FURTHERFELL is a series of Alternate Universe fics based on Undertale's Underfell Fan Verse. Inspired by the Aftergore project, each branch follows up on a possible outcome of Frisk's time in the Underground and what the next fallen human, Hare, has to deal with as a result of their actions.
Branches include:
- Rethroned
: With Asgore's death, Toriel has returned to her position as Queen and sought to walk back her ex-husband's more hostile policies about humans. These changes are put to the test when Hare falls into the Underground, though. - Vive La Révolution: Papyrus becomes King due to all the better options being dead. Despite promising to do better than Asgore did, the Underground's spiraled into totalitarian dictatorship by the time Hare arrives due to Papyrus' insistence on bringing out the good in his subjects... no matter what he has to do to achieve that.
- Drama! Romance! Bloodshed!: Mettaton becomes king. While the status quo of Asgore's reign has been preserved, he's made some changes to the Underground that are a little more to his liking.
- Neutral In Name Alone: Something happened that resulted in the world becoming corrupted and all the main bosses being erased. The Undeground is still around, though, as are a few characters that refused to enter oblivion and some others who've managed to return.
- Sins of the Father: Asgore sucessfully takes Frisk's soul and wages war on humanity, resulting in both sides being wiped out. Millenia later, a new group of humans and monsters find accounts of their predecessors' brutality and the cycle begins anew.
FURTHERFELL's branches contain the following tropes:
- Bittersweet Ending: Rethroned ends with most of the characters in a better place than they were at the start of the story, such as Napstablook focusing on one career full-time instead of three and Papyrus and Undyne working out their differences. However, the Dreemurr royal lineage is no more due to Toriel's death, sending Flowey into mourning and placing a lot of stress on Undyne as her successor. Furthermore, it's uncertain whether Alphys is still alive because she fled to her laboratory after killing Toriel and fighting Undyne and Hare afterwards and hasn't been heard from since, much to her lover Undyne's dismay.
- Brooklyn Rage: Sans has a much more pronounced Brooklyn accent in Drama! Romance! Bloodshed! than in other branches, and he is likewise a more violent and thuggish individual there. He's the overseer of a gladiatorial arena where monster fatalities are a common outcome of fights, takes on Hare himself when they refuse to hurt anyone in the arena, and kills Mettaton due to the issues his reign created without considering that the robot had good intentions.
- Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Napstablook has a serious case of imposter syndrome in Rethroned, as they're working three jobs at once and aren't very good at any of them. They refuse to be comforted about this, however, as they don't think they're worth worrying about.
- Full-Circle Revolution: Papyrus steps up to the throne in Vive La Révolution, promising to bring out the good that monsters have deep within them and be better than his predecessor Asgore, who was openly a tyrant. Due to Papyrus going to extreme lengths to fulfil said promise, the Underground becomes a totalitarian state within six years of him taking over and in many regards things are worse than when Asgore was in charge.
- Funetik Aksent: Sans' canon Brooklyn accent becoming thicker in Drama! Romance! Bloodshed! is conveyed by his dialogue incorporating more slang from and mimicking the phonetics of the accent more often.Sans: [frustrated with Hare's lack of violence] fuck it! the audience ain't even entertained anymore. y' ain't hurtin' a soul! noble, sure, but also pretty freakin' borin'. so we're gonna spice this up. y' wanna go to hotlands, huh? y' want passage to the mtt resort. pro'lly so y' can go an' take out king hal 9000 or whateva. well howsabout this. y' can have the prize... if y' can pick it outta my cold, dead dust. and if ya don't have the heart to hurt me? well then i'm gonna give the audience a helluva show.
- Future Imperfect: Sins of the Father takes place millennia after Asgore's war on humanity wiped out everyone in the area, with a new group of monsters later getting trapped in the Underground they left behind and trying to infer what their predecessors were up to. One of Spuds the Scarecrow's theories on the purpose of the Ruins is that they were used in some religious function (though he brings up their actual purpose of being a settlement as a possibility), and the equivalent of Snowdin is called "Grillby's" because the restaurant of the same name was the last remaining building from the old town.
- Hidden Depths: Despite openly being a tyrant who had no remorse about his plan to wage war on humanity, there are still signs that Asgore wasn't a completely terrible person. Sans and Dess talk about how Asgore still dressed up as Santa Claus to deliver Gyftmas presents like he did in Undertale (though nobody's taken over that job since he died six years prior). Furthermore, he helped raise Dess and Noelle (initially alongside Rudy, then by himself once Rudy passed away) and was a much kinder parent towards them than their own mother was.
- The High Queen: Toriel returns to her position of the Underground's Queen in the Rethroned branch and immediately sets to undoing Asgore's more hostile policies regarding humans. Notably, she replaces the Royal Scientist and Head of the Royal Guard with monsters who are far less malicious than their predecessors.
- Inadequate Inheritor: In Rethroned, Toriel fires Alphys from her position as Royal Scientist due to her excessive Mad Scientist tendencies and replaces her with Napstablook, whose qualifications for the job amount to their being "some random ghost who hanged (sic) around the lab a lot." In addition to having no scientific background whatsoever, they're also simultaneously working as Mettaton's co-star and music producer and aren't very good at any of their jobs, saddling them with serious doubts about their capabilities. At the end of the branch, they resign from the position to focus on music production full-time.
- Legend Fades to Myth: Sins of the Father takes place millennia after Underfell's events and stars a group of monsters with minimal knowledge of their predecessors in the Underground. A town in the snowy wastes is named Grillby's, after the one building they found from the old town that was still standing. As nobody knows what a Grillby is, the locals tell stories to their children about Grillby being a heroic mayor of their town. In actuality, Grillby's a rather surly bartender who loses ownership of his self-named bar in three of the other four story branches.
- People Puppets: A possible ending to Vive La Révolution has Flowey use his vines to hijack control of Papyrus' body as part of a last-ditch effort to stop Hare from killing everyone.
- Promotion to Parent: Dess has been raising her younger sister Noelle since their adoptive father Asgore was killed, as their biological father Rudy has already passed away and returning to their mother Carol is not an option for unstated reasons.
- Reflexive Response: In Drama! Romance! Bloodshed!, Burgerpants has been constantly greeting fast-food restaurant customers with the same phrase for six years, to the point that he instinctively says it when Hare walks up to him while he's taking a break.Burgerpants: Welcome to Glamburger. Home of the Glamburger. What can I get you? ...Oh, fuck. Sorry little buddy, force of habit. I've been saying that 30 times an hour, 8 hours a day, every weekday for 6 years.
- Running Gag: Strange things keep happening to Grillby's restaurant in different story branches, usually in the form of him losing ownership of the establishment somehow.
- The restaurant is bought out by Muffet in Rethroned, forcing Grillby to try raising enough cash to buy it back from her.
- Mad Mew Mew runs her rebellion against Papyrus out of the building that used to be the restaurant in Vive La Révolution.
- Grillby is forced to close down his restaurant in Neutral in Name Alone because Sans disappeared, taking his largest source of income and the establishment's positive atmosphere with him.
- Long after Grillby himself and the rest of Snowdin are gone in Sins of the Father, his restaurant is rediscovered by a new population of monsters, who subsequently build a new town around the building and name their settlement Grillby's while having no idea what it refers to.
- The one branch where the restaurant keeps running like it did before Frisk showed up is in Drama! Romance! Bloodshed!, where the greatest annoyance Grillby has to deal with is Sans descending into alcoholism.
- Saying Sound Effects Out Loud: During his introduction in Drama! Romance! Bloodshed!, Sans' monologue has the word "wink" written out. He then says "yeah, i audibly winked, whataboutit?"
- Shout-Out: Sans refers to Mettaton as "king hal 9000" at one point in Drama! Romance! Bloodshed!.
- Uncertain Doom: During the ending phone call of Rethroned, Undyne mentions that Alphys went into her lab after she was defeated in a confrontation between Undyne and Hare for killing Toriel and hasn't been seen since. Given that this event essentially destroyed her last positive relationship and Undertale both establishes that Alphys avoids people associated with trauma and heavily implies she commits suicide in endings where she loses people she cares about, it's unclear if Alphys went into the lab to die or hide from her problems long-term.
- "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: In the vein of Undertale's neutral endings, some branches have characters call Hare after they leave the Underground to tell them what's happened in their absence.
- Rethroned:
- Undyne becomes queen after Alphys killed Toriel while seized by madness, with Papyrus becoming her advisor and the two resolving their differences.
- Sans becomes Royal Scientist after Napstablook resigns to reduce their stress and focus on producing music for Mettaton full-time.
- Flowey still lives in the Ruins and is crying a lot lately due to both of his parents being dead. Undyne and Papyrus check in with him regularly, but he refuses to tell them what's wrong.
- Alphys went into her lab after the climax of the story and never came out, leaving her fate beyond that up in the air.
- Drama! Romance! Bloodshed!:
- Papyrus became the new king after Mettaton died. He's trying his best to rule, but is exhausted and hasn't really been himself since he took over.
- Sans is experiencing regret over being the one to kill Mettaton due to not taking into account that he had good intentions behind his bad ideas, and everyone is avoiding him because of it.
- Flowey hasn't been seen in ages, though Sans doesn't really care what became of him.
- Rethroned:
- Year X: The Sins of the Father branch takes place in the year X022. As the event that instigated the plot of Undertale (and Underfell by extension) happened in 201X, this helps emphasize that it's been a long time since any familiar characters were around.
