The Narrator (The Stanley Parable)

"But here's a spoiler for you; that timer isn't a catalyst to keep the action moving along. It's just seconds ticking away to your death. You're only still playing instead of watching a cutscene because I want to watch you for every moment you're powerless. To see you made humble. This is not a challenge, it's a tragedy. You wanted to control this world, that's fine. But I'm going to destroy it first, so you can't."

- The Narrator directly to the player in the bad ending

The Narrator is one of two characters appearing in the clever adventure/puzzle game, The Stanley Parable, along with the titular playable protagonist. The narrator's roles as a character depends on what the Stanley, the player, does, as the game allows the player to form an endless amount of conclusive outcomes.

What the narrator is exactly shall always remain a mystery. He is aware that he is in a video game, is just a voice in Stanley's head, and has complete control over reality itself, or at least Stanley's reality. He sees how Stanley's boring life works out and always puts a sadistic and/or helpful twist before resetting it to see what happens in the next incarnation of Stanley's life. Others believe Stanley is simply insane, imagining that he is being terrorized by an omnipresent bully stuck in his head.

Overview
Stanley is simply a middle-aged man working at an unlabeled office with several other co-workers. All he does is press the keys on his computer when he is instructed to, but he is happy with his boring occupation. However, on a certain day, everyone single human being in the office suddenly disappears, including the hundreds of co-workers and managers.

"Good" Ending
When Stanley investigates his boss' office, with the narrator's commentary, he stumbles upon a mind control facility, revealing that all of the workers including himself have been controlled to unquestionably and obediently work by the employers. Stanley, enraged, completely destroys the facility's power, demolishing the mind control devices before he barges out of the office as a free man.

"Bad" Ending
The bad ending truly shows the narrator's sadistic side. If Stanley instead activates the facility's power for himself, the narrator berates him for being so selfish and sets the office to self-destruct in two minutes. While the timer counts down, the narrator constantly insults and taunts Stanley and tells him out of pity why everyone disappeared. The narrator reveals that he simply erased them from existence and set Stanley free from the mind control machine, just to see what happens. He also reveals that the story of Stanley has been completely recreated by the narrator's god-like reality bending abilities several times, all of them differing. He sometimes allows Stanley to die a horrible, slow death, and at others gives him freedom, all depending on the narrator's bipolar mood and cold-blooded traits. At other times, he lets the office and everyone in it burn to a crisp, the narrator amused by how he allows reality to work out, but has it always reset for another era to begin. The narrator is cut off by the entire facility exploding, killing Stanley in the process.

Gaming Ending
When Stanley refuses to do what to the narrator says, the latter displays five buttons in front of the former's very eyes, each button labelled as their respective numbers. These five buttons are used on a rating scale (1 to 5) on the narrator's game idea. After sending Stanley to a false leader-board, the narrator teleports Stanley to a made-up game. The game is a cardboard cut-out of a baby "crawling" towards a patch of fire. Stanley loses if the baby reaches the fire, and he must constantly teleport the never-endingly crawling baby back to the start by pressing a button. The narrator orders the player to play for four hours straight, but this is obviously impossible, so letting the baby die will anger the narrator and trigger him to teleport Stanley to Minecraft. He later gets bored and teleports Stanley to Portal, ultimately ending up in the narrator arrogantly leaving Stanley to rot.

Coward Ending
If the player simply sits at their desk desperately waiting for commands, the narrator will call them a coward who can't decide for themselves and resets the game.

Mariella Ending
Stanley believes he is insane after just believing the strange events in his life were simply dreams, but this theory was diminished once he couldn't wake up. Meanwhile, the narrator ironically narrates about how Stanley is disturbed and confused how there's a random narrator narrating in his head and how odd it is the narrator is narrating about Stanley's confusion to the narrator narrating about himself. He then begins to panic before the screen cuts to black. The narrator then begins to follow a woman named Mariella, who is on her way to a meeting In the street she sees Stanley, insanely muttering to himself saying how nothing is real before he falls down, dead.

Museum Ending
When the player attempts to escape instead of head to the mind control facility to unlock the first two endings, they will be thrown in a junk filled container that will be crushed and recycled. A female narrator takes over the usual commentator's job and teleports Stanley to a clear white museum of beta elements from when the game was in its infancy. She then informs the player that the only way to save Stanley is to quit and reset the game before he is violently crushed. If they do not, just that will happen and the player will be left on a blank screen.

Confusion Ending
If the player gets extremely lost in the underground "basement" area of the game, even the narrator will be confused and clueless on where to continue to get back to the original story. He then resets the game several times, but cannot seem to boot the game back up into shape, thinking they "broke" it. The narrator then makes an "adventure line", being a thick yellow endless line made to lead the player to the correct location. The line does not work, leading back to the monitor room, and the two eventually encounter a large schedule detailing on how the confusion ending works due to the fact it's extremely complicated. The narrator, baffled at the fact that his life has been scripted the entire time, refuses to follow the schedule and doesn't reset just to rebel against what the schedule says. The narrator details the philosophy and annoying antics of what's been happening until he is cut off by the game actually resetting to its original form.

Powerful Ending
Near the beginning, the player must cross a gap via an automatically controlled lift. If the player were to dive off the lift into the warehouse, the fall will instantly kill them and the narrator will taunt them in their death, stating that the only reason they idiotically committed suicide was to prove they were in control.

Zending
If the player actually obeys the narrator when he asks you to walk through the red door, he'll get infested with overwhelming happiness and teleports the both of them to a beautiful field of colorful stars where he hopes for them to forever live there in blissful peace. However, next to the field is a realistic stair case that leads to a fatal fall. The player must constantly cast themselves from the peak of the case (while the narrator constantly tells them not to, as if you die, the game will reset and the narrator's memory of the star field shall be erased) until they finally die.

Out of The Window Ending
If the player manages to "glitch" their way out of the window, they will fall into a white void. The narrator then asks if the player is sick of the gag and then blurts out a detailed, overly-complicated description on what would have happened if they chose the other choice. Either way, Stanley will be left to sit in the void until it is manually reset.

Serious Room Ending
If the player uses cheats, the narrator will teleport/banish them to the serious room, a room that's extremely serious. After lecturing the player on how extremely serious the serious room is, the narrator leaves them there forever as punishment for cheating.

Trivia

 * The narrator is voiced by British actor Kevan Brighting.
 * The narrator shares similarities to GLaDOS, the main antagonist of the Portal games.
 * They are both antagonistic characters who mostly talks to the player from an unseeable location in a mellow tone
 * They have a passive-aggressive relationship towards the player
 * They both allow the player to escape into a grassy environment from a dark abandoned facility
 * They both team up with the player despite their rivalry (the ability to team up with the Narrator is only available on certain endings)
 * They both have complete control over the environment of the player
 * They both drive the player to what could have been a violent death, and the player isn't allowed to do anything about it (the narrator drives the player into a pair of garbage crushers while they're stuck in a trash container while GLaDOS drives the player into a patch of fire while they're stuck on a moving platform)
 * This is even further drilled in as, in the Gaming Ending, the narrator and the player reenact the first few minutes of the first Portal.
 * The Narrator is also similar to the Narrator from Naughty Bear games.
 * They are both nameless, unseen passive-aggressive narrators who commentates the player's life
 * They are both likely just figments of the player's twisted imagination
 * They both order the player what to do throughout the game