4. Portal 2 It's Stuffed With Greek Myths
As is often the way in Portal, it's all foreshadowed by the turrets. When you're going through the turret-building factory lines, you'll come across the place where they're throwing away broken turrets. As everyone knows by now, there's a turret yelling that he's different, and if you pull him off the line he'll tell you the story of Prometheus, who gave man the fire of the gods and was punished by being pecked by crows. It's all a very clever analogy GLaDOS is Prometheus, and her giving the portal gun to Chell (ok, she doesn't actually give it, but she did leave it out) results in a downfall when she ends up as a potato being pecked by crows. This analogy is rammed home by there being references to Aeschylus the writer behind Prometheus Unbound in Cave Johnson's painting. However, that's the least subtle of the Greek myths in Portal 2, which also operates as a re-telling of Pandora's Box. Basically, one can see Chell as Pandora, and Wheatley as Pandora's partner-in-myth, Epimitheus. In the myth, Pandora bestowed upon Epimitheus great power, which he used to destroy the world. It's not too hard a jump to see the comparison in Portal 2 Chell gives Wheatley unlimited power (access to GLaDOS's body and mainframe) and he proceeds to screw everything up, as is his purpose in life. Finally, there's also versions of Tartarus (Greek hell) and Elysium (Greek heaven) in the game. Zeus threw the titan Cronos into the pit of Tartarus to banish him, which finds a direct comparison on Portal 2 when Wheatley inadvertently throws you into a pit instead of killing you after he goes bonkers. On the other side of the coin, Elysium was depicted as a field of plenty, which finds its in-game reference in the field you get banished to after GLaDOS banishes you from the Apeture compound. The heavenly themes are made even more obvious by the fact that you ascend up there using a lift.