10 Things You Didn't Know About Portal
4. Wheatley Originally Died After Just One Chapter
With his hilariously dense personality and charming voice courtesy of comedy legend Stephen Merchant, Wheatley is the surprise star of Portal 2. Fans latched on to him quickly, making his mid-game betrayal sting pretty hard. But it's safe to say we all missed him long after we finished the game.
It's interesting, then, that this fan-favourite character originally had a far smaller role. In early versions of the game, Wheatley was completely destroyed after being crushed by GLaDOS at the end of Chapter 1.
He was never seen again, acting merely as a tutorial-guide character, and was replaced by six other increasingly weird and wonderful cores as the story progressed, with each core being quickly disposed of before another was introduced.
Valve decided to abandon this approach in favour of a more cohesive narrative, with Wheatley lasting throughout the entire game as a key character. This definitely makes for a much better story, but it would have been cool to see some of the wackier personality cores the developers had planned in action.
One such core was apparently called the "Morgan Freeman sphere", who was incredibly wise about the tiny room he was in, but clueless about everything else.
Oh, what could have been.