The cake is a lie

Oct 15, 2007

We’ve all become rather enamored by Portal, which has been untangling the folds of our frontal lobes since its release last week with Valve’s Orange Box. While it may appear simple at first glance, Portal is jammed full of subtleties, Easter eggs, and easily repeatable tag lines that have been rapidly absorbed by the Internet’s collective cultural consciousness.

If you’ve been on the wrong side of the space-time continuum for the last week and have no clue what we’re talking about, scroll down to consume our collection of Portal lore, and hit the tabs to the left to see spoiler-laden video walkthroughs of every level. If you want to avoid experiencing the game through YouTube, distract yourself immediately with sexy booth babes.

Above: We’ll miss you

Aperture Laboratories Terminal

In Test Chamber 17 (the “companion cube” level), there is an area behind one of the walls which contains semi-coherent scribbles and photos of the beloved cube. Scribbled on part of the wall are a username and password:

User: cjohnson
Pass: tier3

Go to www.aperturelabratories.com and type "login." Enter the username and password, and any of the following commands:

THECAKEISALIE – Produces a message from one of your fellow test subjects.
APPLY – Runs APPLY.EXE.
NOTES – Runs NOTES.EXE, a history of Aperture Labs.
IP  - Displays your UID.
HELP – Displays a list of commands.
DIR – Displays available files.
LOGOUT
APPEND
INTERROGATE
TAPEDISK

The Recipe

http://www.planetfortress.com/dfa/portal-recipe.html

The cake may be a lie, but the recipe is very real. Found on a monitor in the final level, the ingredients are:

1 (18.25 oz) package chocolate cake mix
1 can prepared coconut frosting
3/4 cups vegetable oil
4 large eggs
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
3/4 cup butter or margarine, softened
2/3 cups granulated sugar
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups all purpose flour
2/3 cups cocoa
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/3 cups water
1 to 2 (6 oz each) vanilla frosting

The Song

If you’re avoiding spoilers, don’t listen to Portal’s hilarious ending song:

http://itsthedoc.net/music/portal_still_alive.mp3

The Cake Itself

Was it a lie? Here’s the cake, in actuality.