The Underground

The Underground is a video series animated by Gleb Lvov and formerly produced by Machinima. In it, there is a core called the Interview Core who hosts a talk-show where "the rejected are respected and the best-case has no place." It takes place in two forgotten locations within the Aperture Laboratories. Currently, there are six released episodes, and features a cast consisting of new cores, a turret band, the Mainframe and the Party Escort Bot.

Interview Core
The Interview Core is a corrupted personality core who appears in all episodes of the series. He escaped incineration by GLaDOS and found himself on a table, setting the literal stage for the talk-show. As the host of The Underground, the Interview Core is responsible for interviewing his guests and giving answers to his possibly empty audience.



Anthony (and The Band)
Anthony and The Fritz Brothers Band is a trio of turrets, two of which are defective. Anthony has a much deeper voice than normal turrets.



Paranoia Core
''This is about a character in The Underground. For the bounty prize item in Poker Night 2, see Cores.''

The Paranoia Core is a corrupted personality core who appears in the first episode of the series. She is suspicious of all things, and speaks like a stereotypical conspiracy theorist, saying that it knows of "secret walls [being built] in the dead of night in secret to house all the secret boxes that contain files of all the secret rooms where all the real secrets are being kept."



Protocol Core
The Protocol Core is a corrupted personality core who appears in the second episode of the series. He is very knowledgeable about all Enrichment Center policies and was "hand"-picked by GLaDOS to enforce "all of her wonderful regulations." The Protocol Core is under the idea that it was created to be perfect, and as such, denies being corrupted despite being in placed into an Emergency Intelligence Incinerator prior to the episode.



Ambition Core
The Ambition Core is a corrupted personality core who appears in the fourth episode of the series.



Ego Core
The Ego Core is a corrupted personality core who appears in the fifth episode of the series. Onathan describes himself as more intelligent and superior to the other cores, but is quite narcissistic.



Friendship Cores
The two friendship cores, Yellow and Blue are two cores who appear in the sixth episode of the series.

The Mainframe
The Mainframe is a somewhat enigmatic character in the series. After each interview, the cores are sent to him. Anything the Mainframe dislikes, from cores to sitcoms, go down a trapdoor controlled by him. The cores the Mainframe accepts are attached to him, in a manner not unlike GLaDOS and her cores.

Trivia

 * The Underground is written by Gleb Lvov, Mitchell McLeod, and Andrew Walker.
 * Anthony's 'arm' falls off while performing a rimshot, which plays a role in a set of gags in the second episode.
 * Anthony is later knocked to the ground by the Ambition core.


 * The Paranoia Core mentions several aspects of Old Aperture's tests, such as mantis men and test-related tumors.
 * The Paranoia Core is an interpretation of a cut personality core from Portal 2. While non-canon to the Portal universe, this core also makes an appearance in the game Poker Night 2 as GLaDOS' bounty prize item; in this iteration, it is identical in appearance to Wheatley.
 * The first five episodes of The Underground have been released within a short time of each other in July 2011. The sixth episode was released in late September 2013.