Creator / Toby Fox

seeing the hope and happiness that undertale has brought to people...
it fills me with determination.

— Toby Fox

Robert F. "Toby" Fox (born October 11, 1991) is the creator of Undertale and Deltarune. He also produces music, primarily for the Homestuck music team, published on the label What Pumpkin.

Previously known professionally as "Radiation", Fox began as an amateur musician and ROM-hacker, producing EarthBound: The Halloween Hack. This garnered him some attention for the quality of the music, and after he produced some fan pieces based on work done for Homestuck, Andrew Hussie quickly brought him onto the team. After joining the music team, he more or less became the leader of the music team (at least to the fans) and was both very prolific with his own work and helped with mastering and whatnot.

However, as time ground on, Fox began to seriously push forward his own work, first in the background, and then in 2013 in public via a Kickstarter: a game in the rough JRPG mold, written, directed and scored by him, called Undertale — The Friendly RPG Where Nobody Has To Die.

It certainly was that. It also became his defining work and, without exaggeration, one of the most artistically-influential and important video games of The New '10s. Undertale made Fox a comparative household name (somewhat to his embarrassment) and is now, by far, the thing he is best known for, wholly eclipsing his Homestuck work. He went on to support Undertale in a number of ways, including commissioning a Japanese translation after the game proved shockingly popular in Japan and supporting a number of Undertale side and fan projects.

In 2018, however, he was ready to release something more — something that had existed alongside Undertale the entire time. October 31st saw the release of "Chapter 1" of Deltarune, an episodic "sister game"/"parallel story" to Undertale; nearly three years later, "Chapter 2" was released. While Deltarune features many of the same characters as Undertale, Fox has stated that it is not meant to be set in the same "world" as its predecessor. Once again though, it prominently features Fox's music.

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Homestuck albums he has contributed to or worked on:

The Homestuck tunes

• Midnight Crew: Drawing Dead^note "Liquid Negrocity", "The Ballad of Jack Noir"
• Homestuck Vol 1-4^note "John Sleeps / Skaian Magicant", "Carefree Victory", "Atomyk Ebonpyre", "Black": Originally only appeared on Vol. 4
• Homestuck Vol 5^note "Skaian Skirmish", "Savior of the Waking World", "Happy Cat Song!", "Hardchorale", "White", "Octoroon Rangoon", "Lotus Land Story", "Versus", "Dupliblaze COMAGMA", "Moonshatter", "Sunsetter", "Get Up", "Vertical Motion", "Amphibious Subterrain", "Snow Pollen", "Descend"
• Alternia: A solo album, the first of the Homestuck Music Team's history
• Squiddles!^note "Squiddles the Movie Trailer - The Day the Unicorns Couldn't Play"
• The Felt^note "Humphrey's Lullaby", "English"
• Homestuck Vol 6^note "Umbral Ultimatum", "MeGaLoVania", "Gaia Queen", "Wacky Antics", "Nic Cage Song", "A Tender Moment"
• AlterniaBound^note "Karkat's Theme", "Terezi's Theme", "Vriska's Theme", "FIDUSPAWN, GO!" (with David Ko), "Darling Kanaya", "Eridan's Theme", "Nautical Nightmare", "Nepeta's Theme", "Killed by BR8K Spider!!!!!!!!", "Catapult Capuchin", "Science Seahorse", "A Fairy Battle", "The Blind Prophet", "AlterniaBound", "You Won A Combat", "Rest A While"
• Homestuck Vol 7^note "Terezi Owns", "Rumble at the Rink", "Earthsea Borealis"
• The Wanderers^note "Mayor Maynot", "Riches to Ruins Movements I & II", "Tomahawk Head"
• Homestuck Volume 8 ^note "Love You (Feferi's Theme}", "Davesprite", "Frostbite", "The Lost Child", "Judgement Day", "Cascade" ("Penumbra Phantasm" from Part 3 & wrote the solo piano/violin/guitar parts from Part 4)
• coloUrs and mayhem: Universe A & coloUrs and mayhem: Universe B (mixing and transitions)
• Homestuck Volume 9^note "Hate You", "ASSAULT", "Stress", "Moonsetter"
• Cherubim^note "The Lordling" (Some people may recognize the laugh track in this song from a certain flower...)
• [S] Collide.^note "Oppa Toby Style"
• Act 7 ^note In collaboration with Clark Powell

Other Homestuck-related works:

• Hiveswap OST, HIVESWAP Act 1 OST (with THE GRUBBLES) and HIVESWAP: ACT 2 Original Soundtrack^note (with James Roach and Clark Powell)
• Hiveswap Friendsim OST^note (with James Roach)
• Pesterquest OST^note "Darling Kanaya", "mIrAcLeS", "Love You (Feferi's Theme)", "The La2t Frontiier", "Riches to Ruins Movement II", and Dirk's Theme "Stress"

Unofficial Homestuck albums he's contributed to:

• The Baby is You
• Homestuck for the Holidays^note "Carefree Perigree"

His non-Homestuck work:

• The Halloween Hack and its songs
• I Miss You - EarthBound 2012 - Composed the tracks "Fallen Down" (which would reappear in Undertale), "A New Line", "Megalo Strike Back", and "Checkerboard Memories".
• Kiwi Blitz's main theme, "Kiwi Blast"
• Undertale and the Undertale OST^note The OST for the demo contains a track unique to it, "Empty House"
• Deltarune and the Deltarune OST
• Collaborations with Japanese Pop Music singer Itoki Hana:
  • "74" (2018)
  • "Skies Forever Blue" (link) (2022)
  • "The Greatest Living Show" (2023)
• Rose of Winter's soundtrack
• Super Smash Bros. Ultimate includes a remix of Megalovania with the purchase of the Sans Mii Gunner DLC
• Escaped Chasm's OST
• Little Town Hero's OST
• Pokémon Sword and Shield's Battle Tower theme.
• YIIK: A Post-Modern RPG - Composed one of its multiple battle themes, "Into The Mind".
• Dweller's Empty Path's OST
• OMORI - Composed the track "MERRY CD".
• "Hammerhead Shark Song" by Hirokazu Tanaka - Directed the song's music video.
• Toby Fox's Secret Base - Monthy editorial column running in Weekly Famitsu.
• Pokémon Scarlet and Violet - Field music, Tera Raid theme, Academy Ace Tournament theme, Battle! Zero Lab, and Area Zero
• A song for a 2022 Pocari Sweat ad.
• Mr. Saitou - Composed the track "Irritatou"
• We Baby Bears - Guest voice actor in Season 2 as Jared the skeleton.
• Pale Machine 2 by bo en - collaborated on the track "Prelude".
• Soul of Sovereignty Prelude OST (2024) - co-composer
• hololive - Produced and composed the song "Fallen Wing" for Amane Kanata alongside Camellia.

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Toby Fox and his works provide examples of:

• Author Avatar: The Annoying Dog, a small, white dog who appears in Undertale and Deltarune that has some kind of omnipotent force. After all, guess what "Dog" spelled backward is.
• Awesome, Dear Boy: In the June 2023 Undertale/Deltarune newsletter, Toby stated that he accepted the role of Jared in We Baby Bears because "it's always been a dream of mine to be a voice actor in cartoons, so when I got this, my first and only request, I instantly had to say yes."
• Creator Thumbprint: His distinct dramedy storytelling that mixes irreverent humor and psychological drama and his prominent use of leitmotifs. The Undertale and Deltarune soundtracks in particular connect nearly every song to one another through shared passages and samples, with the practice even extending to songs for completely unrelated works.
• Descended Creator: According to the June 2023 Undertale/Deltarune newsletter, Toby himself voiced Queen and Tasque Manager in Chapter 2 of the latter game.
• Digital Piracy Is Okay: Having started his career as a ROM hacker in a community where emulation was the only viable way to play every game in the series for decades (thanks to a mix of No Export for You and Keep Circulating the Tapes), Toby has a rather... unique approach to the topic of copyrighted material for a game creator. Notably, when Alpharad once asked him if he could license the "Dating Start!" song that he'd been using in his sponsorship segments as a running joke, Toby told him that since the composition and all sounds used to create the song are freely available online, there's nothing stopping Alpha from just claiming it to be an original creation of his that happens to sound exactly like the official "Dating Start!". [1]
• Pen Name: His real name is Robert Fox, but he is known online as Toby, formerly Radiation (briefly combining the two as Toby "Radiation" Fox^note His Homestuck tracks being credited as such). Then there's "U.Z. INU": while it has never been fully confirmed to be him, this rarely appearing pen name effectively translates to "A.N.Y.G. DOG" and belongs to an artist who composes very Toby Fox-sounding music for material Toby himself has a vested interest in, such as hololive or Homestar Runner.
• Promoted Fanboy: He went from making a ROM hack of a Nintendo game to actually composing soundtrack for the company, and even got his character, Sans, as a costume in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. The clout Undertale brought him also let him meet and work with some of his idols. Most surprisingly, he even got to interview the extremely reclusive Yume Nikki creator Kikiyama... if only in yes/no questions, except for an humorous question of what they would like to eat if Toby invited them for dinner at Denny's.
• Reclusive Artist: While plenty of photos and videos exist of him before then, Fox elected to stop showing his face for any public appearances/events after the release and surprise popularity of Undertale, first taking a photo of himself in a cardboard Ice-E mask as a default image for online sources before settling on various depictions of the Annoying Dog. What's more, outside a couple of appearances in Annoying Dog costumes (one at an award show, the other in the trailer for the Nintendo Switch port of Deltarune's second chapter), he avoids showing up physically at all.
• Retraux: Both Undertale and Deltarune feature art styles halfway between 8-bit and 16-bit games and a saving system that would be considered outdated if any of their contemporaries tried it.

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