Fridge Brilliance / Undertale

SPOILERS ARE UNMARKED, READ WITH CAUTION!
Fridge Brilliance for Undertale. Fridge Horror can be found here.

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General

• You may note that every area, not just Home and New Home, was probably named by Asgore because… well, they all have a really uninspired, borderline Line-of-Sight Name. Snowdin and Waterfall only really get a pass because it's not uncommon for areas to follow that particular naming scheme in other Role Playing Games.
• At first glance, the order in which you traverse the areas of the Underground seem purely like Seasonal Baggage more than anything else, given you go through Autumn (the Ruins), Winter (Snowdin), Spring (Waterfall), and Summer (Hotland) in perfect order. However, it makes sense geographically as well. Waterfall is filled with water, and is smack-dab in the middle of Snowdin and Hotland. The heat radiating from Hotland most likely allowed for any ice or snow in Waterfall to melt.
  • The Ruins are themed after Autumn, which is also called Fall. How do all humans end up in the Ruins again? They fall in.
• The monsters seem to use "going to the bathroom" as their version of I Need to Go Iron My Dog, which makes sense since monster food is specifically stated to be made out of magic, which allows it to be digested without producing any waste products, making toilets unnecessary. Papyrus uses the phrase as an excuse to allow you to date Undyne, and Alphys has what appears to be a bathroom inside her laboratory which she states she's going to use when she gets too embarrassed to stay in the same room with the main character due to not being able to think of anything to say to them, but the room in question is actually a hidden elevator to the True Laboratory.
  • This also works as an in-universe explanation for Nobody Poops, since humans wouldn't need to use the bathroom ^note At least, they would only need to very infrequently. if any food instantly transforms into usable energy.
• Even with an infinite lifespan, Boss Monsters cannot mature if they have no parents to get life force from, resulting in sterility due to permanent childhood, and are universally docile, yet they rule Monsters. How have Monsters survived long enough to be banished in the first place? What about earlier before civilization, where they would literally be eaten alive? Because Monsters don't leave bodies, and therefore nothing to use as material or food. Killing them would literally be a waste of energy. With no natural predator, no wonder the most docile would be the ones ruling, because nothing can take advantage of them for it.
  • Except Humans, who don't need something to gain.
• Meta Fridge with the Toriel Plush — the official plush contains a small plush "Soul" inside of it, but the only way you'd see it is to cut open the plush. From a business standpoint, adding such a thing would seem like a waste of time and resources for something most consumers wouldn't get to see, since few would be willing to damage something so cute that they paid for. Why is it there, then? It ties in perfectly with the theme of the game — how far are you willing to go to see every last secret for yourself?
  • This brings Your Soul Is Mine! to a whole new physical level.
• The nice cream guy is a rabbit with blue fur, or in other words a "Blue Bunny," selling ice cream!
• Sans’s judgments, as well as the Neutral Endings, are good or bad precisely in the order of how good or bad the player acted, which is more complicated than just “higher kill count means worse judgment and ending”:
  • First, the best possible judgment you can get is only if you have killed nobody. This is not necessarily a True Pacifist Run though, because a player might still mess up and kill Asgore or Flowey, and even if they don’t, they’ll still get a Neutral ending if they don’t go to the True Lab. However, killing Asgore or Flowey would be rather out of character for the player at that point, since they have learned how to solve their problems nonviolently.
  • Approaching Sans with more than 0 Exp., but still LV 1, will make him disgusted with you. After all, it’s pretty much impossible that any player would do this without intending to, considering that there is no reason for a Neutral player to stop killing before having leveled up unless they already know the twist in advance, so Sans knows you’re just doing it to see what he’ll say.
  • The same applies to a LV 2 player, with Sans saying “who gets to lv2 on accident?” Killing any monster outside the Ruins will put you above LV 2, and within the Ruins, you will reach that level in at most five battles (and that only in the unlikely case that they are all Whimsuns) which is less than the number of encounters you’ll have just making it to Toriel’s house. The Exp. curve just in the Ruins means that you’d likely get just enough Exp. to reach LV 3 unless you deliberately stopped fighting while still in the Ruins, which no first-timer would ever do. It may not be strictly impossible to reach LV 2 and no higher by accident, but it’s so unlikely that there is no need to consider it.
  • Being at LV 3 gives the player the only judgment other than 0 Exp. that isn’t a "The Reason You Suck" Speech in disguise. This is because someone playing the game blind will almost certainly be at this level when they reach Toriel and first start being shamed for killing monsters, so once they reload and find a way to spare Toriel, they will likely be a pacifist from then on, avoiding any unnecessary kills for the remainder of the game. Since the player still killed someone, Sans still doesn’t give them a good grade, but recognizes that they weren’t doing it on purpose and so can be forgiven.
  • Between LV 4 and 9, he says that the player deliberately killed at least some monsters, but admits that it may have been in self-defense, so he isn’t sure how to judge them. It’s actually somewhat hard to reach New Home with a LOVE of exactly 4, due to how much Exp. monsters in later areas give out, so the most likely way would be if a player level grinded in the Ruins and, not knowing about the Genocide Route, was horrified upon first seeing the “But nobody came” message and hearing the distorted music and resolved to spare everyone else (including Toriel, who dies in one hit if the conditions to begin the Genocide Route are met). As for LV 5 through 9, a player will be towards the higher end of that range if they just play through like a normal RPG and kill all their Random Encounters but don’t go out of their way to grind. Undyne alone will put them at LV 7 or 8, and since sparing her is a Guide Dang It!, and she is the first monster to actually try to kill the player, it could be considered self-defense. And of course, killing a random monster outside the Ruins (doing this in the CORE gives enough Exp. to go from LV 1 to 5) is only likely to happen if one is doing it on purpose, since one would have to know how to spare by then.
  • Between LV 10 and 14, Sans says that you’re failing and that you’ve probably already heard his judgment before and just want to hear them all, and at this point, he's right. Killing all the bosses won't give you enough Exp. to reach LV 10 on their own, and even the encounters in the Ruins and Snowdin are a drop in the bucket compared to how much Exp. is required to level up at this point, so you must have been killing most of the Random Encounters and even start to seek some out just to kill them. Though a player must have spared at least enough monsters to avoid fighting Undyne the Undying (and thus, Mettaton NEO), their excessively high body count means that they don't value other lives and only demonstrated restraint to avoid fighting the Genocide-only bosses.
  • Most players don't know this, but it is actually possible to reach LV 15 or higher on a Neutral Route. Doing so by aborting a Genocide Run in Hotland will still have you fight Mettaton NEO and set your LOVE to 19 regardless of kill count, but just killing 40 monsters in Hotland is enough to do it even if one was a pacifist up to this point. As such, since you were either trying to go for the Genocide Route and failed, or killed a bunch of people in Hotland for no real gain, Sans says you suck at even being evil, and are certainly a horrible person regardless.
  • And of course, if you actually killed everybody, then Sans realizes that you cannot be reasoned with and must be stopped before you destroy everything, and since judging you would be pointless, decides to make you suffer.
  • Outside of the genocide route, Sans will always specifically mention it if Papyrus is dead, asking the player whether someone with a special power has the obligation to do the right thing and based on the answer, either asking why they killed his brother or calling them a dirty brother killer. Obviously, Sans is upset here because his brother is dead. But he has a point in specifically mentioning Papyrus. Papyrus is the only boss who, regardless of the player's actions, will always eventually spare them. For other bosses, the player might not know how to progress and will resort to attacking to end things. This can include Papyrus, but Papyrus is a unique boss in that he'll choose to end the fight quicker if attacked, thus being sparable before you're able to kill him. The player is essentially given three options: attack and be spared, show mercy and be spared, or lose to him and be given the option not to fight at all. Regardless of your own actions, you're given the option to end things nonviolently. Thus, by choosing not to, you've intentionally rejected the opportunity to do the right thing.^note Violence can also progress Undyne's fight faster and boosts Mettaton's ratings, but sparing them is still far less straightforward than sparing Papyrus.
• As for the endings, it’s a similar idea, based on what Toby Fox thought a player who got such an ending deserved:
  • If you kill no one but don’t meet the requirements for a True Pacifist ending, then you get the only Neutral ending that can be considered happy: everyone’s alive except Asgore and the monsters are working on a way out without needing anyone’s soul. Of course, since Toby Fox wanted every player to fight Photoshop Flowey, he made some of the True Pacifist requirements only possible after getting at least one Neutral Ending, so this ending is only a placeholder until the player inevitably goes through the True Lab and gets the real ending. Note that Alphys can be here if the player went on her date but didn’t go to the True Lab, showing that merely finishing the Fetch Quest is not enough.
  • If Toriel’s alive but at least one monster was killed, then things aren’t too bad, but the game really drives home how the monsters are pretty much stuck at the status quo ante. Since the most likely way the player got this ending was by being a pacifist up to befriending Undyne and then killing someone just to see what would happen, Undyne’s part of the conversation exists solely to guilt-trip them for doing such a horrible thing. This ending could also happen if a player killed monsters in the Ruins before realizing what kind of game this is, and then went out of their way to avoid killing after that, so in that case, there is instead an ending where Undyne is upset with you, but no one else is, since you didn’t know you were doing anything wrong and stopped when you figured it out.
  • If you killed more than ten monsters, or any bosses, on the other hand, then it’s clear that you did kill at least one monster on purpose despite knowing it's unnecessary. If you left all the bosses alive, then the game is shaming you for showing favoritism to the characters you can personally befriend and not caring about anyone else. Papyrus will always spare you before you can deplete his HP, so killing him cannot possibly be rationalized as self-defense. It's still possible that someone playing blind would do it for the Exp., but at that point they're already showing the weakness of character that would push them to do a Genocide Run later, hence they'd deserve it when Sans says they’re not welcome. As for killing Undyne, the very fact that you made it past Toriel nonlethally means you should be assuming that the same applies to all monsters, so killing Undyne means you’re too lazy to figure out a way to spare her, and don’t really deserve a happy ending. But you still aren't nearly as bad as you could be, so Frisk and mankind are safe at least.
  • If Toriel is dead, then not only did the player not even try to spare her, but it didn’t occur to them to reload their save to bring her back, if she was killed by accident. The game assumes the latter if the player does not kill Undyne, since doing so is also very unintuitive, implying the player is doing it on purpose and as such, doesn’t deserve a better ending than one where the player character, and possibly humanity in general, is in danger.
  • On the other hand, it is possible for a first-time player to end up killing both Toriel and Undyne just because they mistakenly think they have no choice. In that case, the game doesn’t really hold it against them, though the endings where Mettaton and Papyrus are in charge are both pretty melancholy. Hey, you did kill someone.
  • If a player just plays through like a normal RPG the whole way, then that entails killing all the bosses. The suckiness of this ending isn’t solely to punish the player, but just to point out the logical consequences of their actions, and hopefully get them to listen to Flowey’s recommendation not to kill anyone next time.
  • Aborting a Genocide Run in Hotland is only likely to happen if the player is aware of the consequences of completing the run, so Alphys tells you exactly what kind of a horrible person you are.
  • The ending where the Annoying Dog becomes king, everyone is happy, and Sans doesn’t even care that you killed his brother is the anomaly here, since the requirements are such that nobody would ever get it by accident, due to Papyrus always offering the player mercy. But the ending is a joke anyway. It was likely done just because the other bosses could plausibly be killed by a first-timer who thinks they have no choice, and to get this ending, one would need to deliberately avoid killing any normal civilians, who are all innocent in this, showing that the player can distinguish right from wrong.

Frisk and Chara

• When naming your character, the game specifically asks you to "Name the fallen human". Obviously this is referring to the child you control, and how they fell down the chasm in the game's intro, right? Nope. The name you enter at the beginning of the game turns out to be the name of the First Child, who had passed away, or fallen due to an illness.
  • "Fallen" also relates to the whole Delta Rune prophecy mentioned further down the page. The child appears angelic, but in the end is actually demonic, and ends up destroying the world.
  • The angelic appearance and the 'fallen' nature of the First Child actually somewhat reflect Lucifer (aka Satan/The Devil/Beelzebub) from Christian mythology. He was an angel that rebelled and fell from heaven, similar to how the First Child (who, on the surface, would likely be seen as an outsider due to their sadistic mindset) literally fell from the surface. This is backed up by the fact that Lucifer is seen as a tempter and a manipulator, much in the same way that both Flowey and The Fallen Child use the promise of EXP and LV (more power in exchange for acts of evil) to tempt the player into bringing about the death and destruction they seek.
  • This is reflected in their shirts as well. Both the First Child and Asriel wear green. Each have symbolized both hope, and Satan. The Fallen Child first symbolizes hope, then Satan in a Genocide Route. Asriel first symbolizes Satan, then hope.
    • A more optimistic way of looking at the Fallen Child's title of "Fallen Child" is simply that it was given to them because they fell down the mountain.
  • The inherent twistiness of the phrase lends to the incredible double subversion: you are naming the fallen human, you are naming the child in the opening, but who says you are naming the Player Character?
• When you first meet Toriel, she introduces herself by saying "greetings". Who else introduces themself like that? Chara, of course!
• The fact that the player character develops a separate, homicidal personality is actually even more of Undertale's meta-commentary on games in general. Certain stereotypes aside, it's likely that a player who encounters the Fallen Child isn't actually a killer in real life, or even wants to be; they only are killing everyone in-game just to see how deep the rabbit hole goes, or are probably just fanatical at Level Grinding. To them, the character they're controlling is a different person. So, that's what the game gives you; a Villain Protagonist completely at peace with the idea of killing every living thing in order for a player to see what happens. Chara even refers to themself in the context of being a player character in a game, as a "demon" that is summoned when their name is called (i.e., when you name them at the beginning of any game) and claiming "Time after time, I will appear. And, with your help. We will eradicate the enemy and become strong. HP. ATK. DEF. GOLD. EXP. LV. Every time a number increases, that feeling... That's me." Hands up; who here thinks such an individual would react badly to finally being told "no?" Karma can be a tough old broad, can't she?
  • This could be taken a step further, when taking a certain theory into account. The separate character is the first fallen child (or their mindset, rather). Your character would never do this, but the original child, overtaken by grief and emotion, would.
• All of the human SOULs have a certain color associated with them, and the player character's SOUL is colored red. The PC is also the only human to survive their journey through the underground. When dealing with the light spectrum, red is the color with the longest wavelength — that is, to say, out of all the colors, red is the one that travels the farthest.

Flowey and Asriel

• Flowey:
  • Flowey's final form has a load of attacks, but the SOUL WARNING attacks are all different weapons you can equip during the game. This is because he's using the souls of the other six children, who used these weapons before dying.
    • Additionally, the reason for the SOUL WARNINGs is because the SOULs themselves are warning you about Flowey using them.
  • He also taunts you to call out to mom while making Toriel's face. Toriel was the Fallen's adoptive mother and the Fallen is connected to the player character (very loosely in a neutral run, admittedly, but still).
    • She was also Flowey's, or rather Asriel's, biological mother. The words he taunts you with are exactly what he said when he first woke up in that form and cried out for his parents — although you'd only know that if you did a No Mercy route.
    • Toriel also acted motherly towards Frisk. While it wasn't to quite the same extent as Asriel and Chara, of course, Frisk does have the option of calling her "Mom" at one point.
    • Alternatively, this could be interpreted as Asriel's true face, which happens to look like his mom. Maybe not so much like shapeshifting and more like reverting to an old face. Flowey does this at the end of a Genocide run when he begs Frisk/Chara for mercy, too.
  • Flowey the Flower is kind of an uninspired name. Looks like Asriel inherited his father's Giver of Lame Names trait.
    • Also, when you attempt to name yourself "Flowey," where most other monsters say some derivative of "that's my name," the text instead says "I already CHOSE that name." Why? Because it's not his real name. He chose it once he woke up as a flower.
  • At first, Flowey's tendency to say things like "Howdy!" and "golly" seem to be there only to enforce his Faux Affably Evil act until you meet Asgore, who speaks in a similar manner, and learn that he's Asriel/Flowey's father.
  • Flowey and Asgore also make almost the exact same expression when Toriel knocks them away from you with her flame magic.
  • In the Neutral ending, Flowey recovers the power of SAVE and LOAD from you… by erasing your save file and making it his own.
    • Even more, he's able to use up to six different save states. Six, as in the number of human SOULs he currently has.
  • In the Neutral end, Flowey declares that after killing you, he'll use your soul and the six human souls Asgore gathered to become God and rule over/destroy everyone and everything. He's perfectly capable of killing you with minimal effort… so why doesn't he enact his plan, instead opting to reload your save and kill you more? Because, as shown in the Pacifist ending, that's not what he really wants to do. Being Asriel, what he really wants is to be able to play with the player again and again, forever… which is what he's doing by reloading whenever you die.
• If you kill Flowey during a Neutral run, on subsequent runs through the game, he doesn't appear throughout the game until the end. This could be interpreted as a permadeath of sorts, except that he shows up anyway to destroy Asgore's SOUL after the latter sacrifices himself. So what's going on? One of the possible endgame conversations with Flowey (in a run where you have not previously killed him) gives a possible answer: Flowey mentions that Sans caused him his "fair share of resets", but if you talk to Sans, he's never seen Flowey, and thinks his brother's conversations with a flower involved an Echo Flower. So Flowey's deliberately been avoiding Sans because Sans is a danger to him… and after you killed him in the previous ending, he's now started avoiding you for the same reason.
• After leaving Toriel, Flowey did tell you that he was prince of this world. In addition, he might not have been technically lying about not planning to commit regicide, at least at the time; if you spare everyone you meet in the ruins, including Toriel, his dialogue implies that he expects you to cave in and kill if you meet "a relentless killer" that can't be spared. Asgore, though not a relentless killer, does take away your ability to spare him at the start of the fight. Initially, the fight seems to follow Flowey's philosophy of "kill or be killed", since you're forced to fight him. Flowey was probably intending for you to kill him off, and only does so himself if you choose to spare Asgore at the end.
• It's no coincidence that the name Asriel sounds a lot like Azrael, the Archangel of Death in Hebrew and Islamic lore. According to Wikipedia, Azrael (or Azriel, as the name is sometimes spelled), has four faces and four thousand wings, and his whole body consists of eyes and tongues, the number of which corresponds to the number of people inhabiting the Earth. (Which sounds a lot like Flowey/Asriel's final form in the Neutral Ending.) He (Azrael) will be the last to die, recording and erasing constantly in a large book the names of men at birth and death, respectively. (Sounds a lot like Flowey/Asriel's ability to overwrite Save Data and manipulate life and death.) Sure looks like the game writers might have done their homework in researching the mystic symbolism for this game… Also, in the neutral route if you choose to kill him and the genocide route, Flowey is the last to die.
• Asriel's final form looks a bit abstract and attacks with rainbows, stars, a huge laser, and they all have attack names. Considering his age when he died, it starts to make sense that his ultimate form is closer to what an 8-year-old would see in a Saturday morning cartoon villain and makes it all the more tragic.
• Omega/Photoshop Flowey himself is an extradimensional form of this. You have been playing the entire game in a pixelated, low-color, low-detail environment. That's not just there for the aesthetic, although it does contribute in a big way to the nostalgia factor. Now, when you meet Flowey in this form, he is anti-aliased, full-color, full-detail (as much as the game engine will allow), transcending the laws of physics and nature within the game. Since we humans live our entire lives in our own universe, with objects and beings with their own forms, shapes, sizes, and colors, imagine how it would feel seeing something or someone that transcends our laws of physics and nature.
• During the battle with Flowey's final form, Flowey regains the power to save and load, meaning he's the only boss in the game that could actually kill you for good if he felt like it… but he doesn't. He keeps bringing you back with that power so he can keep killing you. Why? He's been unbelievably bored with the Underground for goodness knows how long… and finding out how many different ways he can kill you is the first exciting thing to happen to him in ages. The fact his true form is a child makes this make even more sense: Flowey is a child who'd gotten bored with his entire toy box and is now obsessed with his brand new toy: you. Of course, this comes back to seriously bite him in the butt, but it fits the character.
• If you lose to Photoshop Flowey, you hear Asgore's voice telling you that "this is all just a bad dream", followed by Flowey's voice informing you that "you are never waking up!" If you go on to the True Pacifist route later, you learn that unlike the standard Game Over quotes, which are spoken by Asgore in the tape of the Fallen Child's death, the "bad dream" line is never spoken by Asgore at any point in the game. This gives you a big hint that said line is Flowey impersonating Asgore.
• It's been mentioned elsewhere that Flowey's Final Boss form resembles both the DT extraction machine and Sans's Gaster Blasters. Both of these are used in his fight: Determination allows him to save and load, and occasionally, he'll fire a beam in a similar fashion to the Blasters.
• Flowey's screaming tantrum when the human SOULs rebel against him makes a lot of sense when you remember that he's basically a scared little boy given almost god-like power over the world. In that sense, you can read his dialogue as being like that of a child who's had his toys torn away from him, because that is in a sense what has actually transpired.
• It's been said in the past that the best type of villain is one who talks sense, who gives good valid reasons for doing what he does. Asriel is that condensed down to its purest form. Yes, he wants to kill everyone, but afterward, he plans to use all the energy from every monster and human on earth to remake the world so that nobody will have to leave anyone else ever again. No more death, or loss, his family and everyone else's will remain whole forever. He gets his sibling back to boot and his parents are happy again. Honestly, if his plan didn't involve committing genocide to work, then you'd probably be expected to root for him, not the player character.
• Asriel's name is a combination of his parents' names, Asgore and Toriel… because Asgore is terrible at naming things. It was probably the only thing he could come up with. (Another rationalization would be that Asgore just followed the Germanic naming convention of combining the parents' names to name the child. Considering his theme music has a German title, that's not so implausible.)
  • Asriel's full name, "Asriel Dreemurr", can also be read as an anagram for "Serial Murderer" (which is a fitting thing to call him after he dies and turns into Flowey).
• Asriel's final desperate plea to allow him to win during the final battle of a Pacifist Run. Though he uses the name given, some of the things he says could be perceived as being directed towards the player. If the player wins the encounter, that's it. The game is over. This is similar to what Flowey said before consuming everyone's souls just moments ago. Given that Flowey and Asriel are the same person, this is the same idea coming across in two distinctly different ways: If you win, you stop playing the game. Though many of the characters form some sort of attachment to the player's character, it's almost as if Asriel/Flowey have formed an actual attachment to the player themself, and desperately want the player to keep playing the game for that reason.
  Flowey: "WHY am I still doing this? Don't you get it? This is all just a GAME. If you leave the underground satisfied, you'll "win" the game. If you "win", you won't want to "play" with me anymore. And what would I do then?"
  Asriel: "I'm not ready for this to end. I'm not ready for you to leave. I'm not ready to say goodbye to someone like you again.... JUST LET ME WIN!!!"
• If you spare Flowey at the end of a Neutral Run, the encounter will end with him Fleeing, complete with the message "*Flowey ran away." Flee is a Mercy option. You've shown Flowey once and for all that it's not kill or be killed by making him choose an option from the Mercy menu while refusing to pick the Fight option.
• The first refusal to die while fighting Asriel after he transforms has him gloating about your immortality, your hold still decreasing every time you die, your friends remembering you less, being trapped in a world where no one remembers you forever, and how your determination will be your downfall. He isn't gloating. He's venting.
• Why didn't Flowey act sociopathic until later on? Because people who once had the capacity for empathy, only to lose it, retain their sense of morality. Why did he snap anyway? He himself admitted to being in a permanent state of fragmentation near the end of the Genocide Route. Not to mention the discovery of saving and loading was bound to get boring after a while with no emotions.
• Despite howdy being, you know, a pleasant greeting, the circumstances are never pleasant in which it's used. Flowey always uses it, but then he's always scheming something, and Papyrus uses it once, but only when he's being manipulated by Flowey. Asriel uses it talking to Chara, but that very same conversation leads to the plan that ends in both of their deaths. The only other person who uses it is Asgore, and that's before you two battle for the fate of the underground. And, crossing into Fridge Horror, that's when it hit me: the phrase "howdy" is only ever used by a character when either them or the person they're addressing is going to die.
• When you abort a Genocide run, Flowey is annoyed that "Chara" quit after getting so close to succeeding, but decides they must want to try everything else out first and tells them he'll be waiting when they're done messing around. People have pointed out that he still says this even if you reset at the screen where you can kill him in the Genocide run — after he (rightfully) got scared that Chara would kill him, betrayed them by running off to Asgore, and broke down into tears with Chara advancing on them to kill. Why on earth would he react to the reset with such nonchalance when he was so obviously scared of Chara? Well, we know Chara used to make creepy faces for Asriel's entertainment, and we know that Asriel adored Chara and has a huge blindspot for them even as the soulless Flowey. From Flowey's perspective, Chara made a creepy face at him, but crucially never actually attacked him; so when they reset without actually attacking or killing him, all he could assume is that that's all it was — oh, it was just Chara making a face to scare him like they used to, golly, it's so embarrassing that he still falls for it. Now that he thinks Chara isn't really out to kill him, he's exasperated that they pulled a joke like that at such a critical point, but he accepts it as their type of humor. No, most people wouldn't react to Chara the same after that; but both Flowey and Chara are sadistic soulless killers at this point, so Flowey would think that it's not a big deal.
• Why is Asriel the only one to ask why Frisk went to the mountain to begin with? Because Chara admitted their own reason to Asriel, even if Asgore and Toriel were not aware of it. For all we know, when Asriel says "everyone" knows the mountain as a place of no return, he might only mean the humans, and monsters might not even be aware how the humans think of their home.
• Flowey is the only monster in the Underground capable of bringing even a little Pacifist player's HP to 1, and he takes several swipes by Chara to destroy. This is because Flowey is not a monster or a human and thus not subjected to the same rules. He's more of a Amalgamate without a SOUL, or a flower possessed by a monster rather than a monster himself. In Undertale, monsters are so weak to humans because they possess almost no actual physical matter, being made up of magic, while humans are made up of physical matter almost entirely. As such, Flowey is significantly more powerful and takes more to kill because he's made up of much more physical matter than any other being in the Underground besides the player themselves.
• Out of every character in the game, Flowey's the only one you can't give a perfect ending to, despite having perhaps the most tragic backstory and arguably not being "all there" as he lacks a soul, while other characters who retained their morality and compassion also committed murder and got a new, happy life on the surface. Why is that? Well, there is one other entity who cannot get a happy ending even on the best run. You, after a No Mercy run where you wipe out every monster in the underground. Even after you reset, the consequences don't go away. It's possible that this was the case for Flowey, too, who went down the same path, and that this is the only thing that can lock you out of true happiness.
• Why do Flowey's pellets/bullets deal so much damage in the beginning/near the end? Because he's fully intending to kill you, and he certainly isn't holding back. He doesn't have any of the unpleasant morality that would interfere with his fighting. If we intend to kill everyone in the No Mercy run, hence the instant kills, then it's easy to say that the same is true for Flowey whenever he fights us.
  • As for why Flowey's attacks put you at 1 HP? Because he did it on purpose. Flowey has so much killing intent towards you that he could have easily killed you from full health in a single hit. He intentionally held back just enough to leave you at 1 HP just so he could taunt you before going in for the kill, since it wouldn't have been satisfying to him if he had just ended things immediately.
• With the reveal that Flowey was a literal child when he died, his Dirty Coward behavior throughout the game makes a lot more sense: As soon as he has any sort of power over the player, he gleefully tortures them, gloats over their suffering, and acts like he was the one in control the whole time. Then as soon as he realizes the player has power over him, he hides from them and refuses to engage in a direct fight until he has the opportunity to gain far more power than the player could ever achieve. In other words, he acts exactly like an elementary schoolyard bully: running away from and shouting empty threats when his victim actually stands up to him, then gleefully rubbing in his victim's face how powerful he is as soon as they're at his mercy via an unfair size/power advantage. And as soon as he realizes he's losing, he starts throwing a tantrum, and pretty much accuses the player of being "mean" when he gets his ass handed to him. Which is exactly how an immature bully would behave.

Ruins and Toriel

• "Three out of four grey rocks recommend that you push them." Literally. You have to ask the fourth one to move.
• Toriel, a very motherly character, has the track "Fallen Down" for her non-battle theme. Guess what game the instruments in that song come from? EarthBound (1994), aka MOTHER 2.
  • If you interpret Frisk as having parents (which some interpretations do) before falling down, then Toriel is Mother (number) 2.
• Check the tree in front of Toriel's house: "Every time this old tree grows leaves, they fall right off." After Toriel welcomes you inside and you take a nap, you find Toriel again to ask her how to get back home.
  • As "falling down" is a euphemism for death, it could also be foreshadowing of how every single child Toriel has ever had/adopted ended up dying, from Asriel to Chara to the rest of the human souls.
• The song Heartache, which plays during Toriel's battle, isn't dramatic for no reason or just to reflect Toriel's emotions. It's your first real battle and the moment that you choose what type of person you're going to be in the game.
• The song "Home" that plays in Toriel's house has the soothing acoustic melody you'd expect of a safe place. But in spite of its initial impression, the song has noticeable flaws once you listen closely: the chords start to stumble over themselves, the tempo keeps wavering constantly, and the song almost starts breaking down entirely before returning to the original beat. This represents how, despite how much Toriel wants you to be happy living with her, it's not where you belong.
• You have the option to call Toriel "Mom". Well, she is the Fallen's adoptive mother.
• Why are the Ruins' puzzles activated in the beginning? Because the field of flowers the player character landed on is the Fallen Child's grave, and Toriel doesn't want people messing with it. It's the same reason she's there tending the flowers if you spare her and why Asriel is there in the Playable Epilogue.
• Toriel seems weaker than Asgore, with simpler attack patterns and no flashy weapons, but she knocks him away easily in the True Pacifist ending. Why is that? Because she was treating you with kid gloves to scare you back into staying with her. We honestly can't gauge her real capabilities because, unlike Asgore, who is fighting to kill, she's only ever seen fighting to frighten. She may be stronger than him.
  • Even better, CHECK the stats in the combat menu, and it reveals both characters have the same stats: 80 ATK, 80 DEF. Way more than any of the other bosses in the game (Undyne's ATK is 7). Yet Asgore also does only a little more damage than the previous bosses — they were both holding back.
  • Toriel weakens her attacks and deliberately misses you when your HP gets too low, which makes sense, since she's not fighting to kill. While Asgore's attacks are always intense, he never finishes you off unless you have 1 HP. Even if the next hit could kill you, he holds back until there is nothing else he can do.
  • Look carefully at how Toriel and Asgore attack as lost souls. At first, it just looks like one of Asgore's attacks, then a second hand comes in and does the same attack at the same magnitude. Toriel used a smaller version of that attack during her fight, and since she isn't holding back (as much) now, they're both doing the same attack at the same time, their power at the same level.
• Why are Toriel's socks considered scandalous? Because she's a Barefoot Cartoon Animal. Socks in general seem to be an "inappropriate" article of clothing in this universe. If you hum with Shyren, monsters show up to make it a concert and toss their socks at you.
• Why is Toriel so afraid that Frisk will get hurt and is so overprotective of them? Because she had lost two children in one night to murderous "people" with confused morals.
  • If you backtrack after being guided by Toriel, you'll discover that the spike puzzle actually isn't dangerous — they just act as walls. However, Toriel has a perfectly good reason to be worried about things that seem harmless, because the Fallen Child died after (intentionally) poisoning themself by eating buttercups.
• Toriel says she wants you to prove that you're strong enough to survive before engaging the battle, yet even if you've been treating the game like a typical RPG and killing every encounter thus far (but not going full Genocide in the sense that you're deliberately seeking out everything), bringing yourself to hurt her isn't easy. She's not just testing if you're strong enough physically, but mentally as well — all the fighting power and ability in the world won't help you if you're not willing to make use of it, so she wants to know if you'd be willing to fight someone who's been nothing but kind to you if your life depended on it. If you can kill someone under those circumstances, then you can take on anyone, so she knows she won't have to worry about you.
  • It seems to be a major reason she lets you go even if you simply stand your ground and don't fight back. By refusing to back down, you've shown a different kind of strength — the resolve to stand up and face danger head-on, but also be able to find a peaceful solution while being attacked.
• Another sign that Toriel is holding back in her fight is in her attack that opens with her hand going across the soul box with fire trailing it. If the hand hits the child's soul (implying that Toriel physically hit the child), the attack immediately stops.
• Toriel keeps a chocolate bar in her fridge. While at first, it looks like Fridge Horror (no pun intended) because chocolate is poisonous not just to dogs, but also to goats, it goes back to Fridge Brilliance because it was for Chara, and it was their favorite.
• A Froggit admits that everyone in the Ruins is intimidated by Toriel, which seems odd, since she's perfectly friendly and welcoming. This comment makes a lot more sense when you find out that Toriel used to be queen of the Underground (and most monsters likely still consider her to be such, even if she left the castle). While most of the Underground isn't sure where Toriel went after she left Asgore, everyone in the Ruins would know exactly who she is. Wouldn't you be a bit intimidated if your country's ruler suddenly moved in next door?
• On paper, Toriel has very high stats — AT and DF both 80, making her equal to Asgore, who is a Final Boss, and she is a boss monster as well, meaning she has a stronger SOUL than other monsters. So since you fight her in the beginning area, with your highest possible stats still extremely low and only having access to the worst equipment of the game, it should be a near-impossible boss fight where she absolutely wipes the floor with you each time. Instead, she is a starter boss fight, with monsters that have lower stats than her proving to be more difficult fights. So why does she do so little damage and go down so easily, even at a low level and getting one-shotted when you bring down her health to a third? A book in Snowdin explains it: "Because they are made of magic, monsters' bodies are attuned to their SOUL. If a monster doesn't want to fight, its defenses will weaken. And the crueler the intentions of our enemies, the more their attacks will hurt us. Therefore, if a being with a powerful SOUL struck with the desire to kill..." Because Toriel doesn't want to fight the protagonist, she's forcing herself to do it in hopes that she'll either scare them into backing down and staying safe with her, or if they really want to leave, force them to kill her and in doing so harden their heart enough to be willing to kill to survive up against the monsters out there who will want to kill them, like Asgore, so they might be able to escape the Underground with their life. Her attacks do much less damage than they should because she doesn't actually want to hurt them and isn't fighting anywhere near full strength, and their attacks do more damage to her than they should (even with no EXP gained) because her DF is lowered since deep down she doesn't want to fight and hurt you. If you're on a Genocide run, this causes her to die in one hit despite her high DF stat, from a combination of her unwillingness to hurt the protagonist and their willingness to kill — when weaker monsters you'll fight after her with much lower DF and you at higher LV require more hits since they want to fight, which speaks more to just how reluctant Toriel was to fight you with such high DF. On any other run, the longer the fight goes on, the more her will falters — allowing the protagonist to convince her to accept their mercy, or if they're fighting back, causing her to lose the will to keep fighting at all and die from the next hit. Adding to this, it's implied that Asgore is also holding back somewhat and we haven't yet seen the true potential of boss monsters like him and Asriel fighting at full strength and willingness to hurt. TLDR: The human was very lucky the goats are so soft-hearted.

Snowdin, Sans and Papyrus

• Sans and Papyrus:
  • They're named after typefaces (Comic Sans and… Papyrus) that get a lot of hate in the design world for being overused. Similarly, the characters get little respect when they show up (they're upset at their limited appearance in the demo, and the narrator shuts them down in the Steam Greenlight trailer). Their skeletal appearance might also be a Visual Pun of the "overuse" of their namesakes. Yet, by virtue of their enigmatic nature, the characters already have a fan following.
  • Their personalities also seem to be based on the common perceptions of those typefaces. Comic Sans is used when businesses try to appear friendly (but end up looking lazy) and Papyrus is used to make something seem more meaningful and important than it really is. The characters themselves have more depth than that, but those aren't bad summations of who they are.
    • The Easter Egg character, W.D. Gaster, speaks in Wingdings, a font consisting entirely of random symbols. It's a pain to read unless you're dedicated enough to learn (made only slightly easier by the fact that Gaster only uses Wingdings 1 in all uppercase), and only exists because it used to be the most efficient way to include those symbols in word processors. Gaster mysteriously disappeared from both reality and memory, but was the royal scientist and designer of the Core before then, fulfilling his font's characteristics as hard-to-understand and a once-useful relic of a bygone age.
  • Their personalities also extend to the typography of their speech — the excessively enthusiastic Papyrus is all capital letters and exclamation marks. Even if he means well, he is trying a little too hard. Sans, on the other hand, is too lazy to even capitalize properly (except in certain… instances).
  • Even their physical appearance resembles their namesakes: a short, stocky, casual-looking buddy, and a tall fellow trying to look important.
  • Also, Papyrus tends to be considered TOO LOUD.
  • Not to mention Sans… is a comic. And in a No Mercy run, he loses all his comedic intent and his font changes to 8bitoperator. On top of that, it's a sans serif font, which is also a semi-homophone for 'seraph,' an angelic rank. What are angels often depicted doing? Opposing the demonic forces of evil.
    • Why is Papyrus "Papyrus" but Sans is just "Sans"? Because there's nothing "Comic" about him.
  • Undyne mentions that Papyrus has everything it takes to be a member of the Royal Guard, but refuses him on account on him being 'too nice'. It shows in his stats, too — Papyrus has 8 ATK and 2 DEF; the only boss monsters he's weaker than on a Pacifist run are Toriel (who has 80 ATK and DEF, but is holding back) and Asgore (who also has 80 ATK and DEF, but is also holding back (albeit not as much as Toriel) and can be talked down into holding back further). Undyne herself has 7 ATK and a DEF score of zero, and Mettaton EX has 8 ATK and 1 DEF.
  • During Papyrus' boss fight, he hypes up his special attack when it's actually doing nothing but waiting around while Papyrus yells at a dog until he finishes. In Sans' boss fight, the special attack is also hyped up when it's actually a whole turn of literally doing nothing in an attempt to stall you, but you really have to wait around until he falls asleep to scroll over to the FIGHT button.
  • The game strongly implies that Papyrus learned to fight properly from Undyne and that Sans learned some fighting from Papyrus. Considering what a nightmare Sans' attack before his special attack is and that Papyrus complains that his special attack got stolen by the dog, it might well be that if not for the dog, players could have been decimated if Papyrus had not lost his bones.
  • Toby Fox once mentioned that Shin Megami Tensei influenced the game's combat system which allows you to spare monsters. What else does MegaTen have? Absurdly powerful bonus bosses in the form of the skeletal Fiends. Sans and Papyrus are as strong as they are because they're Fiends.
  • On the No Mercy path, when Papyrus dies, he asks the player to keep moving forward out of the hope that they'll change their ways. Meanwhile, Sans makes an effort to stop the player in their tracks. They're orange and blue, respectively. What do orange and blue attacks do?
  • Ironically, while Papyrus' CHECK text in the No Mercy route describes him as "forgettable", out of any other monster you can kill, Papyrus gets mentioned the most. Undyne drops all of her energetic theatrics and coldly promises to kill you. Sans, meanwhile, drops out of the game entirely should you kill Papyrus until the very end of the game, where he delivers a much more scathing judgement than he would even if you'd killed every monster except for Papyrus. (He'll also refuse to make fun of your level if you keep reloading before the judgement, and won't congratulate you for any self-imposed challenges in the end-of-game phone call.)
  Undyne: What did you DO TO HIM?
  Sans: "You dirty brother killer.", or "Then why'd you kill my brother?", depending on how you answer his question.
  • Pay attention to which eye Sans uses when he winks in his dialogue portrait: during a normal run, he uses his left eye, but during a No Mercy run, he uses his right eye. This is because his left one is the one he seems to channel his powers through, as seen when it glows during his attacks when you fight him, implying that when he's confirmed that you're a potential threat, he keeps his left eye trained on you at all times.
  • Compare Sans' 'asleep' sprite and his winking sprite. Notice the difference between the way the eyes look? He's not actually asleep, he's trying to trick you again.
  • There's one area in Snowdin where Sans will teleport back and forth using his Offscreen Teleportation to the point of parody. He's deliberately dropping a hint towards his knowledge about the temporal paradoxes and his shortcuts. Also, while Sans normally turns his sprite to face the player character when spoken to, he's unceasingly staring right at the screen. Since the No Mercy path makes it clear that he's aware that Frisk and the player are separate entities, he's flaunting his powers while staring at you to let you know that he's aware of your existence.
  • Papyrus' attacks consist of, of course, bones, but they're suspiciously shaped like text cursors with the flat top and bottom. Given that Papyrus is also a typeface, this is probably another reference to his ties to the fonts. This also applies to Sans, who is named after Comic Sans.
  • If you call Papyrus outside of Alphys' lab, he, being Papyrus, winds up pronouncing it "Labrador-y" and wonders if that means there are dogs inside of it. Sans chimes in with a wink that he wouldn't rule it out. The True Lab has Endogeny, meaning Sans knows that, at the very least, the dog sentries' parents never left Alphys' lab, though he doesn't drop any hints that he knows their fate.
  • During the Papyrus date, if you look in the sink drawer, you find the Annoying Dog stealing a bone, and after Papyrus fails to catch him, Sans comes out of his room and plays a Trombone. Yes, a TromBONE.
  • In a No Mercy run, if you've died four times in a row to Sans, he will tell you, "that's the expression of somebody who's died quice in a row. quice? frice?" "Frice", as in "fries". As in what you would've had for lunch with Sans if you maintained a non-Genocide run up to sparing Papyrus.
  • Sans is a Pundead.
  • When you first meet Sans, he mentions that he "doesn't really care about capturing anybody." Considering his demeanor, the line just seems to be establishing his laziness. Later on, however, you learn through a conversation with Sans that perhaps he's not so keen on taking prisoners in the first place…
• Why is there a lamp right outside of Sans' sentry station for you to hide behind? He sells hot dogs there. It's a heat lamp to keep his customers warm while waiting outside.
• Papyrus' comment about needing 12 more followers to get a 2-digit number makes sense when you remember that hexadecimal notation is common in computers, suggesting he has 4 friends online.
• Sans killing you after you spare him seems trollish of him, but it's pretty much sweet karma. You killed his brother when he was sparing you, so he was just showing you the utter betrayal he felt.
• Sans' speech during the You Are Not Alone segment before the True Pacifist final boss seems to pretty much be Sans being Sans, but look a bit deeper at his wording, "What, you still haven't beaten this guy yet?" Since he can observe timelines, he's probably aware that the one he's in is one that keeps going after Frisk leaves the Underground, so while the others are egging you on in their belief in you, Sans is doing it because he knows as an absolute certainty that you'll win.
• Examining the dog couple's hut in Snowdin, you'll find coloured definitions of the threat levels — White, Blue, and Green; however, the word Green is actually coloured Red. Dogs are red-green colourblind.
• When you talk to Papyrus during his date or hangout, he talks about how Sans tried making a "quiche" with a sugary substance instead of egg. In other words, pie. An early indicator that he knows Toriel.
• Sans being the first character you encounter in Snowdin may seem a bit odd at first, until you remember that Toriel asked him to protect any humans who came through his area. He even comes up to you from behind — meaning he was walking away from the Ruins! He didn't just passively accept Toriel's request; he was waiting for you from the start!
  • He and Papyrus were also ordered by Undyne to capture any human that falls down. A fallen child would pass the ruins, thus him being right by the entrance would be the correct place to be. Depending on which run the player goes for, he will either regret his decision to listen to Toriel instead of Undyne or not.
• If you kill just about every leader and enough monsters to make Sans disgusted with you, but still get a Neutral Ending, he ends with two very chilling words: "see ya." At first, it seems like an open threat, until you remember that Sans is fully aware of the player's ability to start everything from the beginning. So, if you want to get one of the two true endings, you will see him again on the next playthrough — either as your friend, or as your worst nightmare.
  • Sans also does something similar in his phone call at the end of a pacifistic Neutral route where he says "be seeing you, ok, buddy". He knows that you're going to come back and fully expects you to give them their happy ending.
• Out of all the characters' leitmotifs, only Sans' is just named after him, except for Asgore's. It's well-established that Asgore sucks at naming things, so what's Sans' excuse? Laziness.
• When you defeat Sans in the No Mercy run, why does he seem to bleed when skeletons have no circulation system? It's because he loves drinking ketchup at Grillby's!
• Papyrus' plan of calling every cell phone to find Frisk's number seems ludicrous at first glance. On the overworld, where there are millions of cell phones, it would certainly be this way. In the underworld, however, there are far fewer active lines: if you consider that Mettaton, the underworld's greatest superstar, only has three dozen fans, it seems likely that there are no more than 20 or 30 cell phones active overall. It would then be easy for him to request the underworld's client list using Undyne's authority "in an effort to find the human" and call every single number. Papyrus would need 30 minutes at most to find the right one.
• The fact that Papyrus never lets the player drop below 1 HP, even by accident. Remember who has 1 HP in total? It makes sense that Papyrus, more than any other monster, is used to being very careful not to hurt someone else.
• Why does Sans sleep a lot? The kid at Snowed Inn mentions that sleeping raises your HP above max. Since Sans's max HP is only one, one hit would normally kill him. By sleeping a lot, he decreases his chance of dying even accidentally.
• Both of the Skelebros tire themselves out during their fights, and both get pooped out completely after launching their ridiculously long ending attacks.
• The Dogi, if spared by petting them, become nuzzle-nose champions at the end, claiming the title from Asgore and Toriel. Your actions open them to the notion of dogs petting other dogs, so petting each other as they nuzzled may very well have factored into their victory the next time they competed.
  • Alternatively: If Asgore and Toriel were still separated during the next nuzzle-nose competition, they might have opted out of competing. With their only real competition gone (keep in mind the Dogi were second place), claiming the #1 spot would be relatively easy for the Dogi.
• Sans's checkpoint just outside the ruins has bottles of ketchup, mustard, and relish inside it, but you cannot pick them up. Why is that? Because they're just flavor text.
• Why does Sans hate making promises and try to avoid it? He is extremely observant and perceptive (guessing correctly what happens in other timelines in spite of not actually remembering them based on simple clues, anticipating and dodging Fallen Child's attacks even while asleep), and is implied to be rather close to Asgore (not as close as Undyne or Alphys, but still closer than most monsters). Asgore's whole life was ruined by one promise that he made in a fit of rage and despair and now has to fulfill, even though he really doesn't want to. He makes an effort to hide it behind a nice, happy attitude and is good enough at it to convince most monsters, including the aforementioned Alphys and Undyne, that he really wants to free them at any cost — but Sans wouldn't be fooled. He avoids making any promises, because he doesn't want to make the same mistake.
• Why does Sans look overweight despite being a skeleton? He's BIG BONED.
• One combined with sadness. Snowdrake's father comments that Snowy ran away after his mother died, and both Snowy and his father imply that their relationship is very, very strained. Then you go to the True Lab, and find out that Snowy's mother is there — she had "fallen down" and was comatose, and was sent to Alphys for experimentation. Alphys meant to send the dust back to the families of the monsters for funerals, but they didn't crumble after they were injected with Determination. Then, they woke up, and Alphys wrote to the families, Snowy and his dad included, that everyone was alive. And then… she never responds to anyone's calls or letters, says anything about what's going on, or sends the supposedly-alive subjects home. Unintentionally or not, Alphys really yanked the dog's chain here, giving the families a flicker of hope before snatching it away, without so much as an explanation. Snowy's not just acting out because he lost his mom; he's acting out because he's emotional and angry, and because he never got any real closure, which could've helped him process, grieve properly, and cope in a healthy way. It makes even more sense when you consider that Snowy's a teenager. Teens aren't known for being the most rational of creatures at the best of times, but a teenager that's gone through what Snowy has? Of course he'd lash out at his father and do something impulsive, like run away from home.
• You can buy the Tough Glove from the shopkeep in Snowdin, even though you get it for free inside the first dimensional box you find. If each weapon belonged to a previous human, why is this the only one you can acquire two of? Because it's actually a pair of gloves, left and right.
• Of course almost nobody donated to the Dog Shrine in the Switch version. Without the trophies of the PS4 version, there's no real incentive to.
• If you end up in Papyrus's garage, you'll find a note claiming that he left "refreshments and accommodations" for you. However, the only things in the garage besides the note are a dog bed, dry kibble, and a squeaky toy. It makes sense that this so-called "guest room" in the garage is set up this way given that so many characters in Snowdin are dogs. It also makes sense that Papyrus doesn't realize that these things aren't suitable for you, given that you are the first human he's ever met.
• Looking at the book in the Skelebros' living room will reveal two joke books with a quantum physics book between them. Obviously, this is Sans' because of the joke books. The physics book seems like a random joke, but makes sense after fighting Sans on the No Mercy route. Sans reveals that he's aware of time anomalies and resets occurring. He's reading a book on quantum physics trying to find a way to understand and/or control it happening.
• Papyrus's note on the frozen spaghetti: "You'll be so busy eating it, you won't realize you aren't progressing!" At first glance, this just seems to be a joke about Papyrus's huge ego and Lethal Chef properties, but it ends up being exactly what happens when fighting his brother Sans on the Genocide Route. The only way to progress in the fight is by attempting to attack Sans, meaning it's very easy to get stuck in a loop of eating food to outpace the damage Sans does, meaning another turn of dodging his powerful attacks, which neccessitates using another item to heal, meaning missing out on a turn to attack him to progress his dialogue...
• Sans pranking Frisk with a whoopie cushion in his hand seems just like an harmless prank. And if I tell you that perhaps he was checking if you had dust on your hands?

Waterfall, Undyne and Napstablook

• When buying the Glasses and Torn Notebook from the Waterfall shop, the stats state that your invincibility frames increase. Which makes sense: the glasses are clouded, the notebook is torn. You must look so pathetic and weak that the monsters go easier on you.
• Undyne has more DEF without her armor than with. This could be because the armor is meant to shield her SOUL from attacks, as monsters seem to usually attack the SOUL, not the body. Thus, it is useless against attacks to the "body", and may even actively hinder her blocking. Conversely, without armor to weigh her down, she's able to move and block more effectively, thus her increased DEF when unarmored.
  • Alternatively, it's because the only time you fight her without her armor, you've already gone to immense lengths to spare and befriend her (which, by the way, is only possible if you've been a pacifist to everyone else, too). She's not stronger; you're weaker, because the protagonist can't muster the ill will to do her any real harm.
    • It's not even that you're weaker. The fact that the protagonist is unwilling to hurt her is the entire reason why your attacks barely do anything in that "fight".
• The music that plays during Undyne's death on the Neutral run is a mix of her regular theme and "Battle Against A True Hero." She's trying to muster the determination to take on her Undying form like on Genocide, but because of that lingering doubt that you might still be a good person on the inside, she can't do it. You might have brought Undyne's HP to zero, but it was her own internal conflict that killed her.
  • This could also explain why, during a Genocide Run, she is able to take on her Undying form. She saw you about to murder an innocent child, and when she pushed them out of the way, she felt all the damage your attack did — and it's usually in the 10,000s. In other words, Undyne felt the immense hatred and killing intent you had towards the Monster Kid and was utterly convinced that there was no good in you at all.
• During your hangout with Undyne, she states: "some mean human will fall down here, and I'll take their soul instead." Fast-forward to Undyne the Undying.
• During the Mad Dummy's boss fight, we get to hear Napstablook's theme all the while. The Mad Dummy is prone to repeating some of its words thrice. Go ahead, pay attention to how the music goes.
• Napstablook:
  • Napstablook's name makes little sense when you first meet them, but when you get to their house, you discover they're a music aficionado. They're a Napster bloke.
  • You also first encounter them when they're pretending to sleep and blocking your way, preventing you from progressing. Naps-ta-block.
• The prophecy described on the walls of Waterfall and mentioned by several characters is ambiguously interpreted. Some believe the Angel will free them all from being trapped in the Underground, while others see it as a macabre Angel of Death who will free them from their eternal malaise by ending their lives. This seems to most reflect the Pacifist ending, which contains both — Asriel as an actual angel of death who's emptied the Underground by consuming all the monster souls at once and then later uses their combined power along with the human souls to break the barrier, allowing the monsters to be free. The No Mercy ending, where the player eradicates all of the monsters in the Underground themself, also falls under the latter description.
• In a No Mercy run, there's no save point before Undyne the Undying until after dying to her once (which you probably will). This is because she's the first real challenge you've been made to face — everything to that point has been a curb stomp — thus the determination and excitement of an actual test creates a SAVE point where one wouldn't be on any other run.
• Undyne's death animations in any run always involve her beginning to melt. It's apparent that Undyne truly is badass enough to delay her own death, making her the only monster in the whole underground capable of generating her own Determination. Unfortunately, she's still a monster, so while it lets her revive multiple times for a short while, it ultimately causes her body to melt just like the Amalgamates after she uses it for too long.
• Another moment with Undyne makes a lot more sense in hindsight — you're wandering through the darkness and you find an echo flower… which ominously says "behind you." Naturally, Undyne is lurking and ready to fight you. The brilliance kicks in once you realize that someone had to say "behind you" to the flower — it was Undyne, going off the Voice Grunting, who believes that anime is real and set up a suitably dramatic encounter.
• In a more literal case of Fridge Brilliance than most: Undyne's "hot fridge" might seem like a bad idea… unless you've spoken to the toothy monster at Grillby's and remember that monster food doesn't spoil. For monsters, whether a fridge is cold or hot really is just a matter of preference.
  • The concept is also technically plausible. Refrigerators and other heat pumps don't actually "make" things cold (that would violate Conservation of Energy) but instead move heat from the inside of the fridge to the outside. The only reason real fridges don't have a "hot" side like Undyne's is because the heat removed from the cold side isn't enough to keep food from spoiling.
• Sans' prank where he uses the telescope to leave a mark around Frisk's eye at first seems like a goofy Sans prank. However, it has a practical use too: Sans is trying to see if you, the player, are in control. Logically, Frisk probably wouldn't be able to see the ring around their eye, but you would, once you turned Frisk to the screen. Sans just wants to make sure what to expect from this particular timeline.
• If you sing with Shyren and have spared Papyrus, Sans will appear and start selling tickets made of toilet paper. This seems odd, since monsters explicitly don't excrete, but keep in mind that a lot of trash from the surface ends up underground.
• During Undyne's friendship "date", she tells the tale of how she became the head of the Royal Guard. As a kid, Undyne tried to fight Asgore, who both dodged every attack of hers and utterly refused to fight back. Which is exactly what the player must do, not just with Undyne, but everyone up to that point in order to befriend Undyne and hear that story to begin with. You have to emulate her idol to gain Undyne's friendship and stick with what she admires about Asgore throughout the game in order to keep it.
• In Undyne’s Genocide Route song, "Battle Against a True Hero", you can hear a sped-up version of "Don’t Give Up". Of course, she is determined to strike you down.
• Also, both Papyrus’ and Undyne’s catchphrases sound very similar (“NYEH HEH HEH!” and “NGAHHHH!!”)
• If you Check Napstablook's stats while fighting them, they actually react to the narrator's statement that they don't seem to have a sense of humor. If you subscribe to the theory that Chara is the narrator, this would be further evidence in that regard — if any monster could sense the spirit of a dead human, it would probably be a ghost.

Hotland, Alphys and Mettaton

• Why the heck is Mettaton EX so obsessed with his legs? Well, as a ghost, he never had legs or arms, and as his box form, he still had no legs.
• Why does Mettaton NEO go down so easily in a Genocide Run? When you think about it, it's very likely that he was a rushed production on Alphys' part. To elaborate, Mettaton has an infatuation for the human world, so there's no way he would ask Alphys to intentionally turn him into a human-killing machine from the get-go unless absolutely necessary, and when Frisk started to gain an advantage over Undyne the Undying, that was probably the point when she deemed things went to shit, forcing her to make some last-minute adjustments to Mettaton whilst also evacuating the monster population.
  • Also, Mettaton isn't a true robot. He is a ghost possessing a robotic body which he had made his own for good. He is a monster and has the same weakness to Killing Intent as the rest.
  • The fact that he can comment on his lack of defense could reinforce the idea of Alphys rushing him. It's been pointed out that Mettaton NEO is deliberately wasting time to let Alphys escape, as evidenced by his opening text being "Mettaton NEO blocks the way!" instead of mentioning him attacking or doing otherwise; that might not be what she intended for him to do, though. Alphys probably poured what little time she had into improving Mettaton's attack in the hopes that he'd actually be able to kill Frisk.
    • CHECKing his stats proves this as well. Box Mettaton has an ATK of 30 and a DEF of 255. Mettaton NEO, though, has 90 ATK (even more than Toriel and Asgore), but only 9 DEF. The idea was that he might get killed in one hit, but as everyone is unaware of the "Player attacks first" rule, they probably hoped that he could get in one good hit to kill or at least slow down the player.
    • This is slightly undermined by the fact that if you give him a chance to act by CHECKing, missing, trying to spare him, or otherwise screwing around, Mettaton NEO does absolutely nothing. Either he has no idea how to actually use his new form's combat functions, or he's too damn scared of you to move.
    • Well, yes; it explicitly says that he's "blocking the way." The idea is that while Mettaton NEO simply refuses to fight you, his ridiculous attack score running contrary to him not doing anything means that Alphys hoped he'd fight you. Or to put it more simply, Mettaton's just not doing what he was "meant to," though his dialogue implies more out of Honor Before Reason rather than fear.
    • We learn in the Pacifist/Neutral Run that his human form has some serious energy problems (after all, if he isn't killed, he will still shut down). Mettaton NEO is at least thrice as elaborate, so chances are, whatever attacks he has, they would either make him break down mid-attack or he doesn't even have the energy resources to start them; his energy reserves are probably barely enough to stand in your way without shutting down.
  • Mettaton NEO's theme, "Power of NEO", is a remix of "Battle Against a True Hero". This might be just to trick you into thinking Mettaton NEO is a difficult boss, but it is justified in-game because both want to kill you to ensure everyone else's survival… but also because Alphys built Mettaton NEO, and since she saw your fight against Undyne, it inspired her to create Mettaton NEO as a tribute to the one she loved.
  • Killing Mettaton NEO nets you a metric ton of EXP, enough to raise your LOVE to 19. Until now, you've been slaughtering dogs, bugs, slime, seahorses, airplanes, and sentient fire, with the most humanized monsters being a goat woman, a skeleton, and a fish woman. Aside from his Arm Cannon, Mettaton NEO looks extremely closely like a human, and your willingness to cut him down shows how willing you are to kill an actual human.
  • Even if you hit Mettaton NEO at full strength on a run where you haven't killed all of Hotland's population, why does he say that you were holding back? Because you haven't gained the maximum amount of EXP and LOVE that you could've.
• The quiz question about smooching a ghost with only one possible answer seems odd, until you realize Mettaton is a former ghost himself, so this might be a flirty behaviour or just an effort to get a little care.
• Mettaton EX has the most human appearance of all the monsters. Makes sense, given that he wants to be a star on the surface.
• Why is Mettaton almost invulnerable as a box? Well, if your damage is based on killing intent, how badly could you really want to kill a robot? It's not like it's a living being, only a box with some lights on a wheel. There's nothing to kill as far as the Player Character is concerned. Tsunderplane has a wig and Mettaton NEO and EX look almost human, so it would make sense why you could "humanize" them and harness the killing intent.
• Mettaton's final battle theme in a neutral/pacifist run is called "Death By Glamour". While it can refer to how he wants to put on a show while he tries to kill the player, it can also refer to how his desire to have a more physically appealing body could lead to his downfall.
• Why does Alphys wind up with Undyne, at long last? Well, there are such things as lesbian lizards.
• Why would Alphys think to have a bathroom of all things — something it's established that monsters have zero need for — in her lab as a cover for the True Lab entrance? Well, she is a fan of human culture — her installing one in her home as a place where someone'd go for privacy might come off to anyone who knows her as plausibly related to her hobbies enough not to be worth questioning.
• During the Mettaton EX fight, the ratings meter will start to rapidly drop while in the player menu. After all, you're just standing there choosing what to do, which probably isn't very interesting to watch, and the monsters are going to start tuning out from boredom.
• Alphys gets a lot of shit for inserting herself into Frisk's story in order to see herself as the hero who can fix everything, going so far as to literally watch all their progress on a screen and become attached. Guess who else does that? You. On a Pacifist run, to literally everyone in the game.^note Maybe with some stress on the inside…
• It makes sense that Alphys, based on a lizard, has a lab/home in Hotland, the warmest part of the underground. Lizards are, like all reptiles, cold-blooded and need to spend time in the warmth to not freeze to death. This is especially important because besides the hole Frisk initially falls down in Home, it doesn't look like any other parts of the mountain had fallen away to reveal sunlight.
• The only Neutral endings in which Alphys appears are the very worst Neutral ending where you fail a Genocide Run (abort a Genocide Run in Hotland) and the very best Neutral ending where you fail a True Pacifist Run (kill no one, deliver Undyne’s letter, but don’t go to the True Lab).
• Alphys's master plan, as explained by Mettaton, is to make the human like her so much, they won't want to leave. If she had succeeded, it would actually accomplish the goal that Asgore had assigned her. Keep the human from reaching the Palace.
• In the Neutral ending where Asgore, Toriel, and Undyne (but not necessarily Papyrus) are dead, Mettaton becomes the new ruler. After all, to spare him, you have to boost his ratings to an ungodly degree.

New Home and Asgore

• New Home:
  • Off to the side in New Home is a row of coffins marked with color-coded hearts. You can only reach the red one, on the far left, which is marked with the name associated with the save file. It's empty, presumably to contain the player character. Except that the name it's marked with isn't the player character's, it's the Fallen Child's. Examining it will also reveal bandages that remind Frisk of mummy wrappings. Where did the body inside go, and why is it marked the "wrong" color?..
  • Talking to Flowey in the No Mercy route reveals that Toriel took the body and gave it a proper burial under a certain patch of flowers.
  • The opening with a child (we never see their face) climbing Mt. Ebott takes place in "201X". Toriel has an "old" calendar that's labelled "201x." That's not Frisk we see falling in the opening, that's the Fallen Child.
    • Confirmed in the No Mercy route, by the Fallen Child, as "The day I came here."
  • If you look at the shirt of the person in the opening, their clothes don't match up with Frisk's; there's only one stripe on the shirt. They do match up with the shirt that the Fallen Child wears in flashbacks and the Genocide ending.
• The kitchen in Asgore's home has a wastebasket full of pie recipes. Why? Because he's spent countless tries with different recipes to replicate the pies Toriel used to make.
  • In a similar way, almost all the plants in the Ruins are dead, specifically the tree, while Asgore has his house overflowing with flowers. Toriel is bad with plants, and without Asgore taking care of them, they all die.
• Why did Asgore destroy the "Mercy" button? …Because after all he's done, he feels that he doesn't deserve mercy.
  • Another interpretation is that Asgore is such a softy (seriously) that you'd be able to Spare him right off the bat if you showed him mercy.
  • Another interpretation is that he knows you will keep loading, and is only attacking you to make absolutely sure that you kill him.
  • This is the same reason he doesn't meet your gaze in battle. He doesn't want to see you as human, as a living being with feelings and compassion like him, because it would make it all the more difficult for him to bring himself to kill you. In destroying the option for mercy, he's desperately trying to force you into attacking him, in the hopes that it'll give him some measure of a reason to hate you, so that he can (attempt to) bear the burden of killing you, a child.
  • In the Asgore fight, eating Toriel's pie lowers Asgore's ATK and DEF stats. On an obvious level, this is due to being reminded of her… but it could also be partly because, if you have the pie, it means that Toriel cared about you, possibly as much as a family member. Asgore may have realized that, in attempting to avenge the children he'd shared with Toriel, he may essentially have to kill one of her own children.
  • You can only Talk to Asgore to damage his will to FIGHT and lower his offense and defense if you haven't killed anything. This is presumably because on a neutral run, someone, probably Sans, is sending word that the player is willing to kill in self-defense, so he can bring himself to dehumanize you, whereas if you're on a Pacifist run, your telling him to stop makes him face the reality of the situation — he's trying to kill a harmless child who doesn't deserve to die, and while he still feels that he can't surrender, he can't muster the same justification to attack you with intent to kill.
  • Trying to talk to Asgore on a non-pacifist, non-Genocide run results in the game commenting "But there was nothing to say". You can't bring yourself to try and convince Asgore to spare you, because you too were responsible for another's death in order to escape the underground.
• Asgore is extremely reluctant to fight you — he drags the confrontation out for as long as he possibly can, and gives you many opportunities to back out. Frisk is the first human to meet him face to face — all of the others' belongings were found, presumably, where they died — a long way from New Home and Asgore himself.
  • Actually, Toby Fox has confirmed that Asgore killed them all, which is Fridge Horror in itself.
• Because Asgore is deliberately not looking at you during his boss battle, all of his attacks are aimed in your general direction, not specifically at you. Even his trident attacks are in wide swings instead of a potentially more effective jab.
• The part of Asgore's theme which contains the "Heartache" leitmotif loops six times; that's one for every human Asgore killed. Each time it loops, it gains stronger and bolder instrumentation. It's as if the song itself telling a story: with each human Asgore killed, his own heartache grew greater and greater.
  • In other words, Toriel's theme is hidden within Asgore's, but it's not in reverse. Toriel is still a part of Asgore's life, but he is not a part of hers anymore.
• Why does Asgore drink tea instead of coffee? Because coffee is poisonous to goats!

Genocide and Pacifist-Specific

• Why does Flowey take multiple hits to kill, despite Chara being at the height of their killing intent? People may assume it's because he's an actual flower instead of being made of magic, but look at him just before the act. His face takes on the appearance of Asriel, the only person Chara may still have affection for at this point. It's possible their killing intent is weaker for him than any other monster.
  • Either that… or they didn't want to kill him as much as they wanted to make him suffer. Flowey does mention that, early on…
  • Note that despite Chara seemingly killing Asgore without any input from you, there's hesitation from them here. You have to push the button. You have to push them to kill Asriel, their brother, their best friend. You have to push them over the edge.
• In his boss battle, Sans tells you, "To be blunt...it makes it kind of hard to give it my all," as he describes why he took so long to engage you. It's well-known that this battle is DIFFICULT, and the player most likely has had to fight him over and over. After a couple of rounds, the player gets impatient and starts skipping through Sans' dialogue… and the fight bar. Since Sans can't be hit anyways, you're no longer giving the attacks your all either — you're just stopping the fight meter as quickly as possible, even if it misses or would do minimal damage. Looks like Sans really is getting to you, the player, in a very similar kind of scenario. Sans is going through exactly what you are in regards to his attacks never working, but the difference is that he's putting his heart into his attacks anyways.
  • In the soundtrack, Sans' battle theme is "That Song That Might Play If You Fight Sans", but in the game itself, his theme is actually "Megalovania." It makes perfect sense for the most meta character in the game with the most misleading stats, appearance, and personality to mislead you with his battle theme too. Imagine the shock on players' faces when they expect a song similar to "Bonestrousle" but get a serious, frantic beatdown song.
    • The song title isn't misleading either. It's "That Song that Might Play If You Fight Sans."
• In the True Pacifist ending, right as Flowey collects every monster's SOUL together, you'll notice that Undyne is the only one struggling; even Sans is dormant. Seeing how powerful Sans is, this might seem odd until you remember that Sans only has one hit point. A single hit from Flowey may have temporarily knocked him out.
  • Given that, in Flowey's own words, Sans is the major obstacle that has always kept him from reaching Asgore, he probably made sure to apply just enough pressure to keep the skeleton from interacting to be absolutely certain Sans wouldn't jump in.
    • Continuing this, a reason Undyne isn't also receiving the correct amount of pressure (considering that she can still struggle) may be that Flowey sneaks around. Sans, due to his knowledge and teleportation ability, would always be in the way. Undyne, however, is more easily avoided. So Flowey could just not know how powerful and determined Undyne can get because they never fought.
    • Monsters' attack and defense power are based on magic, and Flowey is using physical restraints. The Mad Dummy confirms that magic and physical attacks are different in this world, so it makes sense that the other monsters – physically weaker than Undyne – can't hold their own. If, say, Asgore or Toriel wanted to burn their way out, that would work regardless of how tight the vine was, but since Undyne can bench press literal benches of kids and suplex boulders, she does better in this specific situation.
• We all know that the boss fight against Sans is insanely difficult. But a question comes up: why would he give you a chance to proceed at all? We know from his false mercy offer that he can execute unavoidable One Hit Kills, so why does he not do this earlier, or every chance he gets? This is because, depending on the route taken, Undertale is a deconstruction/reconstruction of RPG video games. As we can see from earlier dialogue in the No Mercy ending, no matter what Flowey did with his power to SAVE, the characterization of all the inhabitants of the Underground remained the same. The Fallen Child/the Player is the only thing that isn't completely predictable. And despite his badassery, Sans is the same — he can't escape his role. Ultimately, Sans is a video game boss. It is in his nature to be beatable, and he can't escape from it.
  • Alternately, he doesn't intercede for the same reason for his general laziness and apathy — he assumes that everything would be reset anyway, so why even bother? It's only when he realizes that you're about to do something that can't be reset — and given that pretty much every boss fight save Mettaton on the Genocide route is effectively crossing a Moral Event Horizon on its own, that's saying a lot — that he realizes he has to step in.
  • It seemed a bit obvious to me that the only reason he could use a One-Hit Kill is if you lowered your guard. When you choose to give him MERCY, you're setting the knife down. It's like once you have the option to SPARE an enemy, you can one-shot them — Sans is getting you to the point where he can SPARE you by using the same trick you would use.
  • Alternatively, judging by Sans's pose when he says "come here, pal.", it's because he's brought you into a hug, making it impossible to dodge regardless. The bullet box filling up with bones is just an interface representation of the fact that you're taking an attack point-blank and you can't escape from it, rather than any trait of the attack itself. He did say that showing mercy would make his task easier, after all.
    • Similarly, allowing you to get close enough to hug him means allowing you to get close enough to attack before he can dodge. He needs to be certain he can attack before he risks doing that.
  • If you somehow^note possibly by hacking manage to survive his unavoidable attack, the bones will disappear, but the turn won't end, leaving you in an unwinnable scenario. Sans is punishing you for cheating by — much like with his "special attack" — never giving you your turn again, leaving ragequitting (or debug mode) as the only option(s) available. And since you went one step further and cheated death, he doesn't even give you the option to push the dodge box to the FIGHT button.
• Sans sticking to his promise to Toriel despite his brother's death makes even more sense when you consider his overall apathy, since he knows that the world may be reset at any time. He's angry, sure, but "this, too, shall pass" — right up until it looks like you may actually win for good.
• Combined with Fridge Horror — Why is Mettaton NEO so easy to kill? Because he was meant to be a HUMAN eradication robot. By the time you reach him, you're not really human. Speaking of which, that's why Sans gets the first turn in his boss fight, that's why he is able to dodge attacks when nobody else could, that's why he is able to grant fake mercy, and that's why he is able to pause the fight just so you can't kill him. Think about it — you always get the first turn, you're able to dodge attacks (heck, it's even possible to beat Sans without getting hit ONCE), you're able to make monsters sparable and then kill them, and you're able to pause the fight so the enemy cannot attack you for a short span of time until you do something. Yup. At that point, Sans is more of a human player character than you are. You aren't fighting Sans. Sans is fighting you.
  • That's why the Song That Might Play When You Fight Sans doesn't play in the battle. It's Sans' battle theme, a supercharged remix of his Leitmotif, including elements of Papyrus' battle theme and Gaster's theme. Instead, the admittedly awesome track Megalovania plays. Sans is fighting you. Megalovania isn't his theme, it's YOURS. YOU are the Final Boss and he's trying to stop you from triggering The End of the World as We Know It.
  • Sans is taking on traits of the player/human, such as dodging your attacks and being able to stop the turn forever. Conversely, you're taking on the traits of a video game boss. Such as introducing new mechanics that don't apply to any other fight besides the one with you in order to make it much more difficult. In this case being able to move the box over to hit the Fight button and attacking twice in a row.
• In the True Pacifist ending, we see monsters reintegrating with human society, complete with getting driver's licences. Toriel even gets to open her own school. But how can they manage to do all of this? Well, the fact that they're a society who still used gold as common currency stepping into a world where even a little gold is quite valuable miiiiight have helped with some of that… if not just the purchasing things, then also bribing the humans to let them live.
  • And when you consider the fact that human wizards are a thing in the Undertale universe, it's quite possible that the magic didn't just go away as time passed, so the humans are used to weird things happening. It's also possible that there are still some monsters around, if you consider the possibility that the urban legendary monsters like the Sasquatch and Nessie could be around in their universe.
• Sans is both a skeleton and a monster, so why would he bleed when the Fallen Child attacks him? Well, if you refuse Sans when he offers you ketchup in Grillby's, he drinks it all. Sans didn't bleed, he was leaking ketchup. Or he is secretly human.
  • The only problem with this is, getting to the point of fighting Sans involves killing Papyrus, which causes Sans to vanish until you get to the judgement hall, and Sans doesn't take you to Grillby's until you get to Waterfall after the fight with Papyrus.
    • He still could have gone on his own sometime before his boss fight, especially considering he outright mentions Grillby's after you beat him. That, or given his fondness for ketchup, he could just keep some on him, which could be considered a Fridge Brilliance on its own.
• Why does the True Pacifist run require, well, being a True Pacifist? Because it involves succeeding in destroying the barrier, which requires the power of 7 human SOULs. Since they only have 6, the only conventional way to get the 7th would be if Frisk died, which just isn't going to happen. It's mentioned that human SOULs are so powerful that it would take the SOULs of every monster in the underground to match one. That's literal — Flowey's backup plan when 6 SOULs aren't enough to defeat you is to gain an artificial 7th by absorbing every single monster and getting the power of a God without yours. If you kill even a single monster, he can't complete that plan because he wouldn't have enough power to create a false 7th SOUL.
  • The True Pacifist route runs even deeper than that, really. If the player doesn't complete the True Lab portion of the game, the player is shunted into a Neutral Path. The Amalgamates must be freed for Flowey/Asriel to make the 7th soul. Without them, he simply doesn't have enough monster SOULs to create the 7th SOUL from scratch. The True Pacifist route requires befriending all monsters and freeing all monster SOULs in the Underground, not just those who are easily accessed during normal gameplay. And even then, given the amount of monster SOULs to make a human SOUL, the specific amount of souls required begs the question "what would happen if the Amalgamates weren't there?" Flowey wouldn't be able to create the artificial soul, presumably. (The game hints at this, what with the shoving onto a Neutral path if the True Lab isn't fully unlocked. Alphys will talk to the player once the game is over if the player goes on the date with her, further implying that befriending Alphys isn't enough; the events in the True Lab must be accomplished to gain the Golden Ending.) So who gave Alphys the original idea to preserve the souls of the fallen monsters via DETERMINATION injection? What even caused them to 'fall' in the first place? Did another character already have a plan in place and Alphys was merely following what this monster had already laid out? And if so, who was the monster behind it all? Was it Dr. W.D. Gaster?
  • On a similar note, you're only told to go to the True Lab on a True Pacifist run; not on a Neutral — one death, even accidental, bars you from it. If the Amalgamates really are necessary to create that false 7th soul, then Flowey only feels safe having you go there if you go out of your way to avoid killing anyone no matter what. Anyone less than a Friend to All Living Things would likely take one look at those monstrosities and think something along the lines of "Kill It with Fire", which would ruin Flowey's plan. He needs to make absolutely sure there's no risk of you killing them before he can tell Papyrus to send you there.
  • More precisely, the inscriptions reveal that "it would take nearly every monster SOUL to equal one human SOUL". The "nearly" is there for a reason — in the True Pacifist ending, the 7th SOUL is made from the SOULs of every monster except Napstablook.
• To beat you during a No Mercy run, Sans has to go out of his way to use an Interface Screw — when his regular attacks fail, that is. You turn the tables and do the exact same thing to him, attacking twice in one turn after physically moving the box confining your heart over your FIGHT button.
  • Why were you even allowed to do that? Because you're playing by Sans' rules. He abused the rules of a standard RPG by taking too many actions in one turn (read: his final attack + his special attack), which gave you two turns in a row. Something he himself didn't expect.
    • Another reason might be that in the fight interface, every entity (human or monster) can use one attack per turn. It is not you who deliver the final blow: it's the Fallen Child, who never used their turn. This is confirmed by the fact that the killing blow isn't delivered via the player's actions — it just happens.
    • Starting from the second half of the fight after you ignore Sans' mercy plea, he begins throwing attacks at you in the menu. In this battle, you two are on equal grounds: both can attack and dodge attacks, both have (or did have) the option to Spare their enemy, and both can temporarily pause their opponent's attacks (to a certain degree) by staying in the menu and doing nothing. Sans tries to attack you in the menu; in the last moments of the fight, you do it right back.
• The final boss music of a No Mercy run is Megalovania, from The Halloween Hack, recycled music from another game (which is actually an EarthBound (1994) romhack with some similar themes). This works because the boss you're fighting is Sans, who is simultaneously too lazy to bother coming up with his own theme, fully aware of your ability to save, load, and reset the world, fights you by messing with the combat interface and shamelessly using hidden techniques nobody else can use, and since he's a prankster, is trolling you by deliberately not using "Song That Might Play When You Fight Sans". So reusing music from a hacked game is perfect here.
  • Adding to that, the title for the track "Megalovania" itself is clearly a reference to megalomania, with just one letter off — a "V" instead of an "M". Though it wasn't originally created for Undertale, it still has a clever hidden meaning specific to the game. On the soundtrack, the song name is officially stylized in all-caps as "MEGALOVANIA". Remember again the acronym for what Sans judges you for in the final hallway, and how Chara has become obsessed with maxing out all their stats? LOVE, or Level Of ViolencE, with a capitalized "E" in "Violence" as part of the acronym. A true acronym version of this would be just Level Of Violence, with a lower-case "E". Think of the song title again for when you're fighting Sans in Genocide at LV 19, just one off from hitting the level cap: you could say you're suffering from MEGA-LOV-ANIA. Even in his battle theme title, Sans is cracking puns. Toby, you rascal.
• During the final boss of a No Mercy run, after you finish off Sans, he'll ask Papyrus if he wants anything from Grillby's, which would be incredibly odd considering that to get the Genocide ending, you'd have to kill Papyrus. Why would Sans do this knowing his brother is dead? Simple, it was his way of peacefully accepting his fate. He said that he knew he couldn't beat you and his last resort was to cause a stalemate and prevent you from attacking; after all, with your high stats, you're basically an unstoppable force of evil that murders practially anyone who stops in its path. So after he gets hit and starts to leak all that ketchup he drank, he realizes he's taken a mortal blow and limps offscreen so you don't see him slowly die. Him asking "papyrus, you want anything?" was his way of finally giving in to his approaching death by mentioning his dead brother in the most calm way possible so he remains just as relaxed and cool as he was the entire game. Addressing Papyrus, whom is clearly dead, is him coping with the fact that he failed to stop you by talking to his deceased sibling as if he were making his way to the afterlife to join him.
  • This, along with how he hobbles offscreen after defeat, is his way of making sure Frisk/Chara (who are, at this point in the game, a sociopathic mass-murderer) doesn't get the satisfaction of watching him suffer in his final moments. This fits, since the entire point of a No Mercy route is that it's unsatisfying and dull, with your only victories being hollow at best. Sans is by far the longest and most unfairly hard battle in the entire game, and when you finally get a hit in, he doesn't cry, lament his defeat, or drop his permanent grin. He just says "don't say I didn't warn you", climbs to his feet, and calmly staggers away, acting like you didn't just hand his ass to him.
    • Also, when he tells you "don't say I didn't warn you", he can only be referring to how he told you that if you went any further, you'd have a bad time. At the time of saying that, he seemed to be referring to the "bad time" he was going to give you. But the fight's over now and you beat him and yet he says "don't say I didn't warn you". He wasn't talking about you having a bad time trying to get past him… he was referring to the fact that if you go any further, you're not going to be able to enjoy this game ever again without it being ruined (courtesy of Chara demanding your SOUL if you want to restart).
    • Another way to look at it is Sans was questioning why you put in so much time and effort to beat him, when doing so means permanently locking yourself out of a happy ending. While you can mess with the files to make the game think the Genocide Route was never completed, doing so just proves the Fallen Child's point about the player believing themselves to be above consequences.
  • During a No Mercy run, Asgore asks "What kind of monster are you...?" The obvious implication is that he's briefly mistaken you for one of his own kind, since it's commented several times throughout the game that you've ceased to appear human. The less obvious one is that this statement is not addressed to the character.
    • This is played with both ways with respects to the mirrors in Toriel's home (which gives the dialogue message "It's you!"), and New Home (which, on a pacifist run, gives the dialog "Despite everything, it's still you."). On a genocide run, however…
  • In addition, after the Fallen Child is implied to kill you, it doesn't really add up that they can do that much damage when the main reason they were slaughtering people was because of how monsters worked. Then again, you kind of are a monster for taking this route to start with.
  • Alternatively, at this point, they're wielding an actual knife, and not an improvised weapon, so if they attack you, a human, it would definitely do fatal damage if they struck something vital (hence the infinite nines), and given what a freak they've become, the odds of them knowing where to stab to kill are pretty high…
  • Though the Fallen Child's intention was to destroy the world. It would take an absurd amount of damage like that to destroy the world, and as a result, there is only blackness afterwards, even when the player returns.
• On a No Mercy run, during the fights with Undyne the Undying and Sans, to heal you're constantly stuffing food down your gullet as you take damage, usually really unhealthy foods like cinnamon bun(nys) and fast food. Pretty fitting for a gluttonous entity who wants nothing more than to consume the entire world in the darkness of nothing. Whereas the kinder-hearted Frisk rarely has to do so, and by the end can heal just with their determination alone in the fight against Asriel.
• The fight against Mettaton NEO on a No Mercy run is decidedly anticlimactic. With 90 ATK, this boss would kill you in two hits, regardless of what armor you're wearing. He never attacks; instead, he just stands there with his arms stretched out — according to the first text box, he's "blocking the way". Mettaton NEO looks much more human-like than most monsters, and if you haven't killed everything before the confrontation, he concludes that you at least won't harm humanity; so while you wait for him to attack, he's waiting for you. He's waiting to see if you hesitate to hit something that looks like a human.
  • An alternate reason for Mettaton's anticlimactic boss fight: In the No Mercy route, Undyne and the player both get their huge boosts in power from exceptional Determination, and Sans from some combination of determination and cheating. And if heart motifs symbolize determination, his NEO form is certainly designed to look like it fits the theme. But whatever positive traits Mettaton may have, determination is not one of them. In both routes, he doesn't want to fight you at first (in this route specifically because he doesn't want to die), and he only changes his mind for something that could be construed as selfish reasons. So despite all his bluster, he can't actually harness the one power that allowed Undyne to challenge you.
  • Him not possessing this trait but attempting to make it look like he does is even reflected in the music… "Battle Against a True Hero" starts with a piano solo and builds into something incredibly bombastic and awesome. Since Undyne has determination for real, at the base of her character, this makes total sense. Mettaton's music? Similar, but jumps straight into the bombastic bit. At his core, he doesn't have determination, but he recites all the lines and rhetoric that might make it seem like he would.
  • Another possibility is that Mettaton simply isn't made for combat. Everything he says about being originally designed as a human-eradication robot clashes with the backstory you discover for him in any other route, so the simplest explanation is that it's a bluff. He tries repeatedly to stall you with speeches and to get you to stop approaching him, and makes it clear that part of his reason for fighting you is to let Alphys escape. He knows perfectly well that you can kill him in one hit, but he's sacrificing himself (and using the one talent he does have, showmanship, to stall you with big dramatic speeches and a flashy encounter) in the hopes that that buys a little more time for Alphys and the others to get away.
• The message shown when you die to Asriel but automatically revive right away works as a Stealth Pun: it can mean either that Frisk's SOUL refused to give in, or that their SOUL re-fused back together from two halves.
  • Similarly, determination is the power of unflinching resolve that persists against all odds. The word can also be read as "de-termination", which means negation of death. It is the in-game power letting a SOUL do just that. This double meaning aptly describes those who refuse to die, such as Frisk and the player themself.
  • The circumstances immediately preceding this confrontation bear remembering. One of the few songs on the soundtrack exclusive to the No Mercy run plays as Undyne rattles off a brief monologue before becoming Undyne the Undying. The track's name? "But the Earth Refused To Die."
    My body… It feels like it's splitting apart. Like any instant, I'll scatter into a million pieces. But… Deep, deep in my soul. There's a burning feeling I can't describe. A burning feeling that WON'T let me die. Right now, everyone in the world… I can feel their hearts beating as one. And we all have ONE goal. To defeat YOU.
  • The game gives you the mercy of coming back to life every time your HP runs out… because you've been so merciful to everyone.
• One of the biggest complaints about the No Mercy path is that it can be very grindy at times. That's part of the point. Some people aren't morally opposed to murder or killing under various circumstances. And many moral codes, including Christianity, posit that any deed, no matter how wicked, vile, or destructive it may be, cannot be considered a sin unless it was committed with full knowledge of the immorality of the act and the damage it could cause — accidental evil isn't true evil. Undertale's No Mercy route works on similar premises. The encounters slow down the more you kill to illustrate that you, the player, are hunting them down and murdering them in cold blood. If you simply kill everything you encounter without going out of your way to Leave No Survivors, you get a neutral ending — there's still some room for the benefit of the doubt, that you could have been doing it in ignorance or self-defense. This makes it so that there is absolutely no way to get the No Mercy ending by mistake, or even by intention unless you're going about it knowingly (since even if you start on it, you can back out more or less at any time).
• The two non-Neutral endings have their own difficulties in obtaining them. The No Mercy route is grindy and has two bosses that are harder than anything else in the game. In a Pacifist run, you're likely to die a lot and might have a hard time figuring out how to spare or befriend some monsters. However, anyone going through these routes can eventually make it past these challenges so long as they have determination.
• If you get a True Pacifist ending but ended up fleeing from some monsters instead of sparing them, or never encountering them in the first place, their outcomes listed in the credits are different (on top of them being in white rather than yellow, letting you know who you missed). Since you act as the main link between Monsters and Humans, you probably help everyone find their place in the human world, but if you didn't befriend them in order to spare them, you don't know them as well as you could and thus can't find them their perfect calling with what little you do know about them.
• When fighting Sans in a Genocide Run, he actively dodges your attacks and can effortlessly whoop your ass, and yet when Flowey attacks in the Pacifist Run, Sans is easily incapacitated. While this might sound like Fridge Logic, it makes sense once you realize that Sans' death in Genocide came from him not expecting you to attack twice. Chances are that when Sans realized Flowey was attacking, it was already too late to dodge.
• At the tail end of the "date" with Alphys, you're put into the same moral dilemma that you just had to help Alphys conquer — when Undyne asks if Alphys was joking about anime not being real (as in non-fiction) and asks you for confirmation, do you lie to keep her happy or be honest but break her heart? The choice might seem inconsequential in the short-term, and it's largely Played for Laughs, but considering that if you're on this date, you're likely on your way to getting the monsters to the surface, she's going to find out and have to deal with that paradigm shift eventually. Yet despite just teaching Alphys it's better to be honest up front, a lot of players are inclined to tell Undyne anime is real the first time through and not think twice (or justify it by telling themselves it's real in the sense that it exists, even though that's not what Undyne's asking). It's a lot easier to tell someone to be honest than to be honest yourself, isn't it?
  • Another interpretation could be that, at least in the Undertale universe, anime is real. Think about it for a moment: the player character is a Determinator capable of shrugging off death simply by refusing to die and finds themself in a world where both magic and monsters exist. The backstory speaks of an ancient war between the humans and monsters which eventually led to the latter being sealed underground for what was probably centuries at least. The final battle of the Neutral and Pacifist Routes involves the tragically villainous antagonist gaining the power of an eldritch abomination/outright godhood only to be bested by the seemingly inferior protagonist. A well-meaning, but misguided scientist ends up creating horrific (though largely harmless) chimeric beings due to her research into ways to overcome death going horribly right, and also ends up creating the Big Bad the same way. And then, of course, there's Undyne herself. While she may have been largely inspired by the anime Alphys showed her, she definitely fits the bill for a Stock Shōnen Hero. Oh, and there's time travel with all the complex goodness that entails. At this point, you aren't really lying when you tell her anime is real. After all, you're living in one.
    • Also, when you add the fact that seven wizards sealed the Underground, it's quite possible that there are still people with magic out there on the Surface. There could very well be massive animesque fights going on while Toriel bakes a pie.
• In one of the entries in the True Lab, Alphys writes that she has received five messages from Asgore: "four about how everyone is angry. one about this cute teacup he found that looks like me. Thanks asgore." This may seem like a strange detail for Asgore to tell Alphys in such a serious situation, until you think about how voicemails work — the latest voicemail is heard first. So Asgore, not realizing anything was wrong yet, called Alphys about the teacup and then began to hear everyone's grievances, and called Alphys to warn her. Alphys, going through her list of voicemails, would hear those messages first before arriving at the original one about the teacup, writing them down in that order.
• The idea that Frisk is a pacifist makes more sense considering their starting equipment, the Stick and the Bandage. Neither have bonuses to the traditional stats, but have alternate uses.
  • The Stick is used in many fights to facilitate sparing the opponent, usually dog monsters, but can be used to spare Madjick, a late-game enemy, and Mettaton to gain a significant boost in ratings.
  • The bandage can be used as a healing item, healing only 10 HP, which would be only useful in a Pacifist or otherwise low LV run. Also, if you keep it equipped, it lets you run away from fights on the first turn, something useful if you can't figure out how to spare a certain enemy, but don't want to kill them either.
• When you face Asgore at the end of a Genocide run, despite Undyne claiming that Alphys saw her defeat and would subsequently warn Asgore about you, Asgore is completely unprepared. Seems like a case of Idiot Ball, but consider that Alphys probably specifically said that a dangerous human was approaching. When you meet him, Asgore asks what kind of monster you are — he doesn't recognize you as a human and therefore doesn't realize that you're the one Alphys warned him about.
• What animal are Toriel and Asgore based on? Goats. What (or who) plays an important role in their stories? Their kids.
  • Additionally to the religious-based things above, goats are very important in multiple religions. They were often the most common sacrifice, being either the first or last step to get the gods' approval. Toriel and Asgore would be the first and last boss on your way to absolution (escaping the underground) if it weren't for Flowey.
• The No Mercy route being called the Genocide run actually makes perfect sense — the player character becomes a monster by killing all of monsterkind. You're not only feeling right at home, but you're just doing the humans a favor. You are a monster, just like the ones you kill… but only in a vastly different way.
  • It's also a reference to a style of play in another game: NetHack. In Nethack, if you kill enough instances of a species, it stops appearing during that run. Some players take it as a challenge to make this happen to as many species as possible. Like with the Pacifist Run, Undertale takes an optional challenge and makes it canonical.
• Flowey derides those who choose to simply watch the events of a Genocide run as opposed to actually playing it themselves in his monologue leading up to the Genocide run's ending. Once more, he's full of crap; it turns out through The Fallen Child's final victory, those kinds of players have a very good reason to not actually go through with a Genocide run, and he suffers the consequences directly.
• If you choose to comfort Asriel by hugging him, you'll see a piece of dialogue that says: "I don't want to let go...". While many assume this is Asriel, one important detail that is often overlooked is that Asriel's face doesn't show up in this segment. This is Frisk talking.
  • Alternatively, Asriel's face isn't shown in the box because Frisk is hugging him, and shielding his face from the player's view in the process. It's still Asriel's voice we hear, though; it doesn't seem right that Frisk would say "Ha... Ha..." before the rest of the aforementioned line. There's no reason for Frisk to be laughing like that at such a moment.
  • There isn't any reason for Frisk to be laughing at this moment, but there is for Chara to be, if you interpret them as the narrator. The frequent references to Chara being a Stepford Smiler and laughing away their pain in order to cope with traumatic or stressful situations could point to them being the ones laughing here. They finally get to reconcile with Asriel and embrace their adoptive brother after all they've both been through, and they don't want to let go.
  • It doesn't seem all that implausible for Frisk to be the one laughing — if Asriel (or Chara, for that matter) could be doing it just from the sheer, overwhelming emotion of the moment, why couldn't they?
• In order to complete a True Pacifist run, you don't just need Determination, you need every mentioned trait.
  • Patience: Not letting yourself get frustrated or aggravated with how other monsters treat you.
  • Bravery: Taking the time to spare every monster can sometimes require you to face them longer than you would if you just attacked, so by putting the extra time and effort to spare them, you're not taking the cowardly way out.
  • Perseverance: Enduring every harsh attack and word throughout your trek through the underground.
  • Integrity: Never violating Thou Shalt Not Kill no matter how justified you'd be in fighting back in self-defense.
  • Kindness: What you show to every monster.
  • Justice: The run ends with you giving the monsters the fate they truly deserve.
• Consider the plot of the typical videogame-based creepypasta: Everything proceeds as normal until a certain point early on, after which the horror slowly but steadily increases, as the game does things that a veteran player has never seen in normal gameplay, often including Jump Scares just for shock value, and the whole cast slowly getting psychologically broken or even killed, but not before warning the player they’ll have a bad time if they go further. Meanwhile, the music is generally replaced with dissonant noise and game text is changed to threatening or cryptic messages in red. As the experience goes on, it dawns on the main character that the game is addressing them directly. At the end, some malevolent spirit appears onscreen and inflicts a horrible fate on them. This is what the Genocide Route already is. It's an officially produced creepypasta.
• In the Genocide route's Final Boss, Sans turns your heart blue, making it control like a platformer game. Looks like you finally understand the GRAVITY of the situation.
• Sans briefly wonders why people don't start with their Finishing Move after hitting you with his. He winds up becoming a perfect example that if it doesn't defeat the enemy, then you'll get tired and have to fight without your trump card.
• Your kill count doesn't go up after killing Sans, despite the fact that he's clearly heard turning to dust offscreen, and you level up immediately afterwards. But this makes sense; you didn't strike the killing blow on Sans, The Fallen Child did. Hence, the count doesn't go up since the Fallen Child was the one who actually killed him.
  • This also explains why the Fallen Child is powerful enough to delete the entire game. With how difficult Sans is, he certainly must have been worth an enormous amount of EXP (indeed, hacking to fight him at level 1 will automatically set you to level 20 upon his defeat). Thus, the Fallen Child leveled up to be powerful enough to break the entire game! After all, Sans himself breaks the rules of the game, and if the Fallen Child was able to beat someone like that, who else would be able to stand up to them?

Humans vs. Monsters

• With tough boss fights with crazy attack patterns like Undyne the Undying and Sans, you might wonder how the hell the humans managed to win the war against monsters at all when they have such powerful magic at their disposal. Then you might remember that your player character is a child. The monsters' mightiest warriors can't even compare in physical power to a (admittedly very determined) kid.
• It makes even more sense if you take the in-game lore. The game outright states that a willingness towards violence automatically makes monsters weaker, or more accurately the violence against them more effective, and so trained soldiers, who may have spent their lives fighting other human enemies and honing a killing edge, would be able to simply stomp monsters in one hit, no matter how effective their attack patterns are. They just couldn't compete against an army of even semi-determined fighters.
  • Especially considering the in-game lore mentions that not one soul was absorbed. Humans could have died of old age or disease, but were never absorbed. The Monsters didn't fight back, even in self-defense.
  • It should be noted that Undyne, the underground's greatest active warrior, has a will to kill that makes her fairly unique among monsters, even more powerful ones like Sans and Asgore. She also seems to be the only monster to possess Determination. Despite her Fantastic Racism, she became monsterkind's hero by expressing human qualities.
• If the war was so one-sided in the humans' favor, why didn't they just wipe them out? If the monsters couldn't claim a single human soul, then there was absolutely nothing preventing the humans from inflicting genocide. Perhaps humanity as a whole decided to use the "Mercy Option" when deciding to seal them away instead?
• It might seem odd that humans would just forget about monsters — surely they'd leave a few pretty damning clues behind about their existence! Until you remember that when a monster dies, they turn to dust. There would be no fossils or physical evidence at all of their life!
  • And any kind of documentation of monster society could have either been weathered away over the years, destroyed, lost, or simply dismissed as myths by modern historians. It looked like the war took place during the Middle Ages, which do have a reputation for, among other things, being highly superstitious.
• A lot of the monsters Frisk encounters act friendly during "fights" while still sending potentially lethal "bullets" against them. A book in the library mentions that monsters send each other birthday cards that involve bullets - implicitly, these aren't meant to harm the recipient. This reframes a lot of encounters with monsters - most actually aren't trying to harm Frisk but are being boisterous and communicative - and suggests that human-monster conflict might have started with humans being accidentally hurt and both sides misunderstanding and thinking the other is senselessly violent.

Other

• Why does the player get a flashback to Asriel meeting the First/Fallen Child after Undyne sends them falling into the garbage dump? Look what you landed on — golden flowers. They more than likely came from the seeds infused with Asriel's remains.
• Another interpretation of this flashback is that the long fall triggered the First/Fallen Child's memory of falling into the Underground, where they met Asriel.
• One of the descriptions that displays during the True Pacifist final boss battle is "The whole world is ending." This is technically true, but not because of anything the boss is doing — once this fight is over, the game is over, and you'll either leave or reset it.
• The Fallen Child's claim that a demon comes when you say its name could be literal, referring to the prompt at the start of the game. But that doesn't ring true because you always have to do that step but it doesn't always gain any power. But it could also be metaphorical, in that you invite it to join you, by intentionally killing everything and pursuing the No Mercy path. It's always there waiting for you.
  • Considering the main developer suggests that you name the Fallen Child after yourself, it may go deeper than that. Every time that you use the same name, seeking power for its own sake and destroying senselessly in any game, you may be summoning them.
    • Or alternatively, that the developers try to suggest that this desire to kill everything might be dormant in every single one of us. We all could end up in a mentality of "kill or be killed", and unless we make a conscious effort to be kind to others, we might become something that will even frighten a monster.
    • On a similar note, the First/Fallen Child gains enough power to be able to move on their own because it's their name on the save file that lists the stats you earn, not Frisk's!
• Also, the line in the First Child's ending speech in the Genocide route? "Let us erase this pointless world, and move on to the next." They're not just remarking that the world doesn't have meaning anymore — it's literally pointless. There are no more points left to earn in the game, because you've already killed every monster in the Underground.
• The game's view on violence is actually a bit more nuanced than one would think. Sure, for the player, it always works out that mercy is better in the long run than fighting, and the few times throughout the game that you don't get the chance to be merciful initially, you do eventually get the chance and it does help, but for the NPCs, it's not necessarily the case. If the player decides to kill everything, no amount of mercy will necessarily help. Instead, the use of force to stop the player's rampage is presented as genuinely heroic. It's even possible that the threat of getting beaten down by the two toughest bosses in the game will dissuade players from going the evil route.
  • One of the bosses even tries to use Mercy on you during a No Mercy run: Papyrus. At this point, whether the game's original message still holds or not depends on whether you're heartless enough to kill someone posing absolutely no threat to you, and since many players abort their No Mercy runs when they face Papyrus, his method might be just as effective as Undyne's and Sans' brute force.
    • You also have to get past Papyrus on the No Mercy route (read: kill him in cold blood) to even get the chance to face Undyne the Undying and Sans. In other words, force can indeed become the only option when dealing with those who adamantly refuse mercy. It's a similar position as Asgore: even if you've never attacked anyone the entire game, he makes it absolutely impossible to show him Mercy and still get where you're trying to go. You have to fight him to progress. For Undyne and Sans, you've effectively just shattered the Mercy button – to get where they want to go, they have to fight you, too.
• Crosses over with Fridge Horror slightly, but as you progress through the game, the major characters you befriend start showing up on the save screen and more instruments fill in the initially simplistic theme. But once you've completed the True Pacifist route, everyone's gone to the surface, leaving the screen devoid of even your close friends. The only thing giving you company is idle ambient noise of a somewhat eerie variety, symbolizing that the entirety of the underground may as well be one gigantic pit no one ever wants to visit again. Well, no one except you, should you True Reset, remove everyone's happiness, and start over from mostly scratch just to fill the void again.
• Mettaton NEO has unique music, a drastically different appearance, and... dies in one hit on the No Mercy route. Looks like the battery wasn't on the list of upgrades he got.
• From a meta standpoint, the fact that so much of the game is hyper-aware of things like hacking and datamining makes sense when you consider that Toby Fox's early game-making experiences were hacks, in particular the EarthBound Halloween Hack.
  • There's also how the game was made in GameMaker, an engine where everything is stored in easily-opened formats.^*All textures are .png files, all sounds are .ogg files, and code is stored in plaintext that isn't compiled or obfuscated in any way. Looking into the game's resources doesn't require serious programming knowledge, so any secrets that can only be obtained by looking through the files can still be seen first-hand by a lot of people.
• At first, Undyne's whole spiel about 'everyone's hearts beating as one' might seem like a classic cliché shonen anime line, but on second glance? That's exactly what it is! Undyne all but worships the anime that Alphys digs up like gospel, so of course that's where she got a majority of her ideas on her whole 'warrior' persona from! She's trying to be as shonen as she possibly can!
• When playing the Genocide route, examining mirrors and the like gives messages like "It's me, [name]". On Neutral, you get messages like, "It's you". In the Pacifist route, people learn the true identity of the player character and refer to them more explicitly than at other times. It's a play on the first person, second person, and third person points of view. The No Mercy route involves a complete takeover of Chara/a complete unification of Chara and the Player's determination. The Neutral route involves varying degrees of cooperation between Chara, Frisk, and the Player. The Pacifist Route involves complete cooperation between Frisk, Chara (if you believe the narrator Chara theory), and the Player, ending with Frisk moving on to live their own life.
• Why is the stat that measures your potential for hurting others abbreviated as LOVE? How hurt would you feel from an emotional perspective if one of your loved ones tried to kill you?
• It's said that Gaster was torn through time and space when an experiment went wrong. If you go into the files, you can change a value that adds several unused characters to the game. One of these characters is a distorted creature that looks similar to Uboa and is thought to be Gaster. A scientist that takes a form similar to Uboa◊, where have we seen this before?
  • This is probably an unintentional but most likely intentional move by Toby. Gaster was mentioned as torn through space and time. He is not dead but he is still alive. They are actually right. The time and space location is where the files of Gaster are kept in. The very location where he ended up in due to an experiment gone wrong. And on an unrelated note yet still involves Gaster, his leitmotif sounds eerily similar to Final Fantasy VII's Who are you?. A fitting title too as we, the players, like a majority of the monsters, do not know who Gaster is.
  • Speaking about Gaster's theme, it's a simple four-note arpeggio you can find as a harmonic in many pieces of the soundtrack. Because the characters have a presence through their music themes (or a common theme used for them), it says a lot about the doctor, a fact that crosses brilliance and horror: as the arpeggio is simple, it doesn't really "exist" as a leitmotif and no theme focuses on it, but at the same time, it's everywhere.
• Whenever the player character dies, the representation of their SOUL splits in two. They die of a broken heart.
  • This can be seen as terrifyingly bad for the monster that kills the player character. They just destroyed one of the final potential pieces needed to escape the Underground, and who knows how long it would be until another human fell down. Well, until you reset.
• The bit under Fridge Horror about how much the plot is reliant on Flowey being present veers into this when you realize that him begging you to do a True Reset is actually a Batman Gambit on his part; Asriel is asking you to make him forget because he's aware Flowey is the reason breaking the barrier was even possible. Thus, he's willing to sacrifice his memories for the chance that you'll eventually bring everything back to the Golden Ending again.
• Going through the underground, you might notice that all the monsters that are a threat are ones that fight at range, either through magic or weapons with a long reach (in Undyne's case, a combination of the two); this makes sense as something that would help even the odds in a fight against a human, since getting within melee range can be instantly fatal even if they're only attacking with their bare fists.
• Why does Sans use so many blue and gravity-based attacks in his fight? Well, think back — who's the first boss to use gravity, or "blue" attacks? Papyrus. Of course Sans is going to use them a lot — either he originally developed the move and acted as a Stealth Mentor to his brother, or his brother actually did develop the technique first, and Sans thought the technique was the coolest thing in the world. Knowing how much Sans loves his brother, it's not too far of a stretch for Sans to have taken Blue SOUL techniques to the absolute limit as a way of remembering him. Also, as Laser-Guided Karma for killing the person he cared for most in the world.
  • He doesn't just use the same mechanics. Many of his attacks are literally upgraded versions of Papyrus's attack patterns, with additional hitboxes, smaller gaps, or faster speed.
  • On the No Mercy route, Papyrus never even puts up a fight — he literally will not attack you, and you will kill him in one hit. The only way to actually experience his Boss Battle — and his Blue SOUL mechanics — is to play on the Neutral or Pacifist route. So if you were stupid enough to do a No Mercy run before anything else in the game, Sans's Blue SOUL mechanics will come from completely out of nowhere and most likely catch you utterly off-guard — and the way Sans' fight works, being caught off-guard means you're dead in about two seconds at the most. Which serves you right for sweeping Papyrus aside like mere garbage.
• Why does Toriel show up during the True Pacifist Ending, when visiting the True Lab doesn't actually change anything relevant to her? Actually, it does. If you visit the True Lab before fighting Asgore, it gives her much more time to rethink her decision and set out after you.
  • This was even foreshadowed at the very beginning of the game. During the combat tutorial, Toriel told you to stall for time, and she will come to resolve the conflict. By visiting the True Lab, you're stalling for time so Toriel can rethink everything and go after you to New Home, and it pays off when you encounter Asgore. Toriel does come to resolve the conflict by blasting Asgore away.
  • It makes sense in the Neutral run as well, where she returns in the ending. Maybe she rethought her decision and came after you, but was a little too late to get to you before you got to Asgore, so she didn't arrive in time to prevent the fight, and arrived at New Home after you left the Underground, hence why she is Queen if spared in the Neutral runs, albeit sometimes only for a short while.
• During the date/hangout with Undyne, there's a scene where she tells you to project your worst enemy onto some vegetables and then punch them. You then have the option to pound "strong" or "wimpy". Selecting "wimpy" makes you pet the vegetable — something you truly would do to your worst enemy on a pacifist run, given the chance.
  • Alternatively, selecting "Strong" merely results in you pushing the vegetable over. As a pacifist, you're unable to muster any strength to fight.
• Why is New Home so grey and lifeless-looking? Imagine yourself as a father of two, with a loving wife and hope for the future. Now imagine you lose both children in one night, make a rash promise in great anger, and accidentally drive away your wife, who leaves in disgust. You're now alone with the responsibility to continue forth with your anger-made promise, alone, against your very nature, all to try and give hope to the grieving masses. A long, slow plan that, while it does move closer to fruition, every death from it is entirely YOUR FAULT. At least in your own mind. It's any wonder Asgore can even do his daily activities… but then again, that might be how he stays sane. The color left New Home the second Asgore's loved ones did.
  • Especially when one examines the sink. Why is there so much fur in the drain? Because Asgore uses it to wash his face so nobody will see that he was crying.
• No matter how many major characters you kill, Sans will only fight you during a No Mercy run. Why? That's the only path with irreversible effects, namely that the True Pacifist ending is no longer obtainable.
  • Even then, he's reluctant to fight you, and puts it off to the last minute in hopes that you'll turn back. Why wouldn't he be? Killing you permanently is impossible. But when you are literally two empty rooms away from dooming the timeline, he can't afford to stay on the sidelines any longer.
  • So instead of trying to fight you, even when you're being evil, he takes the much more sensible route of constantly checking up on you throughout the game. He plays harmless pranks, tells jokes, invites you out to eat twice… Sans does everything in his power to make you like him and think of him (and by extension the other monsters) as a person and a friend. And oh yeah, tries to make you feel extra guilty about possibly killing Toriel while he's at it. Except… even he can't bring himself to put on a smile and act like your friend if his brother is dead.
• It may seem like Sans is being his usual self when he tells Papyrus you'll never be able to solve his word search puzzle… but you actually can't solve it. At first glance, most players assume the nonsense word "giasfclfebrehber" is just the top row of the puzzle, but the top row instead spells out "giasfclfubrehber". (It also works on the meta level, because there's no way to select the words, so the player has to walk around it.)
• Why is it that after a True Reset, you need to earn a Neutral ending again before you can achieve the Pacifist ending? Because the aforementioned ending isn't just caused by the player's (or Frisk's) actions — it also hinges on Flowey's actions. Actions which he only takes in response to being defeated in the Neutral ending. So he suggests to Papyrus that Undyne give you the letter, and then lures you to the True Lab, to buy him time to gather everyone in one place.
• Choosing the "*Joke" option while fighting a Woshua will lead to several "dirty" jokes about two kids playing in a muddy field of flowers, a kid eating pie with their bare hands, and a kid who slept in the soil. Seems innocent enough… until you realize that the jokes are referring to Asriel and the Fallen Child. And the Fallen Child is, indeed, sleeping in the soil.
• In Grillby's, one of the patrons states he's put out a line looking for fish to date. It seems strange, until you realise the entire town of Snowdin seem to respect and adore Undyne as their protector, and later Undyne is revealed to be a fish-person — no wonder that guy would want to find others that resemble the town's admired guardian.
• Alphys used to be close friends with Bratty and Catty — together, they formed an ABC-themed group.
• Mettaton gives you extra points for complimenting his legs in the essay, and uses some leg-based attacks. As either a ghost or a box-on-wheel robot, he has never had legs before, so of course he is excited about them!
• Each of the human SOULs is a different color representative of certain actions or effects your SOUL is put under, each one shows signs of having died along the way because their souls weren't as malleable as yours.
  • The Light Blue SOUL died in the Ruins, before Light Blue attacks start appearing; presumably they just stayed where they fell until a malicious monster found them and took their life.
  • You find the orange human SOUL's equipment in Snowdin, where one can assume they died. We're also introduced to light blue attacks here, where so long as you stay still, you'll avoid damage. The orange human SOUL was described to always be rushing forward with their attacks (orange attacks are avoided by moving through them), so more than likely they died by running through too many blue attacks.
  • The dark blue SOUL's equipment is found in Waterfall. Certain monsters in Waterfall, such as Aaron, have attacks that are sparse at the top of the hitbox, but tend to clog up the bottom, making it very easy to take massive damage if one gets trapped. When blue, your SOUL is restricted to the bottom of the hitbox and can only jump straight up and down or leap over things.
  • The Purple SOUL could be one of two reasons, it seems like they were a studious note taker and that's what got them so far, but you buy their equipment from Gerson before two rooms that have poor visibility; presumably they couldn't take notes since they couldn't see to write. Another factor is that among the monsters you encounter in the dark rooms are Temmie, so note-taking probably wouldn't be effective anyway.
  • The Green SOUL's equipment is found in Hotland, where orange attacks are introduced. Green can block projectiles, but is completely immobile, and Orange attacks require you to move through them. Also, most attacks in Hotland cover the entire screen or flank from multiple sides, so only being able to block one direction wouldn't have helped them.
  • The Yellow SOUL could have died in either Waterfall or Hotland (Bratty and Catty say they found a gun in a dumpster, not in the dump). If the former, then like the dark blue SOUL, they wouldn't have any counter for the massive amount of attacks that pool at the bottom of the screen. If the latter, then they probably died when they ran out of ammo; crack shot or not, they were far in their journey with their only offense being a limited resource and had over-reliance on it.
  • The remaining mystery is the Red SOUL, which is not specifically defined in-game, aside from a single line: "RED: Try as you might, you continue to be yourself." Being yourself — being genuine, sincere, and following what's in your heart — comes up elsewhere in the game. Or, to put it another way, if you have a Red SOUL, then you have a strong "Chara"-cter.
• Related to the above point: Each time the SOUL colors appear in game, they invoke that aspect both in gameplay and in story:
  • Light Blue (Patience): It's very easy to get jumpy when seeing an attack coming your way, so you naturally move, thus you didn't have the patience to wait and see. This also comes up in the story, seeing as Snowdin will feel rather long for a first-time player due to the shortness of the ruins.
  • Dark Blue (Integrity): The SOUL is now bound to the ground, putting it on the same level as the attacks, thus they are made equal. This is also shown in the two people who use them: Papyrus, who ultimately cannot kill you whatsoever, so there is no reason to kill him. And Sans, who is punishing you for your lack of integrity.
  • Green (Kindness): During your adventure in Waterfall (and slightly beyond), you come across the choice of either saving a character or leaving them to die. This also comes up in battle against Undyne: She has given you a way to defend yourself and you must find a way to avoid killing her (despite her being technically unSPAREable).
  • Orange (Bravery): This is the final steps of your journey, where you either die or be free. You can turn back and just live in the Underground... but you gotta press forward. Same in game: Gotta be brave to rush into an attack. This can also apply to Alphys, who never actually encounters a single attack and lacks Bravery.
  • Purple (Perseverance): When you get trapped by Muffet, your movement gets limited yet again and you cannot flee, thus you have to fight. And the best way to defeat her is to simply learn all the attacks and curveballs. Also shown as the upcoming part is one of the hardest in the game.
  • Yellow (Justice): Before, Mettaton was letting you win against him, but now has betrayed Alphys and attacked you to protect humanity. Now you must show him the error of his ways and win in a proper fight. Just as well, Justice is usually associated with law enforcement or guns, and the Yellow mode shoots bullets.
• Most of the major monsters represent one of the same qualities as the human SOULs, though not necessarily matching up with the color associated with their respective areas:
  • Toriel represents Patience. She is understanding and maternal, accepting of your quirks and foibles until you force her hand. She could also represent Integrity, considering she's unwilling to compromise her Thou Shalt Not Kill ideal, even at the cost of her leadership or her people's morale.
  • Papyrus represents Perseverance. He keeps training and trying to join the Royal Guards, trying to prove his worthiness to Undyne.
  • Undyne represents Bravery, especially in a No Mercy Run. She directly challenges the child, even if they've proven to be a ruthless killer, knowing she might die.
  • Mettaton represents Integrity. Though he initially follows his programming to kill humans, in a Pacifist Run, he reveals that this was not what he was built for, to the point that he exposes his "killer" programming was a ploy by Alphys to prove herself a trustworthy companion to the child, and that he wants to stop Asgore's war against humanity, in order to protect humanity from him. In a No Mercy Run, he wants to stop the murderous child from hurting anyone else. He could also represent Patience, considering how many slip-ups on Alphys's part he has to tolerate and work around to keep the ruse going.
  • Asgore represents Kindness. Despite his declaration of war against humanity, everything you hear about him from the denizens of the underworld, and his behavior once you meet him, indicates he is a "big fuzzy goofball."
  • Sans represents Justice. When you meet him in the Last Corridor, he will judge the child on their actions taken through their trip through the underworld. And on a No Mercy Run, he will attempt to enact justice on them.
  • W.D. Gaster represents Determination. Throwing himself entirely into his work, willing to go to any length and break any moral or ethical boundary to see his goal achieved, and ultimately surviving being sundered across space and time, slowly clawing his way back into reality again.
    
    Alternatively, it could be the other way around, with each soul representing something one of the core 6 monsters lacks.
  • Toriel lacks Patience with her ex-husband's way of thinking, as well as bringing Frisk through the puzzles (note that she changes her mind about letting you solve one).
  • Sans lacks Perseverance and always lazes around as a result.
  • Papyrus lacks a sense of Justice because he wants to befriend you regardless of how murderous you've been.
  • Undyne lacks Kindness — even her befriending attempts are hostile.
  • Alphys lacks Integrity as she was unwilling to own up to her mistakes and thought it better to keep everyone happy via lying. If you want to keep Mettaton on the list, you could argue that he lacks Integrity too, due to breaking his promise to not leave Napstablook.
  • Asgore lacks Bravery because he wasn't willing to go the quickest, most painless route towards his goal, nor was he willing to back out of his plan despite his misgivings.
• One thing you may notice between the Ruins and New Home is the bedroom. The bedroom in the Ruins only has a single bed and a bunch of stuff that would have been collected over the years. New Home, by comparison, has two beds, for the Fallen Child and Asriel, and seems to be kept in a state like they still lived there. This is odd since the game states outright that the Ruins were abandoned and New Home built only after the two died, but it represents how the parents dealt with the loss. Toriel has moved on completely and remodeled the room to focus on the future, keeping children who fall down safe, while the bedroom in New Home is the way it was because Asgore still hasn't let go of the pain of their deaths (he even has a calendar, marked on the day they presumably died); even though he desperately wishes to move on, forcing himself to remember what happened to Asriel and the Fallen is the only thing that keeps him going.
• A True Pacifist run not only requires the player to sheathe all instincts to take the offensive in a fight, but also to befriend each of the bosses you meet. In hindsight, this makes a lot of sense when you realize each character's deficiencies:
  • Toriel is a mother who has lost two children, and tried to save countless others from venturing into the underground. When going a Pacifist route, you have to convince her to let you go on your own, even though she wants you to stay and eat pie, and before giving you a hug tells you not to come back. She's stuck in the state of reliving Asriel and the Fallen's death by letting you go, and finally gets out of that cycle by following you, to protect you from Asgore.
  • Papyrus in all honesty is a Minion with an F in Evil while wanting to prove himself by capturing a human, but is a real softie. When you offer friendship or flirtation, and he realizes that you are not an evil human, he immediately switches gears to win your friendship.
  • Undyne is a more competent warrior than Papyrus, and trained to take down humans. When you pour water on her in the Hotlands and save her life, she not only has to change her perspective, but manage her wounded pride that a bit of overheating nearly did her in. Plus, as a proud warrior, she more than likely is stuck between believing she is protecting everyone from a threat and now owing you her life (a serious thing in almost every kind of military). Going to her house and cooking with her shows her soft side, and she takes on the challenge of friendship when Papyrus suggests she can't handle friendship.
  • Alphys is complicated in three ways: one, she is a Lovable Coward about her crush on Undyne, two, her attempt to be the hero in your tale, and three, her part in creating Flowey and the Amalgamates. Thus you have to go after her when she runs off crying after Mettaton runs out of batteries and show her that you like her despite the lies and experiments, as does Undyne.
  • Mettaton is a charismatic TV star for the underground, and enjoys entertaining. By refusing to hurt him, even when he changes into his human body, you give him time to listen to his viewers who want him to stay, including his cousin Napstablook.
  • Asgore in all versions is a Big Good who made a bad decision in a fit of anger and grief, and who being Honor Before Reason will fight you no matter what you do. Toriel in the True Pacifist Ending giving him a Do Wrong, Right lecture brings him back to his senses, and allows him to shove aside his past in favor of redemption.
  • Sans has been watching you to see if you are going to start killing everyone and if he has to break his vow to Toriel. When you show that you haven't killed anyone, and have even been comforting his brother, he's happy to reveal the promise he made and how relieved he is not having to watch his friends and family die.
• Asgore's theme is literally just titled "ASGORE." As you may have noticed throughout the entire game, Asgore is terrible with names. This probably extends to his own theme as well.
  • Likewise, Sans' theme, just called "sans." because he couldn't be bothered to name his theme.
• The final boss of the Neutral ending, Photoshop Flowey, is naturally fought to a remix of his leitmotifs: Your Best Friend, and You Idiot. The composition is creepy and oppressive to reflect the fact that you're struggling to survive an impossible battle against a god, until the final stage of the fight. At that point, the music becomes brassy and triumphant to symbolize your upper hand. Except that whole stage of the battle is actually an example of Flowey trolling you. Finale being another remix of his theme is a hint that Flowey is still in control — he's just letting you reduce his HP so he can crush your spirit. Notably, the sequences in which the six SOULs break free of Flowey and you decide how you're going to deal with him have ambience but no actual music. (Of course, by the time you've freed the SOULs, Flowey has already lost, since they're how he was able to save his files in the first place.)
  • Similarly, this is why you can withstand a surprisingly generous number of hits; he wants you to think you have the upper hand so he can savescum your victory away. Afterwards, he slams you with a bunch of One-Hit Kill attacks, reloading after each one, to show you that he could've done that at any time, but chose to hold back and lull you into a false sense of security.
• Asgore seems like a walking Satanic Archetype, between the weapon he uses, mythology surrounding him, and goat-like appearance, but it becomes clear within ten seconds of meeting him that none of them are applicable to him as a person. That in mind, recall that Monsters existing with humans was fact that turned into myth with the passage of time, it's incredibly likely that over the years, humanity took a measure of Written by the Winners and, requiring a designated villain, that any religions that formed probably used him as their devil figure as an attempt to demonize the monsters further and justify the fact that they were the ones that started the war. In other words, he doesn't fit into a Satan-like role, but the Satan-like role was created around him.
• According to Eastern Zodiac compatibility, the Rabbit and the Dragon are both compatible to each other, although they're Twice Shy about it at first. Now, what animals do the Royal Guards resemble?
  • Disregarding their actual personalities contradicting their expected zodiac personalities, and assuming that RG 01 is a year older than RG 02, or the latter is at least a decade older than the former, it might be discussed for another speculation...
• Bratty and Catty are found in an alley. Bratty is an Alley-gator, and Catty is an Alley-cat, while both act like V-alley girls.
• Overlapping with Fridge Horror, it makes a lot of sense that you can't fight Chara/The Fallen Child directly. In No Mercy, they simply take control away from you, but even if you were to transplant another Frisk from a different timeline into the run, what could they do? You can't just use Mercy on them; Papyrus already tried that, and look where that got him. Chara has no qualms killing another human, and with no combat experience whatsoever, pacifist!Frisk wouldn't stand a chance against Chara in a fight. Even neutral!Frisk probably isn't ruthless enough to stand up to Chara, who is at max-level and has top-level gear simply because of how No Mercy works. You not only handed Chara your SOUL, but also the perfect vessel to commit omnicide with. Any confrontation with Chara would end in a losing situation, so the game doesn't even let you try. The only way to truly beat them is to deny them the opportunity to fight in the first place... which is exactly what the True Pacifist run is all about.
• Why are you stuck in a dead void after your first No Mercy run, when up until that point you could just reset? And how does Chara bring the world back after you sell them your SOUL, anyway? Turns out both questions have the same answer — Chara is more determined than you now, so the one with the power to reset is them, not you.
• In Genocide, every boss fight other than Mettaton NEO seems to involve a Moral Event Horizon on its own — Papyrus and Muffet decide to spare you from the beginning, Toriel was going to raise you as though you were her own child, and Undyne intervenes when you attack Monster Kid. Yet, the only way to lock yourself on this path is if you've eliminated every monster prior to fighting Mettaton NEO. This seems to reflect the idea that one simple action does not make someone good or evil — even if you show mercy, you still have to live with the consequences of what you've done up to that point, after all — and it's never too late to reform if you really want to.
• The prophecy talks about an "Angel". This is very appropriate, seeing how both Asriel and Chara need to come Back from the Dead in order to fulfill the prophecy.
• During the Final Boss fight of the Pacifist Run, the background goes crazy. This may seem like just a neat effect, until you realize you're still in the barrier, and it's reflecting Asriel's rainbow trail.
• "Et tu, Toriel?" is the reaction many players will have when she says she'll destroy the exit of the Ruins, and this puts the "Tutorial" Pun with her name into a whole different perspective.
• The fountain in Mettaton Resort is the Royal Memorial Fountain, built 201X (Mettaton Added Last Week); considering what royal tragedy we know happened in 201X, it was probably originally a memorial for Asriel and Chara.
• All throughout the game, people hammer in the point of "you're a monster if you kill because you can just as easily spare them". To some, this rings hollow because you're usually defending yourself if you kill, but in reality they're right, because you put equal amounts of effort into killing as you do sparing. How long do most fights generally take if you spare? Optimally, three turns, the first to ACT, the second to dodge the enemy, the third to spare. How many turns do they go if you choose to kill them? Optimally, three, the first hit (if critical) takes off the greater part of their health, the second is to dodge their attack, the third to finish them. Unless you've ground on enemies enough to come one or two kills away from triggering the Genocide run's criteria, fights are equally as long regardless of your path, and given that your Save Scumming powers make trial and error a perfectly viable option in-universe and out, there's literally no pragmatic reason why you would fight instead of show mercy.
• Why exactly did Toriel block Undyne and Alphys' first kiss despite everything you have experienced in the Underground? Note how she says "the human" instead of "the child". Perhaps it's because you are a human, a race of beings who have systematically hurt and killed people who have relationships of two men or women, even some of the nicest people have in history. She wasn't preventing loss of innocence, she was protecting them from being hurt by you overreacting out of disgust or offense. Sure, humanity is a lot more tolerant now, but with how little of human culture monsters know outside of what flows into a trash heap, they wouldn't have any way of knowing they've moved past homophobia being an acceptable standard.
  • Especially considering the only two characters who would know it's more accepted now are, well, Alphys and Undyne.
• Why do you see a Real Knife by the end of the game on a Genocide run instead of the usual Worn Dagger? It's because outside Genocide runs, the PC sees it as a tool, something you use, whereas the murderous Chara would see it as something made specifically for killing things. Plus it's the only thing that isn't a toy, a tool, or a piece of clothing — none of which are made just for killing. Further supporting this is the item description, depicting its use for non-combat and combat means and the difference in the attack stat. The 99 ATK "you" think you can do is due to Chara's proficiency with actual weapons rather than toys and common household items.
  • Alternatively, the 99 damage comes from the Fallen Child's perception of the knife, since with monsters, you do as much damage as you think possible. Naturally this wouldn't work for humans like Frisk, but it still is a potentially deadly knife when used by a knowledgable person.
• On the subject of the Worn Dagger, the last weapon you receive on the neutral and pacifist routes, its item description reads "good for cutting plants". Your final boss for the neutral run is Flowey — a plant.
• Why does Chara have to describe everything? Frisk's eyes are closed or squinted for whatever reason. Frisk has poor eyesight, apparently.
• If you, during a Neutral run, only kill beings in the Ruins, Undyne still calls you out on having killed monsters. How on Earth could she know that? The Ruins have been sealed off from the rest of the underground for ages, no-one has been able to enter or exit them for ages (well, except for incorporeal beings like ghosts and burrowing beings like Flowey), so no-one could've told her about it, riiight? ... Do you remember who else is aware of what you did in the Ruins? The Mad Dummy, Undyne's personal and very chatty training dummy and the cousin of the ghost / dummy you meet in there. Do you remember who's neighbors with Undyne? Napstablook, who, if you do a Genocide run, escapes as you approach them, proving that even though they're just lying there, they are very much aware of what you're doing in the Ruins. With that in mind, is it really so very odd that Undyne is well informed about your actions in the prologue?
• The battle with Photoshop Flowey provides hints on how the Final Boss Battle with Asriel Dreemurr in the Pacifist Run will play out: you spend most of the time dodging the attacks, unable to talk or act except to call for help, and potentially trapped in an endless loop of playtime with Flowey. The intense battle scenes alternate with your SOUL encountering the items from the previous dead children, which turn into healing items when you ask for help. Eventually the six children's souls come together to help you in rebelling against Flowey, destroying his power from the inside out. And what do you do in the Final Boss Battle of a Pacifist Run? Enduring Asriel's attacks until you can call out to the monster friends you made during the game, to SAVE them. Before, with Photoshop Flowey, you are SAVING the souls by reminding them of who they were, what they liked, and what they carried. This makes the decision to spare Flowey all the more significant, since if not for his hint, you cannot complete a true Pacifist Run.
• An overlooked bit is that most people usually get the meaning for Toriel's name but wonder why the player/Frisk can't call Toriel anytime after they leave the Ruins. Well, who goes BACK to the tutorial after they finish it?
• The battle against Undyne looks a lot like a DanceDanceRevolution stage. By the time you fight her, the best equipments you can have are the Ballet Shoes and the Old Tutu.
• Why are Toriel's pie flavors of choice butterscotch and cinnamon? Because the appearances of those ingredients are reminiscent of the body and shell, respectively, of a snail.
• Before the battle with Photoshop Flowey, he says that he has six SOU Ls, and he needs one more before he "becomes God". Considering that all the monster SOULs combined are the equivalent of one human SOUL, he technically does become "God" at the end of the True Pacifist path. The "Absolute God of Hyperdeath", in fact.
  • This can suddenly dive into Fridge Horror when you think about it: what happens if Flowey/Asriel gets not only all those SOULs, but also Frisk's? Furthermore, if Chara's SOUL is available to obtain, or if it ever existed in the first place, what if he also obtains Chara's SOUL on top of all of that? Think about it for a moment...
• Mettaton's song warns you about Asgore: "it'll suck / and then you'll die a lot". In any other context, this would just be lazy songwriting, but in this game, dying a lot, and reloading in between, happens in-universe, especially in the fights against Flowey and Asriel that the Asgore fight leads into.
• Why is the best armor obtained by paying for shopkeep Temmie's college? Because Temmie's the Author Avatar of one of the game's main creators. You're bribing one of the creators of the game to make it easier for you!
• Sans' boss fight. Why does he get tired? Because his attacks are telekinetic. Every time you fight him, lose, and load your save to try again, you get to start fresh. From Sans' perspective, it's always the single fight, which means he never gets a chance to rest his mind between fights. The only way to beat him is to tire him out.
  • What are you talking about? Sans starts fresh when you restart, too.
• Given that Toriel is My Beloved Smother and a Mama Bear, it seems odd that Flowey, who is the reincarnation of her son Asriel, does not go to her for help, seeing her as either someone to save or murder when he has the ability to save and reload; given she's willing to die to see if you are strong enough to survive outside the Ruins, she would do everything in her power to keep a transformed Asriel safe. Then you get to the True Pacifist ending, where a crying Asriel begs Frisk not to tell his parents what he has become, because he has done terrible things as a flower and will horrify them when he reverts to that soulless form. On a subconscious level, Flowey is ashamed of being stuck in flower form, so much that he will not exploit his mother's kindness and love, even if having her as an ally would be better if for selfish reasons on his part. That form of pride lacks compassion, which means Flowey can maintain it without needing a soul or a conscience. Alternatively, which would overlap with Fridge Horror, is that if Flowey did seek Toriel's help and tell her who he was, he certainly wouldn't be satisfied with the results.
• Sans isn't fat. He's big boned. I swear this game needs a section for Facepalmers next to the Headscratchers.
• Of course Alphys collects terrible anime, she gets it from a garbage dump so deep under the earth that only the worst of the worst crap is going to end up there.
  • Are we going to find the lost copies of the ET Video Game down there too, perhaps?
• The tendency of the in-battle dialogue box to tell you what bosses and minibosses smell like (e.x. that Papyrus "smells like bones" and Snowdrake "smells like a wet pillow") seems a little random as far as Running Gags go, but then again, Toby Fox is, apparently, a dog...
• The dusty toys at Home. It's easy to get chills because, especially after a No Mercy run, you know quite well that dust equals death, but all the dust you encounter is the immediate result of monster-slaying (for instance, the Old Tutu is remarkably dusty and suggests that the human who wore it originally killed at least one monster). But then recall how monster funerals work: they scatter the ashes of dead loved ones over their favorite things. Those are Asriel's ashes. His parents gathered up the ashes from the golden flowers and scattered them on his toys, not realizing that his consciousness had already gone into the flower bed. Even worse: no one has touched them since it happened, Asgore still has his children's room enshrined, showing that he's still deeply grieving them.
• Despite Sans's mercy appearing fake, his "dunking" could be considered a Mercy Kill, thus fulfilling Exact Words. Even if he let the player live and they don't kill anyone else, it's highly unlikely that the monsters will ever forgive them. No establishment would serve Frisk, leaving him to starve to death alone anyways. At this point, the player's only options are to complete the No Mercy run or to reset. Also let us consider what happens if Frisk gets past this point in a No Mercy run and how it taints all future timelines...
  • Furthermore, Sans knows that Frisk is being controlled by an anomaly (the player). By killing Frisk, he's giving them a chance to be free from the anomaly's control.
• With 1 of each stat, Sans is listed as likely the weakest enemy in the game, but considering how powerful he is against the player in-game, this would sound like Blatant Lies, right? However, the things that make Sans so powerful against the player probably wouldn't work as well against other monsters.
  • His Gaster Blasters not only do draining damage, but are also implied to only do damage based on negative karma. Even the worst monsters are more along the lines of just aggressive or jerkish, and none of them can really be called evil. Not only that, but most have more than enough HP to survive against hits from the blasters even if they could be damaged.
  • Sans is able to dodge all of your attacks, but why wouldn't he be able to when the main attack used by a player by that point is a straightforward slash? Many monsters have much more complex attacks that Sans would never have as easy of a time dodging, and with 1 HP, it would only take a tap from even a weak attack to do him in. Sans really is the weakest monster, if he's only being compared to other monsters.
• The area music slows down when you're on a No Mercy run... because you're under the effect of tachypsychia, or the altered perception of time due to body chemicals produced from high-stress situations. You're in such a rush murdering everything that moves that time seems to slow down for you.
  • As said in a YouTube comment, this can also be symbolic: the weight of your sins is so heavy, it even slows down the OST.
• The war between monsters and humans began because humans feared the monsters' superior magic, even though the monsters are still much, much weaker than humans regardless. After the Pacifist Ending, there's a whole new option for harmony between the races: If a monster and a human both die, the monster's dust can be used to infuse their consciousness into an inanimate object, which can then be injected with Determination and absorb the human's soul, which allows both creatures to remain alive after death as a half-human/half-monster automaton. It also means that there's hope for Flowey after all.
• A meta example. During the GameFAQs BEST.GAME.EVER. poll, the last fight between Undertale and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time had a screenshot of Asgore amongst the six human SOULs as a representative image for Undertale. Except...in the screenshot, Asgore has the light blue, orange, dark blue, purple, yellow, and red SOULs in his possession. In Undertale proper, the red SOUL belongs to Frisk and the green SOUL of kindness has been taken. It's a little confusing at first, until you remember the context of the image, and who from The Legend of Zelda is primarily green and has a kind spirit (and, like you when your SOUL is green, faces danger head-on and knows how to block attacks)...
• The final boss of the Pacifist path never requires you to use the FIGHT button. The final boss of the Genocide path never requires you to use the ACT command. And the final boss of the neutral path requires both of them to defeat.
• If you kill Papyrus on a Neutral Run, Sans calls you a "dirty brother killer". The Fallen Child is a dirty brother killer, even if you don't kill Papyrus. They are responsible for the death of their own adoptive brother — Asriel. Also, who is the last person you kill on a Genocide Run? Flowey. Asriel's reincarnation.
• Sans is really good at dodging. Of course he is. He knows all about the fact that other timelines exist, including the Pacifist run, and that's how you managed to survive.
  • It's mentioned in passing that monsters use magic for everything (such as cooking). Sans has only 1 health point. Of course he has to be amazing at dodging, if any kind of accident could just insta-kill him.
• The Delta Rune is referred to by monsters as a symbol whose meaning has been forgotten — all they can remember is that an angel will save everyone, or it will kill everyone. Regardless of the outcome, the Underground would never be the same... and in some forms of scientific terminology, "delta" is used as an indicator of change.
• Why can't you get the Temmie Armour in a Genocide run? Well, the population of Snowdin would at that point be either dead or evacuated, leaving the Librarby completely empty, which is the only place even remotely resembling the "colleg" that an aspiring and prospective Temmie could go to.
  • Two other possibilities: Either even Temmies can recognize at this point that helping you is a bad idea (note that in the colleg's place is some premium Temmie Flakes that cost the same. An attempt to scam you, perhaps?), or anyone who's sticking with the Genocide route at this point wouldn't be that generous anyway — even if the option is still there in-universe, the PC isn't seeing or registering the option because they can't comprehend the idea of helping a monster.
• The true difference between a Neutral and True Pacifist run. In a Neutral run, even if you do everything right, there are still two encounters, Asgore and Flowey, where you have to Fight. However, upon doing so, Flowey's advice is to reload your last save, which is right before the fight with Asgore. That's the reason what occurs next is the True Pacifist run. By going back to that last save, those battles never happened. As far as the timeline and the people of the Underground are concerned, Frisk has never been violent.
• Probably the subtlest instance of bookending in the whole game: the cutscene before the fight with Papyrus and Sans' judgement are similar in a subtle, but definitely not accidental way. In both cases, we enter long, mysterious and completely silent locations, with only shadows of our character visible (in Snowdin — due to the fog, in Judgement Hall — due to windows only lighting Frisk from sides opposite to the player). We go forth a little, and then Frisk suddenly stops. The camera moves forward a little, revealing one of the Skelebros blocking our way (either Papyrus appearing from the fog or Sans teleporting behind the pillar). Cue him giving us a speech about love and friendship and judging our actions up to that point. Also, in both cases, once the cutscene (and, in the case of Papyrus, fight) ends, the Skelebro leaves in the same way as they got there (Papyrus hides again in the fog, Sans teleports away).
  • Don't forget Sans' scene with you immediately upon entering the ruins. It's even symmetrically a bookend, since the camera pans BACKWARDS to show he's there.
• The maximum possible LV you can have is 20, in theory for killing every single monster. You get it upon killing Sans, which only leaves Asgore and Flowey as the only ones left alive. Why would your LV be maxed out if there are still monsters around? Papyrus and Sans aren't from the underground. The shopkeeper says they've just asserted themselves here, one day, out of nowhere. They're supposed to be the extra 2, but you kill them before you get to Asgore and Flowey.
  • Shopkeeper in Snowdin says they aren't from Snowdin — not that they aren't from Underground. Also, 20 is maximum possible LOVE — not LOVE you get for killing every living monster — just like in Pokémon, where lvl 100 is the highest you can get, but it doesn't mean you have to KO every living Pokémon to get there. On a Genocide Route, you kill every monster in locations you traverse — not in the entire Underground. It's explictly stated multiple times that many monsters just ran away from us, and in Hotland there is mass evacuation. And, if nothing else, there are several unique monsters that we can't kill during Genocide: Napstablook, Monster Kid, Alphys, and Amalgamates. Also, if I'm not mistaken, while sparing Glyde or Shyren ends the genocide, you don't actually have to encounter them (only unique enemy that has to be killed in a Genocide run is Snowdrake).
• Asriel's 'rainbow trail' in the fights against him is very prominent and most of his attacks feature rainbow colors. It's not really a rainbow though. It cycles through every color except red, because Asriel doesn't have Frisk's red SOUL.
• A Monster with a human SOUL is described as being with not only a terrifying power, but also a very unsettling look. One of the main components of human SOULs is Determination, and we know very well what happens when a monster body is injected with Determination...
• In Victorian flower language, buttercup means humility and childishness, but also ingratitude and self-interest. Giving someone a bouquet of buttercups is a warning that our feeling towards them, while true, isn't completely devoid of desire for any profits. Now, why did Chara poison themself? Because they saw it as the only way to free the monsters — but also, more importantly, as the only way to get their revenge on humans. Also, if we go with the "Chara is evil" view, them using buttercups of all possible poisons to poison Asgore shows their lack of gratitude for everything they got from him and his family.
• Temmie reduces her price for Temmie Armor whenever you die, because she's one of the creators of the game (the other being the Annoying Dog), and thus aware of the fourth wall.
• So Undyne, instead of letting Papyrus become a full-on Royal Guard, invited him to hang out with her instead as sort of a requirement to become a Royal Guard later. This makes more sense, when one realizes that Papyrus truly becoming a Royal Guard would mean that he'd spend more time with the Snowdin Canine Unit. Papyrus doesn't really get along with dogs of any sort and the Canine Unit acts very dog-like most of the time. They'd try to be friendly to each other, of course, but in the end it would be pretty stressful and therefore bad for the Guard itself.
  • Becomes Fridge Logic though if one considers that the Royal Guard is also stationed in Hotland. Papyrus as a skeleton should have no issue with the heat, the guards there aren't dogs, and Papyrus would definitely be motivated enough to move for a chance to be a guard. So her explanation that she simply thinks he is too much of a lovable goof to be a guard to begin with makes much more sense.
• Mad Dummy is a sort of meaner counterpart to Undyne. Undyne represents anger used productively, filling your good deeds with passion and keeping you determined. Mad Dummy's anger blinds them and distances them from others. Mad Dummy eventually becoming Undyne's training dummy is a metaphor for productive anger triumphing over destructive anger.
  • Following up to this, Knight Knight is the armor-clad, Distaff Counterpart to identifiable-as-male Mettaton's EX form. As opposed to him, she looks scary, like a burly man, and although she is polite, she wants the human child (and humans) gone. Mettaton has no problems being rude, but intends to save humans. They are also both connected to Shyren in some way.
  • Even Sans and Papyrus work with this dichtomy. Both are skeletons, guard the ruin entrance, and — from different viewpoints — are the strongest monsters next to Toriel and Asgore. But Papyrus is motivated, powerful and eager to succeed while Sans is lazy, weak, and unattached. At the same time, Papyrus is the one that is very friendly, trusting, gullible, and peaceful while Sans is calculating, skeptical, smart, and — if necessary — merciless.
• Weakness to negative emotions aside, monsters are shown to be pretty tough (Undyne throws herself down a ravine to save MK, catches them mid-flight, cushions their fall with her own body, and emerges with only some minor injuries; Papyrus jumps out of the window and doesn't show even that, and there is also a Running Gag of Undyne suplexing everything and everyone, and the fact that monsters use their normally lethal magic for such trivial things as making birthday cards). OF COURSE they are hard to kill — their bodies are made mostly of magic and are strongly implied to be much simpler than normal, "physical" beings. Their bodies are just simple, material forms with no viscera of any kind — there isn't much to damage, meaning that the only sure way to kill a monster is to either completely obliterate their body or disrupt their magic — for example, with strong, negative emotions.
• It seems most monsters that fight you don't mean any harm — some seem to be playing, or it's just in their nature. (Of course there are exceptions, like the Royal Guard, but even they're very easy to talk down.) The fact that they haven't seen a human in awhile may contribute to why they're not being more careful... or, when you keep in mind that what passes for "human history" in the Underground is comic books and cartoons, some monsters may be under the impression humans are much more resilient than they actually are.
  • Actually, it's stated by many monsters in the Playable Epilogue (most notably Bratty and Catty, but also several more) that they didn't even recognise Frisk as a human in the first place (and some, like Onionsan, still don't realise that they are one), and one of the books in Snowdin Librarby implies that monsters are much, much more resistant to magic than humans. Yes, the monsters we meet are playing around and they do think that the protagonist is more resilent than they are — it's just not because they are overestimating the resilence of humans, but because they think they're a fellow monster and something lethal to a human would be nothing to them.
  • When doing the Genocide route, even though the player character is always at their very best regarding stats, they still take considerable damage from monsters. So it could even be assumed that, while the will to kill is the fatal flaw of monsters, magic is the fatal flaw of humans. Frisk/Chara are just naturally weak to it, so even a weak, harmless nudge with it does hurt the child a lot.
  • Since monsters are damaged by Killing Intent, it makes sense that a monster launching magical attacks at another monster without any intent of causing harm will result in said attacks... well, not doing any harm. Monsters even send birthday cards to each other which involve bullets. Humans don't work that way; accidentally killing a human is very, very possible even if no harm was intended, as the monsters of the Underground are likely to learn the hard way if the player can't handle the Bullet Hell.
• In combat against monsters, damage is determined less by inflicting physical damage and instead by the expression of killing intent. Part of what makes the player so powerful in the Genocide route is the raw, unrestrained bloodthirst from the player and Chara. Each boss is killed in one shot, with increasing amounts of damage — both due to the increasing violence of the player, as well as their increasing level. It isn't until Sans, though, that the damage marker is maxed out — because the player, after fighting Sans, probably is more than a little angry, and that emotion feeds into murderous intent. This is topped when Chara kills Asgore without any player input, doing a thousand times more damage in a surprise attack. Then, the extent to which Chara hates the world is revealed: they attack the game itself for infinite damage.
  • The definition of determination is "resolution or firmness of purpose", but in Undertale, it's literally de-termination, as in negation of ending. That's why it prevents Flowey from committing suicide, how Undyne becomes undying, creates the Amalgamates, and grants the ability to SAVE and LOAD and RESET but not END, which is a "choice" forced upon the player by Chara: having de-termination as an ability means being able to prevent conclusion, including that of the timeline! It also puts Sans' question of whether your special power means you have a responsibility to do the right thing in a new light: it might not be within your power to stop every bad thing from happening, but you have the power not just to choose the best ending, but the power to prevent all the worse ones from occurring.
• Fridge Heartwarming: Muffet is surprisingly okay with Frisk being a human. Most other monsters (with exception of Sans, Temmie and Tsunderplane) either don't recognize them as one, or are extremely worried and/or excited about meeting a human. Muffet, meanwhile, doesn't seem to care at all about it and only attacks them because she is tricked into it by Mettaton (NOT as a mugging attempt, contrary to what some people would say) and immediately backs off when she realizes she attacked an innocent person. She does mention taking their soul and breaking the Barrier, but she seems to see it as a nice bonus rather than a purpose in itself. But why? Doesn't she care about freedom? Of course — she doesn't! There are still many spiders trapped in the Ruins and she's not going anywhere until she can save them. For what she is concerned, the Barrier might as well not be broken.
• The Pacifist Route is forever locked to you if you kill even a single monster because Flowey/Asriel needs every single monster's SOUL to equal one human one and break the barrier. However, according to one of the signs describing monster history on the walls in Waterfall, it would take nearly every monster's soul to equal a human one, not all of them. Why the difference? Because Asriel no longer has his soul, meaning you do need all of them now, but not at the time the signs went up.
  • There's a second reason for it as well. To get the true pacifist ending, you need access to the true lab, and to get there you need to befriend Alphys, which requires befriending Undyne. Undyne's friendship is completely conditional on whether or not you have ever gained EXP — one murder before the friendship sequence and it's inaccessible until a reset, and if you murder after the friendship sequence, she stops being your friend and generally acts betrayed, which would presumably cause you to lose favor with Alphys as well even if you've befriended her, locking you out of this ending. And as others on this page have stated, the time needed to complete the true lab and bonds of friendship you have forged on your journey are both pivotal to Flowey's plan to gather all of the most powerful monsters in one place, which is necessary for him to become Asriel.
• When Alphys calls Mettaton's cooking show and suggests using a vegan substitute for a human soul, some players might notice a plothole with how the cake already has milk and eggs as ingredients. But since monster food is created with magic, the milk and eggs (and by extent, all monster food) would technically be vegan too!
• What does Muffet has in common with the Purple SOUL/Perseverance? Well, minus the obvious fact that she's trying to preserve the spiders in the Underground... Try to remember that whoever was the Purple Soul had a notebook. Now, if you have some lined paper, try to draw a heart on one of the lines.
• What colors does Sans' eye flash in the Genocide run? Yellow and light blue, the colors associated with justice and patience, respectively. Traits Sans shows plenty of; he not only stayed his hand until the end and gave you all the warnings and opportunity in the world to change your mind and back out of the Genocide run, but as a boss, between the well-deserved ass-kicking he'll give you for your murders and his willingness to stay trapped with you for eternity to keep you from destroying the timeline... yeah, Sans has justice and patience in spades.
• Undyne seems baffled as to how Sans keeps getting hired to run different sentry stations, but it makes perfect sense why Asgore would want Sans working for him. Sans can be incredibly capable when necessary, but he's too lazy to take his job hunting humans seriously otherwise. This attitude makes it take that much longer for another human to be captured and killed, which Asgore really wants to put off as long as possible.
• Why does Sans constantly teleport around and change his expression as he's attacking you? Because he's trying to distract you, the Player, by making you look at him rather than his attacks.
• Some particularly skilled players pride themselves on killing Sans (as well as many other video game bosses) without taking any avoidable damage. However, due to his sole use of dodging attacks to avoid dying, Sans "no-hits" many players numerous times in a row.
• Why is there a Running Gag about the smell of different things in the underground? The sense of smell is the sense that is most linked to memories. If something is memorable, one of the things that you will take note of, at least subconsciously, is the smell of that thing. considering how memorable everything in the underground is, no wonder the smell would be noted quite often.
  • Adding to that, you smell things when you breathe and most of the quotes about smell come from battles. When your adrenaline is spiking, more oxygen is in your bloodstream, meaning you need to breathe more. You are smelling more during a fight than outside of one.
• Why do the stats given by the CHECK option almost always lie? It's yet another one of the game's deconstructions of the RPG genre. In real life, if you looked at someone or something, it'd be kind of nonsensical to be able to come up with accurate, numerical stats of their attributes just by looking at them. And unlike a game like Persona, you don't have a navigator whose abilities allow them to do this for you. You're just a fairly normal kid who has to try to judge a monster's abilities based on how they look, and naturally that guess isn't going to be very accurate.
• The "Legendary Hero" item from the MTT Resort is ironically named, when one thinks about it. It heals 40 HP and provides an attack boost. Furthermore, eating it during Mettaton EX's battle gives less rating points than the cheaper and still full-healing on a Pacifist Route Glamburger. In other words, a Pacifist player has no use for it, except perhaps to help out during Asgore's fight, and even then only if the player already knows beforehand that they must fight him and that he can't be talked down. A Genocide player, by contrast, will stock up on these, since they provide the most healing of all purchasable consumables and provide an attack boost on top of it.