What is the blue/orange symbolism in Portal 2?

Solution 1:

Note that Orange Blue Contrast is a common trope in media. I'm just listing examples in ways Valve used it here.

I'm only going by my own experience of the game so this is likely incomplete, but there are a lot of noticeable examples of symbolism occurring throughout the game.

Note, the following is going to contain spoilers for both Portal games.

Well, just for posterity, the origin of all this is probably the portal gun itself.

The first one was actually in Portal 1, where Aperture Laboratories are very cool and blue, while the behind the scenes bits after the last test chamber have a more warm, orange feel.

The really obvious ones:

• The gel colours
• The co-op robots
• The excursion funnel (blue when pushing, orange when pulling).
• The checkmark/cross signs that show the status of an objective

The most obvious one would be GLaDOS, having an orange eye, and Wheatley, having a blue eye. This is later repeated in the end scene, where regardless of what portals you shoot, the one in Aperture Laboratories (where GLaDOS is in the end) is orange, and the one on the moon (where Wheatley is) is blue.

As with Portal 1, the Laboratories are cold and blue, while old Aperture with Cave Johnson has, again, a warmer, orange feel to it.

A more subtle example was in the end speech, right before you were sent up in the elevator. As you can see in the video below, the moment GLaDOS says she deletes Caroline, a bit of warm light that was in the room is dimmed, making the entire room even more blue.

This is all I can remember for now, I'll add more to it as I find them again.

Solution 2:

I know it's not the answer you're looking for, but blue and orange are two very accessable high contrast colors. Even for the most common forms of color blindness there is never a question of whether a color is blue or orange, it's extremely easy to tell them apart instantly and they're also perfect opposites, making them perfect for "ends" of portals.

Solution 3:

I'm going to take a stab in the dark and assume there's a deeper meaning here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Colours#Boundary_conditions

Yellow/red and cyan/blue are considered boundary colours. When you shine a white light through a prism, yellow/red will polarize to one edge and cyan/blue will polarize to the other, depending on the polarity of dark/light.

It actually makes a lot of sense then that two portal colours are orange and electric blue because in "colour theory" they represent two opposite edges of the same plane/surface.