Portal's Retconned Lore, Sorta.

In this video, we take a dive into the realm of Portal 1's lore, which is a section of the Portal backstory that has been almost entirely retconned and almost forgotten about. We'll be exploring it's origins, it's eventual expansion and elaboration on information we've seen in the game, and it's intevitable retconning once the sequel came around. I hope you enjoy this interesting dive into a part of Portal's history almost everyone has forgotton about!
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VIDEO CHAPTERS;
0:00 - Intro
1:20 - September 2006
6:17 - October 2007
10:50 - April 2011
12:40 - Outro
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CREDITS
ValveArchive - Having HTML5 ported Archives of every version of aperturescience.com
- valvearchive.com/web_archive/...
Wikipedia - September 1st, 2006 Archive of Portal's page
- en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...
WaybackMachine and HalfLife2.net - Earliest (as of this video) preserved discussion about ApertureScience.com and it's discovery
- web.archive.org/web/200710122...
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Hey everyone, the name's Ossy Flawol!

[@OssyFlawol]

PINNED COMMENT 1. I forgot to mention the Borealis Documents in HL2: Episode 2!!! It doesn't add too much other than the idea that Aperture was originally based in Ohio. 2. Subtitles will be up soon! (EDIT: Subtitles are now up!)

[@CaptainJZH]

Imo you can probably square the "Ohio" inconsistency with Ohio being like, their administrative headquarters and Michigan being specifically the enrichment center

[@arthurpietrogarcia1057]

Of course Aperture was in goofy ahh Ohio.

[@Ronnie10011]

Can't even perfect portal technology before a mass Resonance Cascade in Ohio bro 💀

[@HankRichard]

Only in Ohio

[@yogurtspace2062]

I never noticed that the beans were heated in the PC, that's an incredible detail

[@Miss_Argent]

Hell of it is, the bean cookin' computers are doubly funny since the big processors of the early-mid '00s (I.e. Intel's Pentium 4 line and IBM's PowerPC G5) ran notoriously hot.

[@quote6013]

Personally caves death doesn't have to exactly be a retcon the mercury thing could have been something that was officially said to keep investors off their backs

[@davidkonevky7372]

I was thinking this, they could've been covering up Cave's actual sickness to not bring attention to the danger of the moon rock gels they were working on

[@OcelotsFilms]

Is it just me or does the weird mercury poisoning tidbit on the website, along with the fact that the log in scrawled on the wall being Cave Johnson's mean that maybe Cave Johnson was originally intended to be Doug Ratman?????

[@mclijah6472]

lots of fans originally thought doug was chell's dad in the first game and beginning of 2nd 👀

[@yogurtspace2062]

I have a headcanon that the explosion at the end of P1 is actually you entering a portal storm and P2 takes places in a sort of alternate universe which is why there are retcons like you mentioned as well as Glados and the cores looking slightly different in P2. Also alternate universes do exist according to Cave's dialogue in the perpetual testing initiative although I'm not sure that's canon.

[@thatonecrimsonecho]

That’s so stupid and it makes so much sense, I love it.

[@Gulliblepikmin]

That sure is dumb, but it's better than having to deal with the inconsistent visual style between games being unexplained!

[@bruhistantv9806]

It explains why the Combine never ravaged the place, Chell got chucked to an universe where the Combine never invaded. The wheat fields scene gives credence to this.

[@L1z43vr]

Or Y'know... It just takes place 50,000 years into the future, where the Combine is gone and the robots just update the place and GLaDOS' dead body

[@KirikkSiSq]

@@Gulliblepikmin this is very similar to what we see in Mind Escape

[@Problematist]

I'm just gonna believe the retconned history of the company is just Cave Johnson saying he was a measly shower curtain maker until recently that pulled themselves up by their bootstraps to the public but boasts about all his accomplishments where only employees see it.

[@jacseptionyt]

I always knew about the differences in lore because of the end of Portal with the screen of Black Mesa on it. I don’t remember exactly but I think it says something about GLaDOS being completely AI and neither Caroline or C.J. being mentioned as planned hosts.

[@chimken135]

i find it interesting that even before they added the context that the genetic lifeform part of glados was specifically caroline, and that glados was designed to have a person uploaded into it, she was still the genetic lifeform and disc operating system. i wonder if that part of her purpose was originally different

[@tuppot]

Great video, as always! I personally appreciate Valve's willingness to retcon when they deem it necessary for their own new stories instead of being constrained by their past decisions cofcoflikestarwarscofcof And we still have this material to go back to and wonder at. We make our own canon.

[@jess648]

and the stories tend to be better off for it

[@ethansaucier2917]

"An intubation associate will be dispatched to revive you with peptic salve and adrenaline."

[@SkullCubeOS]

awesome vid as always, need that Portal 1 content injected into my veins

[@bengregg2632]

10:40 - As much as I love Portal 2, that summary of Aperture sounds FAAAR more interesting than how it's been portrayed since P2 (I guess narrative-wise, it makes sense that some retcons would be made to fit the narrative/lore around P2's puzzle mechanics, as well as to tie up some of the new lore threads introduced in P2 - such as GLaDOS' origin as Caroline - but regardless, it is a genuine shame what the lore has transformed into. It's NOT terrible, but from the sounds of it, it's a shell of it's former self).

[@OssyFlawol]

There's a case to be made that it still exists, it's just less ambigious now. We learn in Portal 2 the slow descent as Cave makes the company lose it's reputation from the 1950's and bankrupts it into oblivion, forcing the company to reopen Test Shafts previously closed due to safety reasons (Shaft 09 was closed in the 60's due to Cosmic Ray Spallation and reopened in the 70's due to Aperture's bankruptcy) and in the end, despite all of Cave's attempts, his last recorded moments are him lashing out at the world that has failed him as he clings to the desperate hopes that the GLaDOS project might save him, but in the end, he dies before it's finished, and it still kills the company.

[@dickc.normus2406]

If you ask me the problem is that Valve tried way to hard to play up the humor in the sequel to the detriment of the story and now they have to try an fit the wacky robots and edible bouncy sauce game into the same universe as the game where a common enemy is a parasitic organism piloting a still conscious human host and hopelessness is a common theme. They wrote themselves into a corner and now there's too many lose ends to tie up.

[@arthurpietrogarcia1057]

@@dickc.normus2406 okay what are the lose ends?

[@arthurpietrogarcia1057]

Have you even played Portal 2? The entire point of Old Aperture(story-wise because gameplay-wise is to introduce the gels) is to show the downfall of Aperture a Company which was up and coming and now have to hire homeless and Their own employees for testing.

[@mozarteanchaos]

@@dickc.normus2406 i think you may have a point, but i don't think pinning the problem on the difference in tone between portal 2 and the half-life series is helpful. i mean... the original portal was already a game set in a world where a shower curtain company - which stuck to shower curtains for over 20 years - invented stable, controllable wormholes.

[@digicat0719]

the pcs overheat so badly that you can cook b e a n s

[@caramelldansen2204]

It _was_ the 80's.

[@caramelldansen2204]

Alternate joke answer: HaVe YoU nOt _SeEn_ iNtEL's 12th GeN CPUs?

[@kanyefan9829]

i've just found your channel by looking at your portal iceberg and i'm astonished! i was looking for a portal youtube for so long, yet the answer was right in front of my eyes! amazing video. you've inspired me to start kind-of get into making portal videos, but they are only in the "idea" or "scripting" stage. looking forward to more amazing content by you! you're super underrated.

[@L1z43vr]

Those are some good points, though I have to disagree on some of those in the Portal 2 segment and a few of the ones at the end of the Portal 1 segment 10:32 Well, to be fair, GLaDOS does say this a few minutes after: " 'Helooooo :D' THAT'S YOU, THAT'S HOW DUMB YOU SOUND!" So we can kinda assume that she was lying 11:16 - 11:40 Well, for all we know, the computers may have been lying about that as well, you know how Aperture loves sugar-coating things, like how they didn't tell us we'd be D I S I N T E G R A T E D if we touch the water, or that we'd have our KNEECAPS stolen, same thing with Cave's poisoning, I mean, why would you want to add in official records that the guy who founded the company wasted money going to the MOON, which was already quite expensive in the 1960's, Imagine that in the 1970's-1980's 11:52 That's... Okay, not really a retcon, but also not really a not-retcon, Caroline could and at the same time could not have been in Portal 1. 12:00 I pretty much think that Rattman was ALWAYS writing those things, I mean, it was confirmed in the comics, and kind of in the first game, with the handwriting being the same in all dens. I mean if all scientist have the exact same insane handwriting and can leave all the same notes about stuff in there, then either they share a hive mind (the Borg, maybe?) or they're just one highly stealthy guy

[@iug5672]

Them having a similar handwritings would be possible if some test subjects were clones >.> or at least some sort of side effect of cloning that makes them all unhinged (also they were being starved to death by a robots so that's also a reason for them to be unhinged) It would also make sense why GLaDOS is so utterly concern about you somehow "falling in love" with the companion cube, even warning you that it can not speak. I always thought that was weird as in the current lore it only makes sense to have happened to ONE guy who is a schizophrenic. On the old lore, it seems like some of the clones figured out they were gonna die and tried living off outside the test chamber areas before potentially dying or leaving. Not necessarily the same person

[@TristenSarelvun]

A retcon doesn't have to be a contradiction, by definition; it can just be new information in a pre-established story. So Portal 2 making GLaDOS into Caroline _is_ a retcon. And her "being both in Portal 1 but not at the same time," like you say... is just nonsense. As for Aperture "super-coating" their science projects by claiming to have only been a shower curtain company, and the source of Cave's poisoning... nah, those are just retcons. No need to argue against it. Retcons aren't necessarily bad things (though they can be), despite how people tend to talk about them. Portal can be an excellent example at how retcons can make a story _more_ interesting when used properly. You make great points otherwise; I was just commenting to spread the misunderstood definition of a retcon around.

[@pharoahsensei]

I could definitely get behind the idea of cloning if it wasn’t for the fact that glados talks about how difficult it is to unalive us.

[@psychodiva336]

I just found your channel and I'm obsessed. I've been a Portal fan for 10 years now and I ALWAYS need Portal content!! you're awesome! and i love the old iteration of the Portal lore, it feels a lot more gritty and dark somehow

[@iug5672]

Very interesting video. The more I learn about Portal's cut content and retcons the more I feel weirded out by it It's not inherently worst or better, just different. Which is unlike other games like HL2 where I always felt the retcons and cut content to be a lot better. This is very cool.

[@endruv_2287]

Can't believe the Cake is a Lie was a meme before portal released

[@varvarvarvarvarvar]

Great video, man. Appreciate bringing attention to the good stuff.

[@somthingarage]

i thought of somthing, how come when a core in portal 1 gets incinerated she starts swinging crazy and how only after the core is insinerated it affects her

[@SplotchTheCatThing]

Hah, I like the question right after the talking one, about whether you need music playing in order to do anything. AFAIK, Half-Life was one of the first FPS games where the music wasn't playing all the time. At least one animal on the first page of that list is not a wild animal, funnily enough. I wonder if that was on purpose or if Valve just copied and pasted some website's list of animals without checking.

[@daboos6353]

Awesome video, really really interesting, you deserve more subs.

[@smn2005]

I've never heard of you before, came from Richter. I think it's worth to stay.

[@jorbertfivesevenaetree5043]

Not gunna lie for a good 5 or so minutes I was seriously just watching the watermark lol.

[@magentialice]

I just realized the testing initiative could probably be used as an in universe excuse to say portal 1 and 2 are in extremely similar but parallel universes as a way to explain the retcons and glados's updated design

[@FunzeeTime]

12:10 Doug Rattman: The Last _Surving_ Aperture Scientist

[@simonebernacchia]

I seem to remember being sentvto a website with all pictures of cakes and the title "the cake is a lie" but if it was in 2007 or an earlier time am not sure

[@mobilemechanics6565]

how about portal 2 is in year 2000 according to the production date on the turrent package when getting to Wheatley with the defunct torrents which are new and this is before half life 1

[@Eggzboss]

That might be when the neurotoxin incident happened so mabye they couldn’t change the manufacture date. Because we know the resonance cascade happened in 200- and aperture was on lockdown because of it, and portal 1 can’t decay that much in what, a month so it takes place around 2010, and portal 2 def happened in a date that was at least long enough in the future that the computers couldn’t say it And I forgot to say, the manufacture date is somewhere between 2010 - 2015 I think, not 2000 And also portal 2 HAS to be at least after 2020 because the combines off earth and hl2 happens in 2020 and portal 2 probably uses (SPOILER FOR HL ALYX) the retconned Alyx ending where Eli doesn’t die

[@SoyMilk1]

mostly unrealted to the video but the 'take-a-wish foundation' is a great joke lol

[@graysongdl]

12:08 What? I don't think Chell being on a specific row on a spreadsheet is a "retcon" to her ID number being 234. I doubt something like that would even change from something as simple as moving a row. Because if it did, numbers would be changing constantly, as one movement would change every number after it. And since we know these IDs are noted on printed paper, there's no way that can happen. We only see two columns on the spreadsheet anyway (one for first name, one for last name), so I guarantee their actual ID is on another column out of view.

[@vinnyfromvenus8188]

thank you for acknowledging us enbies ;)

[@woodlandcollective]

Hell yeag!

[@aceofpizza9932]

​@@woodlandcollective Hell Yeag

[@picture_panic]

hell yeah

[@sahilhossain8204]

Hmm yes the REAL lore of portal that portal 2 sorta retconed

[@iceberg_os]

i'm pretty sure easy as cake and similar things contain a pun if ur talking about portal lol

[@NeutralNinetails]

Good video but you really need to slow down your speaking.

[@redaipo]

Hi, Ossy.

[@arkalt4066]

oh shit im early to a good video

[@RainbowsClone]

Pleasestopspeakingsofastgoddamn

[@D_Dupa]

Ladies, gentlemen and what? xD

[@duckrinium]

"non-binary folks", you can rewind the video to listen again if you missed, use j, l, or arrow keys left and right keys to do that, hope that helps :)

[@spartanshadow90oficial]

This is kinda creepy ngl

[@GamePlayer1695]

I have no idea what this guy is saying.

[@robuxyyyyyyyyyy4708]

7:40 Aperture was super progressive??? Even for today?

[@higueraft571]

Of course, all people make excellent test subjects :V ...though, the thought of what P2 Cave Johnson would do to a wheelchair is menacing, ngl.

[@AntonBagin]

Great video but my man please take a breath. You talk so fast that it's sometimes hard to understand.

[@manofsource9635]

"aperture says trans rights bitches" best thing ive ever heard about aperture lol

[@Niyucuatro]

Yeah. Way to dunk on trans people.

[@9767Music]

As a trans person, thst clipboard made me smile :3

[@duckrinium]

aay ⁠◕⁠ᴗ⁠◕⁠✿, I'm not (demisexual) but very happy for you

[@duckrinium]

aay ⁠◕⁠ᴗ⁠◕⁠✿, I'm not (just a demisexual) but very happy for you

[@IBeforeAExceptAfterK]

7:42 Polyamory has nothing to do with being transgender, though. Polyamory is about relationships involving having more than one partner. At most, the gender-neutral modifier indicates friendliness towards non-heterosexual polyamory.

[@duckrinium]

sorry for year late reply, I personally think it's meant to read as a list, gender-neutral could be separate from polyamory. Just in my humble opinion

[@LostGameDev102]

wow im VERY early

[@hashvolting]

hmm desolation

[@ShignBright]

"Ladies, gentlemen and nonbinary folks, [...]" I was not expecting that, but always nice to see nb representation! I myself am not lgbt, but I have a lot of friends that are.

[@PatPatych]

Get a life.

[@bw50v14]

@@PatPatych wahhhh

[@just.a.guy522]

Ossy is genderfluid, that's why she threw that in. Pleasantly surprised by lgbt+ representation on a Portal channel:>

[@RUINERS]

I cant make out what are you saying 60 percent of the time. I don't know if you got medical condition or what not but that is honesty horrible to listen. Try talking slower, maybe make yt subtitles or something. I cant see you go far with things how they are right now. I'm just pissed cause I'm really into the topic of the video and I see that you clearly did research and editing well but I its not listenable. Am I the first to tell you that? All the comments seems to praise the video. Maybe it's just me then

[@OssyFlawol]

there is subtitles you fool also im not sure if its a medical condition or not but i just have a lot of trouble talking slow

[@MCSlammerMcJammer]

Nah I can't understand him either

[@slabman6262]

I can understand him perfectly lmao

[@strawberrycrisis5592]

what the hell are you talking about

[@redaipo]

lots of stutters but i can still understand them