I just thought of something so dastardly about Caroline, I believe Aperture employees covered up that she worked as CEO! I'm thinking of this mainly as in LabRat Aperture is still using Cave's old prerecorded messages when hes been dead at least 10 years. And on Chell's BYDtWD presentation, even further after his death, she mentions Cave as if he was still alive as an active force in the facility!
I know this lore likely predates Caroline's written inclusion but I think it's so interesting how they don't mention her at all post Cave-death. She doesn't get any portraits or prerecorded messages. And maybe she wanted it like that, seeming that she was publicly an opposite to Cave. GLaDOS/Caroline seems much more introverted. While GLaDOS likes control, she doesn't seem as outwardly full of herself compared to Cave (her to Chell is different because that is a much more intimate scenario, GLaDOS rather acts like shes observing you from a higher standpoint, that she knows more, though she is definitely egotistical too). She didn't want to be a boss and new face of a huge company going through legal trouble. Even if an untrue read of her personality, i still love the idea of Caroline juxtaposing Cave's intense personality- but willingly embodying it as GLaDOS, as if it was brewing beneath the surface for so long! Like she's been molded through time and then intensified by the machinery forcing her to be that was as well. There is no way out of falling into line with Aperture's morals.
GLaDOS yearning for control and power and then freaking out when it's taken from her throughout the games can tie back into Caroline because again she didn't get to control the company she was promised, she didn't get to control her fate. GLaDOS learned to control by force or trickery and that's the only way she can be acknowledged or allowed to do the work that she wants to do, that she's forced to do, that she's programmed to do.
Back on topic, the fact these Cave mentions are after the GLaDOS upload gives me the impression that Aperture workers, as I've said in other posts, likely did not respect Caroline as CEO. Even after Cave stated (in cut lines) that she should be treated like him and taken care of. But they wanted her out of there as fast as possible, she's just another cog in the machine of Apertures ventures.
Id like to say they don't mention her because they see her as GLaDOS now, but clearly that's not true when they don't talk about GLaDOS as like a fellow human being. They don't consider Caroline to be apart of GLaDOS! They don't consider GLaDOS as truly sentient! The employees discredit her hard work at Aperture, basically alikening her to the other lab rats with the misfortune of testing there. Even if it was less of dislike and more so like something that just can't be talked about as some kind of "unspoken rule". Still very peculiar to scrub current mentions of an important figure in the company's history.
Like looking at the whole panel, they consider GLaDOS to only be an experiment, just as artificial intelligence. They refer to her as it and relates her to innanimate objects studied prior. No mention ever that it was based on a real human being who was basically sacrificed to make this project work. Opposed to the Aperture website when putting in Cave's credentials, it at least acknowledges the "genetic lifeform component".
Also unrelated note but above you see GLaDOS was originally just an assistant, never meant to be the boss. This is also evident by her shutdown of the building in which most did not know she was the one in charge. Okay but who was in charge inbetween 1996 and 2003?? Greg? 😭 is it automated? Anyway, I'm glad Valve changed that GLaDOS was just to one-up Black Mesa and rather added some tragic humanity to her. Though it's more interesting if that was Aperture's original idea and then GLaDOS absolutely broke those constraints of her prior job in life. She couldn't only exist to serve others for eternity.
While Aperture now operates as a faceless entity in modern age, they resort to using Cave as some kind of stand in for a human face or organization- or at least the illusion of one. Maybe to boost employee morale? It feels like a facade of the building running smoothly, when it's clearly decaying and going into disarray while trying to compete with other companies and legally keep their head above water. Without someone like Cave operating it, Aperture loses part of its soul. Aperture employees don't even know who's in charge. They don't consider GLaDOS to be it since they don't even consider her on the same level as human. She wasn't supposed to be the real boss to them despite their prior orders!! I feel Aperture is now running as if Valve itself which is employees work on anything they find useful or interesting or marketable, theres not much of a hierarchy. Like you can see the different projects from the Aperture website and the comics how Aperture is split into working at different areas, almost isolated from each other when theres no overarching head of it all. It's just an interesting descent through different stages of greed and capitalism and innovation and life purpose. It is just The Corperation.
I think my main analysis here (Caroline has no human control or acknowledgement ever) ties in really well to Portal's overarching themes of feminism and how it goes from Caroline being very pushed into the background, treated as someone unimportant and easily lost to almost everyone. Shes unassuming and plays into an assigned role. But then shes the head of the facility alone and crushing those around her that caused her pain. In Portal 1 and prior GLaDOS was restricted, her thoughts and actions monitored and controlled as she's prodded and constantly shut on and off. She was treated as some kind of prisoner to the facility she was taught to have power over. GLaDOS was not seen as an equal and not respected like Cave was. Cave had demanding power and got what he wanted because he forced it. GLaDOS was just trying to do the same thing, albeit a bit more obviously deadly. But employees liked(or feared? Respected) Cave more because he was a man, listening to him right off the bat when he barked orders. While Cave had to rather enforce that Caroline was just as smart and doing a lot of the work, if not more than what Cave was doing. So to see the employees switch it up after they've both died is so interesting. Like who made the choice to change Caroline's fate as GLaDOS from CEO to simply being a research assistant?
Last thought but writing this reminded me of that one theory about Portal 1 GLaDOS from eons ago that her body was meant to represent a bound/tied up woman? While I dislike that as a theory of being what Valve was intentionally doing, since the lore was far from concrete then, I still think it is a valid idea to allude GLaDOS to the imagery due to the fact she is in-fact bound to one place. A single person such as Chell or even an animal like the birds in Co-op mode can easily take control away from her. She makes it seem like she has so much control over you but if you escape the facility, or be inside the innards of it far from testing, or even in areas from eras past, GLaDOS can't reach you. She's confined to a room doing these tasks on loop forever. She knows everything in the world up to this point but what is the use if she can't experience it or learn further from beyond her confines?
God I just love the writing of Portal so much, whether fully intentional or not, it is so fun to analyze and draw connections throughout it. Valve I love you.
