Characters / Undertale - Main Characters

Undertale Main Character Index
Major | Others | Monsters | Spoilers (The Fallen Human)

Note that these characters are very important to the story, and as such have the potential to be Walking Spoilers. Read at your own risk.

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Character-Specific Pages:

• The Human Child
• Flowey^note Includes his true identity
• Sans
• Papyrus
• Undyne
• Mettaton
• Asgore Dreemurr

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General Tropes applying to the whole crew

• Beware the Silly Ones: All of them have silly quirks that sometimes makes it hard to take them seriously. However, you most likely should take them seriously.
  • The Human Child is a little kid with comically serious face who is able to both salvage and destroy the entire Underground.
  • Flowey is an innocent-looking flower who introduces himself as your friendly tutorial. That facade doesn't last long AT ALL. He also is the true save data of the game, remembering everything you did and calling you out of it.
  • Toriel is a goofy mom character who secretly loves bad jokes. However, when you disobey her, you get the first serious boss battle of the game. Also, she is possibly just as powerful as Asgore, but is holding back because she loves you too much.
  • Papyrus is likely the goofiest and silliest character in the entire game and through most of Snowdin forest, he tries to stop you using extremely easy to get out of puzzles and traps. Even his boss fight seems to be laughably easy at first... until he turns your SOUL blue, which turns his boss fight into a pretty challenging platformer. Also, just like Toriel, it's implied he is even more powerful than that, but is just too darn nice and holds back because of that. Even Undyne acknowledges that if he wasn't so friendly and nice, she'd have no qualms letting him into the Royal Guard with her, and his control over his magic is so great that he's the only character in the entire game who literally cannot kill you — even Toriel, a Boss Monster with great control over her magic who is actively trying not to kill you, can accidentally cause you a game over.
  • Undyne is a Large Ham who absolutely loves anime, even thinking that it's real, and even burns her house while cooking pasta. However, she is the captain of the royal guard and for a good reason. Her determination also makes her the only boss who doesn't die in one hit in a No Mercy run.
  • Alphys is mostly a shy anime-loving geek who spends most of her time on social media posting goofy and embarrassing posts. While it's not as obvious with her as with other characters, she created the amalgamates and even Flowey, which proves that she can be dangerous when she isn't careful. Also, her "battle" when she's brainwashed by Asriel implies that Mettaton learned his power from her.
  • Mettaton mostly comes across as an excitable and kind of narcissistic TV show host, and his attempts at killing you are always interrupted at key moments by Alphys or turn out to be pretty incompetent. Turns out, Alphys wanted him to act like that, and when he tries to kill you on his own terms, you have to fight powerful mercenaries, then you get a pretty challenging boss fight with him.
  • When you meet him, Asgore is just a friendly and chipper guy who loves tea and flowers and is terrible at naming things. However, his boss fight is quite challenging and he has pretty high stats — 80 DF and 80 ATK — a fact that's even more impressive if you consider he's actually holding back. He is the king of the Underground, after all.
  • Sans is a lazy skeleton who loves bad puns and pranks and always messes with his brother. He also has 1 DF and 1 ATK and is described as "The easiest enemy". However, once you get to the end of the Genocide Run, well… let's hope you are patient and have enough healing items, because you're definitely going to have a bad time: while his attacks each technically only do 1 point of damage, they're unique in that they don't give you any invincibility frames when you get hit and have a poisoning effect that drains your health for an additional amount of damage to what you took from his attacks. Oh, and he dodges when you attack him, so that 1 DF doesn't actually mean anything. You'll very quickly learn that his title as "The easiest enemy" is a load of bullshit.
• Color Motif:
  • Purple for Toriel: She dresses entirely in purple robes, lives in the extremely purple Ruins, and her boss battle takes place in front of a giant purple door.
  • Blue for Sans: He dresses in a large blue jacket, uses blue attacks, and his eye flashes blue when he grabs your soul and moves it directly.
  • Yellow for Alphys: She's a yellow lizard who modifies your phone so that it can shoot yellow projectiles for you to defend yourself with, and the few times she's seen using magic, it's in the form of yellow arcs of electricity. Yellow is also strongly associated with cowardice, and Alphys' fear and refusal to face it form a large part of her character arc.
  • Pink for Mettaton: His house is decorated entirely in pink, pink petals fall from the sky as he sings, and his preferred body has a chassis that is mostly pink.
• Four-Philosophy Ensemble: The main monsters you can befriend can count. This is evident if you research their behaviour in all three paths to the different endings.
  • The Optimist: Papyrus. His naive yet kind nature makes him the most friendly of them. Hot-headed and rather self-centered, but in a good way, Papyrus is also loyal to you once you befriend him. He is one of the few that even in a No Mercy Run will say upon his death that he believes that you can be a good person, showing just how deep his optimism goes.
  • The Cynic: Undyne. The foil to Papyrus, once she meets you in person, she blames your unwillingness to die and give your SOUL as the reason why everyone is still stuck in the Underground. She mellows out significantly if you befriend her.
  • The Realist: Alphys. How she acts depends on which path you're taking. She'll either consider you friendly and a kind person or such a nightmare that she avoids having to meet you in person and helps all the monsters to escape from your reach.
  • The Apathetic: Sans. He’s for the most part indifferent to everything the player does apart from hurting Papyrus, and SAVING him during the Golden Ending requires convincing him that it's worth it to try and get a happy ending and that he (and you) shouldn’t give up. This indifference comes from knowing that reality can be and has been repeatedly reset from the SAVE ability that the player has, making any progress the monsters make or any harm you do not matter in the longer run.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: The four main monsters you befriend:
  • Papyrus is sanguine. He is egotistical, hammy, and goofy, but also incredibly cheerful, optimistic, and friendly.
  • Undyne is choleric. She is a Hot-Blooded Large Ham who takes everything, even cooking, extremely seriously.
  • Alphys is melancholic. She is a quiet and nerdy Shrinking Violet and a Nervous Wreck.
  • Sans is phlegmatic. He is lazy, laid-back, loves to joke around, and is pretty nice and calm as long as you don't piss him off.
• The Friends Who Never Hang:
  • Papyrus's interactions with Alphys are limited: Beyond mentioning her as the one who designed the colour tile puzzle in Snowdin and showing up during Alphys's date to cheer her up, they don't interact that much.
  • The only times where Sans and Undyne are seen together is when Undyne gets frustrated at Sans for sleeping while she's chasing you down and in some of the Neutral Endings where both of them survive.
  • Sans and Alphys never interact much, though they do know each other since she's familiar with his humor. Whatever this connection is, the game doesn't elaborate on it.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Flowey is, well, a flower. Considering he is Asgore's son and he probably came up with the name by himself, it starts to make sense. Like Father, Like Son.
  • Toriel is your tutorial, being the one to teach you basic game mechanics such as Acting and the operation of the simple puzzles in the game's first area.
  • Sans and Papyrus refer to the fonts that their text boxes use (Comic Sans and Papyrus, respectively). Both of those fonts aren't very popular, as Comic Sans is seen as lazy and Papyrus is used by people who want to seem more important than they are… which fits Sans's and Papyrus's personalities perfectly. Also, Sans is a comic.
  • Undyne is one letter off from "undine". Undines are mythical creatures that live in water, which explains why Undyne looks like a fish and lives in Waterfall. Also, some undines seek human souls, though for different reasons than Undyne. Also, her name kind of sounds like "undying", and she is determined not to die, especially on a Genocide Run, where you try to kill her and she generates human determination in order to turn into "Undyne the Undying".
  • Possibly unintentional, but "Alphys" rearranged can be "Shy Pal", which describes her perfectly: a socially awkward individual who just wants to be the protagonist's friend.
  • "Dreemurr", Asgore's second name, is an anagram for "murderer" and he needs to take human SOULs to escape the Underground, which means that he has to kill some humans. "Asgore" alone should tell you a thing or two about his goal. Subverted, as he doesn't actually want to kill anybody. And if taken into its other meaning, "dreamer", it reflects the king's dream to free monsterkind.
• Nice Mean And In Between:
  • The three Arc Villains between the exit of the Ruins and the entrance of New Home:
    • Papyrus is the nice, being a goofy villain who gives you lame puzzles and befriends you easily, no matter the path you choose.
    • Undyne is the mean, being the only one who never hides her intentions to kill you, but also requiring the Nice character and a perfect run to be befriended.
    • Mettaton is the in-between, only pretending to be a threat at the start before revealing his true plan, remaining cordial even when he attacks you with all his strength, and finally helping a friend to socialize with you if you do a perfect run.
  • The royal family counts as well:
    • Toriel is the nice, presenting the dangers of the underground in a pedagogic way and encouraging you to resolve conflicts the pacifist way.
    • Flowey is the mean, making you believe that Violence is the Only Option and supporting you in your killing spree if you choose a No Mercy run.
    • Asgore Dreemurr is the in-between: while he's a nice person, he can't break the promise he made to the monsters to free them at any cost. To do so, he destroys your chance to resolve the battle peacefully and reluctantly attacks you with the hope you will win the battle.
• Only One Name: Surnames possibly aren't a thing in the Underground, or at least, aren't as standard as they are most everywhere else. The only one of the main characters to have a surname is Asgore, and he is of royal descent. What is weird is that even The Human Child, who is a human and should have one, has only one name given. A handful of minor and spoiler characters do have given last names, however, such as Heats Flamesman and W.D Gaster.
• Parental Abandonment: Not one of them ever mention having living parents. Justified in the case of Toriel and Asgore due to how Boss Monsters reproduce – boss monster children age by drawing power from the parents, and eventually in the course of growing up kill them.
• Vague Age:
  • The Human Child is, well, a kid, so they are likely between the ages of 5 and 12.
  • Flowey is also a kid with a sprite that is about the same size as the protagonist, but acts older because he's been around for a long time thanks to his history with resetting the game.
  • While Toriel and Asgore both look middle-aged, it's explained later in the game that Boss Monsters become old only when they give birth to a child: because their son died, they probably kept this form for decades and could even keep it forever. It's also implied that the goat-like child monster who apparently becomes their leader in war in the intro actually is Asgore in his younger years.
  • The rest of the main characters are adults, though their exact ages are unknown. Even their relative ages are unknown, though the creator of the game hinted in a tweet that Sans is older than Papyrus.

Toriel

"Do not be afraid, my child."

The guardian of the Ruins area. Toriel is a motherly figure who literally takes your hand through the first part of the story. Her favourite food is snail pie.

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• Accuser of the Brethren: Toriel is not happy with Asgore when they meet in person in the Golden Ending. While he's happy she came back from the Ruins, Toriel shuts him down and tells him he made his plan to free monsterkind more difficult than it needed to be: he could have crossed the barrier with one human SOUL and found six more to break it from the outside instead of waiting for seven humans to fall into the Underground.
• Action Mom: She's a big, stocky, coddling goat-woman, but it's important to remember that beneath her gentle demeanor is a powerful fire mage. It's later revealed that she is in fact a Boss Monster, the strongest kind of monster, and due to ambiguity about how old she and Asgore really are and if it is indeed him pictured in the intro about the war between humans and monsters, it's possible she was even alive to fight in the war, like Gerson, another old monster, did. She even pulls the fireball equivalent of a Dynamic Entry on two different final bosses. With the vast difference between the Human Child's stats and hers, and knowing the difficulty of Asgore's boss fight at the end of the game even with him holding back and him having identical stats to Tori's, Toriel would be the surefire (pun intended) winner and a nigh-impassable roadblock for showing up that early in the game... if she was actually putting her full power into it and fighting to kill. Instead she is very deliberately holding back and weakening herself because she truly doesn't want to hurt them, trying to make them kill her in a desperate last-ditch attempt to make them more capable of surviving against killers like Asgore Dreemurr.
• Actually Pretty Funny: Near the end of Hard Mode, the Annoying Dog tells her that the Hard mode's continuation would be "hard". Given her love for puns, she's very close to bursting out laughing.
• Affectionate Nickname: Sans and Asgore both call her "Tori".
• The Ageless: Toriel is a Boss Monster, which is a species of monster that does not age unless she has a child. So, like her ex-husband, she hasn't aged since her son died, which may have been at least decades to centuries ago (the year 201X).
• The Alcoholic: Going by Flowey's alarm clock dialogue, Toriel during her loneliest and darkest days indulged in “merrymaking” during parties up to passing out, and even neglecting eating and sleeping on some days. After what she went through it’s understandable.
• Alone with the Psycho: She is this in a genocide run, and until you kill her, she doesn't suspect a thing. You Bastard!.
• Anti-Magic: Toriel saves the Player Character from Flowey by neutralizing his bullets. Twice.
• Anti-Villain: Of the “In Name Only” variant. She attempts to keep you in the ruins by force and attempts to trap you there for the rest of your life, but only because she believes that you leaving is certain death. It being heavily implied that she witnessed this happen to the last 6 children who fell into the underground and her losing both of her children in one day makes her actions much more sympathetic and understandable. She, like Papyrus, is one of the only bosses who refuse to mortally injure you in battle, and starts missing attacks intentionally when you reach critical health (and if you still somehow die, she looks absolutely mortified).
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: When you're saving her soul from Asriel, you're saving her alongside her ex-husband Asgore. Despite her animosity towards him, being unceasingly kind to him is enough to snap her out of her hopelessness too.
• Badass Adorable: She's an old lady that takes the player character to her home, protects them from traps and other monsters along the way, and can even be hugged by the human child. Don't let her kind demeanor fool you, for she is a very powerful user of magic and won't hesitate to kick your behind down the hall if she doesn't hold back.
• Barefoot Cartoon Animal: Wears a robe, but neither shoes nor socks, unlike most of the other monsters we meet. Yet she has a sock drawer in her room. Scandalous indeed!
• Behind Every Great Man: According to Gerson, she was the brains of the royal family as Queen and everything went downhill when she left.
• Beware the Nice Ones:
  • Toriel effortlessly dealing with Flowey's attack at the introduction should be an indication that she is as powerful as she is kind. She also does the same thing to Asgore near the True Pacifist route's climax.
  • She is also willing to beat the player character to near-death to stop them from leaving the Ruins. She's doing it to spare them from what she believes to be a certain death, but still.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • In her debut appearance, she erases Flowey's unavoidable attack and then blows him away with a fireball.
  • She does it a second time when you face Asgore after exploring the True Laboratory. She even uses the same line.
• Book Ends: "Do not be afraid, my child" is said by her when she first saves you from Flowey. She says it twice more near the end of the True Pacifist route, first when she stops the fight between you and Asgore, then when all the ensnared monsters protect Frisk against Flowey.
• Boss Battle: The first one in the game, if you don't count Mini-Boss Napstablook. You must defeat her in order to leave the Ruins.
• The Bus Came Back: You don't see her again after you leave the Ruins for the majority of the game during a pacifist run, until you reach Asgore in the True Pacifist route, when she intervenes just in time and reveals she couldn't stop worrying about you all this time.
• Can't Hold Her Liquor: Played for laughs in the Undertale Anniversary Q&A. There, Sans recounts an incident where Toriel got drunk on three glasses of wine and started throwing mini-pizzas at him like Frisbees.
• The Chains of Commanding: Defied by Toriel. After Asgore decided to restart the "kill all humans" policy, she left him and went to the Ruins to save any children that would fall through the hole on Mount Ebbott. In any ending where she is the queen, she will undo Asgore's policy — or attempt to — even at the risk of angering the other monsters and denying them hope. For her, not killing is more important, even if she's forced out of her position.
• Character Development: Although she does little to stop Asgore for so long, in a Pacifist Route, she will finally return to interrupt his battle with Frisk, which puts her in a somewhat better position to call him out for his double-minded inaction.
• Chef of Iron: A boss fight AND someone quite talented at baking (especially considering the subpar resources other residents of the Underground mention making do with). You know that slice of butterscotch-cinnamon pie you can get from her? it's one of the few items that can recover all hit points upon consumption. You learn in Asgore's New Home that he has been trying to replicate that signature pie for years, but always failed. It hammers in just how much he needs her and misses her. If you save the pie for the fight against Asgore and eat it in front of him, he will be flooded by memories of her, further hampering the effectiveness of his (already much weaker than they could be) attacks... and if you fill the requirements for the True Pacifist ending, she shows up herself to throw down with him. Even the snail pie the protagonist understandably makes a face at is still said by the narration to smell good, and heals almost as much (just 1 HP shy of whatever your max HP is) as the butterscotch-cinnamon pie.
• Chekhov's Gag: Her attempts at puns are adorably bad. They're also the primary reason why Sans didn't kill you as soon as you left the ruins.
• Chekhov's Gunman: In the Neutral Pacifist and True Pacifist endings. In the former, she arrives too late to stop you from fighting Asgore, but resumes as Queen of the Underground and stops the policy about killing humans. In the latter, she pulls a Big Damn Heroes moment to save you from Asgore and chews him out for his cowardice, which stops the fight before it begins. In all runs, because she was telling jokes to Sans through the walls of the Ruins, she extracted a promise from Sans to not kill any humans; if not for that, you'd have died when he first saw you.
• Comically Missing the Point: According to Gerson, Toriel once wore a light blue dress with a floral pattern on it and people kept telling her that she had a nice muu-muu. Toriel mistook the compliments as her being called a cow and never wore it again.
• Commonality Connection: Bad puns is how she became friends with Sans to begin with.
• Cool Old Lady: Certainly has the attitude of one. While her age is never even hinted at, she prefers to spend her time cooking and reading. Subverted in that physically, she and Asgore are both rather young. Boss Monsters are explicitly stated to only age beyond adulthood as their child grows, so ever since Asriel's passing, she'll be where she is for keeps.
• Cute Little Fangs: Has a very prominent and very adorable pair of fangs, which can be seen in her portrait in the dialog box.
• Death Glare: Toriel is not subtle in hiding her displeasure when a Froggit jumps into an encounter with her young charge, and slides in to silently stare daggers at it until the intimidated Froggit wisely decides to scram.
• Death Seeker: Downplayed — Toriel is not actively suicidal, but goads you into a battle at the exit to the Ruins where you might end up killing her, and accepts that outcome if it happens, even using her last words to warn you about Asgore. She is implied to be more powerful than you, but holding back her true strength and making herself easy to defeat (or kill) for your sake; the CHECK text says her DF (defense) is 80, but internal data reveals that it’s actually 1, even on a neutral or pacifist run. The emotional burden of losing both of her children, separating from her husband, living alone in the Ruins, and trying and failing to protect every human child that has fallen into the underground has taken its toll on her.
• Die Laughing: She does this if you fake sparing her, then attack her when she drops her guard; she'll let out a twistedly approving and heartbroken "eh heh heh", remarking that you'll survive just fine in the brutal world of monsters despite her misgivings, just before she dies with a bitter smile.
• Do Not Call Me "Paul": She kindly reminds a character to not call her by her ex-husband's surname, which is also likely her wish of not wanting to be associated with him. She also gets upset at her ex-husband calling her "Tori".
• Do Wrong, Right: One of the reasons she wants nothing to do with Asgore anymore. She didn't condone his plan to begin with, but she absolutely despises his cowardice and unwillingness to go all the way with it, which is making all monsters suffer for who knows how long.
• Double Meaning: If you spare her enough times to convince her to let you leave the ruins, she will laugh bitterly at how she "cannot save even a single child." The phrasing makes sense in the immediate context, but it is also a reference to how this exact same event has occurred six times before.
• Dull Eyes of Unhappiness: When the Human Child keeps pressing her to leave and hurries after her down to the basement, making her realize they won't take no for an answer, her Stepford Smiler act comes to a screeching halt and the lights that had been in her eyes up until then visibly go out. Believing they'll die too, she has a cold, dead-eyed stare as she demands they "prove themself" capable of surviving out there by beating her.
  Narration in Toriel's fight: Toriel looks through you.
• Establishing Character Music: Toriel saves you from Flowey and is accompanied by a calm, soothing melody, helping establish her motherly, caring nature.
• Expy: A confirmed one for Ran Yakumo, Toby Fox's favourite Touhou character, possessing the same dignified maternal nature and very similar outfit. Her relation to the Underground calls to mind the role of Ran's master Yukari also.
• Family Theme Naming: With the Fallen's Canon Name, for gaming mechanics: Chara is short for "character", referencing their connection to the player, and Toriel is a Punny Name short for "tutorial", about her guiding Frisk through the Video Game Tutorial.
• The Farmer and the Viper: Toriel rescues you from Flowey, guides you through the Ruins, and give you a place to stay. If you decide to kill her anyway, then this trope is in effect.
• The Fettered: Very much so. She knocks out Flowey within a few minutes of the beginning gameplay, but doesn't kill him; she treats Asgore the same way during a Pacifist Run while showing that she had a better plan for breaking the barrier, but wouldn't go through with it because she doesn't kill. Likewise, she tries not to kill you when blocking you from leaving the Ruins, and her fireballs move away from you when your HP is low enough.
• Fiery Stoic: Toriel utilizes fire magic and has a maternal and calm personality.
• Foreign Queasine: A fantasy version with Toriel being a magic goat monster from an isolated, underground society of magic monsters the protagonist just fell into: first averted with Toriel's scrumptious-sounding signature butterscotch-cinnamon pie she likes to bake for human kids as a warm welcome to the Ruins and by the normal-sounding chocolate bar in her fridge (she clearly knows what human kids like to eat), but played straight in the next breath of her casual mention of holding off on snail pie "for now", wanting to ease the Human Child into the unconventional Underground diet. In Hard Mode, she bakes a Snail Pie instead and the protagonist apparently blanches at the smell of it. The narration on the other hand still thinks it smells "nice" but diplomatically allows that it is "An acquired taste." If the narrator truly is Chara, they might be speaking from personal experience. Toriel's fondness for snail pie and Asgore's apparent liking of eating snails too seems to be a reference to the idea that goats can and will eat literally anything.
• Good Is Not Soft: If Toriel weren't The Fettered, she could easily become the most formidable ruler in the Underground. When given the opportunity, she will fight anyone that tries to hurt you, including her ex-husband, will fight you to keep you from leaving the Underground, and destroy the one-way exit to the Ruins. Not to mention that she came up with a better plan to reap the seven souls needed to break the barrier than Asgore did, but wouldn't do it herself because of her Thou Shalt Not Kill policy.
• Go Through Me: This is part of her boss battle of the Ruins, hoping to encourage you to submit. No matter what happens, whether she lives or dies, she doesn't end up happy.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Is willing to die if you prove yourself strong enough to leave the Ruins, and is befuddled if you insist on sparing her until she eventually lets you go. Subverted if you're on a No Mercy Run and she realizes you are a (figurative) monster.
• Hidden Depths: Toriel is incredibly powerful, eclipsing most other characters with her CHECK stats and tying with Asgore in terms of ATK and DEF, if not in health. She can send Flowey and even Asgore Blown Across the Room with a single fireball, annihilate enemy bullets, and perform powerful healing magic casually, but you will never see her go all-out in battle against you, because she loves you too much.
• Homemade Sweater from Hell: In her dialogue from the alarm clock app, she mentions wanting to knit Sans a "horribly ugly sweater."
• Horrible Judge of Character: In a No Mercy run, she doesn't notice anything off about the player character's behavior until you One-Hit Kill her, even after you've killed every random encounter in the Ruins. For perspective, immediately after, you've been so corrupted that people on the outside think you are literally as well as metaphorically a monster, and when Sans and Papyrus think this, your LV is only 6. Immediately before killing Toriel, you are only LV 4 (and completely skip LV 5). ^note However, should you decide to spare her and abort the No Mercy run at her boss fight, she will notice you're covered in dust, though she nonetheless leaves you in peace.
• Hypocrite: Downplayed. She accuses Asgore of double-mindedness and guilt about his actions, pointing out that he could have bypassed the seal with only one human soul, killed (or at least, taken from the dying) six more, and broken the Barrier. However, even after Asgore started killing people (children), she doesn't intervene to try and stop him. It is implied, however, that she does her best to convince the people who fall underground to stay with her in the ruins, which fails repeatedly. When Frisk, the seventh human, falls underground, she even goes as far as to try to destroy the exit to keep them from leaving, though once they do leave (with or without killing her), she won't intervene again until the True Pacifist route.
• Hypocrite Has a Point: Even though Toriel did little to stop Asgore from killing people, her accusation of his inaction and guilt was rather accurate, as the man did nothing but wait until more humans fell into the underground rather than act to free monsterkind earlier. Asgore doesn't refute her accusation, either.
• Intergenerational Friendship: With Sans, as they both enjoy bad jokes.
• Interspecies Adoption: She tries to adopt you, a human child, and does so at the end of the True Pacifist run if you decide to stay with her. In the past, she did the same for the Fallen Child — and after tragically outliving them, tried to do the same with six other children who fell into the Ruins.
• Jerkass to One: She's nice to anyone who isn't Asgore. There are hints she doesn't completely hate them, though and it’s implied they’re on better terms in the True Pacifist ending.
• Just Friends: Subverted. She won't even allow this for Asgore. Though it’s implied in the true Pacifist end that they reconcile during the credits scene.
• The Kindnapper: Basically tries to kidnap the child, but does so to prevent them from going out and getting killed by monsters.
• Laughing Mad:
  • If you kill her when she has begun her speech and stopped attacking you or if you are on the No Mercy route, her last moments will be a painful smile about how much she misunderstood you before laughing and dissolving.
  • Conversely, if you spare her repeatedly and convince her to let you leave the ruins, she will laugh softly and bitterly at how she "cannot save even a single child."
• Leitmotif: "Fallen Down," which plays when she first introduces herself in a Big Damn Heroes moment. A variation of it plays again when Toriel suddenly comes back in at the end of a True Pacifist run, again, in a Big Damn Heroes moment. A part of it also plays during Asgore's fight.
• Mama Bear: For you, and for every child that falls Underground. Flowey and Asgore reveal this to the player the hard way. Oh, yes. She saves the protagonist from a seemingly-hopeless situation twice, once from Flowey and then again from Asgore. And, as noted above, if you come to her with very low health, she is not happy about it.
• Maybe Ever After: In the Golden Ending, Asgore winds up the groundskeeper at the same school Toriel runs. So… maybe they're back on speaking terms?
• Mix-and-Match Critters: She is mostly anthropomorphic goat, but has a few glaring differences. Maybe most notably she has paws instead of hooves, fangs instead of flat teeth, and dark red human-like eyes. As other Boss Monsters are seen with a lion-like mane (fittingly since a lion is "the king of the jungle" and Asgore is the king of the Underground), Toriel could be compared to a lioness, having paws, sharp teeth, and short fur without a mane or extra hair. Her paws, long floppy ears, and fur also make her look somewhat rabbit-like. Less overtly, her kind's larger size compared to lesser monsters, specialization in fire magic, and having horns, fangs, red eyes (in Tori's case at least), and immortality, are also the typical staples of dragons.
• Morality Chain:
  • To Sans. If it wasn't for her, he would have killed you as soon as you left the ruins. Or so he says.
  • Also, in a way, to the player. Every interaction with her in the beginning of the game is designed to make the player want to play the game as a pacifist without forcing them.
  • During the Pacifist Run ending, to Asgore. The minute she appears, saves you from fighting, and calls out Asgore for being a "cowardly whelp", he abandons the fight as well.
• My Beloved Smother: She solves the first "puzzle" in the game for you, tells you the solution to the second, and literally holds your hand through the third. She also scares away early random encounters for you. And at two different points, you can't advance in the game unless you ignore her instructions to stay put while she does something important. It is all played in a very endearing light, though.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • It is very difficult to die to her, as her bullets will actively avoid you when your health reaches a certain point. If you do manage to die to her, her split-second expression before the screen goes black is a shocked gasp.
  • In a much more sinister tone, if the player is on a No Mercy route, she comes to realize she wasn't protecting you, but the monsters outside the Ruins from you.
• My Greatest Second Chance: Everything she does stems from her desire to protect the protagonist, since every child that has fallen into the Underground and come under her wing has died. This makes more sense when you remember that both of her children — her son Asriel and his adopted human sibling — died on the same day.
• Nice Girl: Grudge toward Asgore aside, Toriel is shown to be a kindhearted, motherly woman who looks out for the child’s well-being and actively protects them from the monsters outside of her house. She is so gentle and loving that she’s unable to muster any killing instinct toward the child when they challenge her, and if they still somehow die, she looks absolutely mortified.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: If you're on a No Mercy route, then her helping you is what allows you to reach the rest of the Underground. On a Neutral Route ending where she's alive but Papyrus isn't, Sans doesn't have the heart to tell her that her promise led to Frisk killing his brother.
• Not So Stoic: In the Boss Battle against Toriel, she consistently acts cold and aloof, but will display a sudden expression of shock and horror if she accidentally kills you. Also, as you persist in refusing to retreat during a pacifist run, she will start to look doubtful, tear up, and give a sad smile while trying to convince you to either fight or go back upstairs. Then she'll hug you at the end while ordering you firmly not to come back.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • Toriel is kind and motherly, but the few times something breaks her cheerful demeanor, she is dead serious.
  • When Toriel is dying is the only time she'll speak with contractions.
• Outliving One's Offspring: Including the ones that she's rescued in the Ruins, the Fallen, and Asriel. It's also why she hasn't gotten any older.
• Parental Substitute:
  • She wants to become one for the player character. She gets her wish if you choose to stay with her in the Golden Ending, with Frisk shown snoozing peacefully in her new house on the surface, apparently having gotten human authorities to let her be Frisk's legal guardian.
  • Both the Undertale Anniversary Q.&A. and the Undertale Alarm Clock dialogue has Toriel also filling this role for Papyrus.
• Personality Powers: Played with. She isn't hotheaded, impulsive, or violent, the typical personality traits associated with Playing with Fire. She instead embodies the concept of an enduring, nurturing flame — light, life, and warmth rather than chaos and destruction. The fire in the fireplace at Toriel's exemplifies this; the fire is warming, but not dangerous — the narration notes the child can even stick their hand in without getting hurt.
• Playing with Fire: She knows fire magic. Examining the stove in her house shows it to be surprisingly clean, suggesting she even cooks with it.
• Pungeon Master: She keeps a motherly presence when first meeting you, but it's later revealed she absolutely adores bad jokes. She and Sans ended up becoming friends after discovering their mutual taste in comedy.
• Punny Name: Toriel leads you through the early phase of the game. She's a living tutorial. Gets a whole different meaning when you put it as "Et tu, Toriel?".
• Really 700 Years Old: She and Asgore have been around since monsters were first sealed and lived in the Ruins, but due to being a Boss Monster, she hasn't aged physically beyond moderate-adulthood.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Delivers a pretty frank one to Asgore near the climax of a pacifist run about how his cowardice caused the monsters to stay trapped underground.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni:
  • When she was still with Asgore, Toriel seemed to be the Red in comparison to her ex-husband's Blue. While she is far from abrasive, she's more prone to bad jokes and panic, but also holds grudges for longer. For example, during the pie incident, Toriel was mad at Asriel and the Fallen Human while Asgore, despite being sick, didn't seem to hold a grudge against them. She didn't forgive her ex-husband for declaring war on humanity, either.
  • In the Golden Ending, she also seems to be the Red oni to Sans' blue, the other Pungeon Master with an aloof personality. When they first meet in person, Toriel is the most excited while Sans remains chill. Also, Toriel's Naïve Newcomer demeanor accentuates this dichotomy when you compare her to Sans, who's more knowledgeable about the Underground's customs.
• Replacement Goldfish: Toriel has been saving multiple children, including you, when they fall into the Ruins. Part of it is a sense of duty, given that (as she puts it) Asgore has a "Kill All Humans" policy, but the main part of it is you and the other children are replacing her adopted human, the Fallen. Flowey even lampshades this in an Echo Room.
• Retired Badass: Just a sweet old lady who likes to bake pies, tend her garden, or sit in her comfy chair and read… who also happens the be the former queen of the underground and a powerful pyromancer who casually (and unknowingly) smacks down the Big Bad during your first encounter with her.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: A very, very adorable anthropomorphic goat.
• Sad Battle Music: The appropriately titled "Heartache" for her boss battle.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Before the game began, Toriel left Asgore in disgust when the latter declared his half-hearted plan of harvesting the souls of the humans who fall into the underground.
• Secret Test of Character: Her boss fight is both a straight and meta example. She says "Prove to me you are strong enough to survive" as she blocks your way, expecting you to either back down or kill her, and her reaction to being slain normally implies she's alright with that outcome. It is also possible to Take a Third Option and spare her, but the game does not make this immediately obvious (especially since using Talk doesn't work) and seems to subtly test whether players are committed to stalling over and over again until she submits. The game implies, both subtly and not-so-subtly, that the first choice you make reveals the real nature of the player, and Flowey outright points that out if you kill her then immediately reset. This includes trying to beat Toriel into submission (which traps the player into accidentally killing her), since you're still trying to use violence to get your way.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: Toriel trying to save every child that falls into the Ruins, to keep them from going to the rest of the Underground and getting killed. As she puts it, "I cannot save even one child." These words become harsher when you learn that her first two children died as well.
• Sheep in Sheep's Clothing: Toriel is sweet and motherly to the human right off the bat, but the assortment of other children's clothes, keeping you out of the basement, and awkwardly dancing around the subject of leaving can lead you to think she's not as nice as she seems. But no, she just wants to keep the protagonist happy and safe.
• Sickeningly Sweethearts: According to Gerson, she and Asgore were this when they were married.
• The Social Darwinist: Toriel believes that "kill or be killed" is how the rest of the Underground operates, which is part of why she's so protective and reluctant to let you out of the Ruins. If you continuously refuse to retreat or attack her in her battle, she eventually screams, "What are you doing? Attack or run away!" Persist, and you can prove her wrong. For now.
• So Proud of You: She's overjoyed in the full pacifist run to see how many friends you've made along the way. Declaring that even though you may be trapped in the Underground forever, she knows you'll be happy here.
• Splash of Color: It's hard to tell from a distance, but rather than being fully black-and-white like most monsters aside from the final bosses of every route, Toriel's battle sprite has very dark red pupils. This is only the case in battle, as her overworld and talk sprites make her pupils black.
• Stating the Simple Solution: In her backstory, she furiously lambastes Asgore for waiting around for humans to take their souls. To her, the simple (and brutal) way would be to travel to the surface as soon as they have one human soul, kill six more humans (or wait for them to die since monsters live longer than humans), and just break the barrier immediately. However, unlike most circumstances of this trope, she uses it to turn him away from his current path by pointing out how he doesn't want to do it at all because he didn't do it the easy way. She herself makes her stance on her own version of the plan clear in any Neutral ending where she lives, where she declares that any humans who fall are to be treated as friends (with varying results, depending on what the player did).
• Statuesque Stunner: Heavily implied. Toriel is quite tall and possibly has a bit of thickness to her stature, which makes her attractive to everybody on the internet. Toriel either can't believe people would take/make pictures of her or she refuses to believe people could be attracted to an old lady like herself. What also helps is being ageless and being locked at a decent age to keep your looks.
• Stealth Pun: She's an anthropomorphic she-goat and acts as a substitute mother figure for the player. In other words, she's a literal nanny goat. Also, if you become close, you become like her 'kid'.
• Stepford Smiler: She's instantly warm, friendly, and jokey with the kids she takes in, but the fear of them leaving hangs over her head and makes her suspiciously eager to make them want to stay with her and be a perfect little family of two, changing the subject when they want to leave and never asking their name or if they even want to stay with her until just before credits roll on Pacifist. Pushing her hard enough has her turn into a vacant-eyed Broken Bird and triggers her boss battle, with her so unwilling at this point to let another child leave her protection and die that she tries to force them to kill her to prove they won't also die to Asgore. The Winter Clock App dialogue reveals that on top of that, when she's alone in the Ruins, she lapses into alcoholism and struggles to take care of herself... which raises the question of the state her house might've been in to make her decide to go against her Mama Bear nature and leave the Human Child alone to give her time to tidy up and cook.
• Stunned Silence: If the player bores the Training Dummy so its spirit leaves, Toriel has this reaction before continuing like normal.
• Suicide by Cop: Forces you into a fight to the death… and then holds back. It's more of a Secret Test of Character to prove to her that you're willing to do what it takes to survive.
• Technical Pacifist: She is the first serious boss and she will fight you, but if your HP reaches critical levels, her attacks will start avoiding you…
• Technologically Blind Elders: If she lives, she can learn how to text on her phone. She texts exactly like you'd expect, writing long, drawn-out messages, texting you back to correct previous spelling mistakes, and even getting into an impersonation-war with Sans.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: Even when she is using great power against Flowey, you, and Asgore at the end of a Pacifist Run, she aims to stun, not to kill.
• Threshold Guardians: Played extremely straight. Toriel literally stands in your way before the door that would lead you outside the Ruins and asks that you show her that you have the will to survive and move forward — whether by violence or pacifism.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Toriel enjoys eating snails, and on Hard Mode, she makes the player a Snail Pie instead of the usual Butterscotch-Cinnamon one on account of having not bought any groceries beforehand.
• Tragic Keepsake: The chocolate bar in her fridge is implied to be a reminder of Chara, her and Asgore's lost child.
• Utility Magic: Her fire magic mostly isn't used for combat, just cooking.
• Vague Age: Exactly how old Toriel is isn't clear. On the one hand, she behaves like a Cool Old Lady and some dialogue implies she's been around for a while, but on the other hand, it's confirmed that she hasn't aged since her son died as a child. And even then, it's not specified how old she was when she gave birth to Asriel, so her age is anyone's guess.
• Voice Grunting: Sounds similar to the soft bleating of a goat.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: Her blocking the exit from the Ruins seeks to teach you about the game's boss battles. First of all, her attacks are much harder to dodge and the battle is much longer than any previous battle. But equally important, she's the first opponent where sparing requires more thought than just "try everything in the ACT menu once", and the first battle where sparing takes significantly more turns (and effort) than fighting.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Toriel at the end of the Ruins wants to protect the player by destroying their only escape, trapping them in the Ruins with her where they will be cloistered but safe.
• Willfully Weak: Comparing the Attack and Defense stated by the Check options (80 for both) to the damage Toriel deals and takes makes it obvious she's holding back in your boss battle with her, since she has no desire to kill you and you have to deliberately get yourself killed by her, which horrifies her. You later learn that Toriel is actually the former queen of the Underground, but while Toriel is a Wake-Up Call Boss as described above, she's not nearly as hard as Papyrus, Undyne, or Mettaton are later on.
• Would Hurt a Child: Willing to beat the protagonist to a sliver of their HP to stop them from leaving the Ruins, although she will try to avoid killing you, even if you're about to kill her.
• You Can't Go Home Again: Invokes this if she's spared. No matter how much she wants for the Ruins to be "home" for the protagonist, she lets them leave, but not before asking them to not come back.
• Zero-Effort Boss: Downplayed. Toriel will actively avoid harming you if your health gets too low. It is still possible for her to kill you by accident, though. Played straight in the Genocide Run, where you are able to kill her with a single strike.

Alphys

"I didn't expect you to show up so soon! I haven't showered, I'm barely dressed, it's all messy, and..."

The royal scientist, who works directly for King Asgore. She is incredibly talented at building things such as puzzles and human-hunting killer robots.

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• Amazon Chaser: In Mettaton’s final question regarding who she has a crush on, she has the same reaction to two of the answers, Undyne and Asgore, both of whom are incredibly strong fighters. She ends up with Undyne in the Golden Ending.
• The Apocalypse Brings Out the Best in People: During the Genocide Run, she spends her time working behind the scenes to evaucate as many monsters as possible to the True Lab. If you abort Genocide in Hotland, it's revealed that she succeeds in saving Monsterkind and is both hailed as a hero and elected to be the new ruler. However, finishing the run itself renders it moot, as the Fallen Child destroys the timeline.
• Art Reflects Personality: Nerdy Alphys has fanfiction shipping herself with Undyne and Asgore with Toriel. This shows her desire to find love and her hopeless romanticism, as well as her Shipper on Deck tendencies.
• The Atoner: Becomes this in every ending in some capacity. At the very least, she'll admit to you that you'll need to kill Asgore and take his SOUL in order to escape the Underground in most Neutral Routes. In the True Pacifist Ending, she releases the Amalgamates and confesses to everything she did in the True Labs, and in the near-Genocide Neutral ending, she evacuates the surviving monsters and becomes the ruler of the Underground (and is implied to have confessed her secrets in this ending as well).
• Bad "Bad Acting": She's very bad at remembering her lines and cues when "helping" with Mettaton, even though she's presumably the one who wrote the script.
• Barely-Changed Dub Name: In the Japanese translation of the game, her name is "Alphy."
• Be All My Sins Remembered: In the neutral ending where she becomes queen, she is frustrated with the other monsters considering her a hero for evacuating everyone to protect them from the human child in spite of all the horrible things she did, which they now know about in full.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: In order to thank you for allowing her to take part in your adventure and to make it up to you for having set up a fake adventure to begin with, Alphys is willing to have a "cute pretend date" with your player character, though she admits that it sounds bad when she says it like that. She isn't actually interested in the player character, of course, and the date ends with her pouring her heart out to Undyne, the person she actually likes.
• Be Yourself: Alphys’ character arc is based off this. In the Pacifist ending, she learns that she doesn't need to lie to her friends to seem more impressive than she is, as they like her for her regardless of whether her interests are serious history documentaries or goofy animes about robot chefs.
• Break the Cutie: It's a long process for poor Alphys. It starts when Mettaton sabotages her attempts to save you from danger that she herself set up, causing her to suffer a lapse in the confidence she's just recently built by saving you before. It gets worse when Mettaton reveals she's been deceiving you, and that he's done playing around, causing her to have a full breakdown. And that's not even getting into the True Labs, where the results of her experiments on Determination show their face. It's no wonder that, on some routes, Alphys can commit suicide out of grief.
• Cartoon Creature: Somewhat. Is she based on a lizard? A dinosaur? A dragon? No one is quite sure, though her design is agreed by most to be reptilian in nature and 5th Anniversary Alarm Clock confirms that she's cold-blooded.
• Chekhov's Gunman: It's possible for Alphys to mistakenly call you to order pizza way before you meet her.
• Cool Big Sis: According to Bratty and Catty, Alphys used to be like an older sister to them, and would often take them on trips to the dump with her (which is where they get most of the items they sell). By the time the game takes place, they've grown more distant, since she almost never comes out of her lab to talk to them.
• Cowardly Yellow: She has yellow skin and is by far one of the most jumpy and paranoid of all the characters you'll meet.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of the Socially Awkward Nerd. Yes, Alphys's love for anime and lack of social skills is adorable to look at. However, this lack of social skills came from the insecurities she developed out of guilt from creating the Amalgamates (an experiment that went horribly wrong). This caused her to become a shut-in, denying any social interaction and it would have driven her to suicide if Undyne hadn't stepped in. Also, because of her lack of social skills and her insecurities, she conducts a scheme to force you to like her out of sheer self-relief. It's only after you hang out with her she finds the courage to tell everyone about what happened.
• Did I Just Say That Out Loud?: While "romantically roleplaying" as Undyne with her, regardless of your choices, she ends up going completely overboard and yelling at the top of her lungs. This gets the attention of the real Undyne, who'd been looking for her by that point.
• Dirty Business: Her experiments with determination and on fallen monsters all have serious ethical problems, even before they failed and she lied about it. She is very aware of this once everything has gone wrong.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • She's on the verge of it. When Undyne first met her at the garbage dump, she was sitting on the edge of the abyss, looking, as Undyne put it, "contemplative." It's heavily implied that she goes through with it in any ending where you kill Mettaton, but weren't on the No Mercy route. Even in a True Pacifist run, she implies that she had been considering it when she went into the True Lab, when faced with the prospect of revealing the truth of the Determination experiments.
  • This is also implied in any ending where Mettaton takes over the Underground, as Mettaton mentions that he searched for her in order to apologize for how he treated her and ask her to assist him in ruling, but was never able to find her. Notably, one of the requirements for this ending is killing Undyne.
  • When you meet her at the bottom of the True Labs, she notes that she thought that she might not make it back out — not because of the Amalgamates, but because she didn't think that she would be able to tell everyone the truth and would end up running away or doing something "cowardly".
• Dub Name Change: The Japanese translation of the game drops the 's' from her name, making her simply 'Alphy'.
• Early-Bird Cameo: A random one can happen if your FUN value (a line of code which is randomly assigned when the game files are created) is a certain number, and has Alphys calling you as early as leaving the Ruins, having dialed the wrong number and thinking she has a pizza place. This also happens if you befriend her on a pacifist run, but reset before doing the final bosses. Additionally, she also gets name-dropped in Snowdin as the creator of the colored-tiles puzzle.
• Emperor Scientist: In some neutral endings, and a sympathetic example too. If you carry out a Genocide Run all the way to Hotland but abort it there, then Alphys successfully evacuates many of the surviving monsters to the True Lab while Undyne stalls your advance. She is seen as a hero for saving monsterkind from you and is elected ruler. However, she misses her friends and wishes she'd killed you when she had the chance.
• Endearingly Dorky: She's a brillant scientist who is hopelessly awkward in social situations, and her attempts to come across as 'cool' to the people she admires by concealing her geeky hobbies routinely backfires on her. Despite her fears, however, none of her friends look down at her for these things, and Undyne tells her that her sincere enthusiasm for nerdy things is part of what she likes about Alphys.
• Epiphany Therapy: Subverted with Alphys in the Pacifist run. Although she confesses to Undyne that she feels like a fraud and has lied about anime, and Undyne tells her she loves Alphys Just the Way You Are and enacts Tough Love by making her run with Papyrus, Alphys still doesn't feel great. You find a note before entering the True Lab that reveals she might not come out, which means that by following her, you could potentially interrupt her off-screen suicide because she protects you from the enemies within the True Lab. This is Truth in Television; someone suffering social anxiety and depression won't just get better and may even feel lower after a high of hearing someone cares about them.
• Everyone Can See It: When you go on a date with her, she makes it very clear that she's attracted to her best friend, Undyne. Mettaton comments on how obvious it is if you bring it up during his quiz, and even Papyrus seems to connect the dots, judging by one possible phone call.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: Mettaton asks the player a question about Mew Mew Kissy Cutie during his quiz show. Alphys, who's been shaping the letters of the correct answers with her hands up until that point, excitedly blurts out the answer. She then elaborates about the scene and why she likes it, but realizes she accidentally revealed she was helping the player halfway through a sentence. As she notices, her text starts printing out slower and switches back to standard capitalization from allcaps, and she nervously looks over at Mettaton.
• Eye Glasses: Her glasses will sometimes change shape whenever she becomes stressed out.
• Face: She plays this role during the Hotland arc while Mettaton plays the Heel.
• Fake Danger Gambit: On a Neutral or Pacifist route, Alphys reactivates traps and puzzles that had been shut down, and convinces Mettaton to play the role of a human-killing robot so she can help the player character overcome them and feel good about herself for a change. It goes horribly wrong when Mettaton tires of the charade and decides to fight the player for real.
• Furry Reminder: Scaly reminder, in this case. According to the 5th Anniversary Alarm Clock Winter dialogue, Alphys is cold-blooded and has an unfortunate habit of moving and talking much more slowly when she stays in low-temperature environments for too long. This is reminiscent of many reptile species — including snakes and lizards — who depend on heat to improve their metabolism and stay energized.
• Gadgeteer Genius: She presumably developed most of the MTT-brand technology everywhere alongside Mettaton himself and upgrades the extremely-obsolete phone Toriel gave you so you can receive text messages properly, apply for the local social network, wirelessly access the recurring dimensional box as well as another one, and a keychain so you can hold keys without filling up your inventory.
• The Ghost: In the No Mercy route, she's said to be evacuating any and all survivors someplace safe and out of your reach, and as a result, most of Hotland is completely shut out to a No Mercy player. She can only potentially appear if you get pushed into the neutral path in Hotland or the CORE (by sparing one or two key encounters, or not exhausting the random encounters there, but still killing Mettaton), at which point Sans will end up putting her on the phone for you after the final battle. However, she does this only to tell you that you're a monster and that she hates you and should have killed you when she had the chance.
• Gone Horribly Right: Her experiments led to the creation of Flowey, a test to see if one could give something that was neither human nor monster the will to live. It worked, but it also accidentally proved her previous theory — she gave Determination to the original flower from the surface, the one with the most dust on it from Asriel's passing, and in doing so, resurrected Asriel's personality and implanted it in the flower we now know as Flowey.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: Her experiments with Determination are mostly this, as they caused the monsters she was experimenting upon to not only come back to life — which was the opposite of what she wanted — but it caused their bodies to melt and fuse with one another, creating the amalgamations.
• Grew a Spine: If the protagonist is on the No Mercy route, Alphys finally gathers the courage to leave her lab and get as many monsters to evacuate as possible. If you abort the Genocide run in Hotland, the neutral ending involves Sans giving the phone to Alphys, who discusses how she finally had to become brave and become the new ruler of the (remaining) monsters.
• Having a Blast: Since her attacks (as a Lost Soul) are the same as Mettaton's, she uses bombs in one of her attack patterns.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: She seems to make a habit of comparing herself to garbage. During the True Ending playthrough, it's revealed to come from guilt over the results of her experiments. It can even lead her to kill herself if she's pushed far enough.
• Hollywood Hacking: Alphys, at several points, hacks into the Hotland and CORE networks to remove certain obstacles for the player. This is, for the most part, a subversion, as she's actually controlling the devices from her computer, but after her plan starts to go Off the Rails in the CORE (thanks to Mettaton), she performs one act of actual hacking to shut down the power there (battling with either Mettaton or the CORE's failsafes in the process). Subverted also in that Alphys is the royal scientist and a gifted technician, so there's really no reason that she wouldn't just have access to these networks to begin with — it's just more impressive if it seems like she's 'hacking in' to save you in the nick of time, because if you were aware that she had access the whole time, there would have been no reason for the obstacle to still be there by the time you arrived.
• Hot-Blooded: It doesn't come out very often, but when Mettaton's quiz gives the Human a Mew Mew Kissy Cutie trivia question, she blurts out the answer and starts gushing about the scene that she knows it from because it's one of her favorites. In addition, no matter how you walk her through the hypothetical scenario where she confesses to Undyne, she eventually cannot contain her feelings and starts shouting her next actions at the top of her lungs. Undyne admits to liking Alphys because she's passionate about things she cares about, and does things at 110%.
• I Just Want to Be Loved: The reason she lies constantly. She fears that if people knew she was a nerdy loser and responsible for several monsters' hideous mutations, everyone would hate her.
• Interrupted Suicide: It's implied that at one point she was suicidal. Undyne first met her in the dump staring into the abyss and looking "contemplative". Undyne managed to talk her out of it, though.
• Intrigued by Humanity: Loves anime and joined a human fan club.
• It's All My Fault: Maintains this mindset throughout the entire True Pacifist run concerning her failed DETERMINATION experiments, and can even be seen saying it when you fight her as a Lost Soul.
• Karma Houdini: She never actually faces any consequences for her actions beyond her own guilt, which is self-inflicted, and her character arc centers on improving her self-esteem by… letting go of her guilt, which means there are no consequences at all. She does get fired, but since her job is rendered pointless when the monsters go free, it's not actually a loss.
  • It's somewhat Downplayed, however, by the fact that many monsters were angry with her for a while, according to entries in the True Labs, for apparently holding their relatives hostage — meaning she suffered some loss of reputation for it. This doesn't seem to be in effect by the time of the True Pacifist ending, however, so if she ever needed to put effort into owning up to her mistakes, we never saw it.
  • Played straight with Flowey/Asriel, whose fate no one but Alphys and the player know about.
• Labcoat of Science and Medicine: Her normal attire is a white labcoat that reaches the floor.
• Leitmotif: The awkward, melancholic "Alphys." The Dark Reprise "Here We Are" plays in the True Lab. It appears again as the song Undyne plays on the piano while waiting for Papyrus to show up.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: The way that Mettaton describes Alphys watching the player and "yells at the screen" can be seen as a playful jab at Let's Play video audiences (especially for livestreams), and the way she continually attempts to influence your playthrough can be seen as a commentary on backseat gaming as well.
• Lizard Folk: She's a monster that looks like a reptilian humanoid.
• Lovable Lizard: She resembles a golden, crested lizard of some sort, and she is awkward in an endearing way. This is heavily blurred and downplayed upon the revelation of her culpability in the Determination experiments and all the resultant Body Horror and And I Must Scream that ensues, but she remains chiefly a sympathetic character throughout.
• Luminescent Blush: If the player chooses either Undyne or Asgore during Mettaton's quiz, as Mettaton goes into detail (choosing yourself makes her give you a bewildered look and not being sure has her argue with Mettaton). Being kissed by Undyne in the True Ending renders her red from head to toe and she topples over.
• Mad Scientist: Once upon a time, as evidenced by the True Lab in the Pacifist run-through.
• Meaningful Name: Her name is a meaning for being intellectual and having an interest in research. It also can be an anagram of 'Shy Pal' or be a conjunction of 'Algebra' and 'Physics'.
• Mission Control: She acts as this throughout Hotland, frequently calling you and giving you remote help from her lab. This is eventually revealed to be a scheme to improve Alphys' self-confidence.
• Morality Pet: For Mettaton. It eventually becomes clear that, for all his bragging, snark at her expense, and occasional frustration with Alphys, he really does care very deeply about her, and is incredibly grateful for her role in making him famous. In the Neutral route where he winds up in charge of the Underground and Alphys has gone missing (implied to have committed suicide), he expresses regret, saying he wanted her to rule with him, and erects a statue of her. In short, Mettaton's friendship with her is easily one of his more redeeming qualities.
• Motherly Scientist: She acts like this towards the Amalgamates, feeding them and doing her best to keep them comfortable in the True Lab despite how terrifying they are. At the end of a Pacifist run, she admits that the best thing for them is to let them return to their families, which she does despite her fear.
• Motor Mouth: Whenever Alphys brings up anime that she likes, she has a tendency to ramble on without pause until she catches herself (in hilariously stark contrast to her usual stuttering and stammering). The last time she does it plays this for drama on the True Pacifist run, when Alphys confesses to Undyne that all the "human history" they watched together was nothing but nerdy cartoons and that she had been lying to her.
• My Greatest Failure:
  • She claims turning Mettaton into an anti-human defense mechanism and failing to turn off his inhibitors was this. This is eventually revealed to have been a lie to create artificial danger she could save you from.
  • Her actual greatest failure is her DETERMINATION experiments, which have turned numerous monsters into Body Horror amalgamates, as well as having created Flowey.
  • In a near-Genocide route^note which involves aborting a Genocide run in Hotlands, she seems to consider doing nothing for so long and just watching the player kill monsters as this, lamenting on how waiting until Undyne called her in crazed desperation before doing something cost Undyne and multiple monsters their lives and not killing the player when she had the chance.
• Nerd Glasses: She wears glasses, she's a scientist, and she avoids talking to others.
• Nerds Are Sexy: In Undyne's opinion, at least. Part of what she finds attractive about Alphys is how passionate she is about her nerdy hobbies, and she frequently brags about how smart Alphys is and how great her inventions are.
• Nervous Wreck: Alphys' tendency to panic at the drop of a hat is her defining trait: her introduction scene consists of her panicking because she didn't expect you to come so early.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Her experiments involving DETERMINATION led to the creation of Flowey, a being that had the "will to live" but no soul, and therefore no capacity for compassion or love.
  • Depending on your actions during various neutral endings as she is already on the edge, Alphys may be driven further into despair or even be Driven to Suicide by the game's end. Depending on whether you killed too many monsters or certain key characters, the various circumstances make her realize that she enabled the horrible things you did by assisting you through the underground in her misguided quest for fulfilment. In her mind, it is yet another horrible failure in a long line of them and convinces her she ruins everything she touches.
• Nice Girl: Despite her constant lying, Alphys’s kindness and unwillingness to hurt others are both genuine. She makes sure that you aren’t killed by any of Mettaton’s shows and is genuinely worried if you nearly die to the lasers.
• No Control Group: Her methods of experimentation seem to go directly to the implementation phase without testing.
• Non-Mammal Mammaries: Her anatomy is never clearly displayed because of her hunched pose and baggy clothing, but in the epilogue, she is seen wearing a women's swimsuit, implying this.
• Odd Friendship: With Sans, despite never having much onscreen interaction throughout the game, much to Papyrus' surprise.
  • At the true ending's Playable Epilogue, she beats Sans to the punchline and jinxes him, since she knew him enough to recognize what kind of joke he was gonna make. When Papyrus catches on that they've met before, Alphys stumbles to make an excuse for why, and Sans brushes it off by saying everyone knows him.
  • It becomes less odd-sounding when you discover a couple commonalities between them; namely, Sans' surprising scientific background, his potential connection to the previous royal scientist, and how both Alphys and Sans have had their run-ins with Flowey in the past. invokedToby Fox has also potentially implied that she might have been trying to help him fix the machine in his basement, after he noticed people were manipulating the Fun Values earlier than expected.
  • The XBox port expands a bit on this at the casino. Sans says he's asked her about game recommendations for Toriel in the past, and he once asked her why she was collecting empty cans from energy drinks, which was the scrap for Mettaton's body.
• Official Couple: Becomes this with Undyne in the true ending route.
• Oh, Crap!: Several times. A standout example is when she realizes that Flowey — the ultimate product of her experiments — is the one who told Papyrus to call everyone to Asgore's castle, and even worse, it wasn't for a party, but for their souls.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist:
  • Among her areas of expertise: robotics, repairing and upgrading human technology, hammerspace access, bio-engineering, and turning Waterfall's grass into ice cream.
  • Subverted in that while she is clearly great with physics, engineering, and mechanics, she was way out of her depth with DETERMINATION and SOULs, as shown by the disastrous results with all her experiments involving them.
• Only Sane Woman: She's the only one who doesn't try to fight you during the genocide run, instead focusing on evacuating the citizens from Hotland.
• Otaku: She rarely gets out of her lab, is obsessed with anime, comics, and video games, and even has cups of instant noodles in her fridge. She has passed some of her otaku-ness to Undyne, who will beg the player to answer if anime is real at one point.
• Post-Kiss Catatonia: In the True Pacifist ending credits, Undyne kisses her on the cheek and she turns completely red before falling over with a "9999" speech bubble next to her.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni:
  • During the Hotland arc, Alphys is the nervous, supporting, and manipulative Blue oni to Mettaton's Campy, hammy, and taunting Red. They also seem to have this dynamic as friends. During their countless exchanges, Mettaton does his best to captivate his audience everytime Alphys shows up late or forgets her script.
  • If you go further in the Pacifist route, she reveals herself to be the shy, socially awkward Blue oni to Undyne's Hot-Blooded and determined Red. They are a couple.
• Reed Richards Is Useless: Zigzagged. While some of Alphys' technology is commercially available to monsters, much of her more fantasical inventions (like phones with jetpack features, hammerspace access, and so on) she's kept for herself and only provides them to the human child in the Neutral or Pacifist runs.
• Robosexual: Implied. She keeps anime of robots making out saved to her phone for some reason, and she had trouble finishing Mettaton's EX body because she got "really sweaty" whenever she tried to work on it.
• Shipper on Deck: To Asgore/Toriel in the true ending, if you say "yes" when she asks you if you think they'll get back together. If you say "no", she admits that you're probably right.
• Shock and Awe: During the ending sequence of a Pacifist run, she blocks Flowey's attack with a wall of electricity similar to the ones Mettaton EX can throw at you.
• Shrinking Violet: Alphys is very shy, nervous, and anxious and even admits that before meeting the protagonist, she didn't use to like herself very much and on her date, she says that she doesn't like who "herself" is. This is mostly caused by regret she feels for creating the Amalgamates.
• Significant Anagram: Possibly unintentional, but "Alphys" rearranged can be "Shy Pal", which describes her perfectly: a socially awkward individual who just wants to be the protagonist's friend.
• Tempting Fate: Alphys explains how she turned Mettaton into a human-hunting robot by mistake and concludes hoping that she and the human won't run into him. Then we hear thumping sounds and guess what happens next? As she and Mettaton were working together the whole time and his entrance was planned, this trope was Invoked.
• Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: Enforced. In the artbook, it is stated that Alphys was originally planned to be male, but Toby Fox disliked the idea in the end and ended up adding eyelashes onto her.
• Tested on Humans: Or more accurately, monsters. She does this accidentally with Asriel/Flowey, and directly with the Amalgamates.
• There Is Another:
  • After manipulating the Fun Values, certain NPCs begin spawning to describe the royal scientist that came before her, W.D. Gaster, and what happened to him. Paying close attention to the notes of the True Lab raises the possibility that she didn't design some of the technology she was using, but merely following the blueprints someone else might have come up with.
  • Though it's never been outright confirmed, invoked Toby Fox has also noted that there's been someone else besides Sans trying to fix the machine in his basement, and there are few candidates who could fit this role besides Alphys, whose friendship with him has been hinted at.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Girly girl to Undyne's tomboy. Alphys is a Non-Action Guy who is self-concious of her appearance and wears a dress for her 'date' with the player, and whose interests are stereotypically 'girly' — magical girl animes and romance.
• Trademark Favorite Food: She enjoys instant noodles and other junk food, judging by her fridge. Makes sense when she needs to work on her experiments or spends hours watching anime.
• This Is Unforgivable!: In the Near Genocide Ending^note where you play a Genocide Route all the way to the Hotlands but abort it there, she becomes the leader of the (remaining) monsters after saving them from you. She calls for no other reason than to tell you she hates you.
• The Unfought: She is the only major character who never attacks the protagonist willingly: the only time when she becomes hostile is when she becomes a Lost Soul in the Pacifist Ending.
• Used to Be More Social: If her previous Cool Big Sis relationship with Bratty and Catty was anything to go by, she used to be comfortable socializing with others to at least some extent before becoming the Royal Scientist.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: You don't say. Her experiments with DETERMINATION led to Asriel's manifesting as Flowey and dying monsters turning into Amalgamates. She's very unhappy about that.
• Voice Grunting: Sounds like a buzzer. It only amps up her dorkiness, getting across how awkward and shy she is.
• Voice with an Internet Connection: Alphys is this to you during the Hotland arc, hacking Mettaton's traps to save you at the last second. As long as she can detect you and as long as Mettaton accords to her plan.
• Walking Spoiler: Anything relating to her real motivation for helping you in the Hotland portion of the game, and especially the True Laboratory and her past cements her as one of these. All of them culminates in her being responsible for the creation of the Big Bad.
• Wham Line:
  • While Papyrus, Mettaton, and even Undyne think you can cross the barrier only by having a nice chat with Asgore, as the royal scientist, Alphys is one of the rare monsters who know the hard truth:
    "I can't take this anymore. I... I lied to you. A human SOUL isn't strong enough to cross the barrier alone. It takes at least a human Soul... And a monster soul. ... If you want to go home... You'll have to take his soul. You'll have to kill ASGORE."
  • The penultimate log entry you find in the True Lab pertains to her decision to inject Determination into something neither human nor monster… and it's the first golden flower in Asgore's garden; the one that absorbed his dead son Asriel's essence. The log immediately after that?
  The flower is gone.
• Wingding Eyes: Alphys has hearts in her eyes when she thinks Undyne is going to train her.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Alphys thinks that she can insert herself into your journey, with Mettaton's help, and have it play out like a fanfiction where she convinces you to stay in the Underground. Unfortunately, this game isn't fanfiction and Mettaton knows it.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: During the True Lab, and boy, does the chain ever get yanked.
  ENTRY NUMBER 15: I’ll send everyone back tomorrow. :)
  ENTRY NUMBER 16: no No NO NO NO NO NO
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Her character arc revolves around her difficulty believing this — and her confronting the past mistakes responsible for it, in a Pacifist run. Additionally in a Near-Genocide Neutral Run^note which is achieved by playing a Genocide Run through to Hotlands but aborting it there, she is hailed as a hero by the surviving monsters and elected to be ruler because of her role in organizing the evacuation.
• You Monster!: In one of the worst Neutral endings (which you get by aborting a Genocide run in Hotland), she calls you on the phone to say that she hates you and that she should have killed you when she had the chance.

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