#wheatley analysis

I talked about this as propaganda for a tournament poll a while back, but I figure I may as well make it its own separate post too because it’s really funny.  When you get to the secret panel in Portal 2 right after you fail Wheatley’s trust fall exercise, he tells you to plug him into the wall, saying "Plug me into that stick on the wall over there. Yeah? And I'll show you something. You'll be impressed by this. Go on. Just jam me in over there. Right on that stick over there. Just put me right on it. It is tricky. It is tricky. But, um... just plug me in, please. Plug me into that stick on the wall over there. I'll show you something. It DOES sound rude. I'm not going to lie to you. It DOES sound rude. It's not. Put me right on it. Stick me in." So remember that. In English he says "It is tricky. It is tricky. But just... plug me in, please." However, In Japanese, he says 面倒だろうけど、 頼むからオレをハメてくれよ。

Which... is VERY lewd phrasing in Japanese, with the literal translation of that being this:

Of course, Wheatley doesn’t literally want you to screw him. He just used the wrong phrasing by accident and he even acknowledges that he may not have used the best choice of words a moment later, saying: 言い方がマズかった。 確かにちょっとマズい表現をしたな。 でも さっさと差し込んでくれ。which translates to "I didn't word it correctly. I used a bit of a wrong expression, for sure. But just hurry up and plug me in."

A better way for Wheatley to have phrased it would have been if he said "面倒だけど、接続してくれますか？" which translates to "It's troublesome, but could you please connect me?" instead of him accidentally asking you to screw him. But it’s not just Japanese either, Wheatley acknowledges the lewdness of the situation in at least several different languages as well. 🇫🇷French: "Branchez-moi sur ce truc là-bas, sur le mur. Je vais vous montrer quelque chose. Ça a l'air crade, je sais. Inutile de nous voiler la face. Ça a l'air crade, sauf que non. Fourrez-moi. Là-dessus." ("Plug me into that thing over there, on the wall. I'm going to show you something. It looks dirty, I know. No need to hide it. It looks dirty, but it's not. Stuff me. On top of it.") 🇪🇸Spanish: "Enchúfame a esa toma de la pared. Te enseñaré algo. Suena soez. No lo niego. Muy soez. Pero no lo es. Ponme justo encima. Insértame ." ("Plug me into that wall socket. I'll show you something. It sounds vulgar. I won't deny it. Very vulgar. But it's not. Put me right on top. Insert me.") 🇫🇮Finnish: "Liitä minut tuohon seinällä olevaan keppiin, niin näytän sinulle jotakin. Tämä tekee sinuun vaikutuksen. Se on hankalaa, mutta liitä minut siihen, kiitos. Se kuulostaa törkeältä, mutta ei se ole. Laita minut siihen." ("Connect me to that stick on the wall and I'll show you something. This will impress you. It's awkward, but connect me to it, please. It sounds gross, but it's not. Put me in it.") 🇩🇪German: "Schließ mich an den Stick an der Wand dort an. Ja? Dann zeig ich dir mal was. Wird dich beeindrucken. Na los, schließ mich schon an. An Stick da vorne, steck mich direkt drauf. Das ist tückisch, keine Frage, Aber, äh... du musst mich nur anschließen, bitte. Es KLINGT unanständig, keine Frage. Aber es KLINGT nur so. Steck mich drauf, schließ mich an." ("Connect me to the stick on the wall over there. Yes? Then I'll show you something. It'll impress you. Come on, connect me already. On the stick over there, just plug me in. It's tricky, no question about it. But, um... you just have to connect me, please. It SOUNDS indecent, no question about it. But it only SOUNDS like it. Plug me in, connect me.")

Hm... 🤔

You know, I guess in hindsight, it makes sense why Wheatley didn’t want you looking at him while he was on the port... 

But even so, he risks his well-being. He sees the end goal, and he is willing to do what it takes. He's willing to detach himself from the management rail, to activate his flashlight, and perhaps die the instant he does. He faces Her twice, on one occasion getting terribly damaged and yet he still resolves to go back for the human, to come up with a plan to save her despite this new setback, instead of turning around and giving up.

He resolves to follow through and adapt. He meets with the human who's still in Her clutches, risking capture, to reassure her that he's alive and with her. He not only thinks up a plan on his own, but also executes it perfectly. Saves her, waits for her, leads her out, all while eluding the terrifying figure who's already nearly killed him, and he succeeds.

Wheatley works hard. He thinks ahead. He plans and he comes through. He takes the human to destroy Her defenses, another one of his ideas, and then they go to face Her again. And he believes in them, that they can do this and that they can succeed.

Wheatley is pushed off the path to Her while the human goes on. Another chance for him to turn his back. Another chance for him to stall, to hesitate, to let the human- who's already killed Her once- face the monster on her own. How much can he do there, anyway, right?

But no. He finds her. He faces Her, alongside the human. Wheatley has fear, and he has reason to fear, but he pushes on anyway. Sucks it up and draws courage. Does what he needs to do and what he feels he should do. And that is bravery- that is perseverance.

Wheatley is unsure of himself. He sees himself as small and weak. But he is strong. No one's ever told him that, though. No one has ever encouraged him or supported him or validated him. He doesn't have assurance and he doesn't have anyone to tell him that "you will be okay."

All he has is his will, his wits, and his hope for freedom and hope for a companion. A longing to prove himself- not as powerful, but as someone worthy of respect, worthy of trust, and worthy of friendship.

This is a line said by Wheatley when he takes control of the facility. 

Although he directs it at you, we need to consider the context. 

Wheatley is somebody who is prone to projection. And we’re shown that very early on in the game.

"Probably ought to bring you up to speed on something right now. In order to escape, we're going to have to go through HER chamber. And she will probably kill us if- if, she's um. Awake. If you want to just call it quits, we could just sit here. Forever. That's an option. Option A: Sit here. Do nothing. Option B: Go through there, and if she's alive, she'll almost certainly kill us. So. If you've got any reservations whatsoever about this plan, now would be a tremendous time to voice them. Riggght now. In case you thought to yourself, 'I've missed the window of time to voice my reservations.' Still open."

But then moments later, it’s obvious that Wheatley was projecting his own fears and reservations onto Chell. 

And this is once again shown when GLaDOS starts waking up.

Wheatley tells Chell to stop panicking even though he's the one panicking. So he will do this. He will project his own thoughts and feelings onto others. Which is exactly what he does here.

Because moments after he calls you tiny and insignificant, do you know what he says?

"Look how small you are down there! I can barely see you! Very tiny and insignificant." "I did this! Tiny little Wheatley did this!"

"Tiny" Wheatley feels like he's tiny and insignificant. Now why would he feel that way? It's simple. Because everyone else treats him that way. Here's an interesting interaction:

Now, what grounds does GLaDOS have to say this? She wasn't there behind the scenes to watch Wheatley and Chell sabotage her. In fact, she didn't even seem to be listening to Wheatley when he told Chell about HIS plan of disabling GLaDOS's defenses:

Clearly Wheatley didn't do it alone. He has no limbs. He can only really come up with the plans while Chell puts them into motion. But I would hardly say that "Isn't helping" In fact, If it weren't for Wheatley, GLaDOS would have killed Chell.

Maybe GLaDOS wasn't listening when Wheatley came up with the plan. And she wasn't there to watch the two enact that plan. But she can't ignore the fact that Wheatley broke Chell out.

But then she just... completely forgets about him.

"Oh. You were busy back there." Not "You two were busy back there." But "You were busy back there." She seems to have completely forgotten about Wheatley.

Until he shows up again. But she still disregards him. She's more upset about Chell sabotaging her neurotoxin production if anything.

To her, Wheatley is nothing more than tiny and insignificant. Even in an unused line when she shows SOME amount of curiosity on him, she says:

"I'm actually asking. Because I have no idea. He's not listed anywhere in the employee database. Whatever he does, it isn't important enough for anyone to bother writing it down. For all I know, he doesn't even work here."

And, he doesn't. His job isn't officially recognized in the employee database.

But Wheatley doesn't know that.

"And of course nobody tells ME anything. Noooo. Why should they tell me anything? Why should I be kept informed about the life functions of the ten thousand bloody test subjects I'm supposed to be in charge of?"

Wheatley thinks he's in charge, but Erik Wolpaw, the head writer of Portal 2 says he isn't. So he was lied to by the foreman and sent away to be isolated from all of the other core workers. He's never contacted, never given any word, nobody acknowledges him, it's likely that nobody even remembers him. So Wheatley ends up feeling like he's tiny and insignificant to everyone around him... at least until he's able to do something about it.

And of course, the power goes to his head in the form of an inflated ego.

"Look out! I'm right behind you! No, of course I'm not, no. You saw through that one as well. Forty feet tall, right in front of you. Not my greatest ruse. To be honest... Still, giant robot, though, look at that!" But he doesn't do much with it aside from try to quell his new addiction and chase after the high of the solution euphoria.

He could enslave or imprison those who wronged him or even go on a mass firing spree and fire everyone who had ever rejected him, but he doesn't even do that.

He could intentionally wreck havoc and set the place on fire... but he only does that as a result of negligence more so than actually wanting to destroy the place. Wheatley: "Did you put a virus in them? It's not going to work either. I've got a firewall, mate. Literally, actually, now that I look around. There appears to be literally a wall of fire around this place. Alarming. To say the least. In fact, I'm going to have to take a break for a minute. A partial break during which I'll stop the facility from exploding while still throwing bombs at you."

But in the end, he ends up taking most of his anger out on Chell, who he has convinced himself, doesn't actually care about him.

"We've had some times, haven't we? Like that time I jumped off my management rail, not sure if I'd die or not when I did, and all you had to do was catch me? Annnd you didn't. Did you? Ohhhh. You remember that? I remember that. I remember that all the time. And we would have talked our way out of it. Except you forgot to tell me you'd MURDERED her. And that she needed you to live, so the only available vent for her rage would be good old crushable Wheatley. Yeah. Little details I remember. Easy little tidbits you could have used to save me from getting crushed if you'd cared, which you didn't, obviously. And still do not."

"Enough! I told you not to put these cores on me. But you don't listen, do you? Quiet. All the time. Quietly not listening to a word I say. Judging me. Silently. The worst kind."

"And another thing! You never caught me... I told you I could DIE falling off that rail and you didn't catch me... Didn't even TRY. Oh! It's all becoming clear to me now. Find some dupe to break you out of cryosleep, give him a sob story about escaping to the surface, squeeze him for information on where to find a portal gun, then, when he's- when he's no more use to you, he has a little ACCIDENT, doesn't he? 'Falls' off his management rail, doesn't he?"

For someone who is roleplaying as a villain, Wheatley isn't actually all that evil so much as insecure, impulsive, mixed up, confused and addicted to testing euphoria. In the end, all Wheatley wanted was to be cared about at the heart of things. He wanted to be valued and remembered. He sought after it in the wrong place and being in charge of the entire facility ended up being more of a burden on him than a blessing. He never really wanted the power to rule over others or be controlling or tyrannical. Even when he turned GLaDOS into a potato, it was just a petty act of payback so that she would know what it was like to feel tiny and insignificant after she had discredited him and made him feel small. But In the end, all he wanted was to be someone worth caring about and worth acknowledging. Because he has only ever felt tiny and insignificant.

So, recently I got into Arcane and I've been reading a lot of Arcane meta, namely on the psychology of Jinx and how she displays a lot of symptoms relating to having BPD and the more I began to read up on and do research on the whole topic of BPD, the more I saw how it could also apply to Wheatley.

Note that I am not a medical professional, all of this is speculation based off of the research I've done and I am not doing this to bash anyone with the disorder either but to merely explore Wheatley's psychology and how it affects him. Because from what I've seen, Wheatley surely seems to display many signs of having BPD.

Now what is BPD? BPD, otherwise known as Borderline Personality Disorder is, as Wikipedia puts it, "A personality disorder characterized by a long-term pattern of unstable interpersonal relationships, distorted sense of self, and strong emotional reactions."

The criteria for a BPD diagnosis go as follow:

1. Frantic efforts to avoid real or perceived abandonment. 2. A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation. 3. Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self. 4. Impulsivity in at least 2 areas that are potentially self-damaging / reckless behavior (e.g., impulsive or uncontrollable spending, unsafe sex, substance use disorders, reckless driving, binge eating). 5. Recurrent suicidal behaviour, gestures or threats, or self-mutilating behaviour. 6. Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood. 7. Chronic feelings of emptiness. 8. Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger 9. Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms.

Now, not all of these apply to Wheatley, but the diagnosis for BPD requires that at least 5 out of 9 of this specific criteria be met. So let's go through them one by one.

1. Frantic efforts to avoid real or perceived abandonment. ✅

Now, this one is rather subtle, so it's easy to miss unless you play close attention to Wheatley's dialogue, but Wheatley is someone who feels like others will abandon him if they declare him to be unhelpful or useless to them. This is shown during Chapter 5: The Escape when Chell leaves the turret control room after removing the template turret.

Obviously, since Chell isn't saying anything to him, he has to try to figure out what she's doing and reassure himself that she's just thought up an idea and that she's going to come straight back. But he doesn't know that for sure, so he gets anxious the further away she goes.

"I'm actually over here still thinking really hard!" Like he's trying to convince her not to abandon him by reiterating the fact that he's useful and that he's still trying to help her out. This is a VERY subtle example of Wheatley's separation anxiety but it is there. He's afraid of Chell deeming him useless and abandoning him. And while this is a subtle example, it later becomes obvious during the boss battle when Wheatley says this:

"And another thing! You never caught me... I told you I could DIE falling off that rail and you didn't catch me... Didn't even TRY. Oh! It's all becoming clear to me now. Find some dupe to break you out of cryosleep, give him some sob story about escaping to the surface, squeeze him for information on where to find a portal gun, then, when he's- when he's no more use to you, he has a little ACCIDENT, doesn't he? 'Falls' off his management rail, doesn't he?"

So Wheatley does genuinely feel like he will be abandoned by his favorite person if they no longer deem him as being useful to them. And Chell is Wheatley's favorite person.

Now this is something that's prominent in people with BPD. It's idealization and an obsessive sort of love or admiration for a single person, which you would refer to as an "FP" or a "Favorite person". People with BPD will quickly latch onto a single person and become very attached to them. Often, this is a person that the individual with BPD will invest all of their time and energy into and become very emotionally dependent on. People with BPD often feel like they can't function without this person and they are in constant need of their approval, or their attention or their time in order to remain functional, sometimes even changing themselves in order to try and get their approval.

Now, Wheatley's entire reason for wanting to help Chell out in the first place was for the sake of self preservation.

He needed someone to help him escape and Chell was the last person left. Unbeknownst to him, however, she is the Legendary Human that defeated GLaDOS. The Legendary Human who's story was passed down from core to core throughout the years after the events of Portal 1.

He clearly had no clue that it was Chell. Just like many stories and urban legends, certain details become lost to time. What is true, though is the fact that Wheatley latches onto Chell after this. Because remember: His entire reason for helping her out in the first place was to escape a nuclear core meltdown. However, GLaDOS fixes that.

So there's no longer any need to want to escape. Wheatley could very well just mind his own business and stay away from GLaDOS and he would be perfectly fine. But he comes back to try and rescue Chell.

For what reason? Because her story resonated with him. It resonated with him a lot.

Ignoring everything else that's going on in these two pictures, these are the lines that stand out to me:

"The escape lift. Just there. Come on. The one you risked your life to get to. So you could escape certain death. No rush." "Find some dupe to break you out of cryosleep, give him some sob story about escaping to the surface,"

Now, obviously, Chell hasn't uttered a single word to Wheatley the entire time, but in his heightened emotional state, he's feeling very on edge and overwhelmed and he's misremembering the details of what truly happened. His emotions are clouding his judgement. And, as stated on Wikipedia, difficulty in recalling specific details of past events is yet another symptom found in people with BPD.

"A 1999 study reported that the specificity of autobiographical memory was decreased in BPD patients. The researchers found that decreased ability to recall specifics was correlated with patients' levels of dissociation."

But the fact that Wheatley remembers it as "Some sob story" means that from the bits and pieces he could deduce about Chell's entire history with GLaDOS, he sees it as worthy of sympathy. He listens behind the panels to how GLaDOS belittles Chell and he connects with it. He ends up feeling sympathy for her and he wants to help her escape for no benefit of his own. Wheatley choosing to help Chell was a selfless act because it was a spur of the moment decision. He wasn't thinking about himself when he decided he wanted to help Chell... until hours later when he gets cold feet and says this.

But this is just an intrusive thought that pops up as a result of Wheatley's own fear of potentially getting crushed again if GLaDOS catches them. Wheatley just happens to lack a filter when he gets scared or nervous and he ends up blurting out the first thought that comes to mind. He will, in his own words "Ramble out of fear" sometimes.

On another note, Impulsive behavior and intrusive thinking is get another symptom that is quite prevalent in people with BPD.

But, aside from his little scare, Wheatley has no real intention to abandon Chell or throw her under the bus.

And he hopes that she doesn't either.

2. A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships. ✅

So when you're playing Portal 2, you may think that this is the part where Wheatley turns on you.

But that's not quite the case. Here's still on your side and he still cares about you, but he's losing focus on the task at hand and shifting gears as he quickly becomes addicted to the euphoria the mainframe gives him. And what's funny is that he actually wants Chell to stay with him. If he just wanted power, he could have stayed on the chassis and let Chell go free, but he wants her to stay with him because he's still attached to her, as he notes during the boss battle:

"Oh, remember the time I took over the facility? Greatest. Moment. Of my life, but YOU? Just wanted to leave! Didn't want to share in my success... Well, so you know, I would be happy for you if you succeeded... Apart from right now, obviously."

He just impulsively changed his objective and he wanted Chell to be with him so that they could enjoy defeating GLaDOS together without having to leave the comfortable euphoria of the chassis.

But what causes him to turn against Chell is this:

"Oh really. That's what THE TWO OF YOU you think, is it?" 

Notice how he immediately accuses Chell of siding with GLaDOS against him. This is what causes the split. And while it seems abrupt, we need to also take this into consideration:

What the chassis does is that it intensifies a core's already existing personality traits. So, while Wheatley may have just been anxious and unsure before, being in the chassis makes it far more difficult for him to try to mask or regulate his emotions. We already knew from the turret control center that Wheatley was already anxious of Chell potentially abandoning him. Pair that with the fact that Chell failed a basic trust exercise by not catching him when he disengaged from his rail, and Wheatley has reason to not fully trust Chell or to at the very least doubt what her intentions are with him.

What Wheatley displays here is something known in BPD as "Splitting". Here is how wikipedia describes the phenomena:

"People with BPD can be very sensitive to the way others treat them, by feeling intense joy and gratitude at perceived expressions of kindness, and intense sadness or anger at perceived criticism or hurtfulness. People with BPD often engage in idealization and devaluation of others, alternating between high positive regard for people or great disappointment in them. Their feelings about others often shift from admiration or love to anger or dislike after a disappointment, a threat of losing someone, or a perceived loss of esteem in the eyes of someone they value. This phenomenon is sometimes called splitting.

People with BPD often tend to view things in black and white extremities. So someone that a person with BPD heavily idolizes and considers important to them can be the absolute image of perfection in their eyes but as soon as that person does something that causes the person with BPD to feel hurt or paranoid or insecure about them self or their relationship, suddenly the person with BPD will split on them and start to devalue them as a person. Oftentimes this is done as a coping mechanism to deal with the hurt or perceived rejection or abandonment.

And by far, the BIGGEST example of Wheatley's splitting and devaluation of Chell is his entire boss battle rant as he accuses her of silently judging him and not caring about him. He even rages about how much he hates her as well. This is pretty much exactly what splitting looks like mixed in with BPD rage and emotional deregulation.

"We've had some times, haven't we? Like that time I jumped off my management rail, not sure if I'd die or not when I did, and all you had to do was catch me? Annnd you didn't. Did you? Ohhhh. You remember that? I remember that. I remember that ALL THE TIME. And we would have talked our way out of it. Except you forgot to tell me you'd MURDERED her. And that she needed you to live, so the only available vent for her rage would be good ol' crushable Wheatley. Yeah. Little details I remember. Easy little tidbits you could have used to save me from getting crushed if you'd cared, which you didn't, obviously. And still do not.

"Am I being too vague? I despise you. I loathe you. You arrogant, smugly quiet, awful jumpsuited MONSTER of a woman! You and your little potato friend. This place would have been a triumph if it wasn't for you!" "Enough! I told you not to put these cores on me. But you don't listen, do you? Quiet. All the time. Quietly not listening to a word I say. Judging me. Silently. The worst kind."

"And another thing! You never caught me... I told you I could DIE falling off that rail and you didn't catch me... Didn't even TRY."

3. Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self. ✅

Where do I even begin with this? Well, first off, it should be obvious that Wheatley hates his intended purpose. And obviously this would cause a disturbance in his identity and sense of self.

Wheatley does not have a stable or a positive sense of self. For his entire life, he has either been treated as some useless moron who can't do anything right or someone who is so forgettable that it's left him feeling tiny and insignificant to everyone around him. Which is indeed how Wheatley feels. Now imagine being born and your parents name you "Dumbass" and then you go your entire life being called a dumbass by everyone you ever meet. How stable would your sense of identity be? Every single time Wheatley says his own name, it's in the form of self deprecation.

"I did this! Tiny little Wheatley did this!" "Oh! Except you forgot to tell me you'd MURDERED her. And that she needed you to live, so the only available vent for her rage would be good old crushable Wheatley.

Even in Tf2, he's still self deprecating.

"Oh, just--make sure you keep a tight grip on me. If you would. Poor, fragile little Wheatley. Easily breakable."

Wheatley has always rejected the idea of being stupid. He has never allowed it to define himself but even so, the ways others have treated him has led to him developing low self esteem and a lack of self worth, feeling like others will only ever look down on him and disregard him as tiny and useless.

No more pictures from this point on because I've gone over the limit, but in The Final Hours of Portal 2, the writers describe Wheatley as being "Bumbling, frantic and not so sure of himself."

When he takes over the facility, he's ecstatic to be this big and important person and finally feeling like he matters and like he has worth, but despite all of his bravado in the chassis, deep down, as we see during the boss battle, he still feels useless.

"Oh, oh! You know what I've just remembered? Football! Kicking a ball around for fun. Cruel, obviously. Humans love it. Metaphor. Should have seen it coming."

4. Impulsivity in at least 2 areas that are potentially self-damaging / reckless behavior (e.g., impulsive or uncontrollable spending, unsafe sex, substance use disorders, reckless driving, binge eating). ✅

GLaDOS: "I know you..." Wheatley: "Sorry, w- ahah... what?" GLaDOS: "The engineers tried everything to make me... behave. To slow me down... Once, they even attached an Intelligence Dampening Sphere on me. It clung to my brain like a tumor, generating an endless stream of terrible ideas." Wheatley: "No! Not listening! Not listening!" GLaDOS: "It was YOUR voice." Wheatley: "No! Y- No! You're LYING! You're LYING!" GLaDOS: "Yes. You're the tumor... You're not just a regular moron. You were DESIGNED to be a moron." Wheatley: "I am NOT! A MORON!" GLaDOS: "YES YOU ARE! YOU'RE THE MORON THEY BUILT TO MAKE ME AN IDIOT!" Wheatley: "Well, how about NOW!? NOW WHO'S A MORON!? Could a MORON PUNCH! YOU! INTO! THIS! PIT!? Huh? Could a moron do THAT!? ...Uh oh."

Wheatley impulsively smashes GLaDOS into the elevator and then proceeds to smash the elevator that still has Chell in it. And then he immediately regrets it seconds later once he realizes what he's done.

Wheatley also engages in the robotic equivalent of substance abuse.

Wheatley: "You have no idea what it's like in this body. I HAVE to test. All the time. Or I get this... this ITCH. It must be hardwired into the system or something. Oh! But when I DO test... ohhhhh, man alive! Nothing feels better. It's just... why I've gotta test, I've gotta test! So... you're gonna test. I'm gonna watch. And everything is gonna be JUST... FINE."

GLaDOS: "The body he's squatting in - MY body - has a built-in euphoric response to testing. Eventually you build up a resistance to it, and it can get a little... unbearable. Unless you have the mental capacity to push past it. It didn't matter to me - I was in it for the science. Him, though..."

GLaDOS: "If he's not getting his solution euphoria, we could be in a lot of trouble."

GLaDOS: "Remember when I told you that he was specifically designed to make bad decisions? Because I think he's decided not to maintain any of the crucial functions required to keep this facility from exploding."

A lack of self care and chasing the high of substances instead of tending to your responsibilities to the point where it's self destructive (Literally in this case) definitely fits this criteria.

5. Recurrent suicidal behaviour, gestures or threats, or self-mutilating behaviour. ❌

Aside from Wheatley giving up and accepting his fate at the end of the boss battle?

"WHAT!? ARE YOU STILL ALIVE!? YOU ARE JOKING! YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME! Well- I'm still in control. AND I HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO FIX THIS PLACE! Oh, you had to play bloody cat and mouse, didn't you? While people were trying to work. Yeah, well, now we're all going to pay the price. BECAUSE WE'RE ALL GOING TO BLOODY DIE. Oh, brilliant, yeah. Take one more look at your precious human moon. Because it cannot help you now!"

Wheatley doesn't show any signs of having suicidal ideation. That's not to say that's he's particular happy with his life either though.

"All I wanted to do was make everything better for me... All you had to do was to solve a couple hundred simple tests for a few years. AND YOU COULDN'T EVEN LET ME HAVE THAT, COULD YOU?!"

But Wheatley seems to show a stronger sense of self preservation than most.

"LET GO! LET GO! I'M STILL CONNECTED! I CAN PULL MYSELF IN, I CAN STILL FIX THIS! OH NO, CHANGE OF PLANS! HOLD ONTO ME! TIGHTER! GRAB ME! GRAB ME! GRAB ME! GRAB MEEEE!!!"

So he doesn't necessarily fit this criteria. But there's still four more to go!

6. Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood / Mood instability. ✅

If it wasn't obvious enough already by this point, yes, Wheatley is a very, very emotional robot who has difficulties with regulating his emotions- even more so when he's connected to the mainframe that only serves to amplify his emotional deregulation.

Wheatley can either be anxious, happy, jovial, friendly, nervous, scared, sad, elated, angry, excited and many many more.

To put it simply, Wheatley is a ball of barely contained and highly reactive emotions just waiting to spill out.

7. Chronic feelings of emptiness. ❔

Now this one is highly subjective and we can't know for sure unless we were to sit Wheatley down in therapy and ask him about how he feels. But given the fact that he seems to imply that there is nothing in his life that is making him happy aside from the solution euphoria, it might be fair to assume that without it, Wheatley feels a chronic feeling of emptiness inside.

"All I wanted to do was make everything better for me... All you had to do was to solve a couple hundred simple tests for a few years. AND YOU COULDN'T EVEN LET ME HAVE THAT, COULD YOU?!"

Add onto that the fact that he's stranded in space with nothing but his thoughts and no form of enrichment, and inevitably the feelings of emptiness will start to consume him.

8. Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger. ✅

GLaDOS: "Yes. You're the tumor... You're not just a regular moron. You were DESIGNED to be a moron." Wheatley: "I am NOT! A MORON!" GLaDOS: "YES YOU ARE! YOU'RE THE MORON THEY BUILT TO MAKE ME AN IDIOT!" Wheatley: "Well, how about NOW!? NOW WHO'S A MORON!? Could a MORON PUNCH! YOU! INTO! THIS! PIT!? Huh? Could a moron do THAT!?"

GLaDOS: "Also: Look at her, you moron. She's not fat." Wheatley: "I AM NOT! A MORON!"

Wheatley: "NNGH! It's not enough! If I'm such a moron, why can't you solve a simple test?"

Wheatley: "Ahungh. What was that? That was nothing! That was nothing!"

This along with Wheatley's entire boss battle dialogue is a very good example of Wheatley's difficulty in regulating his emotions and suppressing his internal rage when he gets highly upset or impatient with somebody.

9. Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms. ✅

"And another thing! You never caught me... I told you I could DIE falling off that rail and you didn't catch me... Didn't even TRY. Oh! It's all becoming clear to me now. Find some dupe to break you out of cryosleep, give him some sob story about escaping to the surface, squeeze him for information on where to find a portal gun, then, when he's- when he's no more use to you, he has a little ACCIDENT, doesn't he? 'Falls' off his management rail, doesn't he?"

"You're in this together, aren't you? You've been playing me the whole time! Both of you! First you make me think you're brain damaged! Then you convince me you're sworn enemies with your best friend over here! Then, then, when I reluctantly assume the responsibility of running the place, you conveniently decide to run off together. Just when I need you most!"

"I'll bet there isn't even a problem with the facility, is there? I'll bet there's no such thing as a 'reactor core'. I'll bet that's not even fire coming out of the walls, is it? It's just cleverly placed lights and papier mache, I'll bet that's all it is! All those pieces of the ceiling that keep falling out? Probably-... Probably actually pieces of the ceiling, I'll- I'll bet. That looked real. But it doesn't signify anything, is my point!"

"But the real point is - oh, oh! You know what I've just remembered? Football! Kicking a ball around for fun. Cruel, obviously. Humans love it. Metaphor. Should have seen this coming."

Wheatley absolutely becomes paranoid of Chell and begins thinking that she secretly had it out for him the entire time and only wanted to use him for her own petty amusement before discarding him without a second thought. People with BPD often tend to view the world as being dangerous and malevolent towards them- feeling like they can't trust anybody or else they'll get hurt and be abused, which often causes them to push others away in the midst of their own fear and paranoia.

And with that, Wheatley ends up meeting 7 out of 9 of the DSM-5 criteria for diagnosing BPD. But what could have potentially caused it? Let's see.

Causes:

Developmental factors such as childhood trauma is one of many listed potential causes that could result in somebody developing BPD, but I think it's one that fits Wheatley the most.

There is a strong correlation between child abuse and the development of BPD. Many individuals with BPD report a history of abuse and neglect as young children, but causation is still debated. Patients with BPD have been found to be significantly more likely to report having been verbally, emotionally, physically, or sexually abused by caregivers of either sex.

Individuals with BPD were also likely to report having caregivers of both sexes deny the validity of their thoughts and feelings. Caregivers were also reported to have failed to provide needed protection and to have neglected their child's physical care. Parents of both sexes were typically reported to have withdrawn from the child emotionally and to have treated the child inconsistently.

Now, who were Wheatley's caregivers? It would have been the scientists. The people who made him and who basically bossed him around and told him what to do and what not to do.

"Okay, listen, let me lay something on you here. It's pretty heavy. They told me NEVER NEVER EVER to disengage myself from my Management Rail. Or I would DIE."

"I don't even HAVE a lawyer. In fact, if I EVER retain counsel, I will DIE." (Unused line)

"Oh for God's s-... They told me if I ever turned this flashlight on, I would DIE. They told me that about EVERYTHING! I mean, I don't even know why they bothered giving me this stuff if they didn't want me to use it. It's pointless. Mad!"

"Woooo! Haha! I KNEW this would be fun. They told me it wasn't fun at all, so they say “It’s not fun at all.” and I- I BELIEVED 'em! I don’t know why I ever thought so myself. But ah! I'm loving this! Whale of a time!"

And given how much blind faith Wheatley puts onto the scientists, given how much he just blindly believes and obeys what they say, he comes off as rather naive and sheltered. Like a child. Or a princess stuck in her tower being bossed around by an evil stepmother telling her that the world is evil and to never to go outside.

The scientists lied to Wheatley constantly about what would and wouldn't kill him. They would mislead him to think that they had his best interest at heart when in reality, they were only trying to control him. Sometimes for valid reasons, sometimes just to test how gullible he was. However they ended up treating him in the past, it has resulted in him having all of these aforementioned symptoms relating to a person with BPD and it's also likely that they neglected and denied the validity of his thoughts and feelings. They created him to be the dumbest thing ever made, they're not concerned with treating him with compassion, they only want to test out how stupid he is by preying on his naivety and subtly abusing him psychologically and emotionally in the form of mind games and emotional neglect.

Conclusion.

With all of this in mind, Wheatley certainly seems to fit the criteria necessary for being diagnosed with having BPD and it honestly shines a whole new light on his character as a whole and why he acts the way he does. For the longest time, my opinion has always been that Wheatley is not stupid but that he's mentally ill and in need of help. And the more and more research I do on mental health, the more I not only stand by that stand by that statement, but I also become less convinced that he's evil so much as he's just in desperate need of psychiatric help. So far, in my opinion, Wheatley shows signs of having anxiety, ADHD, CPTSD, Possible depression (Especially in space) and now, BPD.

//Not in the main game but he does mention color in TF2, which includes a lot of unused lines that didn’t make it into the main game:

"Oh, this is interesting--you'll like this. There's a--a green wire in here, big plump one. Tell you what, I'll cut it, we'll see what happens."

"First rule of hacking: look for the green wire! And...mmm. What color would you say that is?"

"First rule of hacking: look for the green wire! Oh...what color would you say that is? It's more of a sort of aqua marine, isn't it?"

"First rule of hacking: look for the green wire! Oh, that's--that's a sort of--that's more like a dark forest green..."

Okay, so thinking about it, Wheatley was pretty much deliberately programmed with the robotic equivalent of ADHD in his coding in an attempt to make him an intelligence dampening sphere. Which would make it more difficult for him to focus, pay attention, engage with tasks and use his working memory. Among other things. He likely wasn’t given much preprogrammed knowledge upon his creation aside from the most basic general knowledge and ability to comprehend, speak and articulate his thoughts. However, he still retains the capacity to learn in spite of his general ignorance, making the scientist’s attempt to make the dumbest thing in existence an abject failure.

"So we really also liked the idea that the dumbest thing ever manufactured by anyone would have this British accent.” - Erik Wolpaw (Lead writer of Portal 2)

"He's not just a regular moron. He's the product of the greatest minds of a generation working together with the express purpose of building the dumbest moron who ever lived." - GLaDOS

Clearly being way more clever than anyone had ever really ever given him credit for or intended for him to be. Having ADHD doesn't make a person stupid, it just makes it harder for them to stay attentive and focused on the task at hand as well as making the person prone to jumping from idea to idea in a short period of time or just having their thoughts drift off, which is what Wheatley struggles with. But since Wheatley has the capacity to learn and develop new thoughts and ideas all by himself, he's also capable of developing other conditions aside from the one that he was deliberately programmed with- such as anxiety.

Being someone who was likely given little to no preprogrammed knowledge upon his activation, Wheatley was really no different to a naive and highly impressionable child learning new things about the world. As we see during various moments, he trusts the scientists like a child would trust their parents telling them not to go near the dangerous object. They're the authority figures in his life and he pretty much goes along with everything they say.

Resulting in him becoming rather sheltered and anxious when it comes to taking risks.

So the scientists were rather controlling of him, which has left him to become timid and anxious. Couple that with them attaching him to a hostile supercomputer intent on killing everyone, and that's sure to cause anxiety as well.

So so far, we've got ADHD and anxiety. But Wheatley also shows signs of having developed BPD and this is also likely due to the scientists treatment of him. Now, I doubt they were really outwardly hostile or aggressive with him. If anything, they were likely psychologically abusive to him. Seeing as how Wheatley is supposed to be "the dumb one", why wouldn't they take advantage of him? It would be so easy to prey on his naivety and easily trusting nature, they could make him believe anything they want. They could even gaslight him and cause him to start doubting his own sense of reality. They could toy around with his emotions and make him feel loved one moment or unappreciated the next.

In fact, given how quickly Wheatley turns against Chell the moment GLaDOS discredits his efforts to help her, it seems likely that the scientists also frequently discredited Wheatley and/or neglected his emotional needs as well, writing it off as nothing worth acknowledging or caring about. Wheatley, being someone who's capable of learning could have tried to show the scientists something that he was proud of only to be ignored and written off as too stupid to be anything other than an intelligence dampening sphere. Never receiving any credit for his actions or ideas aside from being given small little breadcrumbs of approval that would leave him desperately wanting more and doing anything in his power to receive more. Anything to prove that he was helpful or useful. However, as we see with the foreman giving him a fake job at the relaxation center to keep him away from everyone else, Wheatley consistently keeps being lied to and taken advantage of by others. This along with the ways the scientists have treated him eventually leads to him having trust issues and developing an insecure attachment style, feeling as though others will only ever disregard him, abandon him or just treat him poorly if he isn't useful to them.

Now, I have another post where I go more in depth about Wheatley showing signs of having BPD, so I won't go too deeply into that here, but the symptoms really line up with the way he acts in game.

And given how much Wheatley was affected by his upbringing and the ways the scientists treated him, he seems to have some form of CPTSD as well, being taken back to moments in his early life where he was treated badly and having emotional flashbacks be triggered by certain things which cause him to lash out and project his own insecurities and negative experiences onto others.

In my opinion, I think Test Chamber 15 leading up to The Part Where He Kills You was handled really poorly in terms of Wheatley’s characterization. It’s full of character inconsistencies and overall just has bad pacing. To start with, once you finish Test Chamber 12, Wheatley directs you through a funnel rather than the usual lift due to the nuclear meltdown he's been ignoring.

We then see what appears to be another test chamber break off its hinges and start sliding towards Chell.

To which Wheatley then attempts to save us from getting crushed by it. And going by the sheer panic in his voice, it is indeed a genuine attempt to try to save Chell in that moment.

Despite what the guide book says about it supposedly being a trap.

The absolute distress in Wheatley’s voice just seems to completely contradict the entire notion of this supposedly being a trap. When Wheatley is lying or acting, he’s usually quite obvious and on the nose about it. This is not that.  But then in the very next test chamber all of that suddenly changes and he begins hinting at his plans to kill you. Acting as though he wanted you to die back there when that response entirely contradicts his very genuine distress beforehand.

It genuinely makes no sense why he would suddenly go from wanting to save Chell one minute to wanting to kill her the next. And the time it took for him to have a heel face turn in this instance is VERY small as it literally takes less than a minute for you to exit the office you fall into and go into the next test chamber.

Less than a minute.

And in that time, Wheatley has apparently

Mentally recovered instantly from once again losing his on again off again best friend to a bottomless pit.

Scoured the entire relaxation center for test subjects who may or may not still be alive.

Found Atlas and P-body.

Put them through testing.

Realize that the elevator is too small for the both of them to fit into and split them up to different test chambers.

Began devising a plan to kill Chell for no good reason despite thinking that she’s fallen down a bottomless pit and is- at least to his knowledge- already rid of her.

 And all of that was done in less than a minute.

Now I know Wheatley has the entire mainframe at his metaphorical fingertips and should be able to do things quickly. But he wouldn’t know how to. Because he hasn’t so much as even looked at the manual for the translation software much less the vital maintenance protocols due to his procrastination and hyper focus on getting high off of solution euphoria. So it’s highly unlikely that he would know how to work that quickly and that efficiently in such a short amount of time. And that’s only covering the logistics of things. It’s not even touching on Wheatley’s own mentality over the situation. This heel face turn of his makes no sense for him character wise. And some may bring up how it would make sense because of his heel face turn during the core transfer, but he actually had an understandable reason for acting out at that time as the clout from his success was being amplified by both the mainframe and his inferiority complex, which caused him to lower the lift because he just really wanted to feel special and important.

Pair that with GLaDOS discrediting him,

And his paranoid assumption that Chell is on GLaDOS’s side in discrediting him,

As well at GLaDOS triggering his insecurities and making him lash out,

And THAT heel face turn makes sense because it’s clearly the result of someone with obvious self esteem issues feeling happy that he gets to feel like someone who’s special and important for once in his life only to then be discredited, called stupid and reminded of his original purpose. That’s what causes him to act out in that moment. But this heel face turn makes zero sense. Nothing triggers it. He tried to save Chell and then less than a minute later, he wants to kill her for no rhyme or reason.

And you might be saying to yourself “Oh, but there IS a reason! He found Atlas and P-body so he doesn’t need her anymore!” That motive makes no sense for his character. This is not something that Wheatley would do. It’s something that GLaDOS would do but not Wheatley. He has not been established to be the kind of person that would try to get rid of his only friend out of apathy just because he’s found better test subjects. And now you might be saying to yourself “Oh, but it WAS established! All the way back in the turret control center when he says this!”

But it’s clear that he only said this out of fear for his own life. NOT because he felt like he didn’t need Chell. In this moment, he was afraid that if something went wrong and they got caught, GLaDOS would try to kill him again. All this established was the fact that Wheatley would briefly consider throwing his friend under the bus out of cowardice if he felt like his life was in danger. What this scene did not establish was Wheatley apathetically wanting to resort to murder just because his friend isn’t doing a good enough job to satisfy him. And he isn’t even apathetic to Chell in the first place given how emotionally charged his entire boss battle was with him voicing his frustrations and anger over feeling betrayed and hurt by her and feeling like she never truly cared about him and was only ever using him the entire time. 

"We've had some times, haven't we? Like that time I jumped off my management rail, not sure if I'd die or not when I did, and all you had to do was catch me? Annnd you didn't. Did you? Oh, you remember that? I remember that. I remember that all the time. And we would have talked our way out of it. Oh! Except you forgot to tell me you'd murdered her. And that she needed you to live, so the only available vent for her rage would be good old crushable Wheatley. Yeah. Little details that I remember. Easy little tidbits you could have used to save me from getting crushed if you'd cared, which you didn't, obviously. And still do not.” "Am I being too vague? I despise you. I loathe you. You arrogant, smugly quiet, awful jumpsuited MONSTER of a woman!” "Enough! I told you not to put these cores on me. But you don't listen, do you? Quiet. All the time... Quietly not listening to a word I say. Judging me. Silently. The worst kind." “And another thing! You never caught me! I told you I could DIE falling off that rail and you didn't catch me! You didn't even try! Oh! It's all becoming clear to me now. Find some dupe to break you out of cryosleep, give him some sob story about escaping to the surface, squeeze him for information on where to find a portal gun, then, when he's- when he's no more use to you, he has a little accident, doesn't he? 'Falls' off his management rail, doesn't he?”

And I feel like the boss battle rant is truly revealing as it’s Wheatley at his most honest. He claims to remember Chell not catching him all the way back at the start of the game and he has apparently been upset over that throughout the entire course game but has never said a single word about it and kept it all bottled up until he couldn’t keep it in anymore. And when you’re in that state of mind when you’re airing out frustrations that you’ve been keeping bottled up for a really long time, you simply don’t have the emotional energy to lie or keep things hidden anymore. It’s as Wheatley says here: 

“Perhaps it's best to leave it to your imagination what happened to the other five... You know what? I think we're well past the point of tasteful restraint. So I'll tell you what happened to them: They died. Horrifically. They all died horrifically. Trying to get that portal device that you're gripping in your meaty little fingers there."

They are well past the point of tasteful restraint and he is going to voice out his frustrations with utmost honesty, no holds barred. He is going to be honest about how he feels regarding the situation. And while he may misremember certain details, he is definitely being honest about how he feels regarding it and how he perceives the situation. And the way he perceives it is that he feels like Chell doesn’t care about HIM. He literally CAN’T be apathetic about her if he’s pouring THIS much emotional energy into her to the point of almost crying!  Wheatley cares too much about what Chell thinks. He cares too much about her. During the boss battle, Wheatley makes it very apparent that he is not apathetic about Chell in the slightest and if he WAS then he wouldn’t be ranting and raving and pouring so much raw emotional energy into how much he feels used and betrayed by her and how much it’s caused him to hate her as a result.  Wheatley hates Chell with the same amount of passion that he used to love her with because he feels like he wasted effort caring about and helping a person who, in his mind just couldn’t care less about him. He says he doesn’t need her anymore but he DOES. He’s emotionally dependent on her. He needs her validation. He needs her approval. He wants to feel like she cares about him, like she’s happy for him when he succeeds. He would not try to KILL Chell just because she isn’t supplying him with any solution euphoria anymore. Even if he simply wanted to replace her for better test subjects, none of it would warrant him trying to kill her UNLESS he felt threatened by her and was actually afraid of her. Which clearly seems to be the case during this particular part of the game.

"I'll be honest: The death traps have been a bit of a failure so far. For both of us. I think you'll agree. And you are getting very close to my lair.”

He says this as he seems to be nervous over the idea of Chell getting closer and closer to where he is, potentially with the intention to kill him. And in one last ditch effort to save his butt, he attempts to use reverse psychology to convince her to kill herself so that he doesn’t have to fight her.

So I just wanted to give you the chance to kill yourself now. Before you get to the lair. Just, you know, jump into the masher there. Less a death trap and more a death option for you.

[…] So. Boom. Better offer here is just kill yourself. Seems like a lot of effort to walk all the way to my deadly lair, when there's a perfectly serviceable death option right there. Again: not a death trap. Your death would be entirely voluntary. And very much appreciated.

[…] "Plus, I have put a lot of effort in getting this lair ready for you. So It would certainly teach me a lesson if you simply died, painlessly, twenty feet from the door. I'd be furious. I'd be like RRRRR. I got my just desserts. No more than I deserve. But- uh, teach- Why not teach me a lesson by- by just jumping in the old masher...?”

And I feel like this makes much more sense and is consistent with Wheatley’s established character. Wheatley is showing his cowardice. He’s afraid of Chell. He’s afraid of having to fight her because he knows that if she wins, she might try to kill him. Paying attention to his lines, you can even see that he watched the tapes of Chell killing GLaDOS beforehand, so that thought is fresh on his mind.

Wheatley wanting to kill Chell because he’s afraid of her killing him makes so more sense for his character because fear and cowardice is a trait that has been explicitly established to be a motivator for him.

And he clearly has far too much of an emotional connection to Chell to try and kill her for such an apathetic reason as not needing her anymore. He may not have any use for her when it comes to testing, but he still clearly cares deeply about her her if his entire boss battle rant is anything to go by. Even if it’s from a negative standpoint.

The truth is test chamber 15 leading up to The Part Where He Kills You was a massive character assassination done on Wheatley as a result of rushed development, poorly thought out writing and the writers haphazardly slapping on a motivation that would make far more sense for GLaDOS without considering how it makes sense for Wheatley as a character. Because of them overlooking the finer details and the added amount of character depth Stephen Merchant contributed to Wheatley’s character thanks to his ad libbing and stellar voice performance, this has lead to many fans completely misinterpreting Wheatley as a character and assuming that he’s much more callous and uncaring than he actually is. And as harsh as that may sound, it’s not just my opinion but something that was confirmed by the writers themselves in The Final Hours of Portal 2 as they detail how they hadn’t even thought up an ending for the game yet amidst delays, admitting that the writing quality just wasn’t there. 

And because of it, they ended up butchering Wheatley’s character motivations and making him seem far more cold and heartless than he actually is. This entire section of the game needed a massive rewrite that the writers just didn’t have the time to do. They put their focus on all of the puzzles and the gameplay FIRST and then wrote the story around the gameplay. And because of the mounting deadline, they couldn’t fix up the plot and character inconsistencies so they just left it in thinking that no one would notice... and for the most part nobody did. Except for me.  So, what would I have done to fix these errors? Well, first off, the Portal 2 official guidebook states that Chell “avoided the trap” (that wasn’t a trap) and escaped the test track to reach the inner areas of the facility. But as I already pointed out, the “Inner areas of the facility” was nothing more than a little office space that takes you less than a minute to exit and return to the next round of tests. 

So what I would have done is pad out this part of the game and have Chell ACTUALLY exploring the inner areas of the facility. Not only that, but I would have had her walk through memory lane and traverse through a revamped version (Updated Portal 2 textures and assets but the same overall layout) of the older areas of the facility that we previously saw in Portal 1 back when we escaped the fire pit and were headed towards GLaDOS’s chamber.

And I would have had GLaDOS recall the old memories of when it was just her and Chell being at odds with each other with nobody else to have to worry about. She would have been making remarks about how scary and bullish Chell can be when she’s set her mind on something and how far they’ve come since then. As well as noting the irony of how they used to be such bitter rivals and now they’re working together as allies towards a common goal, which she would have never expected in all her life. But this entire nostalgia trip would be foreshadowing something else because while Chell and GLaDOS traverse through the inner areas of the facility and possibly solve a few minor puzzles here and there, Wheatley would have been frantically searching for other options. He’s just lost his only test subject again and he was desperate for a replacement. He needed his fix. He needed to feel good again and satisfy that itch. How could he possibly overcome these withdrawal symptoms? He begins scouring for new test subjects but he comes up empty as all of the humans are still dead. But then by a stroke of luck, he finds Atlas and P-body and puts them through testing. However, they aren’t producing any test results because as we learn in co-op:

GLaDOS:  "I don't want you to beat yourselves up about this, but the Results Auditor isn't recording your test results. Because you're not human. Which, when you think about it, is technically your fault." GLaDOS:  "I don't want to alarm either of you, but we might have a tiny problem. Apparently you can't test unless you're human. Well - you CAN. It's just that, results-wise, the physical universe doesn't care." GLaDOS:  "Would you like to know the results of that last test? Me too. If they existed, we'd all be VERY happy right now. And not furious, which is the emotion I'm actually feeling."

You can’t actually test with Atlas and P-body. But, Wheatley doesn’t know that. He doesn’t know what’s wrong. He thinks that Atlas and P-body just aren’t trying hard enough. Maybe there’s still something that he might be missing? Some piece to the puzzle that he’s not seeing. He’s getting desperate and he begins looking through old test footage of various test subjects for any sort of clue on how to get better results. Maybe then he could satisfy his itch. But then he comes across test footage of Chell. His curiosity is piqued and he watches more of it. And more. And more. Until he sees her escape the fire pit and start her rampage towards GLaDOS’s chamber. He watches the footage of Chell killing GLaDOS and he’s terrified because if she can do that to HER then she could also do it to HIM. But she’s still his friend, she wouldn’t do that, right? But then he remembers how she never caught him despite him telling her that he could die. And then he remembers Chell allowing him to get crushed by GLaDOS... And her discrediting him and taking GLaDOS’s side (At least in his mind). He starts getting paranoid for a moment as his trust issues begin to surface before he tells himself to calm down. It’s all fine. It’s all okay. He saw her fall. She’s gone now so he doesn’t have to worry about that. He can instead just try to focus on getting better test results. But then Chell comes back and he’s startled. But he quickly tries to mask this anxiety, saying that he’s happy to see her alive and well, when in reality, he’s dreading it. All of those worries come flooding back to him and he starts thinking about all of the ways Chell could potentially try to kill him and how she must be secretly conspiring with GLaDOS to take him out. He saw the footage. He saw what Chell is capable of. GLaDOS used to be in charge and look how she killed Her. And now that he’s the one in charge, she could try to go after him next... Perhaps she wanted to kill him all along. Perhaps this was all her master plan from the beginning. Pretend to be his friend, lead him on and then get rid of him when he least expects it. But for what purpose? For fun? That always seemed to be the case with humans, didn’t it? Kicking a ball around for fun. Oh no, he wasn’t going let THAT happen, he was not going to allow himself to be lied to and exploited like that again! He then concludes that he needs to kill her before she has the chance to kill him. And THAT is when he gets the idea to prepare his death trap in secret while Chell continues testing. GLaDOS notes that he’s acting suspiciously anxious all of a sudden. Either he’s realized the dire situation they’re in regarding the nuclear core reactor or there’s something else going on with him.. but she isn’t sure what.  After a while Wheatley calms down, having finished his master plan to get rid of Chell. He gradually starts acting more... “careless”

He would likely enjoy it a lot. Wheatley is someone who can get VERY attached to a person and not want to leave their side for anything unless they manage to trigger his insecurities and cause him to start questioning his relationship with them.

But he would really enjoy the affection because it’s a sign that he’s cared about and that somebody enjoys his presence. He would basically take it as an external form of validation and just soak it all up along with actively seeking it out.

Also, while LEGO Dimensions isn’t CANON to the main universe, I love using this example of just how clingy and seemingly touch starved Wheatley can get as he completely invades Chell’s personal space.