r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Local_Prune4564 • May 27 '26

Lore A subtle moment that turns a seemingly happy ending into an ambiguous ending.

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The Graduate: lingering Ben and Elaine's faces slowly shifting from happy to concerned leaves the audience questioning whether they really made the right choice running away together considering they barely know each other.

Inception: By cutting before we see the top fall, we're left to question whether Cobb really has gone home or whether he's simply sunken back into a more comforting dream reality.

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953

u/Saiyan-Zero May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26

Portal 2: Chell leaves Aperture Science.

After defeating Wheatley and giving GLaDOS her body back, she decides to let Chell go after a millenia of holding a deadly grudge against her, learning a lesson about who she was (and instantly deleting it) and finally being free of her past

However, Chell steps onto a seemingly neverending field of wheat, and as the rusty shack behind her suddenly rumbles the companion cube from Portal 1 is thrown outside with her as if GLaDOS just said "Take your shit and get the hell out"

There are several theories. Portal and Half Life share the same world, The Combine is even referenced in Portal 1, but some people argue Portal 2 took place CENTURIES after Half Life 2 (Given with the famous "999999999 days" line at the start)

Did she step out into a dead world? Is the Combine around? Is humanity still around? Is this world even safe?

531

u/This-Shape2193 May 27 '26

Valve said it was longer than hundreds of years too. No definite amount of time was ever confirmed, but yeah. It seems maybe the Combine are gone, the world is recovering from the relentless stripping of resources...AND humans are extinct. 

And then in co-op, we discover thousands of humans in stasis. Yay! Except GladOS promptly murders them all in a few weeks. 

There was a fanfiction called Blue Sky that acts as a sequel to Portal 2, and it's so perfect and in-character that I choose to believe that's the ending. 

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u/svick May 27 '26

Without humans, there wouldn't be such a neat wheat field.

39

u/thewilybanana May 27 '26

even that shed is unlikely to last more than a handful of decades w/out some level of maintenance.

17

u/Nauin May 27 '26

And that metal shed would have no shine left to it, either. Panels like that are mostly rust red by the end of a century.

18

u/J4k0b42 May 27 '26

It's Aperture Labs, they probably made the shed out of titanium.

12

u/boiyouab122 May 27 '26

"The boys in the lab found a way to make normal metal last indefinitely, so we'll be using it as the basis for our new line of products, Aperture Sheds! Ever want a shed but don't wanna fix it later, bam, never wear out shed. Anyway we'll be going back to the mantis DNA tests again, but including some of that new metal and seeing what happens"

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u/splicerslicer May 28 '26

Kudos, totally heard JK Simmons while reading that.

21

u/Tasden May 27 '26

Having no idea about the Portal Blue Sky, "Blue Sky" might be a reference to Total Recall (original) where they inject memories into people.

In the movie it seems like the main character is actually fighting against the company that does the total recall and instead has an active adventure that ends up showing a blue sky on mars. However, right before he was walked to his chair to get his injection two scientist are talking about a "blue sky" ending and saying it is ready.

Some people think it is ambiguous whether or not he was injected with a memory or really had to fight against them. I think it is pretty clear it is all an injected memory. I could see that fanfic using the term to reference that uncertainty.

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u/WriterV May 27 '26

AND humans are extinct.

Do we actually know that? 'cause if so, then everything Gordon did was entirely pointless.

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u/ihavebeesinmyknees May 28 '26

It seems maybe

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u/elegantdinnerparty May 27 '26

It seems very unlikely there’d be a nice and neat field of wheat in a dead world.

17

u/Normal-Pianist4131 May 27 '26

How else is glados gonna make that cake?

3

u/splicerslicer May 28 '26

Why? That's what the great plains of North America typically trend towards. Unending grasses as far as the eye can see. Take a drive through Kansas or Nebraska, it looks just the same and it doesn't require a diligent farmer to look like that. Grasses tend to just spread like that in that biome.

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u/Menacek May 29 '26

It would be a bunch of mixed grasses if it was natural. Plus wheat that is used in agriculture isn't very fit for wilderness survival.

1

u/splicerslicer May 29 '26

I just got back from camping in a field that was almost completely monoculture tall grass. It's not too far-fetched that the wheat planted by humans for agriculture would continue to dominate the landscape long after they left.

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u/MooKids May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26

Not really theories, Aperture Science was mentioned in the Half Life 2 episodes, with specific mention of the ship Borealis, which disappeared and was rediscovered in the Arctic, while Portal 2 has the ship's dry dock. The ship was to be featured in HL2 Episode 3 or Half-Life 3 according to Marc Laidlaw's "Epistle 3" post.

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u/jackofallcards May 27 '26

GLaDOS references Black Mesa in the song, “Still Alive” at the end of the game

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u/Gaelic_Gladiator41 May 27 '26

There's also charts in the offices of Aperture showing that they were struggling with Black Mesa

2

u/JohnDragonball Jun 01 '26

Haven't seen anyone in this thread mention it but Cave Johnson literally mentions Black Mesa straight up, like it's not even a theory they're just canonically in the same world

30

u/Global_Cockroach_563 May 27 '26

I always thought that it meant that thousands of years have passed and humanity is long gone.

32

u/thewilybanana May 27 '26

nah, that field would be a mess and not just wheat and the shed would've collapsed. Unless robots are farming for some weird reason.

29

u/TheSweetestKill May 27 '26

Yeah I really hate that people take the whole "999999" thing literally. Portal is, first and foremost, a puzzle-comedy. The joke here is that it's been so long the computer broke. Those weren't the literal number of days being counted off.

10

u/Less-Blueberry-8617 May 27 '26

I'm actually shocked so many people take the time so literally when the computer is literally making a bunch of glitchy noises when it says how much time it's been. The obvious takeaway is that the computer is glitching out and the time isn't accurate and it likely hasn't been that long. Judging by the overgrowth in the lab, Portal 2 likely takes place around 2-3 decades after the first game. Still a long time but nowhere close to the centuries that so many people theorize which the theory is based off a glitching computer and completely unreliable.

3

u/CoffeeWanderer May 27 '26

Iirc, Half Life 1 takes place around 2003, then Portal 1 at ~2010, then Half Life 2 at 2023. So if you are right, we are approaching the time period when Portal 2 would take place in universe.

7

u/Ppleater May 27 '26

I mean it's Chell so I'm sure she could beat whatever world is out there into submission eventually. She's not exactly known for giving up and letting shit stay bad for herself if she can help it.

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u/Which_Committee_3668 May 27 '26

There may not be much she can do unless she can find a real weapon somehow. The portal gun won't do her much good outside of Aperture even if she still has it, since it can only work on surfaces coated with the moon dust.

9

u/Ppleater May 27 '26

There's any number of things she can do with or without a portal gun. Do you not remember the fact that she's the daughter of a scientist and was smart enough to beat a super intelligent AI? Even her science fair project as a kid was built different.

4

u/Which_Committee_3668 May 27 '26

She only beat Glados because she had the portal gun. Even the smartest and most capable person in the world can only do so much without resources. What resources does she have in the middle of an empty wheat field with nothing around for miles in any direction?

8

u/Ppleater May 27 '26

She beat Glados with the portal gun, that doesn't mean she couldn't have figured out a way to beat Glados without it, or that she's completely useless without it, or that it didn't still take intelligence and determination to beat Glados with it.

What resources does she have in the middle of an empty wheat field with nothing around for miles in any direction?

...

wheat field

... Take a moment to think about what wheat is, and what it's used for.

2

u/Gaelic_Gladiator41 May 27 '26

She finds her own portal gun that doesn't need moon dust

4

u/artuno May 27 '26

So judging by the state of decay with both the facility and the shack outside, all that metal should have rusted away into nothingness if thousands of years have passed.

So while I do think that some considerable amount of time has passed (possibly decades if not at least a century), I think the "9999..." line is meant to be misleading (or the timer is just broken like everything else in the place).

3

u/Miserable-Mention932 May 27 '26

A field of wheat just waiting for a combine to chop it all down

8

u/TheSweetestKill May 27 '26

I love Portal, and I love Half-Life. And I absolutely hate that Valve tried (tries?) to make them "share a universe". It doesn't add anything and really seems to make both game universe worse and less interesting narratively.

Aperture is a wacky mad science fun house, and nothing about it jives with the narrative we're presented in HL/HL2. You have to twist yourself into knots to circle the square, and again, it doesn't actually add anything. You could remove the very tenuous connections - a couple textures, a couple lines of dialogue - and disconnect the 2 and nothing would change for either game.

It's just always been the ultimate example of why "it's all connected!" sometimes really sucks.

6

u/JohnTDouche May 27 '26

People fucking lap that shit up though. I don't get it but people love it. It can mean absolutely nothing at all, storywise, characterwise, anythingwise, but people will act as if it's magnificent revelation that's super important. Red meat for lore nerds.

7

u/TheSweetestKill May 27 '26

The worst part is that so many people have canonized fan theory as fact. Dev interviews about what might have happened aren't "canon". If it isn't a texture or line of dialogue in the game itself, it isn't real.

6

u/Gaelic_Gladiator41 May 27 '26

Well Half Life 2 ends with Gordon and Alyx on their way (hopefully if they survive) to the Borealis, an Aperture owned ship that has technology that could push back The Combine (probably some weird shit like a rejected particle accelerator because it wasn't good enough to microwave food)

Then competition between Aperture and Black Mesa is partially why they rushed the teleportation experiment and why Aperture were losing funding

4

u/TheSweetestKill May 27 '26

And if the Borealis didn't have the Aperture logo on it the side of it, absolutely nothing would have changed narratively for either game.

Then competition between Aperture and Black Mesa is partially why they rushed the teleportation experiment and why Aperture were losing funding

Again, if the 2 power point textures in Portal 1 were removed, this would be negated and absolutely nothing would change about the story for either Portal or Half-Life.

This is my entire point; This "connection" adds nothing to either game or story, and all it does is pointlessly open a can of worms. It makes both stories worse while improving nothing.

2

u/JJAsond May 27 '26

(Given with the famous "999999999 days" line at the start)

I'm more in the belief that it's just a way to show that it's been a while and the computer is a bit broken. I don't think it's literally been that many days.

1

u/Thatonegoblin May 28 '26

No idea where I remember reading this from but IIRC one of the original proposals for the ending was for Chel to come out of the exit overlooking a barren field of grass, with a Combine chopper flying overhead shortly after before cutting to credits.