Johnson's madness and blind ambition. But if reality is simply a story the mind tells itself as a way to cope with existence, could you induce your own reality unto others by using things like sound, voices, and music. Also, how do you know when your mind is actually lying to you or if you're just seeing the madness unfurl before you. Portal is a terrifying series holy shit.

[@Testsubject276]

I'm kinda on the fence about the stasis pod healing theory... On one hand, If you were to enter a stasis pod while dying, your invisible countdown to death would just pause, then resume the moment you get out. On the other, if the stasis pod slows your heartbeat enough, could that allow for enough blood to coagulate and close the wound?

[@PurpleColonel]

For what it's worth, the track names throughout the Half-Life games, at least the ones by Kelly Bailey, are kind of random and not really meant to be indicative of any lore. For example the "Biozeminade Fragment" title comes from people trolling HL2's reviews on Amazon

[@fatalwaffle1715]

Awesome Video Bro!

[@mre-man2043]

Idk if this is necessarily the best/ most cannon source of evidence, but I'm pretty sure we do see Ratman in the portal add-on for the game Lego dimensions,

[@h0neekl0k]

also I like to think there's many undiscovered dens that we never got to see. Idk if it's a sad thought or not actually... but his art is magestic

[@mateks2413]

Love your Work ; )

[@gm_fun]

I'd count the On A Rail occurrence of ghosts but the ghosts in the playground is labeled in the sound files with "memories".

[@damonmorse2860]

thank you for this

[@zircocleaver4407]

You shoulda used the Fact Sphere's “fact” about Schrödinger's cat paradox just to mess around with anyone who truly doesn't know

[@dan74695]

5:28 You can hear him by walking up to the murals in in any room where The Ghost of Rattman plays, even in the room where you find the portal gun. You can look behind the walls in that room.

[@voidreyes]

Cool video, also love your fursona design

[@Lunarcreeper]

i just realized that Doug Rattman has the exact same behavior of an actual rat. hiding in the walls, eating the leftover scraps of food in an abandoned place. i wonder if this was done on purpose? or if it was just a coincidence

[@killerbee.13]

I'm pretty sure "ratman dens" were named before Doug Rattman was named. At the least, his actual name was (afaict) not known by the public until the Portal ARG some time after Portal's release, as it never appears in Portal.

[@zaiden_fishguy]

i like to think that the stasis pod put everything about doug in stasis, his body, his mind, his wound

[@Art3mis_games]

My thought is that he survived as the stasis bed will have slowed some of his bodily functions and that will have made his blood clot at the wound

[@platypipope328]

One thing to keep in mind with dug getting shot is that he isn't shot with a normal projectile, instead a bullet is essentially catapulted at him, and that gunshot wounds to areas like the leg are survivable even if untreated, assuming no arteries are pierced and there's no infection. In a status pod, the latter can be guaranteed, but the former can't be either way, as while he is heavily bleeding at first he clearly stops bleeding from panel 25 onwards. Also, the argument for ghosts being in the Portal/Half-Life universe is tenuous at best, certainly reliant on arguing that if one thing not-real happens then any other not-real thing can also happen, regardless of how established or contradictory it is. For Black Mesa, those screams could just as easily be black mesa staff, while the Children noises in Half-Life 2 are meant to be memories to further drive home the fact that there are no children.

[@zOOpygOOpert]

Omg he's just like Adrian Shephard

[@limpfall13]

I read the comic before starting the video and to me the Schrödingers cat theory makes sense to me given how much it’s refrenced in the comic and his outcome of survival being vauge enough for this to become a debate and topic to begin with.

[@SiIIy_]

I love that ending image

[@Wintergael127]

I lean toward him being alive. Main reason? He isn't bleeding when he goes into the stasis bed. Seriously, look back at the panel. Seriously injured and unable to properly use that leg again? Probably. Dead? Given he didn't seem to bleed out to death, outside of a non-zero possibility of internal bleeding, I'm not entirely convinced. However, I do fully agree with the idea of him being symbolically stuck in an unknown, Schrödinger's cat-like state being The Point in regards to the comic.

[@syrsafox32]

I have a theory that I don't think I've heard anyone talk about before: Doug Rattman is a victim of time travel. Now, I don't have any solid evidence to go by on this other than the subjective content of the murals drawings about the moon. Also about the SSTV signal that you can receive in one of the dens with a radio. How he seemed to know about the ending of the game is an interesting one to me, or just Valve giving a subtle foreshadowin and nothing more than that.

[@Cookieman245YO]

I always thought that doug would be alive if the sleep pods had some slight healing factor so he could ve waken up as the same time as chell did in portal 2 because the first tests doesnt look like the tests from portal 1 maybe the chambers we test through are the chambers where doug fell asleep in why because the pod isnt there anymore maybe doug reconstructed the rubiks cube with the pod or he just threw it away with a lift force so yeah maybe doug is still alive somewhere its not yet confirmed.

[@david4jsus]

Can't believe I've never thought of that third option, that's such a clever takeaway!

[@creeps351]

While definitely not canon, doug does actually make an in Game appearance in Lego dimensions

[@B-squaredBIN]

I’m just looking at the length of the video. This’ll probably be some debate. And yeah, this has been on my head for some time now.

[@wolfcl0ck]

I have one more theory that I haven't heard be brought up yet. See, nobody in Portal is an accurate storyteller. Doug Rattman has schizophrenia, Chell has severe brain damage, Glados is a pathological liar, Atlas and P-Body are automatons designed to only understand testing, and Wheatley has severely slowed mental capabilities by his design. The only time we ever get an even partially believable story is when we play as Chell in Portal 1, where she's *not* brain damaged as far as we know. Going off of that, though, the only times where we can say that what we're seeing is the objective truth is the events of Portal 1 and most of the events of the portal 2 Co-op. As a result of this, I propose this theory: There IS no Doug Rattman. When I say this, I don't actually mean the scientist did not exist. What I mean is that he was simply another one of the many scientists killed off during Bring your Daughter to Work Day. The only thing that we can say for certain in regards to a character LIKE Doug Rattman is that there were dens in the later levels of Portal 1. However, this doesn't require Doug Rattman. In fact, when those dens were designed, the original concept behind them was that they were created by other survivors (plural) according to the dev commentaries. Again, Doug is not supposed to be a believable storyteller, so what are the things that he allegedly did other than the dens? Well, it's claimed that he put Chell up as the first test subject. That's... wrong. Chell *isn't* the first subject. According to the clipboard and relaxation vault, she's the 234th subject. We've spent a long time trying to rationalize how she could be 234 after being set as number one with theories like "Oh, maybe Glados tested the scientists first or maybe there was a reserve that was already set up for testing or maybe the number in-game is wrong." However, wouldn't it make a whole lot more sense if Doug just never did that? We wouldn't have to come up with all these headcanons about why this is Chell's number if we consider that Doug may have never even done so. What else is there? At the end of Lab Rat, Doug patches the reserve power into Chell's room, allowing the entire rest of the grid to go offline. This also makes no sense. According to Wheatley more than once (at the start of the game during his nags and during his boss fight,) he says that Chell is NOT the first subject he tried. At the end of the game this could just be him trying to make Chell feel bad, but at the beginning? Why would he bother bringing up that Chell's a good jumper and stuff? There wouldn't really be a reason for him to if not because he tried other subjects first. Well that explains it as well: Chell wasn't the only subject on life support because the events in Lab Rat didn't actually happen. Finally - and this is a big one - How did Doug make it into a relaxation vault at the end of Lab Rat, and where is he when we fall in there too? I believe in your frequently misinterpreted story-beats video, you mention that this was probably another relaxation vault, which, fair enough, I can believe. However, even if it is, that still doesn't explain how he would have gotten in there in the first place. As we to assume that there's a testing track that has a glass covered relaxation vault starting room near the deep relaxation control room that just happened to have the glass broken in such a way that Doug could jump down from the observation deck WITH his injured leg and then climb into the vault itself? He needed to prop himself on his companion cube just to be able to hoist himself up at the end, and given how high up observation decks are, how would he have dropped down in the first place? There are no other doors in those rooms. So, TL;DR - Everything Doug Rattman does in Lab Rat is contradicted in the games themselves. Therefor, Doug Rattman may have not even existed in the first place, and the events of Lab Rat are just the thoughts in the mind of a dying scientist succumbing to the neurotoxin on ByDtWD.

[@wolfcl0ck]

I will place a hex on the first person who makes fun of me leaving a long comment. It will eat you from the inside.

[@arthurpietrogarcia1057]

uhmmm interesting I always assumed that since Chell was unexpectadly brought up to first, there wasn't enough time to change her from relaxation chambers and also I thought that the comic made it clear that GLaDOS was testing on the scientists first and then moved on to the test subjects. still a solid theory of yours also sorry for the bad english I'm brazillian.

[@arthurpietrogarcia1057]

ALSO if we are counting developer commentary and interviews, Erik Wolkpak confirmed that Chell isn't brain damaged she just doesn't want to talk to any of them so everything we see in the singleplayer campaign is true. also Wheatley probaly lied in the heat of the moment to try to diminish Chell: "like huh you actually think I chose you first?" I mean he even says after you open the door:"oh I knew someone was alive."

[@artemis_173]

well chell could very well be not the first subject but then doug rattman put her on the list first so she'd be tested right away

[@jakdekayen]

Being put at the top of the list doesn't mean she was #1 she just happened to be moved first to be woken up from all the sleeping subjects, dude..... Thats pretty obvious..

[@knightatyourservice7512]

I just realized something (about the art). Do you see how there's a piece of paper in Rat's pod? The paper has one corner on the outside of the pod and the other corner inside of the pod and it stays like on the side of the bed. Like, this pod has just one window piece that closes the pod. In the first game this is not how the pod is closed. The pod has two windows that close like a mouth with the closing point (where the windows connect each other) is above the bed from the pod. You can see that at the beginning of the Portal 1 game. This is not something to suggest a theory, but an error I found.

[@fochy4248]

he must be dead, he enters the relaxation vault, more d he must be dead, he enters the relaxation vault, many years pass, glados wakes up, and sees him sleeping there, she simply turns off his glass bed, or fills his room with neurotoxin,but she must have killed him somehow (probably in some painful way, because doug is someone she was looking for for a long time)

[@iug5672]

No mention of the message from the Radio that shows a picture of a companion cube on the Moon? I always interpretated that as Rattmans cube

[@rapana6926]

In the place where you find the portal gun in P2, the murals show that Glados is actually powered by the sun/solar power - even the light bridges are literally made of sunlight. The narrator robotic voice at the start also states, that the facility can still function with very little voltage being present... Glados also speaks about replaying her last few seconds before exploding over and over again...meaning that she still sucked some energy to stay awake - she was somewhat awake all the time after P1 end. The murals in that chapel-like room actually try to tell a story of what happened after he woke up from his sleep ... - and he left it there believing that Chell might wake up one day and need the portal gun again. That is why it was placed there - almost like a sacred object in a chapel... (because he did revere chell in some weird way). The murals also show that Glados possibly woke up another time and a flood came (the mural in the room with water, where you ricochet throughout) - which led me to think that there was some kind of showdown between her and Doug. Wheatley gives more subtle hints of Doug´s presence - like the color stain on his model that might have been from the murals (although people kept telling me it´s some sort of sticker...but I could not tell). Or saying that "a human destroyed Glados and noone seen him since"- he was not talking about " a test subject", but rather "a human".... which led me to believe that there was a possibility that someone else might have done the same thing as Chell. Wheatley also had no idea about Chell being the culprit behind Glados failing... so the info he had might have truly not been about Chell at all. They might have talked about "some other human". There was also the campaign with the codes...Players entering the dens and finding the radios received a signal, which translated into various images - showing a companion cube on the moon....and other things. So it is possible that he shot a portal to the moon and might have escaped there. But when or if that actually happened - we do not know. It could have been far in the past, or fairly recently before P2 start - since the campaign ran after the P2 release. It would be so great if Valve ever decided to tie the loose ends and make a game about this..

[@springus3887]

I would love to see a fangame where you play as doug rattman

[@NoahGooder]

another thing is that the stasis pods always seemed a little small for adults unless you curl up in them.

[@TomatoRadio]

On the topic of Doug's rambling, you can hear them when next to the murals where you get the portal gun, and you can go behind the panels here, so we are almost certain that these rambling aren't in real time.

[@sahilhossian8212]

Lore of Doug Rattman - The Debate Of His Fate (Portal) momentum 100

[@rustkitty]

I think he woke up some time in the centuries between 1 and 2, but ultimately died as he lived: off screen. If he woke up after the Enrichment Center has already fell to ruin he could've peacefully healed up (he got one bullet shot, Chell shrugs those off all the time) and tried to escape while GLaDOS was "dead". Without that idiot Wheatley getting in the way, I bet he succeeded and lived a life in the post-post-apocalyptic future Time Machine style. Some of the graffiti on the already crumbled walls is just too convenient to have been made before the facility fell apart, so this scenario fits well. Also leaves the door open for Rattman "returning" with his murals in Portal 3. (That was a joke, haha, fat chance.)

[@DylanKolb-hv5yy]

Wait- In the outro scene the box is opened… I think a great portal 3 would be GLaDOS finding Doug Rattman, then you go through a series of tests but see it through his schizophrenic eyes…

[@thephoenixking1086]

What if Ratman was part used to make the two Robots you play as during Multiplayer? This is clearly possible since Glados herself was once Human yet through the games she forgets this and later wipes that from her memory... The two robots are clearly Human based and at the time of their creation, Glados did not have any other Humans to test on (the other test subjects were still hidden at this time), so who did she base the Robots on?? Maybe she captured Rattman and used him to create the two robots...

[@awkwardnoise6715]

idk, all of the robots are pretty human, like Whetely, no indication that he was ever human

[@alvaronavarro4895]

Nope, those two get their humanity by interacting with each other, It's simulated.

[@CourierSiix]

I disagree with the whole "thousand year gap" explanation for portal 1 and 2. The foliage growth and general state of decay of the facility in the beginning is similar to buildings left to rot for around 10-20 years. The wooden furniture would have rotten away Long before portal 2 if it were Thousands. Yes, the final hours book says "50,000 years" as a means of hyperbole to say that portal 2 wasnt going to connect with half life 3

[@DoggosGames]

I think its about 50 years. Also matches up with the combine leaving earth and that the extended relaxation centre wakes people up every 50 numerals.

[@killerbee.13]

@@DoggosGames I agree, 20-50 years seems probable. The amount of decay and plant growth lines up pretty well with buildings which have been abandoned for about that long. At a stretch, if we assume the reactor and sump pumps and other machinery were automated enough to operate on their own without human maintenance, and the stockpile of nuclear fuel large enough, maybe, as a generous upper limit, up to 100 years could have passed between the games. But the steel would've rusted more in that time than is shown in game. Steel certainly wouldn't last 50,000 years, or even one thousand years exposed to the air. The design lifetime of most buildings is 50 years or less, and we know that the enrichment center wasn't brand new construction at the time of Portal 1, most of it would be at least 10-20 years old, if not significantly older. That about lines up with the "structural integrity severely compromised, but not completely collapsed" level of decay seen in Portal 2.

[@DarkstarArchangel]

This is exactly what I thought, objects have to decay WAY MORE if it was 50K years. I mean the main series of this universe is called 'HALF-LIFE' which is a scientific term to define radioactive decay so safer to assume that it is closer to 20 to 100 years. It is a science fiction series after all.

[@charlodynatimberheart4860]

Good video, my one complaint is that there is nothing pointing towards those murals being new, it's just kind of an assumption people make with no evidence because we've never seen them before. They could be thousands of years old, and they're all in areas we've never seen before in the first portal game. I don't think they're new, I think they're simply undiscovered until now.

[@Grandmaquil]

good video yes man you right yes

[@krzyszwojciech]

Thousands of years? We don't really know that... do we? The repeating nines that supposedly represented the number of days Chell spent asleep could be a glitch in a facility that's falling apart. I think it was intentionally left to be vague. On the one hand, repeating nines do feel like some variable that was filled to the brim. On the second hand, in computers numbers are represented as string of bits of 0s and 1s, so you won't get a series of repeating nines in base 10 by maximizing the variable. I doubt anyone would artificially limit the range of a base-2 variable to some set of nines. On the... third hand, that choice might have been made for purely narrative reasons to give the lay audience the impression of filling a variable. But should we expect them to write the narration in such a way? So yeah, it remains vague. Unless I'm missing some important piece of evidence.

[@user-pc3io5ji1o]

Rattman died between portal one and two. Literally thousands of years pass between portal one and two there’s no way he survived

[@tonydsoy]

wait a minute the beans ARE 5000 YEARS OLD

[@mariolegends250]

IT would be so cool If when Portal 3 ever comes Out, you Play as ratman

[@themysteriousstrangerofnow490]

But wait if he still had power in his chamber wouldn't he be preserved until glados wakes up again then she opens it.

[@ARealLemonLime]

"doug"

[@ToadOnSteam]

I actually saw the chamber 17 thing shut, but I was just confused by it.

[@darkkiller1239]

Nah dug hasn't died but he isn't alive as well but his soul or something has gone into a companion cube and now rolls around the facility

[@chimken135]

Yknow, I think doug kept it together pretty well all things considered

[@lyanreehan]

Doug is dead. He moved all power to Chell. His stasis chamber is inactive. Doug is dead.

[@user-ee9wt9pe4h]

In the ending of portal 2 glados give chell companion cube I always thought that was ratman cube because it's look old.

[@SiIIy_]

That’s the cube you burn in portal 1

[@phoenixdening6434]

maybe it said ghost of rattman because he is only a mere ghost of his past self lost to his schizophrenia and attraction to companion cubes

[@youkofoxy]

Other important aspect of this character is how he views his own mental health issues impact his and others views of the world. Ok, that was a bad choice of words, so let the man himself explain: "Reality is a story the mind tells itself." "An artificial structure conjured into being by the calcium ion exchange of a million synaptic firings." "A truth so strange it can only be lied into existence." "And our minds can lie. Never doubt it..." In simple words, what you take from granted my actually be a lie you tell yourself. And that is important when talking about what happened to him, the best answer is really "we do not know for sure". However I Believe he is alive after the events of LAB RAT, for one simple reason (if my mind is not lying to me): We can see new and unique drawings that has his pattern before we get the portal gun. What drawings? Arrows to be precise, now there is a possibility that it just a coincidence or it was made by something else, however I follow Occam's razor in most cases and it says it was Doug that made them... it also maybe gameplay feature and the logical conclusion of Occam's razor would be that, however they have done with just lighting before and the whole pattern is more "telling story" that anything else by what I know (In especial if, [my mind maybe playing tricks] Lab Rat was released before portal 2). So he probably is alive after LAB RAT, however he maybe dead before Portal 2. there also one more evidence, Science and Wheatly. Wheatly is a moron, not a idiot, so he wants us to get the portal gun and he knows where to find it. counter argument would be "he is a moron" however his problem is more that his plans have a obvious in hindsight "flaws in execution", than actually being completely impractical or obviously flawed (remember, he is supposed to distracted GLaDOS, you need to have a "smart plan" to have her attention) so we can assume he knows were the portal gun should be, like he knows about the neurotoxin and the turret assembling plant. And other thing is that the Gun would be place at the same place were we first find it after the battery of test is done for the next test subject, repeatability people. So the fact we find it off the ground, in a place completely different that what was supposed to be means something must have moved it and in quite deliberated fashion. Now it could be anything, there no evidence to support it was rat man beside what appear to be his undated drawings and there no evidence that it was something else... except the robots, they do follow the testing protocol to the letter as far I know it. So yeah, the only evidence I have Doug is alive can also be just a coincidence. To closure, while the falling tree makes a sound, if there nothing to register for sure it made a falling sound we can safely assume it did and therefore, the tree still standing. We will not know for sure until we get conclusive evidence. I still gonna argue the evidence for him being alive is quite strong, NCBI NLM NIH GOV " Ziprasidone has a half-life of seven hours to ten hours".

[@kazimir8086]

"Thousands of years" ...I know Glados says, 999999 (days?) but this could have been a default value after the cash got cleared (or any other error). I don't believe that thousands of years have passed. Simply because of the vegetation. No electric component would survive such long times under damp conditions, nor would any battery or accumulators work, simply because of corrosion and degradation. It looks more like few decades has passed, which is already optimistic. Maybe the canned food is another indicator, that only a few years have passed. Just look at Chernobyl, it got totally overgrown after 40 years.

[@TopHat0278]

I am going to go with the theroy that there is now a dough ratman core that acts like him

[@GoodlyData86596]

Did you know that turret bullets are very shit at killing anything? It’s not even just a “gameplay only” thing that people keep pulling out of their asses to invalidate any solution to in universe problems that fictional characters in video games have. As in the portal 2 promotional video on turrets Cave Johnson states that the aperture brand turrets “fire the whole bullet” because “that’s 65 percent more bullet per bullet”. As everyone but, seemingly, Cave Johnson knows, bullets are not actually bullets but are instead a gunpowder filled casing with a solid projectile as a cap for said casing. The gunpowder launches the projectile at its lethal speeds not the firing mechanism, that only “tells” the bullet that now is the time to ignite the gunpowder. As we see in an animated diagram shown in the turret promotional video, the turret “catapults” (for lack of a better term) the “whole bullet” when firing instead of hitting the primers on the bullets to fire them like a normal firearm would. There’s a reason why we still use gunpowder to give bullets their killer velocities instead of launching them with internal “catapulting” mechanisms inside the firearm, it’s because it’s too much work for too little payoff. Traditional firing mechanisms only require as much energy as it takes for someone to release the tension in a spring in the firing mechanism of the firearm. The amount of energy needed to launch a projectile at even a 50th of the velocity bullets have, using a “catapult” mechanism would be something similar to what would power a small electric car (disclaimer, although I am not good at math, I am good at making broad estimations, therefore the example given is not an exact by any means but is instead an example of how impractical in comparison to regular firearms that a “catapulting firearm” would be, so take the calculations with a grain of salt, but leave your salt at the front door with the point I attempted to make with that comparison.). Thusly it is highly likely that Cave Johnson’s turrets, although by no means non-lethal, would be way less effective at killing than a normal firearm would. For example: an untreated shot anywhere on the body will kill a human, whereas turrets can only knock someone out via blunt force trauma with a single shot if they hit the head. Basically being shot by a turret is like being shot by a BB gun that fires larger and much heavier BBs at the same velocity as a regular BB. All of this to say that valve decided to poke fun at the comically non-lethal turrets of portal by including an explanation for the non-lethality of said turrets in advertisements that are highly likely to be canon to the portal/hl universe, inadvertently making it canon that aperture brand turrets are as shit at killing anything as they are at killing players. It takes roughly 3 seconds receiving sustained fire from aperture brand turrets to die when tested in game. Doug only took one bullet to the knee (ok not the knee specifically but yea his leg nerves are still gonna have an extremely bad time when hit in the area shown in the comics). It’s likely that Doug was not told everything about aperture test environment objects so Doug gets hit with a lot of pain and goes into shock, falsely assuming the bullet was the lethal kind since it’s the only one he would know about, Doug begins to have a severe “self preservation induced” panic attack that causes him to desperately find a way to survive and to find a way to help individuals that he cares about in case he doesn’t survive. Severe cases of panic attacks can cause individuals to briefly pass out ether after the panic hits them too hard too fast or after a heavy amount of psychologically taxing dread builds up in the individual, with Doug fitting the latter bill as he becomes increasingly convinced of his “imminent demise”. Although I have gone through panic induced fainting spells, I am not schizophrenic nor do I claim to have any non-surface level knowledge of the condition so I am only going to touch on that part of Doug’s unreliable narrative on his “fatal wound” briefly and will also ask any readers to take my conclusions of how schizophrenia impacted Doug’s perspective on the situation with a grain of salt. Doug’s schizophrenia may have caused him to have hallucinations of having a gunshot wound and bleeding heavily due to the sheer panic Doug has about being shot. Making the illustrations depicting Doug with a gunshot wound and bleeding heavily unreliable depictions of the reality of the situation, although yes turret shots do cause human shot by them to spill some blood, heavy enough blunt force trauma can break skin and cause minor blood loss (minor blood loss: blood loss at amounts that do not result in blood loss related injuries/complications. Example: “The patient received minor blood loss from the paper cut, but otherwise they are completely fine.”) and aperture brand turrets do cause heavy blunt force trauma so the bloodstains caused by the hits are not unusual for the type of damage received. Doug’s psyche is just blowing the damage way out of proportion because of the “self preservation induced” panic he is going through. It’s likely that his wound stops bleeding entirely due to clotting sometime during him climbing into the pod. What did we learn? We learned that cave Johnson is a fucking idiot who fires (or fires upon) anyone who disagrees with his reasoning and/or decisions. resulting in the events of portal and portal 2 being possible. Oh and that Doug is still alive, if glados didn’t decide that she might as well go all the way with her pest control for her “rat infestation” during the events of portal 2 and incinerated the pod containing the “rat”.

[@magentialice]

I think he survived but died before the events of portal 2.

[@kidgamer896]

How do you unlock the lab rat comicin portal 2

[@entropic-decay]

I'd like to say that I disagree on how far apart portal and portal 2 occur. As someone who recreationally explores various abandoned and disused structures, the level of decay in the structure of Aperture prior to the reawakening of GLaDOS points to only around 50-60 years, nowhere near thousands. Regardless, Doug really shouldn't be eating those beans

[@pieofchart]

Loved this, but oddly enough, I want more. In fact, I want to see Doug dead. I also want to see Doug alive. I'd love to see a visualized interpretation of both these possiblities. Hell, even if it's just a short animation of Doug closing the chamber 17 door on you, which would work great as horror btw, I just need more of this man.

[@aPink_Lemon]

Damn we makin' Doug Rattman videos in 2022?

[@andresbravo2003]

Mysterious and quite scary if you asked me.

[@CoolCrimsonJaguar]

I feel the only real piece of evidence that he's alive, like truly real, is that his death is left vague. A very intentional act, as it adds both mystery, tragedy..... or a possible continuation. people have said that they would love a rattmann game, after all.

[@lego_gman]

Why didn’t you mention him possibly being in the turret opera.

[@Qwerbey]

I figure the dens in the first game weren't actually made by Doug, so for him it's not new areas at all. One of the commentary nodes implies there's multiple "rat men", more like Janitor Bob than a specific character, but Doug was probably the last one to survive, and I guess he happened to be in the Portal 2 areas

[@shadowsnstars]

in what chamber was the commentary mode?

[@Qwerbey]

@@shadowsnstars It's been a very long time since I played through the game with commentary, but I believe it was in 17. Could've been somewhere in the escape too, though

[@shadowsnstars]

@@Qwerbey alr ill look in the escape parts of the game for it

[@PstrywBerryDraws]

Don't forget that in Half Life: Alyx there are drawings of turrets and cubes. If only two people survived Aperture, one being in Cryogenic storage throughout throughout HL:A, and the other's fate being unknown, then it has to be Rattman who made those drawings. So what I think happened is; Doug got into the pod, woke up sometime later, took days to get out of Aperture (Long enough to make all those dioramas and dens), escaped to the surface, then to Eastern Europe (Where HL2 onsward is set). If Portal is set 2010, and HL:A in 2018, then he must have only been in storage for 8 years. You pointed out how fresh the dens looked in Portal 2, as if to imply they were made incredibly recently. Maybe Chell was only in storage for ~8 years too. My personal headcanon is that if Chell really was in storage for 8 years, and was let out a few days later, she would have had to face Combine Armies, which doesn't seem like something GLaDOS would let happen in those few moments where she still had Caroline in her. I think GLaDOS only let her leave because she knew that it was safe on the surface, which makes me think that Chell was in storage for enough time for the Combine to no longer be a threat but not so long that the dens looked ancient.

[@DoggosGames]

1940s > Aperture rises 1980s > Glados is constructed 1990s > New Aperture is completed 2000s > Glados takes over 2010 > Portal 2052 > Portal Stories Mel ??? (I think 2052 or 2060) Portal 2

[@PstrywBerryDraws]

@@DoggosGames How do you know Mel takes place in 2052?

[@Cheeseeatingshark]

could be his ghost

[@redRuxx]

4:26 HAHA HA HA STILL ALIVE FUNNY CAKE IS LIE AMONG US

[@Woot100]

"Catboy companion cube" The cube has no gender, silly, they're nyanbinary! ...okay, okay, I'll show myself out

[@Ridgeneer]

Eh, Doug's a kinda neat character, but I'm more of a Greg guy myself. Good vid tho

[@VashVenus]

He’s not dead, you think that between panels in the comic he didn’t treat his wound? Also, how does Chell have regeneration?

[@Morseful]

Chell has non canon regeneration. Just imagine playing the game and one shot from the turret makes you crawl on the ground dying.

[@VashVenus]

@@Morseful don’t make no sense why ratman doesn’t have that ability then

[@Morseful]

@@VashVenus I said non-canon. So it doesn't exist. It's just so the game isn't stupid.

[@QuackZack]

Game logic. Can't really use it. Then by that logic, canonically Chell can revive herself and avoid death indefinitely? Turret's don't instantly kill in game because 1) that would be frustrating to play against and 2) Portal is puzzle focused, not shooting or fighting. Canonically you can outrun the turret's targeting beam but you can't in-game, so they're not the same.

[@VashVenus]

@@QuackZack that’s in game and in universe, chell has regeneration in the games and in canon