The recap for the Disney movie Wreck-It Ralph.
All spoilers are unmarked.
Litwak's Arcade opened in the 1980s and has been home to many arcade games since. One game that has been there since the opening is Fix-It Felix Jr., a Mario Bros.-like game featuring Wreck-It Ralph, the titular character of the movie. In the game, he is a villain who wrecks a penthouse apartment that was built over his homely stump, and the hero, the cheery Fix-It Felix, has to jump in and repair the damages. After 30 years, Ralph announces he is sick of being the villain in the game at the Bad-Anon, a meeting held in Pac-Man led by Clyde, and the villains in the other games (including Bowser, M. Bison and Dr. Eggman) freak out at this, with Bison even saying "You're not going Turbo, are you?" Ralph declines that, and at the end of the Bad-Anon he steals some fruit from Pac-Man, only to be interrupted by the Surge Protector at the gates. When Ralph gets past him, he finds that Q*bert had his game unplugged, and Ralph offers him the fruit he stole.It's the 30th anniversary of Fix-It Felix Jr. and everyone is there for the party, including Pac-Man and even Skrillex. After realizing that he wasn't invited, Ralph gets into the party, and everyone freaks out. When they reveal a cake that has everyone in the building and Ralph in the mud, Ralph and Gene, the owner of the penthouse in the game, argue until Ralph wrecks the cake and storms out. He makes a promise that he will win a medal to prove he's a good guy, which Gene says if that happens Ralph can live in the penthouse. While at Tapper, Ralph discovers a recently PTSD-ed soldier from Hero's Duty, a modern FPS that only got plugged in last week. The soldier tells him there is a medal at the top of the tower, and Ralph manages to knock him out with a bug, and then steal his armor. When getting to the game, he tells Q*bert that he is Ralph in disguise.
A young arcade gamer inserts 8 quarters ($2.00) into Hero's Duty, and plays the game normally until Ralph becomes scared of the game, resulting in the player losing the game. She then tries Sugar Rush, but the bullies prevent her from doing so. Eventually, she comes across Fix-It Felix Jr., but Ralph is missing, and Felix is confused. The residents then panic, and Litwak is called in to put an "Out of Order" sign on the game. Q*bert, who met a disguised Ralph earlier, arrives on the train and tells Felix that Ralph has "gone Turbo". Felix tries to investigate, but Sargent Calhoun and the rest of the soldiers shoot in his direction. Calhoun spares him once she realizes he isn't a Cy-Bug, and he bonds with her, commenting on her high-definition face.
Ralph then gets to the top of the tower in Hero's Duty and collects the Medal of Heroes. When going down the stairs, he accidentally activates a Cy-Bug and tries to fend it off, going into an escape pod in the process. Felix and Calhoun notice him and the Cy-Bug, and the pod flies into Sugar Rush, a sparkly 1990s racing game.
Ralph's medal has disappeared from him and is on top of a candy tree. While trying to retrieve it, he notices Vanellope von Schweetz, a glitchy character. They chase after the medal, and Vanellope gets it.
We are then introduced to how Sugar Rush works as the game's plethora of racers arrive at the starting line, greeted by the jovial and eccentric King Candy. King Candy explains that each racer must pay one coin to race, and the top nine finishers will be available on the following day's roster. As each racer pays, Vanellope uses the medal to get into the system herself, to the horror of all present. King Candy, reacting with horror to her presence, forbids her to race. The other racers pay her a visit while she is building her kart and destroy it, disabling her from racing.
Ralph witnesses this and scares the racers off. Ralph then berates her, but she insults him right back for how he earned the medal. This angers him (especially when Vanellope takes the game of Hero's Duty in vain) to the point that he smashes a jawbreaker in half. Because of his amazing strength, Vanellope gets an idea. She explains to Ralph that the medal can be won back if she gets first place in a race. She then offers to make a pact that if he can help her win, she'll give Ralph the medal back. Ralph reluctantly accepts her offer.
After making the said pact, they head off to the kart bakery, where the racers make their karts, and they build a kart together. However, a security guard notices the unauthorized activity, and the authorities are sent out, along with King Candy. After a long chase, they give King Candy's party the slip by hiding in Diet Cola Mountain, an incomplete extra racetrack. It is discovered that this is Vanellope's home. From there, Ralph teaches Vanellope how to drive her new kart.
As Calhoun and Felix search for Ralph and the Cy-Bug in Sugar Rush, Felix explains that he is searching for Ralph, who had probably "gone Turbo". When Calhoun asks Felix about this term, he then explains that a long time ago, there was an old racing game called Turbo Time starring a self-obsessed racer named Turbo. One day, a RoadBlasters arcade cabinet entered the arcade and gained more popularity than Turbo Time. Out of jealousy, Turbo interrupted the game. He traveled to the other game and crashed into the main player of the new racing game. By doing so, he crashed both games, which led to both of them being unplugged.
As Felix and Calhoun progress (and get stuck in Nesquik-sand), they fix the pod that Ralph is in and fly off to search for the lone Cy-Bug. Felix later falls in love with Calhoun. However, Calhoun's past comes back to haunt her when Felix refers to her as a "dynamite gal", something that her fiancé, who was murdered by a Cy-Bug on their wedding day because she failed to check the area, would call her. Distraught, she forces Felix to leave her ship. A heartbroken Felix walks to King Candy's castle and meets Sour Bill, King Candy's assistant. He locks up Felix after he realizes he should have locked up Ralph. After a long search, Calhoun soon discovers the Cy-Bug has laid hundreds of eggs underground.
Before the race, King Candy finds Ralph in the absence of Vanellope and offers Ralph his medal, which King Candy has dug into the game's code to retrieve (using the "Konami Code"). The only condition was that Vanellope couldn't race. When Ralph asks why King Candy and the other racers hate her so much, he explains he doesn't. Vanellope is a glitch, and so this would cause her to act abnormally (such as teleporting and jumping around, sometimes through objects). If she won the race, she would become an official part of the racing roster. He explains that her glitching would give gamers the impression that the game was broken and the game would be unplugged. While everyone else could be evacuated from the game, Vanellope could not leave, as she was a glitch, and as a result, once the game's unplugged, she would die along with the program.
So King Candy leaves Ralph with that and exits. When Vanellope returns and gives Ralph a medal that says, "You're my hero", he explains to Vanellope that she cannot race for her good. But she notices that Ralph has the Medal of Heroes and doesn't believe him, threatening to race independently. Ralph furiously stops her and hangs her by her jacket on a nearby lollipop tree, yelling, "I'm doing this for your own good!". He then reluctantly proceeds to destroy her kart into pieces. Vanellope tries to stop Ralph, but it's too late and it's no use. She falls off, says, "You really are a bad guy.", and runs away, heartbroken.
Ralph goes back to Fix-It Felix Jr. and sees that the entire game is deserted, save for one lone citizen, Gene. Gene explains that the game was set to be unplugged in the morning that everyone had evacuated, and that he had stayed behind to enjoy one last martini. Gene did say that he would not dishonor his bets and gave Ralph the penthouse's key since he acquired a medal as agreed. Ralph does not realize the extent of this, saying he is sick of being alone in the dump, to which Gene retorts that it is over, for "now you can be alone in the penthouse". Alone, Ralph goes to the balcony and throws his medal at the screen that sits above the game, realizing that he's no hero after everything he's done. This causes the poster that previously covered the screen to unstick and partly fall off, revealing the side of the Sugar Rush arcade cabinet in front of Ralph's game. He discovers that Vanellope is on the cabinet and wonders why she is on the machine's artwork if she is a glitch. Ralph suspects something foul at play and returns to Sugar Rush to get answers.
He comes across Sour Bill and places him in his mouth as a form of torture until he confesses. Sour Bill explains that King Candy tried to delete Vanellope's code on purpose. When Ralph asks about his motives, Sour Bill says he doesn't know why, and in fact, no one knows why. He explains it is like this because King Candy locked up all the characters' memories and says that if Vanellope crosses the finish line, the game will reset, and she won't be a glitch anymore. Upon locating Felix, Ralph begs Felix to fix the wrecked kart so Vanellope can race. He agrees to do so after discovering how hard of a life Ralph has had. After also freeing and making amends with Vanellope, they start the race, and as the race proceeds, the hatched Cy-Bugs attack Sugar Rush. Felix, Calhoun, and Ralph then battle them. Vanellope catches up to King Candy mid-race, but Candy tries to ram Vanellope off the track. When Vanellope tries to escape, King Candy instantly gets impatient and viciously attacks her with his cane. Vanellope's glitching interferes with King Candy's code and reveals that King Candy is Turbo in disguise, having somehow escaped his game before it was unplugged. Much to the shock of Ralph and Felix. Not wanting Vanellope to undo all he has done to the game, Turbo rams his car into Vanellope's, causing her to be dragged in front of the car while approaching a walled fork in the road. Vanellope finally controls her glitching to escape from Turbo and drives away, yelling at her victory. An enraged Turbo tries to pursue, but suddenly, a Cy-Bug appears on the track and devours him alive.
The group attempts to flee the doomed game, but Vanellope cannot pass through the exit due to her status as a glitch. Calhoun says the game can't be saved because there is no beacon in the game like the beacon in Hero's Duty which attracts and kills the Cy-Bugs. Ralph, in a last-ditch effort, heads to Diet Cola Mountain, where he plans on collapsing its Mentos stalactites into the cola at the bottom, causing an eruption that would attract the bugs. While on top of the mountain, he pounds the mentos into the diet cola below from the top. However, before he can finish, Turbo, fused with the Cy-Bug that devoured him, arrives and stops him. Turbo declares that he has become "the most powerful virus in the arcade" and plans to take over all the other games using his new powers, but not before getting revenge on Ralph. Ralph and Turbo battle, but Turbo quickly overpowers Ralph, carrying him above the mountain and sadistically forcing him to watch Cy-Bugs close in on Vanellope. Ralph breaks free and dives toward the mountain, hoping his impact will start the eruption. Seeing Ralph dive towards the mountain, Vanellope, in turn, uses her glitching abilities to catch Ralph. Ralph breaks through the roof of the mountain, but before he is killed in the eruption, Vanellope catches him in Crumbelina's cart. The eruption shines a bright light, which in turn draws the Cy-Bugs to their destruction. Turbo, being more powerful than the others, can resist for a short time, but his Cy-Bug programming overwhelms him, and he flies into the lava as well, killing him. Because video game characters who die outside their own game are unable to ever regenerate, this means that the Cy-Bugs and Turbo die permanently.
After Turbo and the Cy-Bugs are defeated, Felix restores the finish line, and Vanellope crosses it, restoring her memory as the game's lead character, and restoring the ruins of Sugar Rush. As Ralph predicted, the gamers end up favoring her as a character, despite her glitches (her ability to teleport short distances is perceived by at least some gamers as a special power, rather than a glitch), Turbo had been destroyed forever (Sour Bill, Wynnchel and Duncan, and the Sugar Rush Racers, never again heard about him). Vanellope despite being a princess decides to remain a racer instead and decides to remain in charge of the kingdom but rather under the title of President.
The movie ends as Felix and Ralph return to Fix-It Felix Jr. in time to show Litwak the game works, and they also give Q*Bert and Co. a new opportunity to work with Ralph and crew in a "bonus level", sparing it and also giving its characters new respect for Ralph's work as the villain. Felix later marries Calhoun, with Ralph being the best man and a good friend, and Vanellope as the maid of honor. Ralph concludes the movie narrating both to the audience and the aforementioned support group for video game villains how much his life has now improved, but how the best part is that he's finally made a true friend in Vanellope and how his favorite part of the day is when the Nicelanders lift him before tossing him off the building. When he gets to see a quick glimpse of her in her game, he declares, "If that little kid likes me, how bad can I be?"
