Today I'm going to be talking about one of my favorite pieces of foreshadowing from one of my favorite games: Portal 2. This post will include Portal 2 spoilers.
Somewhere past the halfway point of the game, you begin working with conversion gel. This is a white fluid that can be used to solve puzzles by making surfaces that cannot normally take a portal into surfaces that can.
Through dialogue, Cave Johnson reveals that this substance is made from moon dust. The surface level payoff of this is his reveal that the moon dust has given him cancer, and this leads into the "lemon" speech Which is probably one of the most iconic pieces of dialogue in the series.
The fact that this element of the world-building is played for laughs, combined with it's place shedding some light on the composition of an in-world substance; means that most players will assume that this information has served its role in the story and move on not expecting anything else to follow.
Except that something else does come of this.
Portals can be made on conversion gel. This is a special function of its make-up. The only ingredient we know of conversion gel is moon dust, and what else is covered in moon dust? What else can, presumably, support a portal?
Why, nothing else except the cinematic solution to the game's final shot of the portal gun. With the world falling to pieces around you in a dramatic final showdown, what seemed like a throwaway line of comedy foreshadowed the game's climax, the one puzzle that takes you beyond the walls of Aperture Laboratories.
Happy gaming, all.
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