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 nine released episodes, and features a cast consisting of new cores, a turret band, the Mainframe, the Party Escort Bot and several others.

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 often faces issues with his defectiveness,



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. He has a very ardent demeanor, which he displays to everyone, including the incinerator.



Ego Core
The Ego Core is a corrupted personality core who appears in the fifth episode of the series. He describes himself as more intelligent and superior to the other cores, but is all the while overly egotistical.



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 coresand also his first sketches of GLaDOS.

Transcripts

 * Episode 1: Paranoia Core
 * Episode 2: Protocol Core
 * Episode 3: Elite Core
 * Episode 4: Ambition Core
 * Episode 5: Ego Core
 * Episode 6: Friendship Cores

Trivia

 * The Underground is written by Gleb Lvov, Mitchell McLeod, and Andrew Walker.
 * 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.
 * 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. Since its release, Gleb's YouTube channel was shut down, possibly canceling the series as a whole. Although there are alternative versions with Russian subtitles on YouTube, the only version of the sixth episode has English subs. However, the series has since been rebooted during early 2021.
 * The Mainframe is based on an early concept art of GLaDOS.