I have a theory that the laser in Tron, and Tron Legacy, can only re-materialize people from the digital world if there’s already organic material stored in it. Meaning that once Kevin and Sam were both on the Grid, it would only be possible to bring two people out again. It’s possible that Kevin knew this, and was prepared to stay behind all along. It would also mean that the Real World-Quorra is made out of Kevin’s organic material, moving her a step farther from just being his metaphorical, adopted daughter.
What’s really interesting about this theory is that it would mean that Clu’s plan for invading the Real World with a huge army was doomed to failure from the beginning. At most, he could get two people out. This lead me to imagine some different “what if Clu won” scenarios:
One creepy scenario would be that Clu would hide out the arcade basement and send out a lackey (presumably Rinzler) to kidnap people, who are then digitized to get more organic material to materialize more of his soldiers, slowly growing his army beneath the arcade. This would probably not work in the long run, since sooner or later someone would notice that people keep disappearing in the vicinity of Flynn’s Arcade, so Clu would probably never get all his thousands of soldiers out.
An alternative to this scenario would be that Clu pretends to be Flynn, and makes Flynn’s followers in the Flynn Lives movement his own computer-obsessed cult, which he grows into a huge organization, until he eventually digitizes them all in some big ceremony, replacing them with his soldiers. Again, pretty creepy.
Then there’s the comedy option where Clu and Rinzler try to pretend that they’re Flynn and Alan (kidnapping and digitizing the real Alan, of course), but are really bad at it. Especially the mindwiped, emotionless killer Rinzler, doing a really poor, Terminator-esque attempt at pretending to be human. Just imagine them having dinner with Lora, for example:
Clu: “Mmm, isn’t this food good, Ri… I mean, Alan?”
Rinzler: “Yes, Flynn. I am delighted to consume this organic matter to replenish my energy reserves.”
Clu (laughing nervously): “Oh, that Alan, what a kidder!”
Rinzler: “Yes. I enjoy saying unusual things to elicit an amused response from my fellow Users.”
Clu (sweating): “Humans, Alan, you mean humans.”
love this ideaaaaa
also: does this mean that… if programs leave the Grid while living humans are digitized in there, the humans disintegrate and all their matter automatically goes out via the laser to shape itself into the form of the program who rezzed out
because that is soooo horror
…alternate funny and less-horrific version:
the programs rez out as many as they can, using whatever amount of User-world matter they’ve got in there… BUT they had no reference for how size translates from on-to-off-Grid
so, one User becomes one teeny tiny angry little ARMY of hundreds of itsy-bitsy programs
Adopting this into my headcanon where the Encom trio plus the two sons all get involved in the Grid after Legacy
Which means that if everyone’s in there a max of 5 programs can go outside at any given time
(or rather 4, since Quorra’s already using Kevin’s and doesn’t wanna go back in.
This also makes Kevin count as a ‘program’ for the purposes of going to the user world.
Plus they don’t want to leave the programs unsupervised in the human world which then gets it down to 3 spots)
This leads to competition:
Beck: Hey! Alan said it’s my turn with his organic material!
Anon: ButI wanna see a bunny! I’ll fight you for it. Winner gets the flesh!
Beck: Oh, yay, Sam’s here, one of us can use his. Hey Sam, can we borrow your molecules?
Sam: This isn’t creepy at all
LMFAO
…this appeals to me very very much, and even more if I combine it with the “tiny programs” part of the headcanon
Sam: all of you can go out and look at bunnies. you just have to be smaller the more of you there are. One User has to accompany you full-size to make sure the bunny doesn’t squash you.
