When the leaderboards for Portal began showing the same username at the top of every main category, the community knew it was watching the rise of a specialist. Under the handle SiDiouS, a runner whose YouTube tagline casually calls him “that guy who got sub 15,” built a body of work that stretches from individual chambers to full game runs and culminates in holding world records in all five of Portal’s main categories at the same time.
This profile looks at how SiDiouS turned one of speedrunning’s most studied games into a personal laboratory, how he pushed each category to new limits, and why his Portal career already stands out as one of the most complete legacies in a single game.
Finding a home in Portal
SiDiouS is best known as a Portal specialist. His Speedrun.com profile and his YouTube channel are dominated by Portal runs, breakdowns, and playlists that track his improvement over years rather than weeks.
By the early 2020s he had already gravitated toward Glitchless, the category that tries to complete Portal without using the movement and clipping glitches that define most other high level routes. In 2021, when Msushi released his video “The Quest to Beat Portal Glitchless in Under 15 Minutes,” SiDiouS appeared in the comments with a simple update: he now held all twenty four Glitchless individual level world records at the same time.
Owning an entire grid of individual chambers in one of speedrunning’s most picked apart categories was a statement. It showed that he was willing to grind the game chamber by chamber, learning not just the broad route but every corner, angle, and portal placement that could take a few hundredths of a second off a split. That methodical chamber work would become the foundation for everything that followed.
From chamber grids to full game records
Once the Glitchless chamber grid belonged to him, SiDiouS turned the same attention to full game runs. The Inbounds category, which keeps the player within the intended map geometry while still allowing glitches, became one of his main proving grounds.
In 2024 a post on Reddit’s r/speedrun announced “Portal Inbounds in 7:58 by Sidious | THE FIRST SUB 8 RUN,” marking the first time a human runner had pushed the category under eight minutes. A playlist on his channel shows the progression that led to that barrier falling: double world record sessions, incremental improvements in the low eight minute range, and the final sub eight breakthrough.
That run did more than set a new time. Portal’s Inbounds category had already been explored for years, and shaving seconds meant finding microscopic optimizations in portal placement, movement lines, and how aggressively to cut GLaDOS’s dialogue. By pushing Inbounds under eight minutes, then continuing to improve on that route, SiDiouS showed that the game still had room for large steps forward in categories long thought close to solved.
Shaving seconds from any percent
If Inbounds demanded discipline, any percent Out of Bounds demanded audacity. Out of Bounds runs use glitches to leave the intended spaces entirely, skimming through the void between test chambers and reentering the map only when it is absolutely necessary. It is the category where Portal looks most like a broken physics experiment and least like the careful puzzle game Valve shipped in 2007.
Coverage on PacePals, a speedrunning news site, captured one step in this process in late 2024, when “Sidious” set an any percent record of 5:46.875 after grinding the category for eleven days straight. That 5:46 was only the beginning. His Portal any percent playlist on YouTube shows a long sequence of personal bests and former world records, including runs at 5:46, 5:44, 5:39, 5:13, 5:11, and 5:10, each one a demonstration of slightly faster movement, cleaner void navigation, and more aggressive cutscene skips.
That progression culminated in a 5:07.020 Out of Bounds run, verified on Speedrun.com and posted with a dedicated video on his channel. The leaderboard entry shows it sitting at the top of the category, with more than a minute cut away from the typical first time speedrun of the game and significant distance between his run and most of the field.
The way he arrived there is consistent with the rest of his work. Rather than relying on a single new glitch, the 5:07 is built from many small improvements: slightly better execution of established skips, tighter bunnyhopping in the escape sequence, and a willingness to turn once marginal lines into standard route choices.
No SLA and Legacy: mastering Portal’s most technical rulesets
Alongside Inbounds and Out of Bounds, SiDiouS took on the rulesets that try to rein in the more extreme tools available in Portal’s engine. “No SLA” categories restrict save and load abuse, while the “Legacy” variants preserve older patch behavior and earlier rules, creating a parallel set of leaderboards that keep long standing routes and discoveries relevant even as the game evolves.
In early 2026 he captured the Inbounds No SLA world record with a 9:10.650, verified on Speedrun.com and paired with a detailed world record video that walks through the route. Without the ability to constantly reset and retry through save abuse, runs in this category demand long stretches of consistency. The 9:10 shows him striking a balance between safety and risk, trimming seconds where they matter most while still protecting a world record pace that can be lost to a single failed skip.
The Legacy ruleset posed a different challenge. In a separate thread, r/speedrun highlighted his 10:50.325 Inbounds Legacy run as “THE FIRST SUB 11,” noting that it finally toppled an 11:14 world record by Nick that had stood since 2023 and was regarded in the community as one of Portal’s longest lasting marks. His own video for the 10:50 run frames it as both a barrier break and a capstone on years of incremental routing in that specific ruleset.
By holding world records in Inbounds No SLA and Inbounds Legacy alongside his work in the more familiar categories, SiDiouS showed that he was willing to take on every variant that mattered to the Portal community, not just the most visible any percent board.
Individual levels and Glitchless mastery
Even while hunting full game records, SiDiouS never abandoned the chamber by chamber grind that first put his name on the map. His playlists of Portal individual level runs track a sprawling set of world records across Inbounds, Out of Bounds, Glitchless, and Legacy level leaderboards.
Speedrun.com entries list him with first place times such as a 20.385 Out of Bounds run of chamber 09 and a 16.665 Inbounds run of e01, among others, each representing dozens or hundreds of attempts to lower a level by fractions of a second. On the Glitchless side, records like his 29.925 on Advanced chamber 16 and a string of other advanced chamber times show how deeply he has internalized the “intended” physics of Portal while operating at a speed far beyond casual play.
The comment he left on Msushi’s video four years ago, casually noting that he had just taken ownership of all twenty four Glitchless individual levels, reads today like an early mission statement. The later IL playlists and level entries confirm that this was not a brief moment of dominance but part of an ongoing pattern of revisiting chambers, discovering new micro optimizations, and pushing both old and new routes forward.
The five record sweep
In mid 2025, a post on r/speedrun summed up what SiDiouS had achieved: “Sidious has taken the last remaining Portal WR and now holds all 5 records simultaneously.” The thread notes that he became only the fourth person ever to simultaneously lead every main category and just the second to hold a complete slate once the fifth category was added.
Those five records correspond to Portal’s current full game pillars: Out of Bounds, Inbounds, Inbounds No SLA, Inbounds Legacy, and Glitchless. Earlier in the game’s history another runner, Shizzal, had briefly held all four of the then primary categories, a moment that drew coverage from PC Gamer and marked the first time one name sat at the top of all of Portal’s main boards. By repeating and expanding that feat in a later era and with an additional category, SiDiouS placed himself squarely in the lineage of runners who have defined what high level Portal play looks like.
Community coverage has reflected that status. PacePals described his string of world records as a kind of “Portal perfection,” noting that his simultaneous hold on all five main categories represented something many fans had assumed would never be pulled off.
Style, presence, and ongoing legacy
A large part of SiDiouS’s legacy lives in how he presents his work. His channel does not just upload final, polished world records. It archives failed attempts, near misses, and small personal bests, often in the same playlists as the records that replaced them. For historians and new runners, that archive offers a rare window into how a top player iterates over months and years.
His interactions in community spaces show someone engaged with the broader history of the game. In Msushi’s video comments he responds to an offhand joke about “twelve dimensional ping pong” by quietly reporting on his own progress in Glitchless. In other threads and discussions he talks about how new skips shift the balance between categories, and how difficulty has moved between Out of Bounds, Inbounds, and Glitchless as routes evolve.
As of early 2026, Speedrun.com and his own videos present a portrait of an active runner rather than a retired legend. New IL records appear on the boards, new any percent attempts appear in playlists, and the categories themselves continue to change as the community refines rules and splits No SLA into cleaner variants.
In that sense, any attempt to write about SiDiouS is a snapshot rather than a final verdict. What can already be said with confidence is that he has built one of the most complete single game résumés in modern speedrunning. Through IL sweeps, barrier breaking full game runs, and the rare five record sweep across Portal’s main categories, he reshaped what it means to “solve” Valve’s puzzle classic at full speed and left a trail of videos, leaderboards, and community discussion that future runners will study for years to come.