User:TheHumanAmbassador/Asriel doesn't have two SOULs, Part 2

This is the second part of my project of debunking the "Asriel has Two SOULS, Gaster has many" script.

Chapter 5=--Chapter 5:The Perils of Uncontrolled Experiments--

As incredible as it may seem, the Underground is facing a plague of monster soul thefts. Alphys thought the Fallen showed a typical reaction of what Determination did to monsters. But with Undyne acting as the Control Group, we can see that the Fallen were not typical monsters to begin with.

As I point out in Chapter 4, Undyne does not serve as a control group.

Several smiling Vegetoids appear in the amalgamate of Snowdrake’s Mom, a horrible contrast to her own incredible unhappiness and hopelessness. But you can only encounter Vegetoids in the Ruins. And while some do appear with all the monsters telling the story of Asriel to Frisk, the Ruins are their natural place.

It's rather strange, really. All the monsters from the Ruins-But not just those, but every species of monster came over to New Home..

Perhaps because New Home is the capital, it would have people moving in from everywhere. While some monsters stayed in the Ruins, some of everyone who was in the Ruins would make the journey to New Home as well. Monsters from the other towns likely come to visit the capital from time to time:That is their only way of meeting Asgore, after all.

The monsters from the Ruins couldn't just be visiting. The door is one-way. If they left the Ruins, they intended to stay somewhere else. Everyone's famalies wanted their monsters back, and this would be impossible if anyone from the Ruins was involved, because Alphys wouldn't be able to bring them back. She'd get stuck at the end (or the start from Frisk's perspective) of Snowdin.

When we first met Toriel, she said she was making her daily rounds to see if anyone had “Fallen Down”. Our first instinct was to assume she was looking for humans that has fallen from the world above, just like us. But no humans had fallen into the Ruins in several years. And yet here we have The Queen of All Monsters personally making daily patrols to look for anyone who had fallen down. Toriel wasn’t just looking for humans.. She was looking for afflicted monsters as well. And felt that such frequent patrols were necessary.

She's not the queen anymore. She's the guardian of the Ruins now. And if a human did fall, she'd need to find them quickly. What if the poor child gets dehydrated because Toriel didn't come to meet them within 24 hours, and they had no water to drink? What if they wander off and get into a fight with the monsters, getting themselves hurt?

This is Toriel we're talking about. She'd be worried about that kind of stuff.

The monster population is relatively small, and monsters Falling Down should not be a daily occurance.

Hmm.. Let's calculate the population, shall we?

In the Genocide Route, it's possible to get the same monster again and again, and fulfill the kill count that way. This, and the ability to get multiple monsters to appear even when there's only "1 left", implies the kill count marks the point where monsters evacuate-NOT the point where you've actually killed everyone. Given this, we can actually presume that there are 20 of each Ruins random (non-unique) encounter monster, 16 of each Snowdin random (non-unique) encounter monster, etc. We then add one monster to the total for each unique encounter.

If we count this way, we get 120 in the Ruins, 51 in Snowdin (most encounters are unique ones), 89 in Waterfall, and 320 in Hotland/CORE, giving us a sum of 580 monsters.

But some monsters never die at all, no matter what we do, because they're not fightable. So let's add those, shall we?

We have Bratty and Catty, Gerson, Nice Cream Guy, Snowdin Shopkeeper, Alphys, Monster Kid, Grillby, Napstablook, Faun, Snowman, two Innkeepers, a Rabbit Girl and Cinnamon, Gift Bear, Politics Bear, Scarf Mouse, Nacarat Jester, the three members of the Slime Family.. Okay, I should probably stop trying to list them all. It's 71.

If we add the 5 Amalagamates you battle in True Pacifist (sure, you don't SEE them in Genocide, but they're still there), plus the four that corner you before Alphys shows up, and another one that tucks you into bed, you get a total of 81 monsters. But we're still missing the lone spider that we see in Muffet's battle. Make that 82. Take into account that you can't encounter Glyde or So Sorry, and that boosts the number again to 84. Add that to the total, and we get 664. Oh, and if the annoying dog counts as a monster, it's 665.

...That means Gaster would make it 666. Very clever, Toby Fox.

That's the lower bound. But if Gerson's anything to go by, monsters have a very long lifespan. So your thesis does have merit to it. (Though I'm not sure if 20 is a sizable chunk of 664.)

For all her show of keeping to door to the Ruins shut, it does seem like Toriel had to open this door regularly, even if she locked it behind her, and had to have dealings with Alphys or someone else in the Underground to get the Fallen Vegetoids to the True Lab for Alphys to work on.

If that's the case, why doesn't Alphys know that Toriel even exists? https://youtu.be/L48AqPEPBYc?t=191

Now, Undertale’s lore is weirdly specific about which types of creatures have the power to move between the Ruins and Underground at will, other than Toriel. There are only two types: Those who can burrow, like Flowey and the Vegetoids, and ghosts who can phase through the walls, like Napstablook.

And that's how we know the Froggits that show up in New Home have to be living there now. But this actually makes perfect sense. Ghosts are incorporeal, and burrowing through the door would obviously work. This isn't weird at all.

Toriel would never engage in something as dark as soul theft. And while Flowey is certainly willing to try this, for most of the game he doesn’t have the power.

Yeah, if he did, he'd probably try it on Sans, and it wouldn't have taken him so many resets.

The game says extracting the soul of a living monster would take a great amount of power, saying that such a thing would be difficult. While also saying it’s POSSIBLE in the same sentence.

It doesn't say the latter, but it implies the latter by saying the former.

And while Alphy’s soul harvesting experiments weren’t successful, her theory at least was sound: It -would- take an injection of Determination to allow the soul of an ordinary monster to survive outside their body and be collected.

Exactly-That was discovered to be how the human SOULs were able to do it.

You knocked out Alphys, Flowey, and Napstablook quite well. But of course, I think you already know what my premise is:There is no SOUL thief at all! (Look back at Chapter 4 if you forgot my justifications for that) But even if there was, we now know that being able to travel to the Ruins is not a requirement after all! So that adds back in a lot of candidates. ...But I wasn't able to find any viable ones, except maybe Sans.

So let's just move on to the next point of interest-Where you set out to prove that Mettaton wasn't the one who hired Muffet.

But there’s a problem with this. With his TV show, Mettaton is the one big source of entertainment for the monsters, and he’s the single most recognizable personality in the Underground! And even if he can change his shape, his very recognizable robotic voice always remains the same no matter what form he’s in. There is no way that Mettaton could have fooled both Muffet, and her entire spider court, from recognizing his legendary voice.

Mettaton only has nine viewers:https://youtu.be/fLSLWo0Mias?t=107

And yet, at the same time, he potentially has a fanclub of 24-36 monsters.. Plus the monster who said that over by the ship puzzle. However, as we calculated that at least 320 monsters exist in Hotland/Core, that's around one-tenth of the monsters. Sure, he's the most popular star in the Underground, but that's because he's the only star in the Underground.

So he's not as popular as you might think.

Mettaton only has three, distinct, very robotic forms. So Mettaton could not be the ghostly sprite that was watching Frisk move through Hotland, or the fluid-looking Redacted sprite which resembles it.

How do you know that Redacted looks similar to whoever Muffet was talking about? Can you provide evidence?

And Mettaton had no issues about fighting Frisk in person. In his original form he was impervious to all of Frisk’s attacks, so why would Mettaton be afraid of fighting him, when he could run right over Frisk like a tank?

He's not. He hired Muffet for the same reason why he hired everyone else. It's that simple.

Mettaton might have hired the mercenaries in the Core, but hiring the Spider Queen seems a little too sneaky.

..How is that sneaky, again?

And Mettaton thought he needed Frisk’s soul in order to pass through the barrier, and reach a human audience. If the ghost in Mettaton is Napstablook’s cousin, then it would make sense that Mettaton would have a monster soul too. Which means that Mettaton didn’t have access to a human soul, or a source of Determination, and couldn’t be our Monster Soul Thief.

Ferret, we weren't talking about a Soul Thief-You changed the subject to finding out who was hiring Muffet. Can you provide the evidence that proves that whoever hired Muffet must be the soul thief? For all we know, Flowey was the one who hired Muffet. (If it's not Mettaton, that is.)

Was also a member of the human race. How can I say so, without fear? (EXTREME CLOSEUP OF THE TALKING HUMAN HEAD IN GASTER FOLLOWER #1’s HAND!) His follower’s holding his head, RIGHT HERE!

Alright, two things. First, it's actually Gaster Follower 2, not 1.

Second, why can't that be a skeleton head?

Wingding Gaster was a natural at researching Determination, in part because he was a human himself, and had a natural source of the stuff beating in his own chest. And even when he became a ghost, Gaster was still a ghost with a human soul that acted as a portable source of Determination wherever he went.

Alright, can you get to proving that Gaster is a human first, Ferret? Once you do that, then you can take that claim for granted and build off of it.

In the elevator out of the True Lab, amniasic Frisk hears a voice he doesn’t remember. This voice claims to know him, and says it's been a long time since they talked. Flowey talked to Frisk hours earlier, that was hardly a long time. And even though Flowey has a talent for mimicking voices, they’re always the voices of other characters he’s heard before.

The voice doesn't say it's been a long time since they talked, it just says it's been a long time... period. (He didn't say "period", he just said it's been a long time, and left it at that.)

"Chara... Are you there? It's been a long time, hasn't it...? But you've done well. Thanks to you, everything has fallen into place. Chara... See you soon." -Mysterious caller

That was the entire call. So.. I don't see how we can rule out Asriel this way.

And if an incredibly powerful ghost like Gaster, who shows signs of Determination Melting just like the invincible Amalgamates, wants vengeance on a little kid like Frisk.. Why is Gaster afraid of fighting Frisk himself?

Where'd you get the idea that Gaster wants vengeance on Frisk? Is it because you've concluded that he's the one who hired Muffet?

..Well, that's the end of Chapter 5. Next time, we'll go through Sans.


 * -|Chapter 6=--Chapter 6:You are not your character!--

Frisk has a past, but he can’t remember it.

How do we know? We don't know Frisk's name until they reveal it for themselves. They likely do know their backstory, but we don't, either because: A-We're supposed to make it up, as only we/Frisk know the answer to why they climbed the mountain, or B:This is a mystery that will be revealed in the Mystery Kickstarter game. But Frisk's knowledge does not equal our knowledge. Just as a player shouldn't use their knowledge as if their character knows it as well when they don't (metagaming), so too should we avoid assuming that we know everything they do.

Each game he wakes up, wearing a bandage that has already been used many times. The fall hit his head, and we start the game knowing as much as he does: next to nothing.

You mean as a regular bandage, right? Not as a healing item? I suppose you could say it's been used before because it's a "gross bandage" as Undyne put it. Or perhaps, since Chara is the narrator, and we are her, the narrator only knows what we know, and Frisk has no way to share with us what he remembers. We can see how other characters respond to what Frisk says, but we can never hear what Frisk is actually saying ourselves.

Please explain what lead you to the conclusion that we are Chara. The common consensus is that we're either Frisk, or a third, otherworldly entity. (I fall under the "We're Frisk" group)

The Narrator knowing some things that we know and Flowey appearing to call us "Chara" can both be explained if we just say Chara was with us. And there's plenty of evidence that's exactly what's going on. (Us getting memories from Chara, Flowey going back to mentioning Chara after already figuring out Frisk isn't Chara), If Flowey was actually talking to the narrator, and we were Frisk.. we'd hear Flowey, because if Chara is with Frisk, then Frisk is also with Chara. Why would Gaster, a nearly invulnerable ghost with the mind of a mad scientist and the power of several souls combined, be afraid of a little kid whose most furious strike can barely knock over a tomato?

Because.. he isn't? Either way, Genocide Frisk does have a lot of power. They can kill Mettaton NEO in just one hit. That's not Chara, they don't take over until the end of the Sans fight. But the first step to getting there involves background details that are easy to overlook: Long, dramatic flashes of light, followed by thundering darkness.

You mean the signature Undertale transitions? One to start the game, one to reach the end of what was the "demo", and the last to finish the game. When we first type in our Character’s name, there’s a dramatic surge of light and a deafening swell of sound that drowns out all reality. And then Frisk’s story begins, as we wake up in the Ruins, having just fallen down on a bed of golden flowers.

We don't type in our character's name. We type in Chara's name. Our character is Frisk. Yes. It's a story transistion. After you're done naming everyone in Pokémon Gen I, your character model shrinks, then it fades to white, before your character house appears. And there’s a long hallway to the east that leads to a door, making this first room look like a key.

Which shape strangely does not appear in the demo. There’s a BOOM: Undertale! By BOOM: TobyFox! And then Frisk steps into the Underground as the Ruins door seals behind him, and notices one of Alphys’ cameras watching him from the rocks.

The Ruins is basically the tutorial level (That's where Toriel's name comes from). Now that Frisk is out of the safe harbor of the Ruins, the real game begins. This is also where the demo ended. An ending that started just like the beginning.

Book Ends, anyone?

It’s very interesting to note that except for the tiny little pillar on the right of the door, which is missing in the Key Room at the beginning, all three of these doors have identical sprites. Which is uncanny, because each door shows -exactly- the same timeworn marks, as if they were all the very same door. These doorways aren’t just simple portals, they’re significant bookmarks in Undertale’s story.

Yes, start of the game, end of the tutorial, and end of the game. And just stepping through these doors doesn’t cause the booming flash by itself. At the end of a True Pacifist run, you can walk all the way back to the Key Room at the beginning to talk to Asriel. And whether you’re coming or going, there’s no booming flash. These are just simple doorways now, who have already served their purpose in bookmarking the story.

True. In the True Pacifist Ending where you get the flash, but not the boom, as the previous story is ending and a new story is about to begin.

Right. You don't just get a title drop, you get the full credits.. After an ending cutscene. This seems to be The True Ending. It does seem like the True Pacifist ending is the canon ending to Undertale. Because after Frisk wakes up, he finds himself in another version of the Key Room, surrounded by all his friends. And once Frisk moves to the last door, Undertale tells him that his adventure will really be over this time, in contrast to all the other times before.

They have nothing more to strive for. But really, you could argue that either the True Pacifist or the Genocide Ending is canon. It might even be Soulless Pacifist that's canon. The Beginning and End of Undertale are certainly important moments. But what about the Second Flash? The one that happens just before Frisk steps into the Underground?

As I said-End of the demo, end of the tutorial. It’s as if the Neutral Ending is connected, not to the beginning of the game, but to the Ruins Door instead.

..No. The title drop didn't happen at the start of the game because we literally just SAW the title just before we entered our name! You don't typically see the title drop in a video game just after you entered your character's name. Because outside the Ruins door is when Frisk meets Sans for the first time. Why can't it just be that the tutorial is over, and the real game starts here? While he’s officially on duty to watch for humans, recognizes Frisk as one immediately, and has standing orders from King Asgore to harvest the soul of any human that arrives to ensure the freedom of all of monsterkind… Sans decides to help Frisk rather than turn him.

We later learn the reason why. Go out with him to MTT again, Ferret. (Or just watch a video) Sans tells Frisk to hide behind “that conveniently-shaped lamp” that’s sitting out in the middle of the field, unplugged and useless. But this oddly-shaped lamp turns out to be a pixel-perfect match to Frisk’s silhouette! As if Sans not only knew what humans looked like, but what Frisk would look like in particular!

"our reports showed a massive anomaly in the time-space continuum. timelines jumping left and right, stopping and starting..."-Sans

Sans was doing research on the timeline, on the anomaly.. Frisk. He could have learned that way. Chara doesn't possess Frisk until the very end of the Genocide Route-Frisk is still fighting Sans. So "the anomaly" is Frisk. It turns out the lamp wasn’t necessary, because even when No Mercy Frisk refuses to hide behind it, Papyrus doesn’t seem to recognize Frisk as a human anyway.

And to anyone who tries to say this is only because Frisk is doing a Genocide, and can't be recognized that way, because even Sans says you should keep pretending to be a human.. On non-Genocide routes, Papyrus has to ask Sans if Frisk is a human. But it does leave the question: How did Sans know that lamp would perfectly hide Frisk in advance? Sans must have been the one to place it there, and the lamp’s unique design suggests Sans created it, too. A simple snowman or large cardboard box would have also hidden Frisk with much less effort from the supposedly lazy Sans, and be far less conspicuous.

How does the unique design point to Sans, specificially? Why can't it be someone else who knows what the next human (which turns out to be Frisk) would look like? It’s almost like Sans was trying to use the lamp to send Frisk a message? That he knew Frisk was coming?

Sans and Papyrus become less like enemies and more like friends with every step on the road to Snowdin, with one half-baked puzzle and jape after another.

They never were enemies. Sans just likes being lazy, and Papyrus doesn't like laziness or his bad puns. But they still love each other. They're acting like, well, siblings. If you fail his boss fight repeatedly, Papyrus will actually start giving you hints about how to defeat him, starts leaving Frisk more gifts in the doghouse, and eventually asks if Frisk just want a place to stay, revealing that he never intended to hand Frisk over to Undyne anyway.

Papyrus really is the sweetest, isn't he? And if you really double down on losing to Papyrus, he eventually offer to let you skip the battle entirely to get on with the game, and accept his own defeat. Acting less and less like a human-hunting fanatic, and more and more like a co-conspirator with Sans to keep Frisk safe.

..Why Frisk specifically? If some random human "Elizabeth" fell, what's to say Papyrus wouldn't do the same thing with her?

It’s hard to tell exactly how much Papyrus knows, and how much of his behavior is just acting. In his phone call when Frisk approaches the Core, Papyrus seems sad for a moment, as if knowing something bad is eventually going to happen.

The Core. The place that Gaster very well could have fallen into. Sans and Papyrus aren’t just a couple of goofballs Frisk happened to bump into, their story is much deeper than this, and their fate was entwined with Frisk’s from the beginning.

The former, I agree with-Their story is deeper. The latter.. Can you elaborate, please? But is Sans really just lazy? Or putting up an ingenious act in being just lazy enough to prevent Undyne from replacing him with someone who actually would hurt Frisk? We're not sure. But what we DO know is that he wasn't always lazy, because of the Genocide Route. Why care if everything will just be reset anyways?

There's two ways to look at this. One, he really is lazy, for that specific reason.. Or two, yes, he's acting here.. Because if Frisk dies, that's another reset, and he doesn't want that.

In the neutral ending where you kill every main character except Papyrus, Papyrus becomes the ruler of the Underground, and Sans works tirelessly in the background to try and keep the monster world from falling apart. Now that the anomaly is gone, his reasons for being lazy are also gone. So he returns to his original self. The No Mercy ending reveals that Sans is actually the most powerful boss in the game, who’s several orders of magnitude stronger than Asgore, the erstwhile “King of All Monsters”.

Yeah. He's basically doing the real life equivalent of powergaming. He breaks the rules, and uses a KR ability to ignore invincibility frames. I'm sure if we got rid of KR, Sans would be the easiest fight in the game, besides those one-hit-kill bosses. He's using all the tools he has.. Gaster Blasters.. That would have been made by Gaster. Sans is incredibly powerful, very smart, and not lazy at all. He would certainly make a strong King. The only reason Sans doesn’t become King is because he chooses not to, feeling for some personal reason that it would be wrong for him to rule the monsters.

I guess he'd rather just make bad puns.

It takes Chara all of her epic gear and LVL 19 power just to have a ghost of a chance at defeating Sans.

Wrong. You can beat Sans with a stick and a bandage. And it's equally as difficult.

Right before the Megalovania fight, Sans says “Sorry old lady. This is why I never make promises”. This could mean regret at making that promise.. Or it could mean that Sans never made such a promise in the first place.

I'd say it's the former. Why would he need to apologize for breaking a promise he never made? And Sans’ refusal to use Toriel’s name is strange. Because at some point, one of them MUST have had contact with the other beyond telling knock-knock jokes through the Ruins door. Toriel and Sans don't recognize each other in True Pacifist until they hear each other.

One of the first things Toriel does is give Frisk a cell phone, an older model with a keychain attached to it. This is the same keychain that Frisk uses to pick up the keys in New Home.

Of course! Why not use it? Do you think they had their own?

And even on a No Mercy run, when Alphys doesn’t upgrade your phone, Chara-possessed Frisk still uses this original key chain from Toriel to manage the keys.

...Yes. Because that was the only one they had. Because if you repeatedly reload the game and talk to Sans in the Judgment Hall on a Pacifist run, playing the password game to prove you’re a time traveler just like Sans himself.. Sans reveals that the key to his mysterious room is already on your keychain.

..So why isn't this timey wimey magic again?

..I request an investigation. After the speech is made, and the key was "already in the keychain", reload again, and try to enter the door without talking to Sans again. If it doesn't work, your theory crumbles. If it does work, it has merit to it. Which would make sense, because Sans is always the one who has Frisk’s phone number at the end of the game.

Right.. And he never asks for it. The post-Pacifist dialog reveals that Sans and Alphys know each other. And CoolSkeleton95, revealed to be Papyrus wearing sunglasses, is friends with Alphys on Undernet. Alphys has been using her camera network to record all of Frisk’s movements from the moment he stepped into the Underground, so any friend of hers would have constant updates about what Frisk was up to. And since Sans and Papyrus are already friends of hers, they can keep track of Frisk through her.

They'd only get the kind of updates that we get from Alphys before she realizes that we're already friends with her. The big question is.. Who called Toriel to join the others at the end of the game on a Pacifist run?

Nobody. She came on her own because she was worried. The extra time from the True Lab must have been enough. Sans and Toriel have been talking to each other for a LONG TIME already!

Yes. But just through the door. But while their communications through the Ruins Doors were verbal, Sans and Toriel have also been conversing with each other in a non-verbal fashion. And also in a non-visual fashion, because Toriel didn’t recognize Sans by sight.

Evidence, please? Toriel did mention that Alphys upgraded her phone to add a Texting feature. But while the game makes it sound like this just happened, Undertale is very good at trying to make us assume things in haste. Toriel and Sans started texting each other while standing two feet apart, and it’s quickly clear that they’re both skilled with texting, reveling in each other’s dork-ness like old friends, to Papyrus’ chagrin. Alphys must have upgraded Toriel’s phone with texting some time ago.

Actually, Toriel was just starting to figure out how it worked. However you look at it, Alphys and Toriel must have met face to face at some point in the past for Alphys to upgrade her phone and receive the Fallen Down Vegetoids. And even if they didn’t meet directly, Alphys would have certainly seen Queen Toriel on her extensive camera network, so Alphys must have known who Toriel was.

Toriel was just starting to learn to text after the True Pacifist Ending. I'd say Alphys upgraded her phone while Frisk was asleep. But Alphys and Papyrus both acted like they didn’t know who Toriel was when they met her, both whispering their surprise to Frisk. However, Undyne, who wasn’t part of the conspiracy, correctly guessed that Toriel was Asgore’s ex right away. So Alphys is definitely faking her surprise here, she must know who Toriel is.

..Or Toriel had nothing to do with the Fallen Down monsters, as I explain in Chapter 4! I’m not sure I believe Papyrus’ witty confusion, either. If CoolSkeleton95 was born in 1995, he would have been at least 16 when Toriel left. Papyrus has a strangely deep vocabulary for someone who acts like a fool, and even he would have known there was a Queen, and probably what she looked like.

How do you know he wasn't born in 2095? And Sans certainly knew that the key to his room was already on Frisk’s chain. Because Sans himself pointed this out to Frisk after testing to see that Frisk was able to time travel, just like he could. And not only is Sans testing Frisk’s memory to see if he remembers to use this time-traveling ability.. But Sans will only reveal the truth about his key if Frisk is completely innocent.

Which is pretty risky, considering that people will commonly do Genocide right after a True Pacifist. ..Already knowing the secret. And Sans certainly planned for Frisk to use his room key. Because after Frisk goes into this dark room, and the stripes on his shirt start mysteriously phasing between one and two stripes as if two timelines were crossing in this weird extradimensional space… Papyrus arrives and turns on the light switch, momentarily mistaking Frisk for Sans. And Frisk finds a note taped to the treadmill he wakes up on, which says “the truth is that you got owned, nerd……” continuing the very conversation the two of them had in the Judgement chamber.

Of course he did! This broken machine, which Sans with all his powers and knowledge of Quantum Mechanics still seems unable to fix, is like the very vehicle that brought Sans, and any traveling companions he might have had with him, to Snowdin in the first place.

What makes you think that's the case? Why isn't it the machine Gaster was using to observe the timelines? And Sans has just gifted access to these most private of his treasures… to Frisk.

Right. Alphys even knows that Sans was the one who called Toriel rather than Papyrus, which means Alphys knew Toriel was coming in advance, and shouldn’t have been surprised to see her.

When did she say this? And Sans certainly does have Toriel’s number, because he and Papyrus go to live with her in several of the endings, and she actually opens the door for them.

Well, yes. And if Sans was really just protecting Frisk because of a vague promise he *didn’t* make to the voice of an unknown woman he knew *very well*, why on earth did he go to such lengths to arrange for Alphys to smuggle the key to his legendary room onto the keychain of the phone Toriel handed to Frisk?

Simple:He didn't. Scratch that.. How did Sans, or anyone else, even know that Frisk was coming in the FIRST PLACE? They’d have to know that to put all these tests in place in advance. And, of all the humans of any age and size who might have fallen from above, how did Sans know Frisk’s Exact Body Shape to put The Convenient Lamp in place before he arrived?

Refer to the anomaly research. In fact.. Sans’ ability to remember rewound time is eerie, too.

He reads Frisk's face to see how many times they died. He doesn't just remember the timelines. However, if you repeatedly fight Sans, SANS is the one who tells Frisk how many times they’ve fought. Or how many times they’ve talked together, when he’s seeing if you’re worthy of his room key.

In the latter case, it's because of Frisk saying the codewords. How is Sans doing this? And why is he so interested in helping Frisk, a human, evade the monsters that believe taking his soul will lead to their freedom?

Because he doesn't want Asgore destroying all of humanity? He's not a warloving monster, but a kind one?

Because like Frisk, Sans is also a human.

We'll see about that...


 * -|Chapter 7=--Chapter 7-The Wacky Skelebros--

We’ve already covered many reasons why Sans must be a human. Alright, I'll just rapid-fire the rebuttals so far.

Bending the rules to give yourself an unfair advantage doesn't count as being more powerful, Sans is reading Frisk's face, not remembering timelines, Sans' promise did happen, he'd rather not just destroy all humanity, and he'd rather have the dog rule, or someone more qualified. Not someone who has the power to do it, but someone who can do it well.

But there are many more clues to Sans’ human condition throughout the game. And the best place to start is by comparing Sans to Papyrus, who’s supposedly his skeleton brother. That won't prove that Sans isn't a monster, it'll prove that either Sans or Papyrus isn't a real monster.

Papyrus is definitely a real monster from the Underground.

I could say the same about Sans. If Sans is a human, Papyrus is a Starman. I'd say there's about an equal number of clues for each. His fleshless bones are in clear display, leaving no room for a disguise.

Exactly. He's not a human. What about a Starman? :3

He turns to dust right in front of our eyes just like all the other monsters, rather than bleeding like Sans.

Do Starmen bleed? ...Actually, I'm going to look back at earlier threads. I'd like to find out how our conversation about Sans' bleeding ended.. I know we ruled out it being ketchup (unless Sans disgustingly decided to try human ketchup, or didn't actually eat the ketchup, but put it under his shirt or something.. I don't think the former is true. He only eats at Grillby's, and they serve monster food.), but I'm not sure if there were other possibilities as to what it could be. Though now that I know determination isn't necessarily yellow, maybe that's what it was?

...No, I can probably rule that one out too. At least under the presumption that he's a monster, that is. The amount of.. whatever that stuff is, is far more than what you might get from an injection. He'd start melting, wouldn't he? Maybe another look at the True Lab and Sans' death animation will help settle this once and for all, though.

What's most likely is that Sans is.. a Darkner. They bleed just fine. Toothy Chica in Grilly’s mentions that monster food doesn’t pass through the body like human food does, but vanishes, which explains how Frisk can eat six Legendary Hero subs in a few seconds without exploding. So even if Sans drank a tanker truck of ketchup before his fight with Chara-possessed Frisk, it still wouldn’t linger in his system to leak out after he was stabbed. So when Chara stabs Sans, that isn’t ketchup we’re seeing.

Like that! If you return to Grillby’s after killing Papyrus on a neutral run, you’ll learn that Papyrus only ever drinks milk, which makes sense because he’s literally made of calcium. Sans, though, is Grillby’s #1 customer who orders a vast variety of food, and now that Sans has left after Papyrus’ death Grillby is worried about his restaurant’s financial future.

Yes.. Other monsters like eating food besides calcium as well. Papyrus never eats his own spaghetti, and neither does anyone else, so Papyrus’ side of the fridge is always packed with the stuff. But Sans’ side is empty except for a single bag of chips.

Papyrus: SANS, WHY DID YOU PUT THE CHIPS IN THE REFIGERATOR? THEY GO ON THE FOOD SHELF! YOU DON'T REFRIGERATE CHIPS, SANS!

Sans: oh, papyrus. you know i like to keep things cool.

Papyrus: SANS!!!

(Disclaimer:Those quotes don't actually appear in the game)

Undyne knows Sans uses the fridge because she’s noticed him making “hundreds” of midnight snacks at times when she was visiting and crashing on the living room couch.

Sans: hey, when grillby closes down, what else can i use to eat?

Papyrus: I'LL BE HAPPY TO COOK YOU SPAGHETTI, SANS!

(Those didn't appear in the game either.) And Papyrus recalls Sans once making an egg pie, which resonates with The Abandoned Quiche Frisk finds stashed under a bench in a hidden room you can only access with bridge flowers, or by teleporting. Hot dog-obsessed Sans definitely eats a variety of things, and knows how to cook food that’s edible by humans. Isn't just about ANY monster food edible by humans? It's still monster food nonetheless. Besides, if he DOES eat human food, then why can't the red "blood" be human ketchup? Papyrus might nap, but he never truly sleeps.

Yeah. He's really something special. Sans is unique from the monsters in several ways, and here, this is something Papyrus is unique in. As Undyne points out, monsters DO sleep. Papyrus doesn't. So, if we're going by clues.. Papyrus is a Starman. Or at least some kind of alien.

...Or, he's just an outlier. Like Sans. While many monsters sleep, Papyrus can’t. But his “brother” Sans sleeps frequently. Exactly. Sans isn't the outlier here, Papyrus is. So if this points to anything, it points to Papyrus being the fake!

..Though I don't think either of them are fake. Not yet, anyways. Papyrus has a fully animated face, with moving jaws and a full range of dramatic expressions for every possible emotion.

Of course. He does have the form of a skeleton, alright. But one thing about him is that he can't stop smiling. Let's take another look at our first time meeting them.

Sans: come on, you're smiling.

Papyrus I AM AND I HATE IT! But Sans’ mouth never moves when he talks. In fact, Sans’ huge maniacal cartoony grin NEVER changes, forcing him to act and emote entirely with his eyes! Even when stabbed, Sans’ head just leans back for a moment, with not even the pain of near death breaking that grin.

Though he DOES sweat.. from ABOVE his eyes.. ..Just something I'd like to point out. It’s almost like Sans is a little kid, wearing overly baggy clothes and a huge costume skeleton head to conceal his true nature from the human-hunting monster world.

Alright, so I've looked through the animations, and then decided to look at Undyne's as a control group... And you're right that Sans never moves his jaws!

Papyrus: SANS!! ARE YOU SERIOUSLY TOO LAZY TO EVEN MOVE YOUR MOUTH? FIRST YOU DON'T EVEN CAPITALIZE YOUR WORDS, AND NOW THIS?

...It's probably not laziness. So now both Sans and Papyrus have 1 clue that they're not monsters. So far, my premise stands:They both have the same number of "not a monster" clues.

Granted, it does look like Sans has a thin skeletal neck when you look at him from behind at Grillby’s. But Frisk, sitting right next to him, also has the very same cartoonishly thin neck. So this body type isn’t out of place for Undertale humans.

Of course. Let's see what else you have to say. San also tries to scratch his head and side during the dinner, acting as if the skin he wasn’t supposed to have was itching.

I thought that in the magical sense, their bones ARE their nonexistent skin?

Scratching a costume, by the way, probably won't relieve you of itching. Sans loves making Skeleton Puns, and reminding anyone watching that, yes, he and Papyrus are both brothers, and yes, they are both skeletons, just in case there was ever any doubt!

Didn't he only introduce himself as Sans the skeleton once? That being when we first meet him? Though yes, he is a pretty punny guy. The puns don’t tickle Papyrus’ funny bone because as an Actual Skeleton, he finds them borderline racist. A feeling that Sans, as a human, doesn’t share. What makes you think THAT'S the reason? I'd say it's for the same reason why he doesn't like Sans being lazy.

And Sans knows what the Sun is, and what humans look like, two things Papyrus doesn’t claim to know. And even if Papyrus is kidding about not recognizing humans, which all the other Undertale creatures seem able to do, he really hasn’t seen the Sun. If his Undernet persona CoolSkeleton95 was born in 1995 he’d be in his 20’s or so. Papyrus was born in the Underground, and has never seen the sun.

His TWENTIES?

Undertale doesn't take place in 201X, Ferret. That's the year Chara fell. It's been a LONG time since then. Like, I'd say centuries.

I'm pretty sure the monsters would know what the sun is, though. Not because of them seeing it for real, but because they know where that light from the Surface is coming from. The library in Snowdin says that monster souls are full of hope, love, and compassion. And it also says that the true nature of SOUL is unknown, because humans have proven that their SOULs don’t need these positive elements to exist.

It says that people say that monster SOULs are made of love, hope, and compassion. That's a myth, by the way. The entire underground was devoid of hope, and everyone's SOULs didn't start fading away. The author of the waterfall glyphs was surprised that the humans attacked and started the Ancient War, saying that even though a monster with a human soul had appeared, called Kanashi by some of the Undertale Fandom, the humans still had nothing to fear.

They STARTED by saying the humans had nothing to fear, because of how powerful they are compared to humans, THEN brought out Kanashi, and then said that THIS is what the humans feared. Take another look at the order of the glyphs.

This kind of presentation has been done before. Have you ever seen someone make a reasonable claim, only to debunk it later on? That's kind of what's going on here. Most of the monsters that attack Frisk in Undertale are either misunderstood, or can be reasoned with in some way, and are just attacking Frisk because their King ordered them too. And even Asgore, the Dreaded Lord Fluffybuns himself, is ultimately a nice guy who was forced to make a terrible choice for the good of his people.

Yeah, but what about Jerry?

But Sans… is different.

Whatever he is, Jerry's far, far worse. And while he does his best to hide it underneath his japes and jolly exterior, Sans wears his happiness like a mask just like the one that covers his human face.

So not being happy is darkness? If not being happy is enough to qualify as darkness, I once again lead you to the case where the entire Underground was devoid of hope. And now and then his eyes disappear, leaving empty holes, and suddenly his grin takes on a sinister quality that chills us to the bone.

Sinister? What's so sinister about him? Sure, he turns serious every now and then, and when we're a literal genocidal maniac, he fights to kill us, but Undyne does the exact same thing. Just sooner, and in a different way. Because Sans isn’t an innocent character like Papyrus. We know for a fact.. than Sans has killed someone before.

How do we know this? Also, we know that six humans died at the hands of monsterkind. So monsters have killed before. If murder is where we draw the line of darkness (And I'd agree:Murder is enough to cross the line), monsterkind HAS proven that it can turn to darkness.

And while he seems ashamed and self-conscious of this wound upon his soul, and tries hard to make the best decisions in a tense situation, his LOVE level is actually very high.

How do we know how high it is? I say because of his 1ATK and 1DEF, he's at LV1. (His only kills were in earlier timelines, which no longer apply, as LV is reset with a new timeline.) And if he wants to, Sans can give you a very, very bad time.

As I said, that's solely because of his Gaster Blaster technology, and his special KR ability. It's not strength, it's special abilities. Sans used up all of his points on INT, blue magic, and probably a long path to bypass invincibility frames. (Or keep reducing it until it hit 0.) He sacrificed his HP, ATK, and DEF, all the way down to 1 to do this. He's the biggest powergamer in the entire history of Outside (Undertale edition) Sans is willing to hurt others when the situation calls for it, and is very capable of doing this.

Just like Undyne, hmmm? ..Maybe she's not a viable control subject after all. Let me look at Toriel's animation.

..Yep, her mouth does move. The conclusion remains the same.

So far, you haven't proven Sans is any darker than Undyne. Who we know is a monster.

And even though he does try to reason with No Mercy Frisk, he’s also willing to trick Frisk into surrendering, then kill him as a betrayal action, just like how Chara-possessed Frisk himself might have dealt with other bosses like Toriel and Papyrus. Sans: if we're really friends, you won't come back!

It's a message to Frisk. Sans IS going to spare Frisk.. But they're going to have to reset and bring everyone back first.

If Frisk does come back, and fights in response, he'll mention that since Frisk came back anyways, they never really WERE friends. But now we have a paradox to solve: Why was Sans willing to kill Flowey many times in other timelines for the crime of simply messing with Papyrus.. And yet sit back and watch Frisk actually kill Papyrus.. Sans’ own blood brother in bone… and do nothing about it?

You think it was JUST for messing with Papyrus? Oh, please. That's not right.

"It all started because I was curious. Curious what would happen if I killed them"-Flowey

He was going to kill them all. He too, was doing a Genocide Route. And I'm convinced that just like with Frisk, Sans only stepped in once everyone else was dead because of Flowey.

But even if this wasn't the case, Sans only promised to protect humans. Not flowers. (See my response to Chapter 6 for why I think Sans DID make the promise.) Sans could have easily saved Papyrus from Frisk. Just like Sans would have easily crushed Frisk the moment he emerged from the Ruins, like stepping on a baby bird. But even when Frisk betrays Papyrus’ goodwill attempt to spare him, Sans does nothing other than complain about it angrily over the phone.

He was going to keep his promise.. And only break it if the entire world depended on it. ...This is WHY he hates making promises. Because of just how bad they can turn out. The very moment Papyrus falls, Sans stops going to Grillby’s. And we see Sans in the background of Shyren’s musical fight soon afterwards, selling tickets made of toilet paper if he’s happy, or just watching darkly with his hood up if he isn’t.

I think Sans would recognize if his brother was dead. He also spots you just after the fight of Papyrus. If Papyrus can spot the dust on your hands, couldn't Sans do the same? And yet Sans still refuses to fight Frisk, forcing himself to watch the destruction, instead. And it’s only when Frisk is so thoroughly evil that failing to stop him would result in the destruction of the entire universe, that Sans finally gives Frisk his legendary Bad Time. Of course. Because that's when he can't afford not to care anymore. And why would Sans, who is so protective his true identity, go to such great pains to secretly give Frisk the fabled key to his room? He would not have done this for just any human passing through.

Hey, if the truth is just that the human got owned, it'd be fine. He probably only left the Silver Key out there AFTER Frisk passed. (Or he was too lazy to hide it and put it away...) I have reason to believe that other humans HAVE passed through before, while Sans and Papyrus were in the Underground.

Can you EXPLAIN your reasoning? Because Sans makes it very clear that Papyrus has never seen a human before. And how did Sans know exactly what Frisk would look like, and stir his lazy bones to build The Convenient Lamp, when much simpler ways of hiding Frisk were available? Even when the action of hiding Frisk from Papyrus wasn’t even necessary to begin with?

I refer you to Chapter 6. Sans definitely knew that Frisk was coming, and exactly what Frisk would look like, down to the pixel. And Papyrus likes Frisk so much that he refuses to stop believing in him, even when No Mercy Frisk answers his offer to spare him with a stab.

Papyrus is that way about EVERYONE, not just Frisk.

And socially-awkward Alphys was so flustered at meeting Frisk before she could fresh up that she went into a panic. And Queen Toriel was willing to put her own life on the line just to test Frisks’ character at the start of the game.

It wasn't to test Frisk's character, it was to see if Frisk was strong enough to survive. She was going to block the way until Frisk proved they could survive out there. Which leaves us with a thundering question: WHO IS FRISK? And why is he so special to everyone?

Let's see:They're the last SOUL everyone needs! Toriel doesn't want Asgore's plan to succeed, Papyrus doesn't want to kill a potential friend, and watching a human on a screen camera makes you root for the guy!

The simplest explanation might be that Frisk is an innocent human. And only a truly innocent human can unlock the True Pacifist Ending, save Asriel Dreemur, and finally bring about The End of the Barrier.

Nope, I found a simpler explanation. The one the game literally gives us. Sans, who has killed before, is no longer innocent, and is no longer capable of achieving this happy ending on his own.

If you reset, you lose the guilt, and become guiltless again. Hence why you can get a True Pacifist even after killing. So all those times he killed Flowey don't count. But Frisk must have gone somewhere, because Sans always has to leave him a message.

What's to say they didn't bonk their head on the barrier trying to reach the surface? Normally, Sans talks to Frisk like a friend. But on particularly dark runs, Sans will add something else to his dialog: A warning that Frisk should never come back.

Yeah, don't come back, or they'll kill you-Oh, wait..

Sans' phone call has even said before that Frisk shouldn't give up wherever they are as well.. Since it's the place they were working so hard to get to.

Sans probably didn't know that Flowey took Asgore's SOUL, and thus assumed that Frisk DID cross the Barrier, using said SOUL, even though they actually didn't. Now consider there’s an elevator to the True Lab in the Core that leads to both Alphys’ lab and Asgore’s castle. And as we covered before, there’s a time and space portal somewhere in the Core.

The only elevator we see in the CORE is the one that takes up right to the top. There are two elevators in the True Lab:One to Alphys' Lab, and the other straight to New Home. Not the CORE, New Home. The only way Frisk could have escaped from the all-seeing eyes of Alphys and Sans is if he left the Underground completely, without passing through the Barrier.

It took physically rummaging through Asgore's castle to discover the tapes. We also don't see any hidden cameras in Asgore's castle. Asgore's castle appears to be a blind spot. And that's exactly where we were. Sans’ room might have been an alternative, but in order to realize that he had to key for that, Frisk would have to have already earned the True Pacifist ending, and likely left the Underground completely.

It was Asgore's castle. But that's just it. If you reset the game just before the credits would roll, but after you get Sans' key, you SHOULD be able to get into Sans' room if your theory is correct. So let's conduct an investigation, shall we? So our friend Frisk likely went back in time. And either this allows him to start over from the beginning, or it allows him to re-insert himself into the story at a different point in time to try and change things for another version of himself.

It's neither of the two. They're still at Asgore's castle.

Also, resetting is tearing everyone from one timeline to a new one. If Frisk did go back in time, to try to help an earlier version of himself get a better ending.. What would that look like to the earlier version of Frisk that encountered his future self?

There'd be two Frisks, of course. When Frisk calls Papyrus outside of Alphy’s Lab, Papyrus mistakes the word “Lab” for “Labrador”, and wonders if there are dogs inside? Sans winks, and says “I wouldn’t rule it out.” There are indeed dogs inside.. In the amalgamates downstairs in the True Lab. Which is why Alphys keeps a massive bag of dog food upstairs. Sans likely did work there with Gaster. And the dog food probably gives it away. But if you're saying that he was there before as an earlier Frisk, that actually crumbles your theory. Because you can only enter the True Lab in a True Pacifist Route. Sans is sleeping on the job just in time to allow Frisk to escape from Undyne.

Eh, he was probably sleeping the whole time. Sans establishes a hot dog stand in Hotland right at a point where Frisk would badly need some food.

Right where they'd badly need some food? Can you elaborate as to why that specific spot is where Frisk would need some food?

And the snow on the roof suggests this is the very same stand he had in Snowdin, which he teleported to Hotland along with himself.

Of course! Sans also repeats this trick in Deltarune by warping both his house and the renamed Grillby’s out of the Underground and up to the surface, making him a very powerful psychic indeed.

He definitely does have PSI.. But monsters DO have magic.. And during his battle with Frisk, Sans is the only character in the game who can actually dodge Frisk’s attacks, almost as if he can see them coming.

Why can't he just know about the HUD, and watch for tells that Frisk is aiming for the FIGHT button, and time his dodge to match the delay between the press and the slash? Although he doesn’t know everything, because if you HAD died before then, Sans is curious about the expression on your face.

Which rules out the idea that he remembers timelines. Else he'd remember you die, and not be confused. It wouldn’t just be Sans who lost his memory, going back. It would be Frisk, as well.

He was talking about getting to the Surface, not going back! Even if we do get to the surface, we'll just forget everything. He's talking about the monsters forgetting everything. And Sans did have somewhere he wanted to go back to, he wasn’t born in the Underground. Or even, strangely, the surface world directly above.

He probably means back to the timeline that Gaster existed in. But when he weighs the options of a life of food and friendship with the monsters, or ruining all of that by killing their beloved King just to go home again.. Sans choose to spare Asgore and stay in the Underground. And Sans tries to convince Frisk to do the very same thing.

He wouldn't need to kill the king, because he's not leaving the Underground, he's going to a different timeline! Sans and Frisk are almost the same size and shape, the same kid-size that makes them look like dwarves to most of monsterkind.

Monster Kid is smaller, though, so it's not very unusual.

And you see that both Sans and Frisk have the same cartoony pencil-necks when they sit side by side at Grillby’s.

What about everybody else, though? And why can't this be because they're skeletons? And whatever Frisk orders, Sans agrees with, so they seem to have similar tastes in food.

Or he'd just eat any of those foods. When we first see Sans, he’s a darkened silhouette that creeps up behind Frisk, so that for a moment, we have only a shape to compare with Frisk’s own. And the two shapes then face each other, each appearing almost like the mirror reflection of the other.

It's better to compare them when they're both facing the same direction. https://youtu.be/LYS8Ef17E5g?t=43

Can't you notice a few differences? This comparison is even more powerful the last time we see Sans in the judgement hall, where both Sans and Frisk are silhouettes with the very same stained glass windows behind them, and a pillar separating the two almost as if they were ink blots on a symmetrical page.

...Or, the pillar is literally just a pillar. And Sans never asks Frisk what he’s thinking when he reflects in the Judgement Hall, became somehow, Sans always seems to know. ..Or he meant THAT kind of reflection, and that's what the pillar is for! Sans knows that Frisk knows Sans.. from another time.

Oh, he suspects that Frisk made friends with Sans first. But he still says this, even if Genocide is your first run. Before both the dinner at Grillby’s and the dinner at the MTT resort, Sans tells Frisk he’s going to show him a shortcut. Then, after they both walk the wrong way, or even up a dead end alley, somehow both Sans and Frisk appear together right where they want to go.

Teleportation! Strangely, though, Sans never teleports Papyrus with him. In post-Papyrus Grillby’s you learn that Sans always appears first during his frequent visits, and Papyrus always arrives a little bit later, looking annoyed. Either Sans was just being a joker by refusing to teleport Papyrus with him… or Sans wasn’t able to bring Papyrus, because Papyrus didn’t have the ability to teleport along with him. Maybe he was annoyed just because he had to go to Grillby's. He hates the place.

GRILLBY’S? WE’RE TOO REFINED FOR THAT GREASEHOLE. -Papyrus, if you call him and Undyne while at Grillby's.

Or, this might have happened. (These quotes you're about to see ALSO don't appear in Undertale.)

Sans: hey bro. wanna come to grillby's with me?

Papyrus: WHY WOULD I COME TO GRILLBY'S WITH YOU!

Sans: sorry, your loss, i guess. see ya. i'm taking a shortcut. *teleports*

Papyrus: NO, DON'T LEAVE! WAIT FOR ME, SANS!!! *runs to Grillby's*

Psychics as powerful as Sans are certainly rare, even among humans. But we see at least two of them in Undertale.

Yes, they are rare.. Perhaps Dr. Gaster developed those abilities? But Sans isn’t the one teleporting here! Sans is definitely intending to kill Frisk, and isn’t about to warp him to safety this time.

There seems to be some unstated rule that every attack HAS to be possible to avoid. NOBODY seems to think of making an undodgable attack.. Except Flowey. And once Frisk is at 1HP and is about to get hit.. The bullets heal.

If Frisk can teleport, they should do this WHENEVER they're about to get hit, not whenever time expires. (It happens after a certain amount of time.) It might be because Chara’s a ghost, and it might be because Sans and Frisk are both powerful psychics radiating their thoughts.

It's the former. You can't read Chara's face, or see them aim for the FIGHT button if they're invisible. Asgore is the King, and highest political authority. Undyne is the strongest, and has the most unyielding sense of justice. Papyrus is the most innocent, and most worthy to call out others on their misdeeds. Alphys is the smartest, and has the best knowledge of what Frisk has been up. And Toriel has all of these qualities put together!

Asgore's a fluffy pushover, Undyne DID judge Frisk, but lost, just like Sans, Papyrus wouldn't say that ANYONE's evil, Alphys is too unconfident and shy, and Toriel's more focused on teaching than judging. Sans is the only one left. Saying that it's because Sans is Frisk is quite a big leap. And when Papyrus finds Frisk on the treadmill in Sans’ room, it takes him a moment to realize that he’s looking at Frisk instead of Sans. Because Papyrus does seem to know what Sans actually looks like.. And the resemblance is close enough to make him think for a moment to tell one from the other.

This is the same Papyrus who couldn't tell a rock from a human, and we WERE in Sans' room.. The Silver Key machine is likely the vehicle that Sans, and whoever came with him, originally used to warp into the Underground, which then broke when they tried to return through the Barrier.

How do we know this? What's to say the machine wasn't built just to further Gaster's experiments? What's to say they even warped here at all? WHY would they warp here? But at some point in the future, Sans and Papyrus both used the portal in the Core to warp back in time in an attempt to change the future. The shopkeeper in Snowdin recalls how they both just appeared in town one day, and asserted themselves.

In the Beta timeline, Gaster fell before the Skelebros would have been born. Their origin literally doesn't exist anymore. This is the reason why there aren't two Sans-es and two Papyrus-es. There was no Beta Sans or Beta Papyrus. There is only Alpha Sans and Alpha Papyrus. Which is why Sans doesn’t want to fight Frisk. Because if he did, he would literally be fighting himself. Even here, he wants to get Frisk to just give up and reset. And while the final knife strike does hit Sans, Frisk is the one who actually falls and generates the Executions Points that Chara receives, as she finally takes over Frisk’s body and soul completely, effectively killing him.

Since it was a knife strike, and this happens even if the True Knife and Stick are in a Dimensional Box, and thus inaccessible.. This couldn't have been through Frisk's body. Chara must have done it by themselves.

We control Frisk all the way up to Asgore's fight. But Frisk still has control, since we can still reset. Which is why “You Won!” doesn’t appear at the end of the Sans fight. Because Frisk doesn’t win. He, and eventually the player, have just lost everything.

Chara dealt the final blow. That means they won against Sans, not Frisk. Plus, "You Won!" never appears in boss fights (probably because the usual dust thing doesn't occur). Sans is a boss fight.

That's why "You Won!" didn't appear. Sure, Frisk started looking zombified before Snowdin, as Sans said Frisk should continue pretending to be a human, but this is likely another case of the popular "You're not even human, are you", in response to someone acting so violently that it's unbelievable that a human would act this way, and without any emotional guilt about it either!

But once Chara strikes, Sans realizes the battle is over: Not because he’s been defeated, but because there’s nothing left of him in Frisk to save anymore.

Oh, Frisk can still reset afterwards. They're not completely gone. It's probably that Sans has been defeated. After all, he did try to speak to his dead brother (Near-death experience/hallucination?), and you get EXP when you kill someone. And since Frisk can still reset before fighting Asgore, they're not dead. So Sans leaves, bidding Chara a fond farewell as he creates a portal to another timeline, and says hello to another Papyrus as he travels to a dimension where his best friend is still alive.

He asked Papyrus if he wanted anything (after saying he's going to Grillby's) when we could still hear him! So he was asking Papyrus if he wanted anything.. from THIS timeline! An alternate Papyrus wouldn't be able to hear that! He must have been speaking to our Papyrus.. who is dead! (Of course, Papyrus wasn't really there. Sans was having a near-death experience.) And leaves Chara to her doom of a lonely universe full of nothingness.

Um, that's exactly what Chara wanted, Ferret. It's not doom. When Sans asks Chara-possessed-Frisk his famous question: “Do you think even the worst person can change? That everybody can be a good person, if they just, try?” Sans wasn’t asking for Frisk’s sake.

He was. He only asks that question in Genocide. He also follows up by asking if they want to have a bad time. Under all his defenses, Sans seems to be a good person who tries to do the right thing, but is living with the guilt of having made a terrible mistake.

How do we know he made a terrible mistake? You haven't provided any evidence to that claim yet.

Sans left his timeline and traveled to the past because the ending he got on his own run wasn’t good. And the scars on his soul from his own bad decisions still weigh on him.

So how is this any different from your typical "reset after a bad ending" that we, as Frisk do right now? So when No Mercy Frisk does his dirty work, Sans forces himself to watch every bloody knife-swing. Not because he enjoys it, but because he feels he deserves the pain of watching, and knowing.

How do we know he did this? What's to say Frisk's face and/or all of the dead monsters isn't enough to let him know what Frisk did? Sans didn’t travel to the past only to find someone who could save the monsters…

He didn't travel to the past, he analyzed the timelines! Sans wanted to find someone would could save himself, too.

Well, there's another error that made it through the proofreading process. "would could"? But as I said, resetting should be enough. And help him undo a cursed legacy that haunts him to this very day

Resetting should be enough!

--Chapter 8:Gaster, the Pillar of Temporal Magic--
 * -|Chapter 8=

When Gaster first came to the Underground, he must have seemed like a miracle worker.

Well, he was smarter than Einstein, so of course.

Alphys claims the only reason monsters have modern human technology is because they reverse-engineered all the junk that flowed down the waterfall from the world above. Diligent hunters like Bratty and Catty have salvaged this junk, and figured out how it worked.

...Wait, wasn't it Undyne who said that? Ferret, if Alphys said it too, can you say where, so I can check? Right now, I only see Undyne doing it, if you call her at the Garbage Dump. https://youtu.be/TC3plNwe9SM?t=487

Anyways, I have two explanations for this.

1-Gaster really WAS forgotten after all, so she theorized that all that tech had to come from SOMEWHERE, and decided it came from the humans.

2-If this was only Undyne speaking, remember that she thinks that anime is real. Which means anime would be recording the adventurous lives of the heroes of the shows. Maybe she actually thinks anime is the modern technology..? We did get anime from humans...

---

This is why the monsters have electricity, cell phones, and little wonders like the Christmas Lights you see in Snowdin.

The CORE converts geothermal energy into magical electricity. Humans don't use magic like that, that's a monster thing. Monsters couldn't have gotten electricity from the humans.

Without actual contact with the surface for ages, the monsters have no frame of reference for what the human civilization above actually looks like. Alphys and Undyne both enjoy anime and manga, and Undyne was horrified to learn that humans do not actually swing ten-foot swords or pilot giant robots on a routine basis, feeling horribly let-down.

Their only frames of reference are the media that happens to fall into the dump, and they have no idea what is fiction, and what is non-fiction. And since not everything ends up in the dump, their sources are quite.. incomplete.

That's why Papyrus mentions Santa, but calls him "a chubby, smiling man who loves to surprise people".

Chara, our sometimes helpful and sometimes homicidal narrator, is from the human world of the surface above. And she gives us dialog options that suggest that, just like in our world as players, the magical super-technology in manga is just a fantasy designed to look cool on the page, and is not the normal human experience at all. And the surprisingly normal level of technology we see in the surface town of Deltarune suggests that the humans living on the surface of Undertale’s world are very much like our own.

You still think Deltarune is Undertale?

Well, it's time for my next paradox!

Asriel is still alive, and heading off to college. It couldn't have been that far since 201X. Less than a generation, most definitely. And yet, Gerson is dead, and Monster Kid is older than he is in the present, so it must be later than Undertale.

It's been a long time since a human fell when Frisk showed up in Undertale, and Papyrus never met a human until he met Frisk. This means it must have been a LONG time since 201X when Undertale takes place. So long, in fact, that Papyrus didn't even know about the queen's existence. So at least a full generation.

So, let's review the constraints.

Deltarune must take place less than one generation after 201X.

Undertale must take place at least one generation after 201X.

So, Undertale must take place after Deltarune.

But Monster Kid is clearly older in Deltarune than in Undertale. So Deltarune must also take place after Undertale.

Looks like we have a paradox. Deltarune can't take place in Undertale's world at all! It must be, as I've said, an AU!

--

But somehow, the monsters of the Underground gained access to technology that the humans above had never actually seen before.

Like, for example, magical electricity.

Alphys installs two extra dimensional bags of holding into our phone in a matter of seconds, one of which links to all of the dimensionally-linked boxes we find laying on the ground all through Undertale. As if these wonders that bend time and space are about as interesting to the common monster as a discarded cardboard box. And Alphys has a huge portal in the Core that she plans to use to evacuate the monsters fleeing No Mercy Frisk to another dimension entirely.

Alright, here's what makes me think Alphys is evacuating everyone to the True Lab, and not another dimension, and why everybody DOES die when Chara destroys the universe. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7NJ6dIjV_U

I realized I had to do something. Even if it meant everybody would... Have to learn the truth about me. -Alphys, Near-Genocide Ending

Now, how would they learn the truth about Alphys? Well, if they went in the True Lab, where the Amalgamates are, then yes, they would learn the truth. The True Lab is also the one area that we can't go to in the Genocide Route. The elevator must be so secure that even Flowey with his vines can't make it take Frisk/Chara down.

And sentient transforming robots like Mettaton actually exist, and work!

Mettaton isn't a sentient robot. It's a robot body for a ghost to possess. Did you ever use that Mystery Key from Bratty and Catty? It reveals the truth about Mettaton. But you are right about the transforming part.

You can build an epic transforming structure in a lava field without it melting, and you can turn a cell phone into a jetpack or laser gun with the touch of a button!

The monsters really are good at using magic to their fullest potential. I wonder how..?

Undertale’s monster technology is -already- anime made real! There’s no way that any of this stuff was salvaged from the human world above, because this technology doesn’t exist up there! And since the monsters didn’t research this tech on their own, it must have all come from another world!

..Um, they DID research them on their own. That's literally the only explanation for this. Well, specifically, one monster... I think you know who I'm talking about. It's who this chapter is all about.

Someone of remarkable brilliance must have visited the Underground from another world, and left his mark on the entire monster civilization. A scientist capable of doing things even beyond what the humans of the surface above could achieve.

Either way, Undyne was wrong when she said it came from trash. So, if she was wrong about that, then what ACTUAL clue do we have that the monsters didn't research them on their own? (Specifically, Gaster.)

And besides the cover story of this amazing structure acting as a power plant, it also housed The True Lab that served as Gaster’s mad science headquarters, until his eventual death by falling into this very creation, and being scattered across time and space.

The True Lab was not a part of the CORE.

The True Lab is underneath Alphys' Lab, which was L1 of Hotland. The CORE is in L3 of Hotland.

If you told Gaster something was impossible, he’s do it just to show you it wasn’t!

I found another typo. "He's do it"? It's "he'd do it".

And this is why Asgore named Gaster the Royal Scientist, gave him the massive resources he needed to build The Core, and tasked him with the single most important mission in the Underground: To break the Barrier, by any means possible.

"The barrier is locked by SOUL power.. Unfortunately, this power cannot be recreated artificially."-Entry 2

Gaster:..So you think that's impossible? How about I prove you wrong again?

(ex:You place Gaster's Entry 17 with Alphys' Entry 17. Which means Gaster was around to read Entry 2. You also said if you said it was impossible, Gaster'd do it to prove it wasn't. So... that means he'd start a project to artificially create SOUL power. Hey, it's a natural thing that exists, and new SOULs are created naturally when new people are born. Such a process.. What if Gaster recreated the SOUL power creation?)

The Memoryhead amalgamate, the first one Frisk encounters when visiting the True Lab, is unique in that it doesn’t actually resemble any monsters we’ve seen. It attacks you with ghostly heads that might resemble Gaster, has stats that are strangely determined by Frisk’s own +10, talks through Frisk’s phone, and puts a piece of itself in Frisk’s inventory, which becomes the Bad Memory.

What if Memoryhead was one of the shattered pieces of Gaster? It's a shattered piece, not a fully autonomous Gaster, which is why it's not, well.. "Intelligent" compared to Gaster.

You're spot-on with the memorial fountain. ...At least until I find a candidate you missed. Do we know if the Royal Guard even existed before Asgore declared war? I'd like to say they didn't, since they don't exist anymore in the True Pacifist Ending, but I'm not actually sure when they were formed, and haven't actually found any evidence pointing to when they were formed.

If Gerson was dead, I'd have said Gerson was the one the memorial was for. But he's very well alive.

Yet somehow, Gaster was still able to conduct his research into Determination Extraction, because Alphys discovers Gaster’s blueprints for the DE machine in the True Lab, which is how she was able to build her own.

Good catch! ...This very paradox is why I've been trying to avoid the statue being of Gaster, to try to make it anything BUT Gaster.

And if Chara was the first human who fell from above, this unknown human hiding alongside Gaster must have arrived in the Underground through some other means.

That is completely backwards.

Chara is the first known human to be seen in the Underground. Hence why they were adopted into the Royal Family, and not this mystery previous human.

However, there is no evidence to suggest that they were the first human to vanish into Ebott. Remember, the legends about humans vanishing already existed by the time Chara fell. While this could be because of the nature of Ebott itself, as I theorized, it also allows the possibility of Chara not being the first to fall from above.

So the evidence points to Chara being the first to be seen underground, not the first to vanish from above. The latter has just been implied from the former. Appearing from another world wouldn't solve the former problem, and the latter problem doesn't actually exist.

He arrived along with at least one other, because “We” had gone to check on an anomaly in the space-time continuum, where timelines kept starting and stopping, until eventually everything ended.

Why can't "we" just be Gaster's team? Why does "we" HAVE to be someone from the same world as Sans was presumably from? Why does Sans even have to be from another world at all? If the man was Gaster, and/or Chara, where does Sans fall into this? How is HE from another world?

Getting to the surface is not the same as going back, yes. Sans isn't from the human world of Undertale. Doesn't rule out him being from the underground itself, or an alternate timeline of it.

Both these lines mention “man”, as in “human”. And they are both certainly about Gaster, because he is The Man Who Speaks In Hands, and since Sans is trying to help Frisk rather than kill him, Frisk has no reason to beware of his future self unless Chara’s ghost warps him completely beyond recognition.

Sans refers to Toriel as a woman when we dine with him at the MTT resort, and we know how a fact that she's a monster. "Man" and "human" are not the same thing. You made the exact same mistake that MatPat did when he assumed the photos of people you don't recognize must be humans because it said "people".

And why isn't it Chara who Frisk needs to beware? Chara, from the Surface World, the "other world"?

Based on your previous posts, you seem to have been confused on what my take is.

Here you go, you can have it in full.


 * Sans:From the Underground (Likely related to Gaster)
 * Gaster:The Man Who Speaks in Hands
 * Chara:The Man from the Other World (Surface World)

If I find a monster that speaks in hands that actually DOES something to Frisk, I'll replace Gaster with that monster in my take. But I doubt that will happen.

The Gaster Blasters might be artifacts from another time entirely, and may never have been invented in Frisk’s timeline at all.

If they weren't invented, they wouldn't exist.

What do Sans, Papyrus, and Wingding Gaster all have in common? They’re all members of The Font Brigade, the only characters in Undertale who talk in the fonts they’re named after, showing they all share some type of strange bond.

That's probably because they're all skeletons. Or, at least are SUPPOSED to be. If we went into the world of Undertale, and somehow made the skeleton population grow, each and every skeleton would probably speak a different font.

And we know from his secret Lab Entry 17 that while Gaster was setting up his Darkest Experiment, he was confiding in two other people in the lab, and asking them “WHAT DO YOU TWO THINK?”

The common concensus is Sans and Alphys. Alphys only entered the scene, and took over Gaster’s old laboratory, after he died. But in Entry 17, Gaster is still alive, so Alphys wouldn’t have replaced him yet. And Alphys would have no reason to be in that room.

So you've changed your mind about the two Entry 17's being made at the same time? Gaster's Entry 17 DOES predate Alphys' Entry 1? Alright, then. Now take away the Entry 17's serving as a link between the two timelines. And then, I'll take away that bit about Gaster proving to Alphys that it's not impossible to artificially create SOUL power.

What happened on the Night of Gaster’s Darkest Experiment?

What makes you think it was dark? Because the darkness kept growing? Just because darkness was a part of the experiment doesn't mean his experiment was dark, as in, the other kind! You're taking the literal and metaphorical darkness as if they're the same thing! That's the fallacy of equivocation!

We know Entry 17's darkness was talking about literal darkness, since it explicitly mentioned the photon readings being negative. So it was literal darkness, with possibly literal shadows, and no photons.

So we have no reason to assume that it was a dark (figuratively) experiment.

Which was the very reason Gaster researched Determination in the first place, when he was the resident Royal Scientist. Because once bypassing the Barrier failed, the only alternative to breaking it was with SOUL power.

Why would it fail, though? Here, Gaster:I have a plan!

1:Find out how humans can save, load, and reset

2:Artifically recreate that power, to time travel before the Barrier.

3:Bring everyone to the Surface World

4:Go back to the present with everyone

5:Profit!

Alternatively, you could use your Gaster Blasters to turn the tide of the war.

If I can think of it, Gaster could have thought of it, because he's a genius.

So Gaster developed Determination Extraction and injection from the very beginning, as a way to collect monster souls.

Right, where else could he get determination from? Humans that didn't fall yet?

Though he wouldn't get very much. But perhaps he could study it and try to recreate it artificially after finding its chemical formula..?

But if CoolSkeleton95 was born in 1995, he would be around two decades old by the time Gaster died in Frisk’s timeline in 201X. So while there are still mysteries surrounding Sans’ brother in bones, Papyrus is certainly a normal Underground monster during the game, and definitely not Gaster’s skeleton. So Papyrus could have easily met Sans and Gaster when they arrived, and joined their party.

Why couldn't CoolSkeleton95 have been born in 2095? (I've asked this several times, as well.)

And it just so happens...That there is a memory from the Alpha timeline, hidden deep in Undertale’s code, in the form of the TWO secret True Lab Entry 17s.

no No NO NO NO NO! You just made it clear that Alphys wasn't there at the same time that Gaster fell! Was Alphys with Gaster or not? You have an inconsistency in your theory, just like MatPat did in his FNAF3 theory, saying the thing Purple Guy was holding in SAVETHEM both wasn't and WAS a phone!

The second Lab Entry 17 is stashed deep in the very code of the game, an echo of a footnote. It writes about the formation of the Amalgamates. In it, the author theorizes that monster bodies can’t withstand large amounts of Determination without melting. A theory that’s incomplete because it doesn’t account for Undyne in her role as the control group.

It easily can, Undyne simply had less determination than the Amalgamates did!

The timing of Entry 17, appearing between 16’s “no No NO NO NO NO” and 18’s “The flower’s gone”, has an eerie significance. The moment Gaster mentions that his next, Darkest Experiment will be very interesting… Flowey animates, and disappears. Much to Doctor Alphys’ surprise and chagrin.

Entry 17 explains what happened to the Amalgamtes. Alphys really wouldn't have anything new to say, or any reason to make a new entry, until the flower vanishes.

Instead, both Gaster and Alphys had to create a vessel out of a living creature that was neither human nor monster, then bind this vessel to their control as a type of puppet, so they could force the Vessel to wield the power of Seven Human Souls to do their bidding, and break the Barrier for them by remote control.

Yes, they would both need a vessel. But, I imagined Alphys' plan as just taking the SOULs, putting them into SOUL capsules to trap them, and giving them to the vessel...

..Though I suppose you would still need to control the vessel to have it actually break the Barrier. But I imagined the vessel as more of a non-sentient means to an end, than an actual, living being. Which means that through a quirk of overlapping timelines, Gaster and Alphys BOTH created Flowey in their respective realities!

How do we know Gaster created Flowey, specifically, and not something else?

Someone is controlling Flowey the vessel now… And it isn’t Alphys.

It's Asriel!

The Elevator Voice claims to have known Chara, specifically, from the past, and says that they haven’t met in a long time.

Say it with me... "It's been a long time", PERIOD. The voice never said "It's been a long time since we've met. You need to stop adding those last three words to the sentence. They were never there. It's one thing to use evidence that actually exists, but that's just making up evidence.

He stayed on as the Royal Scientist right up to the point in time where Alphys wrote her own Entry 17: A time after Chara had already visited the Underground, and Asgore had collected six human souls from the ones who followed her.

Cue Gaster reading Entry 2 and trying to prove it is possible to make SOUL power artificially.

Sans and Gaster were two human friends from The Other World, a world where anime super-technology was real, and humans had amazing mind-powers.

Ferret, how do we know it was normal in that world? Gaster easily could have invented all that technology himself.

They detected an anomaly in the space-time continuum happening on a different world, where timelines kept stopping and starting, and eventually lead up to the End of Everything.

Well, at least you finally made a motive for them to go to the other world in the first place. That puts you WAY above MatPat.

Once they arrived, they found the Barrier prevented the Silver Key Machine from warping back to their homeworld again, breaking it in the process of trying. So unless Sans and Gaster could find a way to destroy or bypass the Barrier, there was no way for them to go back to The Other World they came from.

Why would they instantly try to go back? They came to fix the problem, so they should have just, well.. fixed the problem.

To blend in with the monster population, Sans dressed up as a skeleton while Gaster pretended to be a ghost. And they befriended Papyrus, a real skeleton, to help make their undead disguises more plausible.

How do we know it wasn't a skeleton he was trying to be, only becoming a ghost after his fall? Also, this was during or before 201X. Long before monsters declared war on humanity.

After his attempts to bypass the Barrier through dimension travel failed,

There! That's when the Silver Key Machine could have broken in your narrative.

Gaster began to study the Determination generated by human souls as a resource that could be extracted and put into monsters, so their souls could survive outside their bodies and be collected.

What about time travel? Oh, and Gaster, I think you really need to start working on, oh, I dunno… Stopping the anomaly?

And since he began this research before Chara and the six humans who followed her fell into the Underground, Gaster had to use his own soul and that of his friend Sans as the source of Determination for his experiments.

Yeah, it's better to use the far, FAR greater source of determination, then go around trying to steal some from the innocent monsters. You gotta leave a good impression, right?

In the original Alpha timeline, Gaster stayed on as the Royal Scientist even as Chara and the six humans had their misadventures in the Underground. It was good thing Sans and Gaster had kept up their monster disguises, because after Asgore’s edict that all humans would be harvested, discovery would have meant the end of them

You know.. Maybe THAT would be when they put them on?

...No, then the monsters might wonder what happened to those two humans that were still alive, and put two and two together. This would probably be the first time they needed to reset. Unless they could find some way to fool the monsters into thinking the humans died.. AND that the SOULs were unobtainable for some reason.. ...Yeah, I think they're going to need to reset.

But hey, in their second try, they would be wearing monster costumes from the start. So.. I guess the second timeline is a bit closer to yours, now?

Both Gaster and Alphys were researching how to break the Barrier by the collection of monster souls in their respective timelines. And both created Flowey as a vessel to hold all the human and monster souls collected so that the power equivalent of Seven Human souls could be channeled in one place to finally destroy the Barrier.

2+1 is not 7. But since we've already shown they're willing to use themselves for experiments, they could have broken the Barrier on their own after 5 humans fell. No need to steal monster SOULs, they can just use the vessel. I still want to know when the goal shifted from stopping the anomaly to freeing the monsters, though.

A world where Wingding Gaster had already died years earlier in 201X, and had a fountain built in his honor as a fallen hero of the monsters.

I guess it was better off for him to die a hero, than live long enough to become the villain.

But through some sequence of events, Sans had once taken Frisk’s journey earlier in the Alpha timeline, making him the Alpha version of Frisk. So Sans knew that Frisk would eventually arrive, and roughly when, and was able to set many things in motion before Frisk’s game began in the Beta timeline.

Why did he take off his monster costume, walk back though the closed doors to the Ruins (I mean, I guess he could do that with a shortcut), and pretend to fall underground?

As I said, there have to be at least THREE timelines if the "Sans is Frisk" theory is correct. The Alpha Timeline, before Gaster fell, the Beta timeline, after Gaster fell, and the Gamma Timeline, the one we see in Undertale. That would interestingly make Deltarune a "Delta Timeline"... If it wasn't for the fact that it just doesn't fit anywhere.

Sans and Papyrus then established themselves as human-hunting guards to prepare for Frisk’s arrival. And they befriended Alphys, the new Royal Scientist, to aid in the cause of monitoring Frisk and doing what was possible to test him while also keeping him from harm.

Makes you wonder:

1-How did Sans survive the last time around, when he was Frisk?

2-Why didn't Frisk put on a monster costume like Sans did?

There's a third question, but that has to do with Frisk/Sans being Ness, which you haven't said yet, so I'll save it for then.

So Frisk had his adventure in Undertale, while slowly recovering from the head wound he gained after his fall, gradually regaining his memory and powers. And whenever Frisk reached the neutral end of the game, he used the Core Portal to go back along his own timeline and get a different ending.

Flowey and Sans already explained how resetting works. You're destroying the timeline, and sending everyone to a new timeline, with no memory of what happened. That changes the FUN value, as well.

And following Frisk, always hiding in the shadows, was the vengeful shade of Wingding Gaster. The ghost of someone who had once been Sans’ best friend. Who somehow knew Chara’s name, and addressed Frisk as if he were her.

How do we know Gaster is following Frisk? We only see him in that one mysterious room.


 * -|Chapter 9=--Chapter 9:The Darkness Keeps Growing, Holes Cutting Deeper--

Sans “(deadpan) If you ask me? I think we could use more light...”

Papyrus: SANS!! DID YOU FINALLY LEARN TO CAPITALIZE YOUR WORDS? YOUR BROTHER IS SO PROUD OF YOU!!!

Sans: hey, I've capitalized before. remember that time I talked about LOVE? come on, let's just help g out.

(The lights flick on, revealing a mad scientist laboratory deep in The Core decked out to the 9’s, with computer screens everywhere)

The 9's? ...I don't get it. Are they from the damage display?

Papyrus “Behold, dwellers of the dark! I, The Great Papyrus, have found the Switch of Light, and brought happy radiance back to the lightless recesses of this distressed stronghold!”

Sans: um, paps? you don't sound all that excited.

Papyrus: WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, BROTHER?

Sans: you didn't capitalize your words.

Gaster isn’t happy “This was a Top Secret operation! No one other than us was supposed to know about it! How did the word get out!?”

Papyrus: COME ON, GASTER!! AREN'T WE FREEING EVERYONE? WHY DID WE HAVE TO KEEP IT A SECRET?

Sans: because it might go wrong and make him fall in? wouldn't want to get everybody's hopes up if it failed.

Gaster “The WORRY is that this operation has to be done PERFECTLY, and we can’t have any more unexpected distractions! Any unknown variable could ruin everything!”

Sans: that works too. pretty close to what i said, too.

<span style="color:#00FF00;"Gaster looks at him. “They’re acting friendly at the moment because they don’t know we’re humans. Have you stopped to wonder exactly what would happen if our disguises failed? We’re trapped in an underground civilization of creatures dedicated to the destruction of humanity. One wrong move.. And WE could bring that about! And who’s to say they wouldn’t find a way to invade our world afterwards?”

Papyrus: LOOK, IF ANY OF US KNOWS MONSTERS THE BEST, IT'S ME! BECAUSE I AM A MONSTER! AND US MONSTERS ARE QUITE PEACEFUL! ALL WE HAVE TO DO IS CONVINCE ASGORE TO NOT DESTROY HUMANITY, MAYBE BRING THE QUEEN BACK, AND HUMANITY WILL BE SAFE!

Sans: yeah, i'm more worried about humanity declaring war again and banishing monsters again.

...Well, it WOULD only take one monster to absorb enough souls and destroy humanity... So I actually side with Gaster here.

...But by your theory, monsters CAN'T display darkness, which would mean that such a feat isn't going to happen. Which would make Gaster wrong here.

Sans meets his gaze “But once they learn humans were the ones who broke the barrier for them, they wouldn’t want or need to destroy humanity anymore. They’ll live on the surface with us, as friends! Just think, Scooby and Snoopy will finally have dates!”

Must be before Sans turned into the way he is now..

“I’ve been wondering about some of your Core design for a while. Why so many lasers, traps and security robots on the inside? I also see you’ve made some new blasters.. Is there something I should know about?”

Papyrus: WELL, WE WOULDN'T WANT ANY PESKY HUMANS SHUTTING THE EXPERIMENT DOWN NOW, WOULD WE?

It.. must be a glitch in the security protocols. We’ll fix the robots.. We’ll fix EVERYTHING.. Right after this experiment is finished.”

Sans: um, doc? why would a glitch in the protocol make monsters fall down before they're supposed to? something's telling me that this is the anomaly that we came here to stop.

Gaster:DO YOU SEE ANY TIMELINES JUMPING LEFT AND RIGHT? ...NO? THEN THIS IS NOT THE ANOMALY. LET'S JUST DO THE EXPERIMENT.

“Yes.. save the worlds. Of Humans. And.. monsters.” he sighs, then looks meaningfully at Sans “Sans.. you must understand something. This thing that I’m doing.. I’m doing it for you. I’m an old man, I don’t have much time left. But you’re a young hero, and our world is going to need you. I have to get you back home, no matter what the risk or cost.”

Sans: um, doc? how is breaking the barrier going to take us back home? you know we don't come from the surface up there.

<span style="color:#00FF00;"“Your mother was wroth with me after our last adventure, she told me that *I* was grounded. Before we left, I promised her I’d bring you back. (slowly, very meaningfully) No matter what.. I had.. To do.”

..I wonder which Mother game that happened in..?

Gaster calmly moves over the portal, fiddling with some controls by the little box. “Only the power equivalent of seven human souls can destroy the Barrier. And Asgore has collected six. But I found a way to equal the power of a seventh soul, without having to sacrifice you or I. We can have that power.. If we collect the souls of almost all of the monsters.”

Sans: doc? didn't you already take that power of my.. "SOUL"? you already have mine. that, plus the six we've collected, is enough to break the barrier.

Gaster shake his head in disapproval “People say so many things are impossible, because they don’t have the courage or imagination to try.” he turns to Sans “Human souls persist after death because they have an energy in them called Determination. Once I figured out how to extract this energy, I could inject it into monsters and steal the souls from their still-living bodies, leaving behind an empty husk that would gradually decay over time.”

Gaster:I TOOK YOUR "DETERMINATION", NOT YOUR "SOUL POWER".

“THEY TRUSTED YOU!” Sans screams “*I* TRUSTED YOU! You’re going to genocide an entire underground world of friends just so we can GO HOME!?”

Gaster:NOW NOW… THEY WON'T BE KILLED... THEY'LL JUST BE SOULLESS. LIKE OUR LITTLE FRIEND..

Sans staggers “Doctor! I don’t know what you’ve done to yourself.. But you’re becoming corrupted! A darkness is consuming you! You have to STOP!”

Gaster:WHATEVER DO YOU MEAN? THE UNDERGROUND IS QUITE A SMALL PLACE. NOBODY LIKES IT DOWN THERE. THEY NEED TO BE FREE.. AND THAT WOULD REQUIRE A LITTLE.. SACRIFICE. BUT THOSE WHO SURVIVE? THEY'LL KNOW NOTHING BUT CLEAR SKIES. IT'LL BE A PARADISE. I'M THE ONLY ONE WHO KNOWS THAT. AT LEAST I'M THE ONLY ONE WHO HAS THE WILL TO ACT ON IT.

Sans: you're acting just like thanos, and you still don't think you're being corrupted?

Gaster chuckles darkly “Our world will welcome me back as a hero. We’ll bring our captured monsters from the Core back with us. They won’t be free.. But they’ll see the surface. And then we can breed them, turn some into invincible abominations, and harvest the rest to supply souls for those in power, so they might stay in power, and heed my every word. Discovering your monster friends will be the greatest thing that ever happened to mankind.”

Sans: yep. you're definitely corrupted. if you really just wanted to free everyone, you would have just let them go after you broke the barrier. after all, wouldn't our friend be enough to take care of things?

“You see.. As troublesome as he’s been in the past, I still need your Doctor friend, just like I need all of my instruments to effect change in this world. His fine mind is an invaluable tool. And if I could turn you dark as well, your courage and strength would be great assets for me.”

Sans: oh, i didn't know i ended up in that other timeline. doc, didn't i already fight you before? "if we ever meet again... you're going to get the... sh..... ....i...." (ex:This is what Doctor Andonuts says when you win his fight in the Halloween Hack)

Sans stares at the haywire portal that Gaster disappeared into in disbelief. Then he’s rocked by a series of horrific pains as the screen suddenly rewards him a staggering boatload of Execution Points, and one Level of Violence after another. A surge of compounding damnation as his screams echo off the walls, just before the Core circuit breakers give out again, and everything plunges back into darkness

Papyrus: WHAT'S WRONG, SANS? DIDN'T YOU KILL OFF LOTS OF ALIENS BEFORE? IF YOU WERE A PACIFIST, YOU BROKE THAT LONG BEFORE GASTER, LONG BEFORE WE EVEN MET!

“SAVED?” Sans spits out the word “I haven’t SAVED anyone! Gaster and I are the reason everyone was in danger in the first place! If we hadn’t come here, the Core would have never been built, and none of this would have happened! If I hadn’t been so.. DAMN STUPID!.. And let Gaster do all of this, so many people wouldn’t have gotten hurt! And I had to kill my best friend to stop it!” he grabs Papyrus’ arm “I had to kill my best friend, Papyrus! I JUST KILLED MY BEST FRIEND!”

For the second time.

Also, by that point, he was no longer the friend you knew, Sans. He was Giygas. You killed Giygas!

Sans stares “Papyrus.. THAT’S IT!” Sans looks at the portal, then around the lab “Gaster was studying traveling through time and space. He made that portal at first to look for a dimension where the Barrier didn’t exist. I CAN go back in time, and try to change the future! Papyrus, YOU’RE A GENIUS!”

Sans: i've always wondered why he didn't just go back in time to before the barrier was made... it'd solve everything without the need for the sacrifice. but, it seems freeing everyone was never his intention to begin with.

Sans finishes programming the Portal, which glows white. “OK, it’s ready. We’re going to appear in Snowdin a few years before the other me arrives, hopefully we can do something about Gaster before then.” he turns to Papyrus, and hands him one of the Gaster Blasters “There’s several miles to the Snowdin. We’ve got a full rack of blasters, half a pack of spaghetti. It’s dark outside, and we’re wearing sunglasses.”

This is what gives me the conclusion that if we take your premise to its logical conclusions, there must have been three timelines, rather than two. That statement implies that Frisk and Gaster went to the world as humans first, then went back to before 201X, and that's when the experiments began. Meaning we have an Alpha Timeline, where Gaster was never the Royal Scientist at all, meaning there likely was never a CORE or anything.. a Beta Timeline, where Gaster was the Royal Scientist, and the experiments and everything happened, and a Gamma Timeline, the one where Gaster died at/before 201X.

In the Beta timeline, Sans never made the journey as Frisk, because he was working with Gaster the whole time.

Which would make the Alpha Timeline far different than the Gamma Timeline. And also different than how I imagined it the last time I deconstructed it (I visualized it as what I now consider the Beta timeline)

And that’s how I believe Sans and Papyrus left the original Alpha timeline, and established the Beta timeline by warping several years into the past. As a last-ditch attempt to change the past to save the future.

You seriously think the events of Undertale happen only a few years after 201X? I date it centuries afterwards, considering how long ago the war was, and Chara being the first human to naturally fall in the Underground.

If you're wondering why the fallen humans and Frisk don't have futuristic technology, and why the city on the Surface is not futuristic, it's because the monster calendar is not a match to the human calendar. "201X" was actually perhaps the 18th century from a human perspective.. Or maybe even earlier than that.

Papyrus may say that he doesn’t know what humans look like, but all the other Undertale monsters have no trouble figuring this out. A human was a member of the Royal Family for a while, not too long ago, and the Royal Guard is certainly briefed about them as part of their orders to hunt them down.

"Not that long ago"? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cb8LuokrlAM

A long time ago, a human fell into the RUINS.

Sans might have also seen no point in rewinding time because Gaster was already infected by the alien from their world even before they arrived, and he couldn’t rewind time far enough to undo that. And if Sans told the monsters in the past what Gaster was planning, they would have followed Asgore’s orders and harvested them both.

They could have only mentioned the vessel, the SOUL absorptions, and literally everything except the fact that they're human.

Or it could be, since we find the same type of bandages in Chara’s coffin, and wake up right where Toriel had buried Chara, that Frisk and Chara share some sort of linked destiny that spans timelines, much in the same way that both Alphys and Gaster both created Flowey? We assume that Frisk fell from above before our game began, but the while we saw this happen to Chara, Frisk may have simply teleported or warped to the Ruins rather than falling.

*Golden flowers. They must have broken your fall. -Chara Dreemurr


 * -|Answers to Objections=Just like in the first part, this is where objections that don't fit in the script will fall. This time, it's for Chapters 5-8 (Ferret hasn't responded to my initial analysis of Chapter 9)

--Objections from Chapter 5--

It doesn’t make sense that Alphys wouldn’t know who Toriel is. I believe she and Papyrus are both playing dumb. After all, Alphys knows that Sans called Toriel to the Asgore showdown instead of Papyrus.

Alphys only stated that Papyrus didn't call Toriel. That says nothing about whether Sans did, or what Alphys thinks happened.

--Objections from Chapter 6--

So the bandage, and Frisk, have a history from before Undertale begins. One that Sans is somewhat interested in.

Sans only asks if we've ever took it off-Not what happened before we fell. Think about it, Frisk has been wearing the gross bandage for an entire day.

--Objections from Chapter 7--

He’s (Sans is) by far the most difficult boss in the game. And not just because he can disable invincibility frames. He also can psychokineticly bash you against walls, and can fire badass lasers than white out a significant portion of the screen. As well a teleport. As well as evade all your attacks.

..Those are the kinds of magic that MONSTERS show. Monster-like power is exactly what we'd see in.. a monster. Darkners can also do these kinds of things (plus Darkners can dodge!)

Flowey even looks pleased when Frisk finally stabs him, saying “I KNEW YOU COULD DO IT!”

That's more the case of "I knew you had the heart to do it!" Remember, it's not that hard to stab a flower, especially a flower that WANTS you to do it to him, won't even try to dodge, has just been weakened after losing all six SOULs...

You’re taking the information that Chara, The Unreliable Narrator, is giving us? Where she specifically says Sans is The Weakest Enemy?

These values exist within the game files as well.