Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26006155-20181123023529

Hello folks, I'm compiling all the observations and theories I've collected about Undertale over the last two years into one powerful document.

It's only finished up to Chapter 5 at the moment, and I still have much to add.

But so far I've been able to prove why Asriel Dreemur doesn't actually fade at the end of Undertale. Because not only does he still have a soul, he'll going to get a second one over time.

And, the reason for all the Fallen Down monsters, is because there's a monster soul thief sneaking about. And there's only one creature that it could be.

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Script for “Asriel has 2 souls, Gaster has many!” By BlackfootFerret, aka Robert E Taylor IV

Souls are what drive the story of Undertale.

Monster souls contain the powers of positivity and magic. While the darker, much stronger souls of humans have the power of Determination to persist after death and reset time. As well as the non-magical power of telekinesis, shown as the six captured human souls tore their way free from Photoshop Flowey.

The friendly monsters need the power equivalent of seven human souls to break the ancient barrier and return to the surface, and they’ve only collected six. So they see killing Frisk as a necessary act to free their people.

But some creatures are not what they seem. And Sans, who somehow has a power level far beyond Asgore, the King of all Monsters, is secretly doing everything he can to save Frisk, for reasons of his own.

However, there’s still a way for the monsters to destroy the barrier, evening without harvesting Frisk. Legend says it would take almost all the monster souls in the Underground to equal the power of a single human soul. So a being willing to genocide monsterkind, like God of Hyperdeath Asriel, could break the barrier instantly. Or someone patient enough to wait for generations could harvest the souls from dying monsters until they’d acquired enough, which was the mission King Asgore gave to Doctor Alphys by sending her the monsters that had Fallen Door.

However, Alphy’s mission was doomed to failure.

Undyne shows how Determination affects a monster with a soul: She became strong enough to kick Toriel off the throne in some endings, was able to touch Monster Kid several times without melting into him, and only finally succumbed to Determination Melting after taking massive repeated damage during her Neutral fight.

But the Fallen Down monsters Asgore sent to the True Lab acted dead, without turning to dust, because someone had already stolen their souls. And while the human souls trapped within Photoshop Flowey still retained their identity, and were able to seperate from the fusion, the Fallen Down monsters who fused into the Amalgamates had no core to their beings to maintain their individuality, and they all fused inseparably together.

Undertale’s story centers around the souls of its characters. Who they are. What they might become. And how they might be corrupted, stolen, or redeemed. And a character’s soul determines what sort of emotions they can feel.

And while a person might clearly see the souls of others, it might be impossible for them to clearly look at their own. Or even believe they have one at all.

And yet, even those who believe they have no soul, might be in for a great surprise, and find they have one of the most powerful souls of all.

Because Asriel Dreemur has TWO souls.

And Gaster.. Has many, many more.

--

I’m BlackfootFerret, and welcome to The Ferret Theory!

Although I haven’t uploaded often, it’s been a busy year.

The Afton Family Horcruxes, my best shot at solving the epic story of FNAF 1-4 after three years of blood sweat the tears, is now out in Narration form. Everything I’ve ever discovered about Five Nights at Freddy’s is there, much of it resonating heavily with the mirror universe of the novels as “The Fourth Closet” has given a boost to many of my theories, especially the core theory that the Aftons tries to put their own souls into robots to achieve robotic immortality.

My Steven Universe theories also reached a high point this year, when my video “Followup to: Rose Quartz Ate/Saved Pink Diamond” scored several hits about how the Diamonds really were part of Steven’s family, and his destiny may be to try and heal and unite the divided Homeworld.

“The Last Jedi” showed that Maz Kanata, with her tech talents, blaster skills, and jetpack, is very likely a Mandalorian, and will be playing the role of the New Yoda in teaching a new hero to use their talents to save the galaxy. I believe this hero is Finn, one of many young Mandalorian children abducted by The First Order and unknowingly trained as their Elite Stormtroopers. My theory that Finn will become The Mandalore and strike down Kylo Ren as a martial hero rather than a force user is still very much in play, and looks more plausible after the last few Star Wars movies.

But while all I was busy making all of these videos, I also spent time researching Tobyfox’s amazing game Undertale in the background, and built and refined several theories that I shared with reddit and the Undertale Wiki as I went along. They may have been crude at first, but just like my FNAF and Steven Universe theories, they became more refined with each iteration, and delved deeper and deeper into the lore.

Until, finally, they reached a stable point where I couldn’t advance them further. And I felt I’d discovered all that I could.

And now that the sequel, Deltarune, is coming out, it’s time for me to release my findings before the full version arrives.

These are just my theories, and as always in detailed mystery like FNAF, Steven Universe, or Undertale, there are bound to be details that I missed. But the details I found fit so well together in my mind, that I feel I must have at least brushed the truth.

I can show why Asriel Dreemur doesn’t fade at the end of the True Pacifist Ending, and is still alive in the alternate mirror universe of Deltarune. Because not only does he still have a soul, he has a human soul, and his monster soul will regenerate over time.

I can prove WingDing Gaster’s mishap wasn’t an accident. He was killed by his best friend Sans, who was desperate to stop him from completing his Darkest Experiment.

But the most surprising thing I found, even though I wasn’t looking for it, was the true identity of Frisk. A discovery that forced me not only to question everything I knew about the game, but what I thought I knew, about myself.

This is my story.

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Part 1: Saving Asriel Dreemur

-

The most heartbreaking part of the original Undertale is the fate of Asriel Dreemur.

After his final battle with Frisk, Asriel turns a new leaf, abandons his guise as the God of Hyperdeath, and uses both the power of the six human souls as well as all the monster souls he stole to finally break The Barrier, and finally free his people.

After compassionately freeing all the souls inside him, Asriel tells Frisk that he believes himself to be soulless now, and doomed to fade back into the flower form he had before. He compassionately decides to spare his parents and friends the heartbreak of saying goodbye to him again, and asks Frisk not to tell them what happened, then walks back into the depth of the Underground even as the others prepare to return to the surface, and see the Sun at last.

It’s the tragic, emotional ending to one of the greatest video game stories of all time.

And yet, I don’t this is the end of Adriel’s story. An idea strengthen by Asriel’s reappearance in Deltarune Chapter 1.

If you travel all the way back to the beginning of the game after the True Pacifist Ending, you’ll find Asriel watching the golden flowers at the place where you originally fell down.

In fact, the only time you ever actually see Asriel turn back into a flower... is when you reset everything by restarting the game.

What’s going on? Is Asriel not going to fade after all?

No. Because even if he doesn’t realize it himself.. Asriel still has not only one, but TWO souls.

The first is revealed when you go back and talk to the old turtle adventurer Gerson Boom at his shop at the end of the game. If you ask him the question: “Is Asgore a goat?” Gerson will tell you about Boss Monsters.

The royal Dreemur line are a special kind of monster whose souls are strong enough to persist for a short time after death, and get absorbed by a human.

But the special thing, which Gerson tells you for the first time, is that when Boss Monsters have a child, the SOUL energy of the parents slowly flows into that child over time, causing the child to grow as the parents age.

The reason Asgore and Toriel seem the be immortal is that their only child Asriel has been dead for some time, and after Toriel left Asgore over his policy about killing humans, they aren’t likely to have another child anytime soon. An Gerson even adds that an adopted child like Frisk doesn’t count, this will only happen to a real boss monster child.

There is only one character this reveal can effect: Asriel Dreemur himself. And while he didn’t qualify as a boss monster child turning his time as a flower, now that Asriel has returned to boss monster form this principle should kick in again!

This means that Asriel will slowly regenerate his Boss Monster soul over time! And there is hope that he won’t have to fade! All he has to do is hang on long enough, and he’ll have a SOUL again!

But I don’t thing Asriel was ever in any danger of fading. Because while the second SOUL he has might not be his, its far more powerful than his original one.

Let’s review the story of Chara, and Asriel.

Long ago, Chara, the girl with the single stripe on her shirt, was the first human to fall into the Underground. The opening to Undertale show her fleeing her village and running into the cave, then tripping and falling through The Barrier into the world of monsters below.

She was found by Asriel, who brought her back to his parents, and together, the Dreemur Clan adopted Chara as a member of their own family.

Life seemingly went well for a while, with Asriel and Chara growing up together. Although, Chara would occasionally make creepy faces that disturbed Asriel.

The creepy faces were signs of a greater problem. Something terrible had happened to Chara back in her home village, bad enough to make her run away from the world of humans and want to live in the world of monsters. Whatever hostility Chara endured, it left a scar upon her soul, leaving her unable to feel true love and compassion. She viewed the monsters as a means to an end, tools in her plan to get revenge those that hurt her.

After learning of the poisonous properties of buttercups, Chara came up with a plan. She told Asriel that if she poisoned herself, he could absorb her human soul. A being with both a human and a monster soul could pass through the barrier. Asriel would tell Asgore and Toriel that Ciara’s dying wish was the return to her village, so they would let Asriel carry her body back to the human village. But the real plan, or so Chara told Asriel, was that he would kill six humans back at her village, harvest their souls, then return home with the power of seven humans souls, and the break the to and free his people.

Asriel reluctantly agreed to this plan, and did as Chara asked, carrying her lifeless body back to the human village. But when the villages saw the body, and moved to attack Asriel, thinking he had killed her, Chara revealed her true plan. She tried to control Asriel from within like a puppet, to force him to kill EVERYONE in the human village to exact her revenge, throwing away all their friendship in a horrible trick, revealing that she had never carried for Asriel in the first place.

But Chara’s plan went wrong. Asriel was too strong for her to control, and he refused to fight back even as the humans stabbed him again, and again. Gravely wounded, Asriel retreated back through the barrier, collapsed in the flower garden.. and died, scattering his dust and essence over the golden flowers, his monster soul dissipating with his death, unable to survive for long outside his body.

Then, much later.. Asriel woke up again, finding his mind in the body of a golden flower, the very one underneath him when he died, that had absorbed the most of his dust.

He also found he had strange powers. Whenever he died, he discovered he had the human power of Determination to keep living, and reset time to a save point in his own story. Powers Asriel had never had before.

But Asriel, now calling himself Flowey, had lost something as well. This monster, which had once been overflowing with love, could now feel every emotion.. except love. He could feel angry, scared, horrified, surprised, vengeful, confused, even sad. But even when he visited his mother in the Ruins, hoping against hope that she of all people could help him feel it again.. not even Toriel could help Flowey feel Compassion. As re-emphasized in Deltarune, Compassion is something that comes from the soul. And while the monster soul Asriel used to possess was overflowing with Compassion, the soul he had now was damaged, and unable to feel Compassion at all.

This is what drove Flowey to become homicidal, where he began killing people after his resets, feeling as if nothing he did mattered, and that the lives of those he used to love no longer mattered. And this feeling came to a head in the True Pacifist showdown with Frisk.

Even after Asriel absorbed the six human souls, and almost all the monster souls in the underground, giving him the equivalent of seven human souls and the power to become a God and restore his true form, Asriel didn’t regain his Compassion. He toyed with Frisk, believing him to be his old friend Chara, and planned on kill him again, and again, resetting the world anew each time, until the memory of Frisk and all of his friends were erased.

But Frisk was able to feel the souls of his friends trapped within Asriel, and reach out to them. He restored the memories of Toriel and Asgore, Alyphs and Undyne, and Sans and Papyrus. And all the while Asriel, the God of Hyperdeath, leered above Frisk, his disposition never changing.

But then Frisk felt a seventh soul deep within Asriel, and reached out to it, calling a name.. and the moment Frisk did, Asriel became confused, feeling an alien emotion fore the first time in ages.

Another memory was restored, that both was Asriel’s, and wasn’t. The memory of finding the first human who fell into the underground, of helping her to her feet, and adopting her into the Dreemur family. The memory of when Asriel met his real best friend for the first time.

CHARA was the name Frisk called out, striking at the very core of Asriel’s being where not even he could see, reaching out to the human soul that still resided there ever seen the doomed trip to the village. The human soul that did not vanish with her death, or even Asriel’s, but remained with him to this day.

Asriel, confused, tried to strike out to stop Frisk, but Frisk weathered the attacks, determined to save him. And each time Frisk used his Save power on Asriel, some of the ancient damage healed, and Asriel, through Chara’s human soul, began to feel compassion again. The attacks became half-hearted, then weak as Asriel began to realize the pain he had caused so many others, finding he couldn’t go on.. finding he didn’t WANT to hurt Frisk anymore. Yet fear of what would happen to him if he relinquished his captured souls flared, and he hit Frisk with all his power in one final blast. But even then, Frisk was too determined to give up, and Asriel finally stopped, surrendered his God of Hyperdeath mantle, and finally changed back into the scared little kid he always was. Then found his courage, grew up, and did what had to be done.

Asriel couldn’t feel compassion.. because Chara couldn’t feel compassion, and he still carried her damaged human soul within him after all this time.

This is why Asriel compassionately relinquished his power, and broke the barrier, even while believing it would mean his doom. He thought the compassion his felt was from the souls of others. Yet even after he set them all free, Asriel didn’t fade, and continued being able to feel compassion, because of the healed human soul that still glowed within him.

Asriel Dreemur has two souls. His own monster soul he’ll regain over time, and the human soul of his best friend that he shields within him still. And although he decided to stay in the Underground after the others left for the surface, Asriel, OUR Asriel, will certainly be in the next game.

—— Part 2: Chara’s curse ——

This begs the question.. if Chara’s human soul is still in Asriel.. what soul does Chara have in the games?

Flowey answers this question in the No Mercy route after Chara kills Toriel, by referring to her and her “stolen soul”. Frisk’s soul, the one the player is actually able to control.

We see this at the end of Deltarune Chapter 1, where Chara’s, who has one-stripe on her shirt, tears out Frisk’s soul and throws it in a cage, where the player is still able to move it around during the cutscene. We might control that heart.. but Chara now controls the body.

Which Asriel died, his dust scattered on many flowers, dust that contained both his essence and Chara’s determination. This is why you find patches of golden flowers growing in inhospitable places in Undertale. Alphys studied how injecting flowers with determination made their seeds cling more firmly, flowers that were determined to live and spread despite the odds.

Frisk falls into one of these golden flower patches once he falls after Undyne chases him, and has a flashback of a memory that wasn’t his, the memory of when Asriel first found Chara after she fell down.

And at the beginning of the game, Frisk wakes up with a bandage on his head, after falling into a similar patch of golden flowers.

When Frisk fell into these flowers, he was not only exposed to Asriel’s dust, he was also infected by the lingering presence of Corrupted Chara. And Frisk’s actions during the game determine how this effects him.

Whenever Frisk makes decisions that are truly his own, and resists the temptation to kill monsters and grow stronger by gaining EXP, he gains more control over his own destiny as Chara’s influence fades as she is unable to take him over. If Frisk looks in the mirror again in Asgore’s house toward the end of the game, it will tell him “Despite everything that’s happened, it’s still you.”

But the reverse happens whenever Frisk acts more like Chara instead.

The more Frisk advances along the No Mercy path, the more strange, disturbing things began to happen to him. Familiar dialogue suddenly turns into creepy red text that doesn’t sound like Frisk at all, but a dark voice speaking from within him. When looking in the mirror, the narrator, who usually refers to Frisk in third person, starts saying “It’s Me, Chara” in red text.

A popular theory says that Chara is actually the narrator in Undertale, and she only knows what she learns along with us during the game. She thinks the monster candy must taste like licorice, until you actually try some and discover it’s not like licorice at all. The game enters “serious mode” whenever you encounter members of the Dreemur family, and funny names for items, like “ButtsPie” for Toriel’s butterscotch pie, suddenly become described in simple, humorless terms like “Pie” instead, as if fighting one of the Dreemurs is bringing back painful memories. This theory seems plausible, and I’m willing to adopt it into my own.

In fact, depending on how you, the player, act, Chara’s outlook on life becomes brighter, or darker. A half-full glass becomes “half-empty” as Chara the Narrator’s pessimism grows. Monster Kid becomes “In My Way”, and “Looks like Free EXP”, and the narrator shifts more and more from a positive 3rd person tale of what Frisk is doing, into a negative 1st person narrative that makes it sound like Chara is in control instead of YOU.

The more Frisk acts like Chara, and strikes without compassion or mercy, thinking only of his own gains, the more the shard of Chara’s dark soul is able to take root in him, influence his actions.. and eventually utterly take him over and claim his soul as her own.

This process comes to a head at the end of the legendary fight against Sans. Somehow, Sans is able to know exactly what attacks Frisk is going to throw at him, and dodge out of the day, even in his sleep! But the last strike, the one that actually hits him for the first time, isn’t one the player orders, but an extra attack Frisk seemingly makes out of the blue without waiting for player input, that takes Sans by surprise.

We don’t realize it at the time.. but that decision to attack Sans while he’s sleeping is the last action that FRISK.. ever takes.

When Chara’s unauthorized attack hits Sans, making him bleed very un-skeleton-like red blood, Sans isn’t actually finished. He stands up, limps offscreen, says he’s heading to Grillby’s, then talks to a Papyrus we thought was dead, as if he’s just opened a portal to another dimension, and stepped through, leaving us in this doomed one.

And then, and only then, do we hear the familiar death notification sound, gain Execution Points, and reach Level of Violence 20.

You only get Execution Points when you kill something in Undertale. Yet Sans doesn’t die at the end of this fight.

Where do we get the EXP?

We, Chara, get it by killing FRISK.

From here on in the story, Player Choice is gone, and Chara is the one actually playing the game.

We have no chance to save Asgore, who Chara destroys without hesitation

And, most hardbreakingly, not only does Chara destroy Asriel, she makes an example out of him, stabbing him over, and over, and over again, until not even a shred of him is left at all.

This scene is even more horrible than it seems. Chara isn’t just destroying Asriel/Flowey, once her greatest friend in the world. She’s tearing her OWN ORIGINAL SOUL APART by doing so, whether she realizes this or not.

Actions have consequences for everyone in Undertale.

And the worse consequence of all.. is for US, THE PLAYER.

Remember when we entered our name at the very beginning of the game, thinking that this would be the character that we would control while playing the game, and serve as our personal avatar?

The name “Chara” is derived from the word “Character”.

But no matter what we type for this name, the character we actually control in Undertale is always Frisk, who always had his own name from the beginning.

When selected the name for “The Fallen Human”, we weren’t naming Frisk, the 7th human to fall into the Underground.. we were named Chara, the FIRST human to fall.

And we gave Chara our own name.

Even if we weren’t aware of it at the time.. there’s a great justice in this. Because our actions in Undertale don’t just determine Chara’s fate, they determine the fate of our own soul

WE are Chara in this game. We just happen to be unwittingly controlling the actions of Frisk. And the reason people have such a powerful empathetic bond with Asriel Dreemur.. is because he has OUR SOUL within him. And his fate is tied directly to our own.

If you save Asriel, and prove that a human can be more than a heartless monster killer, it’s your own soul that you’re saving, and restoring the compassion within.

And the inverse is true on the No Mercy route, where nothing we do can save Asriel from Chara’s sadistic blade. And after teaching Chara to kill everything in her wake, it really shouldn’t surprise us when Chara’s final act is to break the 4th wall, talk to the player directly.. then stab us through our own monitor screen, as one more monster harvested for EXP.

After that, there’s only one way to continue playing that game. And that’s to beg Chara to restore the world.. by giving her our own, player’s, soul.

Our determination is now her determination. Our soul is now her stolen soul. And no matter what we do from then on, no matter how many times we play the game, this transaction can never be undone, and remains the one permanent change to the world. And even carries to the realm of Deltarune beyond.

When slaying monsters, you best be careful not to become one yourself.

——- Part 3: The Inventions of Alyphs ——-

Monsters may not be as mean as humans, but they’re still capable of lying. Or at the very least, only telling us part of the truth.

Doctor Alyphs lied to Frisk several times about the arraigned fights with Metaton, the pink stuff she fed Undyne that WASN’T ice cream, and had to spin many creative tales when Asgore ordered her to collect the souls of dying monsters, and everything went wrong.

But the largest half-truth is about the largest structure in the Underground: The Core.

This sprawling complex, built directly on top of a lava field that requires a wolf to throw ice into the river night and day to keep it from melting, is supposedly designed for one purpose: To provide municipal electricity. But if all the Core is really designed to do is power the Christmas lights in Snowdin, it’s massive overkill.

And the security inside is paranoid! Frisk had to brave lasers, force fields, hordes of guards and mazes of steam vents to navigate what could only be described as a Mad Scientist’s dream lair, filled from head to toe with marvels of technology.

It’s impossible to know all of the inner Core facilities, because the innermost rooms were designed to rearrange themselves at the whim of their controller, a defensive measure that means there could be many places within The Core that we haven’t seen in the original play through of Undertale.

But two things are certain. The Core was designed to be much more than a simple power plant. And somewhere within it is a portal to warp time, space, and dimension.

Doctor Alyphs reveals in the first Metaton encounter that she’s been doing a lot of research into alternate dimensions. And since it took her literally seconds to turn Frisk’s phone into a bag of holding by installing a miniature dimensional warp box into it, she’s gotten very good at this research.

The Core was commissioned by King Asgore at the request of the first royal scientist, the legendary Wingding Gaster, who was famously scattered across time and space in an apparent accident that couldn’t have happened unless Gaster was also doing dimensional research at the time.

Much of Alyphs’ research built upon Gaster’s own. Alyphs built the frightening Determination Extraction machine using blueprints she discovered in The True Lab, showing that Gaster was the pioneer in Determination technology.

But in spite of Metaton’s joke that Alyphs could only find a suitable date by exploring other dimensions, Alyphs, and Gaster’s, original dimensional research had a high-minded goal: To find a way to bypass The Barrier without resorting to the grim business of soul harvesting.

The idea is simple: Why spend so much pain and blood trying to break The Barrier with soul magic, if you could just warp to a dimension where the Barrier never existed in the first place, walk a few feet, then create a portal back to the home dimension on the other side? You would effectively create a tunnel through time and space that bypassed The Barrier completely!

It was a noble goal. But unfortunately, it didn’t work, since Asgore later ordered Alyphs to collect souls from the dying Fallen Down monsters, resorting to a much grimmer backup plan. It seemed that every alternate dimension Alyphs could reach still had its Barrier intact.

The research on large-scale portals that could transport the entire monster population  still came in handy, though. During the No Mercy timeline Alyph’s friends inform Chara-possessed Frisk that Alyphs is current evacuating the remaining monsters into the Core, and plans to send them somewhere where Chara can never find them. Considering that Chara destroys her entire universe when she wins, the monsters would have had to flee to another dimension in the multiverse.

And then there’s the lingering question of what happens to Frisk on a Neutral ending of Undertale.

It takes both a monster soul and a human soul for a creature to walk through the barrier. Yet no matter what choices you make in the game, Frisk never absorbs the boss monster souls of either Toriel or Asgore, and reaches The Barrier with no way to pass through it, or progress further.

And yet, whenever Sans tries to call Frisk at the end of the game, Frisk is always gone, and Sans has to leave a message.

An elevator to The True Lab is right next door to Asgore’s lair. If Frisk knew about The Portal, and how to reach it... he may have sent himself back in time to try again.

It’s an interesting idea, and something to keep in mind as we move forward.

——— Part 4 — The Determination of Undyne ———

At some point in Undyne’s life, whether she realized it or not, she went through an amazing transformation.

Early in life, Undyne trained hard to try and defeat the fluffy King Asgore in the sparing ring. Only to find it took everything she had just to land a single hit on him, and Asgore outclassed her so easily he was actually apologetic about it.

This makes sense, since Asgore was one of the rare and powerful Boss Monsters, while Undyne was just a normal fishy stick-person of a monster, compared to the King of them all.

And yet, in the neutral endings of the game where both Toriel and Undyne are alive, Toriel returns to take the throne and reverse Asgore’s policy of killing humans... only to have Undyne stage a revolution, and personally kick The Queen of All Monsters off the throne “with her strength”, according to Sans.

The game says that Asgore and Toriel have the very same stats of Attack 80 and Defense 80. And after one-shoting both Flowey and Asgore with a single fireball each, one might easily think Toriel was stronger than Asgore.

And yet Undyne was not only able to defeat Toriel in one-on-one combat, she becomes one of the two Ultimate Bosses in the No Mercy timeline. Undyne the Undying is frighteningly powerful, and second only to Sans himself in terms of boss difficulty of the game.

How did a normal monster become stronger than a Boss Monster?

Only one answer is presented: Undyne’s Determination.

Undertale make a point in telling us that, somehow, Undyne has Determination within her. A powerful substance generated only by human souls. And the uniquely horrific melting conclusion to her Neutral boss fight makes certain of this, giving her character traits seen only in the molten shifting forms of the Determination-enriched Amalgamates.

How did Undyne get her Determination? Other theorists have pointed out that the source is likely one of Alyphs’ unorthodox experiments.

One of the six humans that came before Frisk died in a stretch of tall grass, possibly leaking some traces of their Determination into it. Alyphs declared this stretch of grass Scientifically Protected, and harvested some of this grass to take back to the Regular Lab, where she somehow extracted pink slime from this green grass, and fed it to Undyne.

Alyphs hurriedly confesses to Undyne during their date that she only used this grass to make ice cream. Yet when calling Papyrus, Sans and Undyne on the phone, Undyne says she hates ice cream, but loves the pink glop Alyphs makes, which tastes nothing like it.

Knowingly or otherwise, it seems Alyphs has been feeding trace amounts of Determination to Undyne for a long time.

But accident or not, Undyne’s example serves as the Control Group of how exposure to Determination should effect the average monster. Undertale wasn’t kidding when it said a monster with a human soul would be a being of incredible power, if the lingering trace touch of a human’s presence could empower Undyne so greatly.

If the Underground had many, many monsters who were also injected with Determination, Asgore -should- have an unstoppable army!

And yet.. something is very, very wrong.

After the attempt to bypass the barrier through dimensional travel failed, Asgore had the bodies of several monsters who had “Fallen Down”, quote unquote, delivered to The True Lab, instructing Alyphs to begin the generations-long task of collecting the souls of dying monsters to eventually gather enough souls to gain the equivalent soul power of the Seventh Human Soul, and break the Barrier for certain, even if no other humans fell into the Ruins during that time.

These Fallen Down monsters were comatose, giving every sign of being dead. And yet.. while monsters normally turn to dust immediately upon death, along with their souls, the Fallen somehow still clung to existence, refusing to disintegrate. Determined to carry on.

Alyphs theorized that if she injected the fallen monsters with Determination, it would strengthen their souls to the point where regular monsters souls would not turn to dust immediately upon death, but would survive outside the body long enough to be collected and accumulated, eventually making the destruction of the Barrier possible. A theory that -seemed- sound.

And yet, the Fallen monsters showed no change at first when Alyphs injected them with Determination. So she injected them again, and again. Until, finally, something creepy happened.. the Fallen monsters slowly, lethargically, began to wake up.

At first, everything seemed fine. It looked like the Fallen had made a miraculous recovery, and Alyphs sent letters to the families of the Fallen, telling them their loved ones, once thought dead, would then be returning home!

But then, horror struck. The Risen Fallen began to merge together into terrifying, twisted forms, almost ghostlike with their ability to shape shift and defy any attempts to kill them. The Amalgamates were born, each one still possessing some of the identity of the original monsters, but seamlessly fused together like a Crystal Gem fusion gone horribly wrong.

Rather than becoming super-soldiers, the Fallen slowly rose, then turned to mush, and seemingly fused to each other just by touching each other, as if there was nothing inside them to separate their identities.

The six human souls inside Photoshop Flowey were still able to maintain their individuality even as part of the fusion, and eventually break free under their own Psychokinetic power. But the Amalgamates possessed no such ability, and everything within one of the Fallen became a part of all of the others, seamlessly.

What happened to the Fallen doesn’t sound like what happened to Undyne at all. Looking at the Fallen, one would think Determination would be horribly toxic to monsters, rather than empowering.

Because the Fallen Down monsters, which came from every family of monsters in both the Ruins and the Underground, were not typical monsters at all. And although she couldn’t have known it at the time, Asgore and Alyphs’ plan to harvest souls from the Fallen was doomed to failure from the very beginning.

Why was Undyne able to become so strong, and repeatedly touch Monster Kid without immediately fusing with him, like the Fallen would?

Because out of all the monsters injected with Determination, Undyne was the only one who still had her soul.

——— Part 5 - An Ode to the Fallen ———

It’s easy to assume, at first, that the reason so many monsters of all types were simply collapsing was from natural causes, like age, or illness.

But a quick look at which monsters are actually in the Amalgamates shows this can’t be the case.

Young Shyren was one of the Fallen, old age did not apply to her. And buff Aaron was literally as healthy as a horse.. but that didn’t stop him from falling along with the others.

The Fallen Down monsters were much weaker than Undyne, and seemingly already dead when they were found, comatose and unmoving. It was as if someone had already injected them with Determination, making their bodies persist after something essential had been taken from them...

And this strange plague of collapsing monsters wasn’t limited to the Underground, it happened in the Ruins as well. Vegetoids only appear in the Ruins, yet several of them were in the fusion with Snowdrake’s mother.

When we first met Toriel, she said she was making her daily rounds to see if anyone had “fallen down”, quote unquote. Our first instinct was to assume that she was looking for humans that had 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 for anyone who had Fallen Down. Toriel wasn’t just looking for humans.. she was looking for afflicted monsters as well. And it happened frequently enough that she felt daily patrols were necessary.

Whoever is going about stealing monster souls, they have the ability to strike both the Underground, and the Ruins.

Undertale is strangely specific about who, other than Toriel, can travel between the Ruins and the Underground: Only burrowing creatures, like Flowey, can tunnel under the door, and only ghosts, like Napstablook, can phase through it.

So whoever our monster-soul thief is, they must have: 1) The ability to travel between the Ruins and the Underground  2) The knowledge of how to extract Determination and inject it into monsters so their souls can be collected 3) A source of Determination at their command, to make their soul-stealing spree possible.

Corrupted Flowey certainly has the will to steal souls, and the ability to travel to the Ruins, but still doesn’t believe he has a soul of his own at this point, so he doesn’t have the power to steal souls until he acquires the Six Human Souls at the end of the game, then absorbs the souls of all the assembled monster kind in a blast of amazing power. Flowey may have determination, but he’s not a mad scientist, and can’t perform the Determination Extraction and Injection required to steal the souls of monsters.

Napstablook is a powerful ghost, who somehow resists Flowey’s soul vacuum cleaner blast that absorbs all the other monsters. When Asriel was able to restore the bodies of the other monsters by releasing their souls, it gives hope that the Fallen might eventually find life again. But Napstablook is a kind music geek, not a mad scientist, and his magical tears were able to drive off The Mad Dummy. If only magic can hurt ghosts, and the Snowdin library says only monsters have magic, that would suggest that Napstablook has a monster soul, although the exact nature of ghosts being neither monster or human is still an interesting bit of lore, and we don’t know what type of creatures Napstablook, Mad Dummy, and Mettaton were before they became ghosts, or if they even were different creatures before.

It’s interesting to note that only a few creatures can actually shapeshift in Undertale. Ghosts, Amalgamates (who seem to be related), and Flowey, to a limited degree. This is important, because Muffet the Spider Queen mentioned that the creature who paid her to retrieve Frisk’s human soul was able to shapeshift in the shadows. They also offered Muffet a LOT of money, enough to save the spiders trapped in the Ruins, which doesn’t exactly sound like our little flowery friend

Flowey tried to kill Frisk earlier, but then decided it was much more interesting to follow Frisk on his journey. Flowey would not be the shapeshifter who was trying to steal Frisk’s soul.. The same way he stole the souls of so many monsters.

So the cunning shadow soul thief must not only be a shapeshifting ghost, not only be a Mad Scientist with knowledge of Determination Extraction and its uses, they must also possess a human soul of their own to serve as a source of Determination to use.

So our soul thief must be the ghost of a HUMAN mad scientist

It’s a hardcore, exacting set of criteria to find. But it just so happens, this search returns one solid hit.

One day he vanished, without a trace.

They say he shattered across time and space.

How can I say so, without fear?

(EXTREME CLOSEUP ON THE TALKING HUMAN HEAD IN GASTER FOLLOWER #1’s HAND!) I’m holding a piece of him.. RIGHT… HERE!

Wingding Gaster, the previous Royal Scientist who first invented the Determination Extraction machine.. Was a natural at using Determination. Because, as a former human, he was quite familiar with the stuff.

And it seems, for whatever reason, from both paying Muffet to collect his soul, and hacking the elevator in The True Lab, that Doctor Gaster has a personal score to settle, with Frisk.

Although, strangely, during his Mystery Man encounter, Gaster seems reluctant to actually fight Frisk himself. 