This subject is related to the Portal 2 era.

Frankenturret

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This subject is related to the Portal 2 era.

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Frankenturret full.jpg
Frankenturret box.jpg
Frankenturret
General information
Faction

Aperture Science

Usage
Maker(s)

Wheatley

Used by

Chell

Game information
Entity

prop_monster_box

"For God's sake, you're BOXES! With LEGS! It is literally your only purpose! Walking onto buttons! How can you not do the one thing you were designed for?"
Wheatley[src]

Frankenturrets[1][2] are crudely-made hybrids of Aperture Science Weighted Storage Cubes and two Sentry Turrets made by Wheatley during the course of Portal 2.

Overview[edit]

Wheatley designed the Frankenturrets to compensate for his lack of test subjects, having intended to design a cube which could walk on buttons themselves. However, they are shown to be utterly useless for that purpose, only wandering around aimlessly and falling over. After their introduction, they are used in place of normal cubes, with the only major difference between them and the standard cube being that the Frankenturrets will try to hop away if placed right-side up. This can be a nuisance in Wheatley's tests, but placing them so they land on their back negates the problem.

When a Frankenturret is placed on a Heavy Duty Super-Colliding Super Button, the legs will retract and the Frankenturrets will not move.

Trivia[edit]

  • Instead of speaking like standard turrets, they make unusual chirping sounds, although they sound like sped up and gargled voice clips which can be roughly translated to "Let me think about this.", "What are you doing?", "Up!" and "Please put me down!".
  • When picked up, they tuck their turret bodies and legs into the cube, like hermit crabs; the term "hermit" is used in the related animations. It is also interesting to note that their form of locomotion is very much reminiscent of hermit crabs.
  • Their cube fixtures feature a modified version of the Enrichment Center logo, reading "Wheatley Laboratories" instead of "Aperture Laboratories". This change is also visible on the loading screens during the time in Wheatley's testing track.
  • The turret heads on the cube are not consistently patterned. Occasionally they will be missing half or all of their plating.
  • If placed right side up, they attempt to headbutt Chell, to no effect.
  • If they are moved against one of Wheatley's screens through an Excursion Funnel, they will smash it after a short amount of time.
  • While they do not speak themselves, they do appear to understand speech, since a number were disabled by GLaDOS' paradoxical statement. Wheatley is unaffected by GLaDOS' paradox, which suggests that the Frankenturrets are not only sentient, they are more intelligent than Wheatley.
  • A Frankenturret can be found on one of the walkways shortly after Chapter 9 begins. It becomes excited when it sees Chell and bounces up and down. However, before Chell can reach it, it is knocked into a wall by a poorly aimed crusher which Wheatley intended for Chell. Since objects in the game are generally indestructible unless fizzled or, in a turret's case, exploded, the Frankenturret is just dazed.
  • A Frankenturret can be seen crawling along near the back during the Turret Opera.
  • During the co-op credits, a Frankenturret can be seen hopping along in front of the conveyor belt. Another also appears on the belt to be scanned, as do most of the NPCs and objects in the game.
  • Unlike normal turrets, the turret portion of a Frankenturret cannot be destroyed by lasers, possibly because Wheatley stripped them of their ammunition parts and thus made them non-explosive.
  • If a Frankenturret is made to walk up to a button on its own, it will tuck its body and legs into the cube when it touches the button, making it impossible for it to solve the test seen at the beginning of Chapter 8 by itself. However, a Frankenturret can very seldom knock another onto a button.[3] If this happens in the first chamber before Chell enters, the game will fail to begin the dialog between Wheatley and GLaDOS, and the player will be soft-locked and forced to reload a save.

Behind the scenes[edit]

The developer commentary notes their withdrawing into a cube was initially just to make them be cubical when picked up, but it was so cute they added shaking animations and wide-eyed reactions to the turret to make the player sympathize with their plight.

Gallery[edit]

List of appearances[edit]

Main games[edit]

Other[edit]

References[edit]

  1. Portal 2 developer commentary
  2. Perpetual Testing Initiative level editor
  3. [1] Demonstration video on YouTube

External links[edit]