Oooh!!!!!!

First of all I appreciate the compliments very much – it feels weird to be considered a Ram expert since I’ve only been in Tron fandom a little over a year, and I really don’t want to take away from the voices of fans who have been here for ages… but, I do admit I have spent that short time in an abnormally intense state of hyperfixation, and I LOVE talking about my headcanons, especially about Ram…

so… here we go!!

Okay, so, in my funhouse of a brain this thing about Ram’s circuitry is probably a more complicated question than it’d seem to anyone else. Several different interpretations and answers here.

On the one hand, there’s my understanding that clothing in the Encom system doesn’t actually come off, just gets shifted from one outfit to another– with the same sort of animated effect you might get when changing the outfit of a video game avatar.

Generally, asking what’s under a program’s suit is a kind of meaningless question.

I think even if they have a “naked” option for how they can appear, it’s not “underneath” the others in any meaningful sense, it’s just another outfit. Nor is it their “true” appearance in any way – one program could have several different naked renders with different anatomy!

But:

your question was about armor, and I do imagine that some of the armor pieces worn by warriors in the Games can be taken off. Although we don’t see proof of it onscreen, my own feelings tell me that the helmets and gauntlets and shoulder pads can probably be “removed” pretty much like clothing. On the code level of things, I imagine the code for those is more similar to “object being carried” than “outfit being worn.”

Interesting little side detail here! Apart from the very dramatic change of outfit that Yori does in the Deleted Love Scene, there are a couple instances of small costume changes being made between scenes– with known behind-the-scenes reasons for it.

Like how Yori wears a warrior helmet while on the Solar Sailer, because Cindy Morgan insisted on taking a break from that tight headcap and the painful glue that held it onto her head.

But then, it’s fairly straightforward to theorize in-universe reasons why a helmet may be more proper solar-sailing attire than a headcap.

It’s harder to explain an in-universe reason for the sudden change in appearance in both Ram’s disc and his hands, between two frames of the disc-trick scene:

The out-of-universe explanation is that the disc tricks were done by a double, instead of by Dan Shor. Which could explain the shift from bare hands to gloves– it’s probably hard to do those tricks with gloves on (though it doesn’t quite explain why Ram has to wear gloves the whole rest of the scene, or why a whole different disc was needed.)

In-universe, anyway, I like to imagine that Ram was calibrating or testing his disc in some way– and this involved running a subroutine that temporarily changed the appearance of both the disc and his hands, simply as a graphic interface to show that the routine is running.

….Okay, that was a long side detail! Back onto the question of Ram’s armor.

I’ve also posted before about how I view the armor of game warriors. Basically, I see it as functioning less like actual armor, and more like a set of symbols to represent which programs do what. (Like how the toga indicates novices, and so on.)

Anyway, whatever Ram’s vest means, I think that it does come off, and would reveal a different set of circuitry on the “bodysuit” portion of his render underneath that.

But, to be honest, I think that pattern would be pretty standardly similar to the one on Flynn and on a few of the other conscripts. The parts of it that we can see– that little arrowlike thing below his neck, for instance– are pretty much the same. So I’d guess it’s all part of a design that’s just one of a few standard render patterns that get used and reused for warriors.

However.

Ram could still have a secret, unique, cool and interesting appearance of his own! The whole outfit of Ram in the games is a render chosen by the MCP, and is not necessarily what Ram considers “himself.”

I think programs can have specific appearances that they consider to be their “true form”– the way they appear when they get to be fully themselves. This is what Yori seemed to be shifting into for the Love Scene.

It’s even more clear in the novelization’s version of that scene, which also gave Tron a transformation of his own, in which his circuitry “took on a flowing look.”

I imagine it’s possible that many programs have a “true form” with patterns that look less angular and more organic. The parts of the System that are “free” and the way things naturally “should” be (…the I/O Tower…. Yori’s creative decorations in her quarters…) do tend to have more flowing, curvaceous lines.

….And now I do feel a bit inspired to draw something like that for Ram.

I think he’d love it.