Portal Doug Rattmann's Story

In This Guide I Have Answered The Question Of Who Is Doug Ratmann

Who Is Doug Rattmann?

Doug Rattmann, commonly nicknamed as the Rat Man, was a scientist at the Aperture Science Enrichment Center. Prior to the events of Portal while GLaDOS began flooding the entire facility with neurotoxin, Rattmann is the only known employee to have survived. A paranoid schizophrenic, he is dependent on anti-psychotic medication as a means of keeping him sane.

Overview

Portal 2: Lab Rat

In the Portal 2: Lab Rat comic, he is revealed to be an Aperture Science employee who worked on the Handheld Portal Device. He expresses doubts about GLaDOS and the effectiveness of a morality core, remarking "You can always ignore your conscience". His fears turn out to be justified when she poisons all the staff in the Enrichment Center with neurotoxin upon activation during the company's Bring-Your-Daughter-To-Work Day.

Prepared for the outcome, he survives the initial attempts to kill him and proceeds to sneak through parts of the facility, avoiding GLaDOS who is actively hunting him. Acting on a 'hunch', he breaks into the test subjects' filing room and arranges Chell's name to the top of the test subject roster, leading to the events in Portal.

Portal

Delusional, running low on medication and traveling with what he sees to be a talking Weighted Companion Cube, he watches from the shadows as Chell is put through GLaDOS' testing course. Although he is never spotted in-game in any of the playable Portal series, his refuge areas (referred to as dens) can be found by Chell, containing crude bedding, empty cans of beans and scribblings and dioramas on the walls. It is in one of these dens that the warning phrase "The cake is a lie" can be found scribbled on a wall; as GLaDOS continually promises that there would be cake at the end of testing.

Following Chell's conflict with GLaDOS after her escape from the testing tracks, the Lab Rat comic details Rattmann's point of view after the events of Portal in which he follows the sound of the explosion and finds a route to the outside world after the destruction of GLaDOS. His joy is short lived as he witnesses an unconscious Chell being dragged back into the facility by the Party Escort Bot. Feeling guilt, as it was his actions that resulted in her being the first test subject, he once again enters the facility and finds Chell has been put in long-term cryogenic relaxation.Finding out that Chell's Relaxation Chamber is offline due to the downfall of GLaDOS, the overall facility operator, he proceeds to save Chell's life by unplugging all other available chambers from their cryogenic supply and into hers. He is injured in the process when he is shot by Turrets that are still left in nearby test chambers.He then submits himself into Chell's cryogenic stasis bed found in the Relaxation Vault previously used in the events of Portal, and falls asleep in it.

His fate is left unknown as the entire bed with him is nowhere to be found when Chell later revisits this Relaxation Vault at the beginning of the single-player campaign in Portal 2.


Rattman's Bed In Portal

Portal 2

During the events of the single-player campaign of Portal 2, Rattmann's fate is left unknown. Whether or not he is dead is left up to debate, as Chell's cryogenic stasis bed that she used before the events of Portal he took refuge in, had disappeared entirely. Some speculate that Rattmann may have made it to the moon, as shown in a hidden picture encrypted into the game's audio file. You can find the audio file by bringing a radio into Rattmann's den in Portal 2 Chapter 2 Test Chamber 6.



Rattmann's graffiti work makes no appearances whatsoever during the course of the game's Cooperative Testing Initiative. However, a Weighted Companion Cube can be spotted by Atlas and P-body in the last test of Course Four: Excursion Funnels. The cube is apparently attached to a Core Receptacle, indicating that it may in fact be as sentient as any other Cores in the series.

At some point in the events of the Perpetual Testing Initiative, in which the player takes role of stick figure Bendy - is shifted into a variety of alternate universes at the Enrichment Center as a means of still having Cave Johnson as ongoing CEO. There is a universe in which Cave and Rattmann were born with switched bodies. In this universe, Cave (in Doug's voice and body) hijacks the intercoms to yell out and warn everyone that Rattmann (presumably in Cave's body and handling the company typically as the real Cave would) is embezzling from the staffs' paychecks.




A Rattmann den during Portal 2's single-player.

Known Dens

Aside from leaving paintings, murals and messages behind, Doug Rattmann also discovered a number of hidden rooms in Aperture Science. He adorned these rooms with messages and artwork, and primarily used them as refuges in order to escape GLaDOS' scrutiny. The hidden rooms are present in both Portal and Portal 2, and are known as the Ratman's Dens. A total of 12 have been discovered, 5 in Portal and 7 in Portal 2.

Den locations in Portal:

Den #1: Test Chamber 16
Den #2: Test Chamber 17
Den #3: Test Chamber 18
Den #4: Test Chamber 19
Den #5: Test Chamber 19


Den locations in Portal 2:

Den #1: Chapter 1 - Test Chamber 4
Den #2: Chapter 2 - Test Chamber 3
Den #3: Chapter 2 - Test Chamber 6
Den #4: Chapter 3 - Test Chamber 11
Den #5: Chapter 3 - Test Chamber 12
Den #6: Chapter 3 - Test Chamber 16
Den #7: Chapter 3 - Test Chamber 17

Doug Rattmann Lyrics

Reality is a story the mind tells itself. An artificial structure conjured into being by the calcium ion exchange of a million synaptic firings. A truth so strange it can only be lied into existence. And our minds can lie. Never doubt it...
— Doug Rattmann

[Wheatley aperture core]

havent you played Entropy:Zero 2?

[Wheatley aperture core]

mgs608,the borealis is at Arbeit communicaitions

[BHZKHR]

Aight. Thx.

[M4jorKnight]

BHZKHR, Den #7 in Portal 2, located in test chamber 17.

[BHZKHR]

mgs608, which den does he ramble at? im curious and i want to see for myself

[Wheatley aperture core]

wait,i thought ratman died due to the shot at his leg

from wheatley

[avani101]

I'd say, Rattmann is still alive and still looking for Chell, the thought of finding Chell keeps him sane...
...enough

[Tomas]

Nice summary!

[british sounding combine soldier]

science!

[mgs608]

You can actually hear him in portal 2 rambling in one of his dens. He appears to be talking about the boralis and that black mesa stole it or something of that sort... This event might mean that doug woke up from his relaxation vault and started roaming around the faclity again or something, but idk.