CLU is a more advanced incarnation of Flynn's original computer-hacking program, designed as an "exact duplicate of himself" within the Grid. Bridges also portrays CLU (Codified Likeness Utility), via digital makeup and voiceover, while John Reardon portrays CLU physically. He disappeared in 1989 while developing "a digital frontier that will reshape the human condition".
She and Kevin Flynn are depicted as recreational Go players. Wilde added that although " could have just been another slinky, vampy temptress", it was important for her to appeal to both men and women. Her hairstyle was influenced by singer Karen O. Wilde describes Quorra as akin to Joan of Arc. Flynn refers to her as his "apprentice" and has imparted volumes of information to her regarding the world outside of the Grid, which she longs to experience in person.
In the process thereof, Flynn discovered a series of "isomorphic algorithms" (ISOs), which carried the potential to resolve various mysteries in science, religion, and medicine, but CLU, considering these an aberration, betrayed Flynn, captured Tron, and destroyed all of the ISOs, with the sole exception of Quorra. There, Flynn reveals to Sam that he had been working to create a "perfect" computer system and had appointed CLU and Tron, a security program created by Alan Bradley, as its co-creators. CLU nearly kills Sam in a Light Cycle match but Sam is rescued by Quorra (Olivia Wilde), an apprentice of his father's, who conveys him to his father, now an old man, outside CLU's territory.
On the Grid, Sam is sent to compete against a masked program called Rinzler who, having realized that Sam is a User, takes him to CLU, a duplicate of Kevin Flynn from 1982 who acts as the Grid's ruler. There, Sam unintentionally teleports himself to the Grid, a virtual reality created by his father. Sam is visited by his father's friend, ENCOM executive Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner), urging Sam to investigate a message originating from Flynn's abandoned arcade. Twenty years later, his son, Sam (Garrett Hedlund), now ENCOM's primary shareholder, takes little interest in the company beyond playing an annual practical joke on the board of directors.
In 1989, Kevin Flynn ( Jeff Bridges), the software engineer and CEO of ENCOM International, mysteriously disappears four years after the death of his wife Jordan.