Chell

"You've been wrong about every single thing you've ever done, including this thing. You're not smart. You're not a scientist. You're not a doctor. You're not even a full-time employee! Where did your life go so wrong?"

- GLaDOS

Chell is an Aperture Science Test Subject (Subject #1, Formerly Subject #1498), and the esoteric, silent protagonist of Portal and Portal 2.

Background
Although Chell's origins are unknown, she was definitely among the people present during GLaDOS's activation in 200-, as GLaDOS locked down the facility after her activation. According to the psychological profile in personnel file, Chell is "abnormally stubborn" and refuses to ever give up, no matter how daunting the challenge. Originally, she was not supposed to be a test subject, but Doug Rattmann altered the testing order, having correctly guessed that Chell's extreme tenacity might allow her to defeat GLaDOS.

Portal
Some time after GLaDOS' takeover of Aperture Laboratories and shortly after the Combine invasion of Earth, Chell is awakened from some sort of stasis pod in a Relaxation Vault by GLaDOS, who speaks impersonally about the tests Chell is to undergo. Chell is released from the Vault through a portal, and begins to progress through a series of Test Chambers. The facilities show clear signs of neglect and decay. By Test Chamber 02, Chell acquires the first model of the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, which can only shoot blue portals. The gun is further upgraded to create both blue and orange portals in Test Chamber 11. Throughout the tests, GLaDOS continues to act as though the situation is perfectly normal, giving apparently pre-recorded scripted responses. Despite this, she often seems to malfunction at ominous points in mid-sentence, and lets slip several comments that hint at something unusual or sinister going on. She continuously promises rewards such as cake at the conclusion of testing.



When Chell eventually makes it to Test Chamber 16, GLaDOS informs her that the appropriate chamber has been replaced with a live fire course designed for Military Androids. In this chamber she is met with Sentry Guns for the first time. It is here that Chell discovers a hidden alcove in the wall where desperate messages were scribbled on the walls by mentally unstable former Aperture employee Doug Rattmann while he was trapped in the facility and hiding from GLaDOS. The most prominent message, "the cake is a lie", is repeated several times. Chell proceeds to the next chamber, where GLaDOS introduces her to the Companion Cube, which Chell must carry through the chamber. She once again finds messages from Rattmann, who seems to have become emotionally attached to his Companion Cube and grieved over its "death." At the end of the chamber, Chell's Cube meets the same fate when she is forced to incinerate it in order to proceed.



At the conclusion of the test, Chell travels on an Aperture Science Unstationary Scaffold away from the final Test Chamber. Instead of the promised cake, she is met with an incinerator. Using the ASHPD, she narrowly escapes certain death, and begins traveling through abandoned maintenance areas despite verbal discouragement from GLaDOS. Throughout the decaying and neglected maintenance areas, Chell finds that Rattmann has been roaming around the facility for some time, leaving graffiti on the walls to guide her along the right path. After constant admonishment from GLaDOS and a massive Sentry Gun ambush, Chell finally finds herself in GLaDOS' main control room, where the A.I. has been sitting alone for over twenty years. GLaDOS attempts to deploy a "surprise" to eliminate Chell, but ends up accidentally detaching her Morality Core, which Chell promptly incinerates.



GLaDOS, now unrestrained by the morality core, begins to flood the Enrichment Center with the same neurotoxin that she once used to murder the Aperture employees who built her (resulting in her Morality Core being added in the first place). GLaDOS notes that the Morality Core must have had some ancillary responsibilities, and that she cannot shut off the Rocket Sentry in her control room. Chell uses this to her advantage, and uses portals to redirect the rockets back at GLaDOS, detaching and incinerating her Personality Cores one by one. Before the neurotoxins can kill her, Chell destroys GLaDOS, who is apparently sucked through a portal to the outside with parts of her generator. Chell is dragged with her, and ends up among GLaDOS' remains on the parking lot in front of the Aperture labs entrance, only to be dragged back inside and placed in stasis by the Party Escort Bot.

Despite GLaDOS's apparent destruction, only a part of her was destroyed. GLaDOS reactivates a room full of Personality Cores and re-captures Aperture Laboratories, filing a letter to Chell, informing her that she is still alive and "not even angry" about Chell's actions - but not before extinguishing a candle on the cake, which was not a lie after all.

Portal 2: Lab Rat
While unconscious, Chell was placed in a "Long Term Relaxation Chamber", a large stasis chamber designed to look like a cheap motel room. However, the main power for the facility failed when GLaDOS was destroyed, and the chamber's life support systems were compromised.

Doug Rattmann, the last remaining scientist alive in the facility after the Bring Your Daughter To Work Day Massacre, restored power to the chamber by hooking it to the reserve grid, saving Chell's life, though placing her in a semi-permanent state of stasis. The reserve grid wasn't programmed to wake her. It is also revealed at the end of the comic that Chell was rejected as a test subject due to her abnormal tenacity, which was precisely why Dr. Rattmann made her test subject number one.

Portal 2


Many years after GLaDOS' partial destruction, Chell is awakened from stasis by Wheatley, a Personality Core who has become concerned with the state of the facility, and convinces Chell to escape with him. Chell agrees, and they set out through the maintenance areas, which along the rest of the facility, are in decaying ruin, overrun with nature. After reaching an elevator, Wheatley attempts to activate it, but it is on override and starts descending. Before Wheatley can stop it, they reach the bottom, where can be found the remains of GLaDOS' chamber. GLaDOS awakens, and is quick to accuse Chell of murdering her years ago. Chell is then forced back into the testing area, where she must complete more tests. She is met by Wheatley, who breaks her out of the test chambers, and the two narrowly escape GLaDOS. Wheatley devises a plan to defeat GLaDOS, and convinces Chell to aid him in blocking off her defenses. They first shut down her turret production by setting a corrupt turret as the model for the scanner, killing all the normal ones, and letting the others pass. Next they cut off her neurotoxin supply by cutting off the tubes on the neurotoxin generator, causing it to implode. Wheatley and Chell travel through the apparatus vents until they are separated. Chell begins to wander until she is trapped by GLaDOS in a mobile relaxation chamber, and taken into her lair. She summons the turrets, which end up exploding and breaking the glass in Chell's chamber, as Wheatly falls through the neurotoxin tubes. Chell manually overrides the systems and is able to complete a core transfer. GLaDOS screams as her head is removed, and Wheatley is attached to the mainframe. After entering the lift which he provides to bring Chell to the surface, he quickly becomes mad with power, remarking that he did all of this and that Chell did nothing. GLaDOS, still alive, counters by saying Chell in fact did do all the work, in which Wheatley drags her head into a hole, and re-installs her into a potato battery. GLaDOS soon recognizes his voice as one that told her to do terrible things, and reveals that Wheatley was designed to be a moron to make her an idiot and make her behave. Wheatley grows bitter to both of them, and smashes them both down the lift and into the bowels of the facility. Both Chell and GLaDOS wake up in a forgotten place in the enrichment center, filled with old test chambers ran back in the 40s and 70s. Chell is greeted with pre-recorded messages from Cave Johnson, who frequently talks to his close assistant, Caroline. After searching through the decay and completing tests, Cell reunites with GLaDOS, and stabs her onto the ASHPD. GLaDOS begins to recognize the voices in the pre-recorded messages, and realizes that she is Caroline. The two eventually escape the ruins and go back to the upper facility. Wheatley, now in charge of the enrichment center, captures them and makes them run his own faulty tests. He frequently ignores the alert systems about the meltdowns in the facility, and continuously crashes testing areas together, and creates freakish turret-cube hybrids. GLaDOS and Chell escape him as he tries to kill them, and finally arrive at his lair. GLaDOS and Chell work together, as Chell uses Wheatley's bombs against him to momentarily shut him down, and GLaDOS hands her corrupted cores to attach to him. After Wheatley is seen as completely corrupt by the computer systems, a manual override is offered to Chell. Chell then quickly runs after the button to press it, placing a portal under Wheatley and in the closed off button chamber, but instead it explodes in her face due to Wheatley's booby trap. The entire facility begins to fall apart as the core meltdown continues, and a piece of the ceiling flays off, revealing the surface and the moon. Chell, still alive, grabs the portal gun, and shoots it at the moon. The portal under Wheatley begins to suck everything out, and Chell grabs onto Wheatley as the two are dragged out into the vacuum of space. Chell holds on to Wheatley, who is still attached to the mainframe, but is saved by GLaDOS as Wheatley is spat out (he was pretty OK about it). Chell awakes to P-Body and Atlas standing over her, and GLaDOS begins to talk to her. She realizes that Chell was her best friend, and how Caroline is part of her brain. She quickly deletes Caroline and then remarks that killing Chell was too hard, and that she'd rather just let her go. Chell is lifted up, and treated to a chorus of turrets before finally arriving to the surface. She opens the door, and finds her self in a sunny wheat field. The door behind her shuts abruptly, and quickly spits out the scorched Companion Cube from the first game.

Appearance
Chell is a fairly thin young woman in her 20's or 30's. Her ethnic background is somewhat ambiguous; she appears to be of Latin or multiracial descent, and Valve concept artist Matt Charlesworth described her as having "a hint of Japanese ethnicity." (Chell's face and body model, Alésia Glidewell, has a Brazilian-American father and a Japanese mother.) She has light brown skin, gray-streaked black hair, and gray eyes.

Throughout the first game she wears a worn-out orange jumpsuit and has bare feet, with Advanced Knee Replacement prostheses surgically attached to her legs. She has a ponytail and mild "bed hair" from sleeping in a stasis pod for an unknown period of time, with tired eyes. Her split earlobes suggest that she once wore earrings that were violently ripped out.

In Portal 2, Chell appears much better groomed and rested. Her knee replacements have been replaced with Long Fall Boots. She wears the same jumpsuit, but with the upper part folded down and tied around her waist, revealing a white tank top emblazoned with the Aperture logo and tight-fitting pale blue shorts or pants. She also wears white hand wraps up past the wrist on both hands.

Personality and skills
"You dangerous, mute lunatic."

- GLaDOS

As with her fellow silent protagonist Gordon Freeman, relatively little is known about Chell's personality. Some of the most certain information about her comes from the Lab Rat comic, which shows portions of her personnel file. According to the file, psychological testing showed that Chell scored well into the 99th percentile on the trait of tenacity. A note on these test results characterized Chell as "abnormally stubborn," adding that "she never gives up. Ever." Because she was so much an outlier in this respect, she was initially rejected for testing until Rattman altered the records.

Rattman's comments imply that Chell's profile was not particularly remarkable in other respects. She was not the fastest or most athletic of the test subjects GLaDOS captured, and some of the others had higher IQs, although Rattman implies that Chell's IQ was above the average. Based on her success in the Test Chambers and subsequent escape, it can be surmised that Chell is highly resourceful, quick-thinking, good at creative problem-solving, and does not panic easily.

Chell seems to rarely or never speak to GLaDOS; in the first game, GLaDOS asks "Are you even listening to me?" and in the second, she calls Chell "a dangerous, mute lunatic." However, Eric Wolpaw has stated that Chell probably can speak, but refuses to do so in order to avoid giving GLaDOS the satisfaction of a response. The Lab Rat comic showed that Chell declined to answer at least part of her test subject questionnaire, suggesting that her defiant refusal to answer GLaDOS may be a long-standing habit. At the beginning of Portal 2, when Wheatley asks her to speak, she jumps instead, which Wheatley interprets as a sign of brain damage.

Little else is known about Chell; all further information about her comes from comments by GLaDOS, who is by no means a reliable source of information. GLaDOS claims that Chell is "a bitter, unlikable loner," "pointlessly cruel," and that test results show that she is "a horrible person." As GLaDOS lies habitually about many subjects and has a particular interest in trying to make Chell feel uncomfortable, guilty, or worthless, none of her comments can be assumed to be fact.

Backstory
Players exploring the Aperture facility in Portal 2 can discover a presentation from the Bring Your Daughter to Work Day science fair signed with the name Chell. One of the steps described in the experimental procedure is using a "special ingredient from Daddy's work." This strongly implies that Chell was the daughter of a male Aperture employee, was trapped in the facility during GLaDOS' takeover on Bring Your Daughter to Work Day, and spent her entire adolescence as one of GLaDOS' prisoners.

Virtually no other reliable direct evidence about Chell's background appears in the games, although players have speculated based on vague hints. In the Lab Rat comic, Chell's surname is redacted on the list of test subjects, while no other information is missing; this may indicate some sort of secret concerning her family background. However, the possibility that there is no in-story explanation for the missing name and Valve simply did not want to give Chell a canonical surname yet cannot be dismissed.

GLaDOS often drops hints about Chell's background, but since her comments are clearly intended to manipulate Chell or damage her self-esteem, they may not have any basis in fact. In the first game, GLaDOS said that she possessed a backup of Chell's brain, which she later claimed to have deleted in a fit of rage. Although the comment may have been a complete fabrication, some players speculated that Chell might be a clone (although the game's writers have now confirmed that this theory was not intended) or an android. GLaDOS also asserts once in the first game and repeatedly in the second that Chell was abandoned by her birth parents and subsequently adopted. However, she also repeatedly implies that Chell is overweight, which is manifestly untrue.

Behind the scenes



 * The heel springs were originally created for the Combine Assassin, cut from Half-Life 2. They were reused as the Advanced Knee Replacement for Portal due to disbelief by playtesters that Chell could survive the drops she was subject to, particularly those that involved falling recursively through portals.


 * Chell's real life reference model is Alésia Glidewell. She also served as the base for the original model of Left 4 Dead's Zoey.


 * It has been stated by Gabe Newell in an October 2007 interview that Chell has importance in the overall Half-Life universe, and will eventually have a fairly significant relationship with some of the other characters that we are already familiar with.


 * In the original Portal trailer, a balding male Test Subject is used as a placeholder for Chell. While it cannot be clearly seen, it may be the Half-Life 2 "male 07" Citizen.


 * As seen in a very early Portal screenshot, the hands and forearms of the ASHPD user were to be featured in the viewmodel. Chell's right hand and forearm are still present in the final viewmodel, although the texture is broken. However the texture file can still be found in the game files, revealing what may be an early Aperture Science logo, followed by the number "122-7605", possibly an early Test Subject ID. These are not featured in Chell's model, which probably did not (at least fully) exist at that time of the game's development.


 * As seen in the texture folder for Chell's model, it appears that she was at some point to wear a fancy hairclip (as the texture "chell_hairclip.vtf"), replaced in the final game by a simple ring / elastic.


 * As with all the playable characters in the Half-Life universe, Chell is silent. However female Citizen sounds (by Mary Kae Irvin) are reused when she is hurt.




 * As stated by Matt Charlesworth, designer of the Portal 2 Chell, she was really successful in the first Portal. She fit into the world really well and complemented it without the distractions that a more flashy character would bring, and served well her utilitarian purpose. However when the team started working on Portal 2, they were not sure whether they would bring her back or not, and explored a few other characters before returning to Chell, when they realized removing her would not benefit the game.


 * In Portal, Chell's orange jumpsuit is similar to the common American prison outfit. According to Bay Raitt, the team put Chell in an orange jumpsuit to reinforce the fact that she is a Test Subject. Visually, the warmer orange colors help her pop out against the colder tones of the environment. For Portal 2, her outfit was redesigned to reflect her "lab rat" status.


 * That new outfit went through many concepts before the final one was chosen: as stated by Matt Charlesworth, some of the concepts started with a sporty, motorcycle gear like look, which was very different from the original orange outfit, even though they were still going for clean and simple. They played around with proportion as well, trying to play a lot more with extreme feminine proportions and a totally different color scheme. They also explored changing Chell's nationality for a little bit, since her true nationality has never been explored nor revealed.


 * The constraints the team had were that Chell was supposed to be dressed by machines, so any markings on the suit would have been on there for readability by a computer. That includes machine-read imagery, and what extra things might be on that kind of suit, but they eventually leaned away from the bar code design, because they reckoned it has been done quite a bit before, and originality is something Charlesworth really associates with Portal. She was never to look as if she had been designed, something the team fought with – to make her still appealing to the player, but not look over designed (the team tends to cut anything that does not serve a real purpose on their characters).




 * In the end, the things the team considered successful were the more minimal, clean, utilitarian looks (nothing was on there for fashion), leading to the final design of a purposely and constantly dehumanized Test Subject, considered by the team as making her look physically capable, but at the same time showing some vulnerability about her (what Charlesworth considers attractive in every person), which they thought to really seem like it belongs in the Portal world.


 * That new design is not supposed to look like a sexy Marvel superhero suit, as Charlesworth states. It is supposed to look like it was designed without any thought of making her look attractive. They team does not want to make her unattractive, but still wants to balance that out, and have Chell look like what she is - a Test Subject, not a prisoner, a janitor, or something else. They also want people to remember that version of the character better than the first one. Before he started working on Portal 2, Charlesworth admits he barely remembered the first Chell.




 * The hat featured in that new design came up around halfway through the conception phase, and it seemed to strike a chord with the whole team. Charlesworth states that is is something that always reminds him of test pilots – people who were subjected to testing and extreme conditions. It also serves a second purpose, because if there is a graphic on it, it is constantly readable from all angles, making it trackable by any computer found in the Enrichment Center. That serves the fiction of her being tested by GLaDOS, and keeps the hair out of her eyes.


 * The team was not sure whether to keep the Advanced Knee Replacement for Portal 2. He states that some team members are attached to it, and that some are not, so they have experimented what to do with them, or how to replace them. It was replaced by the Long Fall Boot.


 * Chell's new outfit was revealed as two ASCII art images given by the BBS during the Portal ARG.


 * In the end, the outfit chosen for Chell in the final, retail version of Portal 2 had her wearing her jumpsuit from the first game, though her upper body is disrobed and the upper half of the jumpsuit is tied around her waist, revealing a white tank top with the Aperture logo on it. She also wears a white band around part of her right forearm.


 * Originally, Chell was to be one half of the two Portal 2 co-op characters, the other being another woman named Mel. When they were replaced by ATLAS and P-body, Chell was kept for the singleplayer mode only, and Mel was removed from the storyline.


 * "Chell" may be derived from "Chelle", which is the diminutive of "Michelle". "Chell" is never given in-game, but is mentioned in the Portal end credits and can be found in the game files.



Trivia

 * It was previously speculated that Chell might be Test Subject 234, but this was disproved in Portal 2: Lab Rat, which stated that Chell was Test Subject 1438, until Doug Rattmann changed her to be Test Subject 1.


 * While it is kept ambiguous whether or not Gordon Freeman participates in conversations in the Half-Life series, according to Erik Wolpaw, Chell does not actually speak during the course of Portal. Wolpaw explained that this is because of Chell's annoyance at her situation, choosing not to give her surroundings the satisfaction of a response. Wolpaw further stated that Chell probably can talk. Also in Portal 2, GLaDOS does call Chell a mute, though this could just be an observation, not a fact. Additionally, Wheatley attempts to get Chell to speak to check if she has brain damage after being in suspension; the speech prompts provided actually make Chell jump instead.


 * In Portal 2: Lab Rat, Doug Rattman finds a personal file on Chell, revealing that she was asked if anyone would file a police report if she went missing. It also reveals that she refused to answer the question.


 * One of the "Take Your Daughter To Work Day" science fair projects, the one with the overgrown potato, has "By Chell" written on it. This implies that Chell made this project and that she's the daughter of an employee.


 * Chell has left Aperture Laboratories three times and has been to the surface twice. First was after she defeated GLaDOS at the end of Portal, however she was dragged back into the facility by the Party Escort Bot. Second was when she launched a portal on to the surface of the Moon to defeat Wheatley, she was pulled in to the vacuum of space but was saved by GLaDOS. Finally and currently, she was asked to leave the Aperture Laboratories and go to the surface by GLaDOS where she currently has just exited the lift near a shed in the middle of a wheat field with a burnt Companion Cube.


 * According to GLaDOS during The Itch, Chell might be adopted showing that GLaDOS may have already known all about Chell during her childhood. This is also implied on the "Take Your Daughter To Work Day" easter egg where an overgrown potato has "By Chell" written on it. GLaDOS might also know about the people who adopted her who may have worked at Aperture Laboratories.


 * It's not exactly clear how much time Chell has spent in stasis between events of Portal and Portal 2. At the beginning of Portal 2 she's woken up first time after 50 days of sleep, for mandatory set of physical and mental exercises. Next time she wakes up, announcer fades out (or stutters) after 5 nines in number of days, which would mean Chell was sleeping for at least 273 years.

List of appearances

 * Portal
 * Portal: First Slice
 * Portal: Still Alive
 * Portal ARG
 * Portal 2: Lab Rat
 * Portal 2