Webcomic / Handplates

Handplates is a complete web comic by zarla-s based on Undertale. Beginning from a short comic of Frisk wondering why Sans and Papyrus always cover up their right hands, it is an AU that provides a hypothetical scenario that Sans and Papyrus were experiments of Gaster's, and suffering ensues. The focus is usually on the brothers' perspective, wherein they try to survive and adapt to the things Gaster puts them through, with the story providing explanations for why they are the way they are in Undertale proper. However, just as much time is devoted to Dr. Gaster's perspective as well, where he forces himself to continue with his experiments despite the emotional and physical toll such cruelty is taking on him, convinced that it's necessary to win the monsters' freedom.

While the story began with several out of order comics just focusing on the brothers' lives as Gaster's test subjects, as the AU progressed a clear chronological narrative began to emerge. The AU also goes beyond just backstory, carrying on to Sans and Papyrus's lives after Gaster inevitably falls into the Core and is erased from existence, and eventually, into the fallen human's various runs of the game. Zarla has also occasionally written mini-comics and done illustrations for alternative scenarios where Gaster backed out of his experiment and raised Sans and Papyrus as his sons (either from infancy or sometime before or after first drilling the titular hand-plates onto them, for varying levels of angst) and one scenario where the boys escaped to the ruins and were adopted by Toriel.

The index for the series and the "non-canon" side comics is available here. Before reading, please note that this series is very dark and contains several mature themes. Also, due to this being based on Undertale, spoilers for both the game and the comic will ensue.

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Handplates provides examples of:

• Abusive Parents: While it's ambiguous whether Gaster qualifies as a father or a brother to Sans and Papyrus in this AU (Papyrus has referred to him as a brother in a state of delirium but the general feel of the connection is more paternal than fraternal at other points in the story), Gaster is incredibly abusive to the brothers. In addition to the obvious physical/medical abuse, he also routinely undermines their self-esteem and purposely traumatizes them. His feelings about his actions are generally mixed: he doesn't like doing it and takes no pleasure in it, but feels that it's for the greater good and chooses to do so despite the damage it causes himself and others.
• Afraid of Doctors: A given for Sans and Papyrus, since the story revolves around medical torture.
• All-Loving Hero: Papyrus, and in a rather tragic way. As he says during one breakdown, seeing the good in everyone is hard, but if Gaster is a Complete Monster with nothing but malice in his heart, what hope do they have? As an adult, this has matured into a more sophisticated philosophical stance— he refuses to let anyone say they're Beyond Redemption and thus resign themselves to being evil. He'll help everyone find the light, whether they like it or not.
• Ambiguous Situation: A very sad one. Near the start of the comic, Gaster — projecting his own hang-ups — tries to force Papyrus to kill an unspecified monster by holding San's lives hostage. We never see what choice Papyrus makes, cutting to him sobbing as Sans comforts him. This event cements his Actual Pacifism, but that's from holding to his principles or guilt over the one time he broke them is never confirmed.
• Art Evolution: As the comic went on, Zarla's style for Gaster and the brothers got less blocky, and Gaster in particular became more slender and less square-shouldered. Zarla's take on his Lost Soul head also gradually became more shaped like a candle flame. Zarla's art also gained more defined shading and lining in later comics. Even when the comics are put in chronological story order, it's easy to tell which comics were released earlier because of this.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Everything Gaster does For Science! is to find a way to break the barrier so that Asgore will never have to kill anyone again.
• Berserk Button: Being called, or even implied to be, stupid for Papyrus, due to his treatment under Gaster. When Sans hides the fact they live in a video game from him, he's furious, and it nearly destroys the skeleton's relationship.
• Beyond Redemption: Discussed. Gaster considers himself to be this for what he did to Sans and Papyrus. However, Papyrus points out that this is a form of moral cowardice — if you can't be redeemed, you're freed from the obligation to better yourself — and Sans angrily comments that as his victims, it's them who get to decide if his actions are forgivable, not him. By the end Papyrus feels like Gaster can make the steps to be a better person, while Sans isn't sure he can ever accept Gaster. Neither side is seen as right and wrong, and the brothers accept that both positions come from a valid place.
• Bishie Sparkle: When Alphys asks Gaster to heal her and he can't (but can't let her know), he distracts her by kissing her hand. Cut to her point of view ("lolol Alphys vision"), where he's surrounded by sparkles.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing:
  • Gaster is sociable towards most of the monsters, and is in fact good friends with Asgore and Alphys, but is exceedingly cruel to Sans and Papyrus. The dissonance between how he acts towards his friends and how he acts towards the boys starts wearing him down later in the comic.
  • Flowey acts cheerful and encouraging towards Papyrus, but only when he feels that he may gain something from the encounter. It is heavily implied through several images that Flowey has killed the skeletons in many different timelines.
• Body Motifs:
  • Hands. Sans and Papyrus' hand-plates are a permanent reminder of their pasts even when they've forgotten it, and Gaster drilling the plates onto their hands signifies his true descent into darkness. Before then, Gaster mutilated himself by punching holes in his hands so that he could clone the boys in the first place.
  • Eyes, especially expressiveness in eyes and being able to "see." In Zarla's fic, skeletons' eyes glow different colors as a form of expression and not glowing can cause emotional problems in skeletons. Gaster is blind in one eye (much like how he's only able to see one solution to his problems) but can still glow in both, yet often chooses not to. One of Sans' eyes is broken as a result of an early experiment and he can neither see nor glow from that eye, much like how he comes to adopt Gaster's no-mercy mentality towards those that hurt his brother. Papyrus, who always insists on Take a Third Option when put against a "kill or be killed" situation, can glow and see from both eyes.
• Call-Back: In an earlier comic, Sans makes a run for it and tries to turn off the beams to Papyrus' cell by putting his hand on the magic signature reader; because he's a part of Gaster, but a smaller part, he can only make one light on it go on. Much later, after Gaster is erased and he and Papyrus are exploring True Lab to figure out more of their past, Sans and Papyrus finally make all three lights go on by pressing their hands on the reader together.
  • Additionally, some of the comics in the second half of the story feature direct dialogue callbacks to things the brothers said while in the lab (though the two of them are of course not aware of this due to forgetting everything), such as Sans's "god i hope so" dialogue.
• Cerebus Retcon: On a meta level, this gives a rather bleak explanation to a lot of the Skelebro's quirks from the main game. Why is Papyrus so obsessed with spaghetti? One of the few good moments with his abusive father was making and eating it with him. Why does Sans like puns so much? A joke book was the only reading material he had while being experimented on in a dungeon.
• Child Hater: A downplayed example as while Gaster doesn't actively hate all children, he demonstrates in the comic and in non-canon side comics that he's just bad with kids—and this on top of him torturing kids who can't be mentally over 13, although he insists he doesn't hate them. He does seem to hate the fallen child, as well, since they're a human.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: Sans and Papyrus have spent most of their childhoods being tortured, and therefore don't really expect anything to change.
• Cosmic Retcon: Gaster falling into the Core erases him and everyone's memories of him from existence. Comics from after the fall that show True Lab show that even his equipment is gone.
• Despair Event Horizon:
  • Sans crosses it in the arc where he almost kills Gaster to escape and Papyrus heals him, spoiling the escape attempt. After he makes up with Papyrus, he resigns himself to the idea that they will never get out and he takes on the listless, defeatist attitude he's most known for in-game.
  • Funnily enough, Gaster treating the boys better is the result of him passing this. An experiment gone wrong leads him to learning that he may not even exist in the future; this, combined with Papyrus' continuing kindness and insistence that he can change, leads him to just drop the experiments and brood over the possibility of his approaching nonexistence.
• Desperately Craves Affection: Papyrus only has his brother, but is desperate for Gaster to treat him kindly. During the arc where he and Sans were fighting, he becomes especially clingy towards Gaster, to the latter's disapproval.
• Does Not Know How to Say "Thanks": Gaster is completely unsure how to react when Papyrus thanks him for the simplest kindnesses.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Gaster's treatment of the boys is a parallel to the player's actions in the original game, particularly the Genocide run.
  • Gaster forcing himself to continue on his "Genocide" path (experimenting on the boys for what he believes is a Necessarily Evil) is represented by the "Fight" and "Mercy" buttons.
  • Gaster drilling the plates onto the boys' hands seems to be the equivalent of the player's first kill or handful of kills—a brutal, senseless act that leads down the wrong path, but not anywhere close to irredeemability.
  • Papyrus, in spite of the suffering that Gaster/the player puts him through, never loses his optimism and still remains hopeful that they could possibly make a Heel–Face Turn. Sans, on the other hand, is much less forgiving of Gaster/the player and very much wants them dead.
  • According to Word of God, some of the things Gaster does to the boys are out of scientific curiosity. Why do some players do the Genocide run? They want to see what happens.
  • In the "Mercyplates" scenarios, Gaster "sparing" the boys when they are babies and deciding to raise them as his own is the equivalent of a True Pacifist run, and the best-case scenario where everyone is happy. On the other hand, Gaster changing his mind and sparing the boys after he's already been running experiments on them for some time is equivalent to a dusty Neutral run; Papyrus is completely loving toward him and forgiving of his sins while Sans remains mildly hostile, makes it clear that he doesn't think Gaster has really changed, and is only putting up with him to make his brother happy.
• Doomed by Canon: As one of the only characters who is confirmed to have been lost before the events of Undertale, it should come as no surprise that Gaster does not make it through the entirety of the comic.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • Going by release order, in the comics that take place before the hand-plates are drilled on the audience has seen plenty of comics that showcase how horrible Gaster is to Sans and Papyrus. But before the hand-plates are drilled on, Sans and Papyrus see Gaster as a caring, if weird, caretaker, even if Sans is a little suspicious.
  • The scene where Sans and Papyrus see visions of their future and take it to mean that they'll escape the lab one day, though they can't see enough to understand what exactly is going on in them. One vision is a foreboding one of Papyrus meeting Frisk in Snowdin. The other is Sans coughing up blood in the final corridor.
  • Close to the point where Gaster ends up falling in the Core, he gives up forcing himself to carry out experiments on the boys. Alphys, who is worried about him, ends up finding his lab and finds the cell the boys are being kept in—which now, unlike any other time prior, has food, a few toys, and some blankets in it, as well as pictures Papyrus has drawn about how he HOPES Gaster will treat them from now on. Alphys sees this and interprets it to mean that Gaster IS treating the boys well.
• "Eureka!" Moment: A very dark one — Sans is trying to figure out why the machine shows timelines starting and ending randomly, until Alphys calls to gush about her new game. Specifically, how she's had to delete and start a new save. This makes Sans realize what the machine is telling him, much to his horror.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: Shortly after Gaster drills the titular plates onto the boys' hands, Sans rants to Papyrus about how Gaster couldn't be trusted after all and will continue to mistreat them. This leads Sans to the realization that the plates were only the beginning, and no one can stop Gaster from continuing to hurt the two because no one knows they exist.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Gaster's opinion of Papyrus is a variation wherein he can't comprehend how someone who was made from himself could be capable of such unwavering compassion and mercy, since he doesn't see himself as capable of it. He understands Sans' resentment and aggression towards him much more easily.
• Fix Fic: Many a fan of the comic has written one to try and give Sans and Papyrus happier lives; subverted by Zarla's alternative scenarios that show Sans and Papyrus either being raised as Gaster's sons or show the boys escaping to the Ruins, which end up being depressing for their own reasons.
• Flash Sideways: Sans and Papyrus occasionally get glimpses of themselves from other timelines. It usually does nothing but confuse them, much to their typical aggravation.
• Forced Bath: In Make sure to cover the outlets, little Sans and Papyrus get into the printer and make a mess when playing with the ink cartridges, and Gaster has to give them a bath.
  Papyrus: Nooo, no no, no tashing, no tashiiiing.
  Gaster: (as he's scrubbing Papyrus) You brought this on yourself, shush.
• Forced to Watch: As Sans has an HP of one, Papyrus undergoes the brunt of the physical abuse, much to Sans’s dismay. Gaster is implied (and in one instance, outright shown) to use this as a punishment when Sans acts out of line since he's too fragile to punish directly.
• Foregone Conclusion: To the first arc, thanks to game canon and Sans and Papyrus' future vision; Gaster gets thrown into the Core and erased from existence, and Sans and Papyrus escape the lab to live in Snowdin. Although this development did surprise some fans since not all of them knew how much of the game's timeline the fic was going to cover.
• Gratuitous Japanese: This comic about Gaster teaching the boys to rattle their bones is titled Karakara-ing on. Karakara is Japanese onomatopeia for light clattering, and is the Japanese name of Cubone from Pokémon.
• Freudian Excuse: Gaster grew up before and during the war between monsters and humans, and not only was raised by emotionally distant parents, but his attempt to be a pacifist and not hurt any humans led to him watching as all of his friends and family died in the war. Many of his opinions on mercy and kindness are clearly formed from survivor's guilt.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Even if his entire race has been wiped out, that doesn't give Gaster the right to do half the things he's done to Sans and Papyrus; this is stated not only by the author herself, but is an opinion clearly shared by Sans.
• Hates Being Touched: Gaster refuses to let himself be touched by Sans and Papyrus, deciding that it would pose too much of a risk of him getting attached. This behavior carries over a little bit into his interactions with other monsters as well, as he's not generally affectionate.
• Healing Magic Is the Hardest: Apparently, a monster's ability to heal themselves or others is directly linked to their empathy. As Gaster carries out his cruel experiments, he has to hide his newfound inability to heal from Alphys and Asgore.
• Heel–Face Turn:
  • It takes a very, very long time, but Papyrus eventually wears Gaster down enough that he can no longer continue to hurt the boys. The lead up to his being thrown in the Core shows several days going by without any experiments.
  • A Flash Forward comic that is potentially Handplates related shows Papyrus doing the same thing to Frisk, who evidently was doing a No Mercy route and is shown hugging him with their knife discarded. This winds up being an alternate timeline to the main comic, in which this turn doesn't happen.
  • As of "I have HAD it with this," Gaster is willing to allow Papyrus to teach him to be 'good.'
• Hoist by Their Own Petard: Afraid that Sans and Papyrus might use blue magic against him, Gaster traumatizes them to the point where they're both incapable of using it^note According to Gaster's notes, upon being told to use blue magic, Sans would completely shut down while Papyrus would burst into hysterical tears. This comes back to bite him when, after he's pushed into the CORE by Sans, Papyrus tries to catch him with blue magic, the Trauma Button activates, and Papyrus loses his grip.
• How We Got Here: On the very first page, Frisk is curious as to why the skeleton brothers never seem to remove their gloves, and discovers the handplates by removing said gloves when they're sleeping.
• Idealist vs. Pragmatist: Sans and Papyrus, while in the Lab. Papyrus thinks there's a core of good in Gaster, and wants to find a way to convince him to let them go without hurting anyone. Sans, meanwhile, wants to escape no matter the cost. This comes to a head when the brothers have a chance to escape at the cost of leaving Gaster for dead. Sans obviously wants to take it, but Papyrus refuses to leave Gaster, healing him and losing the opportunity. This leads to the near-destruction of the brother's relationship.
• I Did What I Had to Do: Gaster frequently justifies his actions by saying other people "need" him to do the experiments and it's what he has to do, since his hope is to break the barrier without Asgore having to kill any more children to do it. In a comic after Gaster is erased Asgore (referring to the human children he's killed) also says it was what he "had to do", and Sans remarks that he has deja vu again.
• I Have a Family: During one of Gaster's traumatic flashbacks of the human-monster war, he sees his younger self cowering in terror under a labcoat while the other skeletons are being slaughtered on the battlefield all around him, screaming things like "RUN! RUN!" "PLEASE NO!", "I HAVE A CHILD!", "NOOOOOOOO!" "I DON'T WANT TO DIE!" and "HELP US!!"
• I Have This Friend: At one point, Papyrus attempts this while asking Undyne for advice for a complicated situation. It goes about as well as you'd expect.
• "It" Is Dehumanizing: Gaster intentionally refers to the boys as "it" at first, and for a long time after also refers to them as "things". This is purely to keep himself from becoming attached to them. He also refers to the player as this, in their case it's the "Eldritch Abomination too alien to empathize with" variant.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: As falling into the CORE causes anything to be erased from existence, the memories involving the fallen are lost as well. A majority of PART TWO - FREEDOM is spent with the cast attempting to make sense of events after Gaster is forgotten.
• Last of His Kind: Gaster is the last skeleton monster after all the others died in the human-monster war. He creates the boys using artificial means, using pieces of his own bones as genetic templates.
• Last-Second Word Swap: Gaster frequently stops himself from saying words or phrases that imply the boys are children, or that they have any familial relation to him, usually to replace them with colder sounding phrases.
  Gaster (offering his sleeve): Here. Hold on to m—this.
• Living Emotional Crutch: Sans and Papyrus are this to each other, to a potentially unhealthy degree. The mere thought of having to live without the other is extremely upsetting to them.
• Moral Event Horizon: In-Universe, Gaster believes he crossed it when he drilled the titular hand-plates onto Sans and Papyrus' hands, intentionally doing it without anesthesia and without any explanation to the boys both so they'd stop viewing him as a parental figure and so he himself wouldn't hesitate to do any of the other painful experiments to them from then on out. This idea is defied by Papyrus, however, who continually insists (like in the main game) that you can always stop making bad choices.
• My God, What Have I Done?: The first time Gaster ever killed someone, which was to stab a human in self-defense during the war, he was near catatonic for a long time afterwards and couldn't stop shaking. To a much lesser extent, he'll occasionally feel this way towards what he does to the boys—not that this is enough to make him stop.
• Nightmare Sequence: Papyrus, Asgore and Toriel are shown having vivid nightmares involving Gaster after he's erased from existence.
• Noticing the Fourth Wall: The machine that Sans and Papyrus find in their house has figured out that they live in a video game. Neither skeleton takes this well, but Sans in particular has a complete breakdown over it.
• Not So Stoic:
  • Gaster tries to keep his emotions in check at all times, and writes about the experiments he conducts with a flat affect, but the visuals in the comic will occasionally show him trembling and smoking to calm down from something he did to Sans and Papyrus if it was particularly horrific.
  • Sans makes a game of trying to get a rise out of Gaster whenever they're together, since Gaster treats him with such a cold and clinical air.
  • On one occasion, Gaster tries to convince Papyrus that mercy is wrong by using a "hypothetical" example of a skeleton who abstained from fighting during the war and watched all of his family get killed when he could possibly have saved them. Papyrus naturally points out that the skeleton isn't at fault for not fighting, and Gaster practically roars that it is his fault. It's one of the only times he ever raises his voice to the brothers—making it clear that it wasn't a hypothetical story at all.
• Parental Substitute: During and after the human-monster war, Asgore and Toriel looked after a young Gaster after all the other skeletons were killed. Later, Asgore takes care of Sans and Papyrus upon discovering them after Gaster's Ret-Gone.
• Poor Communication Kills: On their first meeting, Alphys is unable to speak with the boys since they don't know English, only Wing Dings. She doesn't know how horribly Gaster has treated them and therefore isn't careful when telling them where he currently is in the Core. Sans, as well, knows Gaster can track them down even if they escape and still believes that he will continue torturing them, because Gaster hasn't even made it clear to them that he no longer has the will to carry out his experiments. This all culminates in Sans pushing Gaster into the Core and erasing him from existence.
• "Reason You Suck" Speech: Sans delivers one later on when Gaster is delivering food to them, pointing out how for all his talk of "people need me to do this" in regards to the experiments, as if he doesn't have a choice in what he does, he has a lot more freedom than Sans and Papyrus will ever have and even Papyrus is still able to choose to be kind and Sans himself is able to choose to keep going. Gaster doesn't respond to it.
  Sans: you got choices. you're just not strong enough to make them.
• Recursive Fanfiction: More than a few fanfic and webcomic authors have done their own takes on Handplates, either doing AUs where the boys escape or continuations of the story past the point the webcomic was at when they started. Others have written fanfictions where Gaster gets an assistant character to help with his experiments, usually either Alphys or an OC of the writer's.
• Replacement Goldfish: After the arc where Gaster's erased and the boys have escaped, Sans starts to suspect that Asgore is using him and Papyrus to replace the children he lost, and this is one of the reasons they move to Snowdin.
• Ret-Gone: Gaster gets wiped from existence after Sans pushes him into the CORE. Nobody remembers he existed, all written mentions of his name are blanked out, and Sans and Papyrus lose almost all memory of their childhood.
  • This only applies to memories though, the Ret-Gone doesn't actually change any of the actions he's taken. Some characters notice that somebody existed to be the royal scientist before Alphys or to own the home that Sans and Papyrus now live in, but aren't sure of who that somebody was.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: Asgore scolds Gaster for carrying baby Papyrus upside down because it’s not safe. Gaster says that it should be fine because skeletons don’t have physical brains, veins, or bloodflow that could be negatively affected from being held upside down, but Asgore gets proven right a second later when Papyrus’ head falls off and hits the tabletop with a “clonk”. (Thankfully, he’s fine afterwards, just dizzy.)
• Sadist: Gaster insists that he does what he has to when it comes to hurting the boys, and for the most part it's clear that the guilt is having a physical toll on him if nothing else, but in a conversation with Sans he can neither confirm nor deny that he has enjoyed doing it. Zarla also made a (joking) comment in the past that if he had a tail, it would probably be wagging while he was performing his experiments.
• Shout-Out:
  • In the comic "Whoops!", Gaster's coffee mug has NIMH written on the front.
  • One flashback comic to before Gaster made the boys has him wearing a shirt for Star Control II
  • One of Gaster's hoodies (which Sans also occasionally wears after he's erased) has Black Mesa on it.
• Skip the Anesthetic: Gaster bites down on a wallet to stifle his screams of pain while using a laser to remove circle-shaped parts from his hands.
• Squee: When Alphys sees Gaster's tail, she makes a squeal that's so high-pitched he initially thinks there's a mosquito in the room.
• Stepford Smiler: Papyrus; he constantly tries to stay cheery for Sans' sake, especially after Sans really falls into depression, but it's obvious he's suffering too. This carries on even after Gaster is gone, as he tries to pretend he's awesome and cool and without any emotional baggage even when he's obviously traumatized by things he can't remember and barely anyone pays attention to him.
• Survivor Guilt: Gaster has been haunted by survivor's guilt for years from being the last skeleton monster left alive after the human-monster war. Feeling he doesn't deserve to continue living while others suffer and die is part of his motivation for wanting to be the one who breaks the barrier, no matter what lengths he has to go to.
• Symbol Swearing: When Gaster hurts himself and says an unknown swear word (represented by "@#$%!") in front of the boys, they immediately start repeating it, to his frustration.
• The Talk: In the Loose Canon side-strip Is there a stork involved, Frisk asks several characters where baby monsters come from. Grillby explains that fire monsters clone themselves by using a matchstick. Undyne and Alphys (a fish and a reptile, respectively) say they come from eggs. Papyrus starts to explain before realizing he and Sans have no idea where baby skeletons come from.
• This Is Unforgivable!: Before beginning the experiment, Gaster considered all the ramifications that would result from it, should it succeed. One of them was that Asgore and Alphys would never forgive him when (not "if", when) they found out what he had done.
• Trauma Button: To avoid the boys using blue magic on himself, Gaster intentionally traumatizes them out of using it at all, even making sure to test afterwards that they can't use it even if their lives might depend on it. Sans is evidently able to get over his fear, but this incident is used to explain why Papyrus never throws you around with it in the main game.
• Troubled Abuser: Gaster has a hell of a Dark and Troubled Past, being the Last of His Kind and wracked with guilt over both the actions he took and the ones he didn't during the human/monster war, and his abuse of the brothers is directly connected to it. However, this is never used to excuse his actions — even Papyrus, the person most committed to his betterment, sees it as a route to redemption rather then an excuse.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Gaster used to be a sweet, idealistic young skeleton who believed monsters and humans could be friends. The slaughter of his entire race in the human-monster war turned him into a Broken Bird, but with Asgore and Toriel taking care of him, he was still able to retain some measure of happiness and optimism; one occasion (a picnic with him, Asgore, and Toriel) has him enthusiastically explaining (and bragging) about a puzzle he's created, startlingly similar to Papyrus of all people. Then, in his adulthood, the incident that resulted in Asriel and Radic's^note the author's preferred name for the Fallen Child deaths, Asgore's declaration of war on humanity, and Toriel's departure to the Ruins crushed what little idealism he had left, leaving him a cold, emotionless scientist whose only goal became destroying the barrier and freeing monsterkind, regardless of the cost to himself or others.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Alphys, who is just enjoying an RPG videogame at the time, accidentally provides the exact right words for Sans to almost immediately cross the Despair Event Horizon and become the depressed skeleton from canon.
• Wham Episode:
  • …Reap the whirlwind, as the finale of Part One, has Sans push Gaster into the CORE, removing him from existence and erasing all memory of his life.
  • Haha remember when has Gaster return all of Sans and Papyrus's memories of the lab to them, allowing him a part of existence to cling to.
  • Nailed it has Gaster return to existence with Sans and Papyrus.
• Wham Shot: In I sleep where the lady fox sleeps, Sans sees Frisk holding a knife and attached to the soul of Zarla^note the author's appearance as the game's player character. This shot announces the official beginning of the No Mercy run.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Papyrus is DESPERATE for Gaster's affection, even when Sans (correctly) points out that he'll probably never get it. Alternate scenarios of the fic show this as being true even if Gaster had lost his nerve and raised them as his sons from infancy, Gaster dotes on Sans because of his intelligence and Papyrus becomes neglected as a result.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Gaster creates the boys as part of a series of experiments to find alternative ways to break the barrier (among other things.) He believes that his experiments are worth it as long as Asgore doesn't have to kill anyone and change himself to break the barrier. He also believes that his cruel behavior while doing them is necessary so that he doesn't start getting attached to the boys.
• What You Are in the Dark: Gaster has a very low opinion of who he is when no one is watching. His treatment of Sans and Papyrus is evidence of how far he's willing to go as long as none of his friends are there to be horrified by it.
• Would Hurt a Child: Gaster, although not at first—he initially tries to make the boys seem as unchildlike as possible before he gets to the meat of the experiments by speeding their growth and trying to speed their mental capacity along as well. When he realizes that he's getting attached, however, he decides to go forward anyway despite the boys' immaturity.
• You Are Number 6: Gaster refuses to refer to Sans or Papyrus by anything other than 1-S and 2-P for the purposes of establishing a baseline of psychological distance from them; they only get their names after he's thrown in the core and they're taken in by Asgore.

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