Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26006155-20200107155350/@comment-26006155-20200123020909

Ambassador, I already covered that in the script.

Sans is the older, more jaded version of Frisk. A Frisk that has made mistakes, and has a terrible guilt on his conscience after killing his former best friend Gaster in order to try to save the monsters from The Darkest Experiment.

Frisk is young and full of idealism, but Sans is scarred and more pragmatic. At the MTT dinner tried to talk Frisk out of his quest to leave the Underground, and stay below where he has good food and good friends. A far better fate than having Asgore’s blood on his hands.

Sans knows that even if they do break the Barrier, he still can’t go back to his real home on another world. And that no matter what they do, the timeline will likely just be reset anyway. In his own words “it’s hard to give it my all”. Sans has a complete knowledge of how the Dave and Load system works. He makes Frisk abuse this mechanic and talk to him repeatly in the Jugdement Hall to prove that Frisk is a time traveler... just like Sans himself. And at the end of it all Frisk discovers that the key to Sans’ room was on his keychain all along from the start of the game. The very phone Toriel gave him was probably Sans’ own phone from when he took a trip through the Underground.

Sans is no longer innocent, and the True Pacifist ending is locked away from him. He’s killed Gaster and Flowey before, and Frisk himself, potentially any number of times.

But the True Pacifist run is still possible for Frisk. And so Sans is lending Frisk what aid he can, without blowing his cover as a human in disguise.

But there’s also a problem. Frisk has been infected by some of Chara’s essence. So Sans needs to test Frisk, to see if it’s really his innocent earlier self in there.. or if Chara’s murderous shade has already taken him over.