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gargyshmub · 1 year

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DELTARUNE; Gargy's Fairytale Theory

So, lately I've kind of had an itch in the back of my mind about DELTARUNE, more specifically the secret or hidden bosses in the game and a little correlation they all share. I'll try to keep this under 100 pages but i promise nothing (tee hee hee)

If you've played the game to the extent you're looking at a tumblr blog dedicated to it, you're probably familiar with the character's jevil and spamton. These are the two characters coined by the community as "secret bosses", since you have to stray away from the games intended path to find them (in most cases.)

When you defeat spamton in his 'NEO form', a neat little song will play with his dialogue "a real boy!", this is a nod to the fable/fairytale "pinochio" I'm sure everyone's familiar with. It's a story about a doll that comes to life in search of becoming 'a real boy'. This corrilation made me realize there are A LOT of similarity's between pinochio and spamton. The strings, his regular form being a mockup of a doll, even his goal to become "big", its almost like becoming a 'real boy'. He knows he's not 'real', and just like at the end of pinochio, he too becomes renewed (reneo'd).

This made me wonder if the other secret boss, Jevil, represented something other than the Joker card. Then I realized whenever he was hit in his fat empty head it actually sprung out like a jack-in-the-box. I initially discarded this since it wasn't really a fable or fairy-tale, but if you do some digging you'll find it actually is!!!@! back in the 1400's somewhat, the jack in the box was originally named 'The Devil in the Box', essentially it's a story about a man who trapped a devil in a boot in order to save a village in france at the time, kinda like that one story about the court jester who got locked away by his magician friend in order to save their kingdom (haha. hahahahha. thats from deltarune. hahaha.) just to run home my point, jack-in-the-box; Devil in the box. Jack; Devil. What way could you fuse them together? Dack? Jackil? maybe some other 3rd way that has some importance to Yea thats right you know you've always known its Jevil.

Obviously, in deltarune fashion, its easy to overthink most elements in the story. Granted, toby will make an entire 2nd game about a hypothetical character you've never met but no you've only ever POSSIBLY met through a 1/100 chance door where he'll show you his asshole and then disappear into a million pieces, but yea, it's easy to make certain correlations that aren't even really there. In this case however I'd say that there's one more correlation that seals the deal that makes this theory WORTH theorizing.

Yea gaster. even though he's not even technically a character yet, every piece of information regarding him seems to lead people to believe he's not only the narrator at the beginning of the game, but he's also the 'man' behind the tree (since the way you find 'his sprite' in undertale is almost exactly similar ['theres a room in-between, theres a room, in-between']). I'm assuming you know what there is to know about gaster so im not gonna go into it, so onto the correlation.

I've read before someone talking about how gaster represents easter eggs in video games, not only physically (egghead) but metaphorically (the way you find him, his implied involvment with the secret bosses, the fact he gives you an '''''EGG''''' when you DO find him). Well if he is technically involved with the secret bosses, wouldn't that make him a fable too? I'm here to tell you he is. he is HUMPTY DUMPTY from SECOND GRADE FAIRY TALE PLAY.

I've already gone over his physical and metaphorical symbolism relating to eggs, but the story of humpty dumpty is also very, haha, hahahaha, hahahhahahaha

Humpty dumpty sat on a wall (The Core)

Humpty dumpty took a big fall ("Fell into his own creation")

All the kings horses and all the kings men (Who did gaster work for again?)

Couldn't put Humpty together again ("He was shattered across time and space")

What could this mean? for the future it means that if this theory is right, EVERY secret boss we meet is gonna represent not only a lightworld object, but an actual FAIRTY TALE, a FABLE. I mean, how many fables are out there. I know theres one in particular, one that the game is named after, one that has to do with an ANGEL. an ''''ANGEL'''' with ''''TATTERED WINGS''''''.

but then again idk

EDIT: ALSO LITTLE MISS MUFFET THINK ABOUT THAT UNDER-HEADS LITTLE MISS MUFFET SAT ON HER TUFFET

Last edit: also this has no grounds as an actual theory but uhhh that mf that made the Undertale RED boss fight got hired on the team. Huh. I wonder what Red was a reference to. Huh.

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haunted-80s-arcade-game · 4 months

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An Inconclusive and Slightly Unhinged Analysis of the True Lab Entries from Undertale: And Why They May Be Significant to Deltarune.

There is very little I can add about the True Lab entries that hasn’t already been pointed out by the fandom many many times before, so this analysis is more of a re-telling of EVERYTHING rather than a suggestion of brand new theories, however… I will be throwing in a few details I noticed while extensively combing through each lab entry that may have been missed by other people (but again, I highly doubt it. I haven’t searched through every thread on reddit or tumblr etc. so if I’m repeating anything that others have already mentioned, then I apologise. I’m mostly just writing this to get all of my thoughts in order before I explode).

Nevertheless, I’m going to order this in chronological order based on the most well known facts/speculations, down to the least well known, and the speculations that I myself have been recently thinking about.

So what are the True Lab Entries?

Basically, the True Lab is only accessible when carrying out the True Pacifist Route and reaching (almost) the end of the game. After defeating Omega Flowey, you can travel back to Hotland and enter Alphys’s Lab like normal. This time, however, you will find a note on the ground reading:

Hey,

Thanks for your help back there. You guys… Your support really means a lot to me. But… as difficult as it is to say this… You guys alone can’t magically make my own problems go away. I want to be a better person. I don’t want to be afraid anymore. And for that to happen, I have to be able to face my own mistakes. I’m going to start doing that now.

I want to be clear. This isn’t anyone else’s problem but mine. But if you don’t ever hear from me again… If you want to know “the truth”. Enter the door to the north of this note. You all at least to deserve to know what I did.

Upon entering the door to the north of the note (the door with a bathroom sign on it), you find yourself in an elevator, which almost immediately breaks down when you try to ride it, and sends you plummeting down into what is known as the True Lab.

The True Lab is basically just the creepy basement where Alphys does all of her more shady experiments involving determination, or at least, the place where she kept all the monsters who’ve had determination injected into them after death. Now, however, all of those monsters have turned into sticky, melted “Amalgamates” and are being hidden away from the rest of the Underground and in particular, their families, who regularly send letters to Alphys asking where their family members are, only to be completely ghosted by her. I’m going to safely assume that everyone reading this knows all of this and therefore, I don’t need to continue on with this very long-winded explanation.

The most intriguing part about the True Lab are the Lab Entries, which are basically updates about experiments being logged as “entries” that can be read as the player wanders around the True Lab. They are numbered, but this is both painfully significant and also potentially not significant at all, so bear with me here. I’ll get back to this.

Who writes the Entries?

This is where we start to get into the meat of the True Lab, and also down the rabbit hole of speculation, so pretty much nothing beyond this point can be considered canon, apart from a few select details.

At first glance, it seems that all of the entries are written by Alphys, and indeed, a lot of them certainly are. Entry Number 11 is certainly proof of this:

[“now that mettaton’s made it big, he never talks to me anymore… except to ask when i’m going to finish his body. but i’m afraid if i finish his body, he won’t need me anymore… then we’ll never be friends ever again… not to mention, every time i try to work on it, i just get really sweaty…”]

Obviously, we know that Alphys canonically created Mettaton’s body, so we know– at the very least– that this entry was written by Alphys. Because of this, people have assumed that she also wrote entries 9-13, and 18-21 (and maybe entry 16 and the second version of entry 17… again, I will get back to this). This is because the grammar and the capitalisation of letters at the beginning of the sentences (or rather, lack thereof) is the same throughout all of them (entry 16 is tricky to determine, because there are no sentences. It simply reads “no No NO NO NO NO NO”). Not only that but, again, a few have very Alphys-specific details in them, such as her spending time at the dump.

Now… this is where it gets Very, Very Interesting (for those who haven’t heard this shit thousands of times before because this is NOT new information, I promise). The rest of the entries are written COMPLETELY differently. I don’t just mean grammar-wise either (but it is noticeable that everything is properly capitalised, which tipped people off into thinking that these weren’t written by Alphys). What I haven’t really seen analysed before is how much the content of the entries don’t quite match up with Alphys’s timeline. Not to mention the fact that there are some very specific wording choices that caught my notice.

Entry number 4 and 8 are the ones that mostly confirm the theory that these weren’t written by Alphys, at least in my mind, by the simple fact that they mention Toriel (both directly and indirectly). Entry number 4 explains that the writer found the VHS tapes and we can glean from their wording that they watched them (why would they say that Asgore shouldn’t watch them if they didn’t know what was on them?) which means they heard audio footage of Toriel.

In entry number 8, they mention how they found a flower that appeared “just before the queen left”

which means that they are aware of Toriel, and may have even interacted with her, if they were around before she left as well. I say all this because, unless Alphys is lying at the end of the Pacifist Route, she doesn’t recognise Toriel.

(Yes it’s a screenshot from Jack’s playthrough, did you think I was gonna go through the full game for this one scene?)

None of the monsters really do, except for Sans, because Toriel left long before any of them were even born, judging by the timeline (which I’ll get to in a sec). Not only does Alphys not know the queen, but she also absolutely did not have anything to do with the first flower, and therefore did not create Flowey.

Think about the timeline for a second. Toriel left fairly soon after the original human’s death and after Asriel’s death, when Asgore started to take the souls of other human children. We can assume that, unless human children were literally dropping down every other week, it has been YEARS between the first human who fell and Frisk falling down. It could be anywhere from a few decades to potentially even centuries (I think I saw a timeline suggesting it had been about a hundred years since Chara fell?). Now, I’m sure many monsters probably have ridiculously long lifespans– clearly Toriel and Asgore do, but I honestly don’t buy the idea that Alphys was there when Asriel died and the queen left. I honestly don’t think she had anything to do with any of the experiments in the True Lab beyond the creation of the Amalgamates.

And, because of this, the reason why I’m sure she didn’t create Flowey is because Flowey had to be created fairly soon after Asriel died. We know that he was, because entry number 8 specifically mentions that the first flower was taken from the outside world, just after the queen left (“hang on,” I hear you say. “The entry says the flower appeared just after the queen left, not that it was taken. It could have been taken way later!” buttercups live for two months, next question). Now, this is where it gets a little tricky, because I think there are still some people who don’t quite understand how Flowey was created (believe me, I was one of them). The reason he has Asriel’s soul inside of him is because the dust from Asriel’s soul stuck to the flower and mixed with the determination that was injected into it. In entry number 10, which was written by Alphys, it’s mentioned that the seeds of the flowers “stick to you, and won’t let go” which is a nod towards how the dust stuck to the flower. This is why Flowey had to have been made very soon after Asriel’s death, which Alphys just was not there for (and yes, I know that isn’t technically confirmed canon, but I really don’t think the timelines match up in this case). Overall, I think it’s safe to assume that Alphys didn’t create Flowey.

However, going back to entry 10, we do know she worked on flowers. In fact, I think this is more solid evidence that Alphys didn’t specifically create Flowey, because the original experiment was on one, original flower. Whereas Alphys seems to work on multiple of them: “whatever. they’re a hassle to deal with anyway.”

I also don’t think that Alphys’s experiments on the flowers led anywhere, because the only reason Flowey turned into Flowey in the first place was because he had Asriel’s soul embedded inside him, not because he was a flower. The entries about Alphys’s experiments in the flowers seem to align with this, because there’s nothing in them that suggests the flowers ever did anything after being injected with determination.

“But wait!” Yes… I know. What about entry number 18?

Well… I don't think Alphys wrote this one either.

I know the lack of capitalisation suggests that she did, but I think this is a red herring. Think about it, does this read like Alphys? It’s very abrupt, very factual. There’s no concerned ramblings or anything, it is simply a grim statement that the flower has gone. Also, why does it only mention the flower? We know that Alphys has worked on more than one flower before, so the fact that she hasn’t clarified, or said a flower is suspicious, to say the least. It sounds more as if the person who wrote this is the person who experimented on the original flower (or at least was present during that experiment), aka Flowey.

Lastly, none of the other entries that Alphys presumably wrote ever mentions this flower again. True, neither do any of the entries after this one, but to be fair… this is the last entry that (possibly) isn’t written by Alphys.

So who did write the other entries?

Well, you can theorise all you want on this aspect, but personally I do believe it has to be W.D. Gaster and naturally that’s the most accepted theory. Obviously, we know for a fact that he was the Royal Scientist before Alphys, so it stands to reason that these are the notes from his experiments. This is where I’d like to actually talk more about the contents of these entries, though, and put together more of an idea of exactly what Gaster was working on, how it relates back to Alphys’s own experiments, and one theory that I made up while reading the entries (though I haven’t checked to see if anyone else has pointed this out before… perhaps I should have researched this more instead of just launching into my own ramblings).

First, Gaster specifically researched humans and their souls as part of his experimentation, including experimenting on the souls of the humans that fell into the underground. Again, this is why I don’t think Alphys had a hand in these experiments because– unless she’s still hiding a lot of things– she never mentions that her knowledge of humans really goes anywhere beyond what she’s seen in anime, let alone personal experience with the souls of the fallen humans.

This isn’t what interested me, though. The interesting thing, in my opinion, is where the experiments of Gaster and Alphys cross over each other: the monster souls that were injected with determination, an experiment which they both worked on. Here me out, but.. I don’t think these are the same monsters. I think Gaster experimented on dead monsters and their souls and the results were just as inconclusive and fatal as when Alphys tried to remake the experiment. However, I think the outcomes might have been slightly different.

I think Gaster specifically created the so-called Gaster Followers (and Goner kid). I think these are the monsters that he experimented on, and something went wrong, and now they don’t even exist anymore.

I’ll get more into my reasonings why in a sec, but I wanna go back to the timeline again. If Gaster experimented on Flowey around the same time as he experimented on the monsters, then these can’t be the same monsters that make up Alphys’s amalgamates. We’ve already ascertained that there could be a decades long gap between Gaster’s experiments and Alphys’s experiments, so how would Alphys still be getting regular, frantic letters from the same families of whom Gaster experimented on if their family members have been gone for decades? I’m not saying the families would have given up entirely (if they’re even still alive by this point) but the letters would certainly be fewer and farther between, surely. The letters Alphys is receiving are from families who have only just recently lost their family members, which doesn’t match up with the timeline if these are supposedly the same monsters from Gaster’s original experiments.

So, why do I think the grey characters are the original monsters that Gaster experimented on? Well, I’ll start with the most obvious connection first and talk about how Gaster specifically uses the word “goner” to describe the monsters he had been working on, which I think?? may have been the reason the fandom nicknamed the grey monster kid Goner Kid in the first place, but I could be wrong on that. I haven’t kept up with fanlore for a while. I think a lot of people assumed that Goner Kid was more of just a victim of timelines being reset over and over again, but I think it’s plausible that he could have been one of the monsters that Gaster experimented on before this happened, along with the Gaster Followers.

I can’t really back up this claim with evidence from the grey NPCs dialogue, except that they have the most information about Gaster, which would make sense if they actually interacted with him at some point or with his lab. I just think it’s never really talked about why these characters exist in the first place. Why have they been erased from existence when other monsters haven’t and why are they so connected to Gaster? If the experiment that Gaster was working on with the monster souls happened around the same time as the experiment that shattered him across time and space, it would make sense if the monsters had gotten caught up in this, along with everyone else in the lab at the time (Flowey perhaps? Judging by entry number 18, Flowey was still there when Gaster “fell into his creation and shattered” if we conclude that entry 17 is the moment that this experiment went wrong and, let’s be honest… There must be a reason that Flowey is able to control timelines. Almost like a side effect of something idk…). Unlike with Alphys’s experiments, we never actually see the outcome of Gaster’s. His entries talk about the monsters waking up and walking around, before we get entry 16 and 17 which cuts off his experiments for good before we’re able to find out if the results were the same as Alphys’s. Perhaps they would have been, had Gaster’s time fuckery experiment not got in the way and potentially wiped out both him and the monsters entirely. As a result, we get these grey NPCs who don’t look melted and fucked up like the amalgamates, but their existences have been destroyed.

Which brings me onto another point of interest. What is the timeline of the entries? And do Alphys’s entries even exist in the same timeline as Gaster’s?

My main reasoning for this is the fact that there are two entry 17s. One of which was definitely written by Gaster because… well, it has to be because I think if Wing Dings McGee wasn’t the guy who wrote entry 17 then the fandom will immediately lay down on the floor and die. The other, however, was written by Alphys and talks about the monsters she experimented on melting together:

monsters’ physical forms can’t handle determination like humans’ can. with too much determination, our bodies begin to break down. everyone’s melted together…

Now, yes… I know this entry doesn’t exist in the game and I know it’s technically a deleted entry that can’t be treated as canon. However, it does still exist in the game files. People can access it, and by this point, I think it’s common knowledge that Toby Fox does not just leave things behind on accident. Everything that can be accessed by the players is put there for a reason (unless we go with my other theory that Toby is a master of chaos who just likes to amuse himself, which… shouldn’t be ruled out tbh). How can there be two entry 17s and how come they overlap each other without ever mentioning the other. How can Gaster go on a one-man trek into a fucking black hole while Alphys is dealing with melted dogs at the same time? These entries did not happen together, and I definitely don’t think entries 9-13 happened before entries 14-16. I also think entry 4 is actually the first entry, because it mentions Gaster “researching humans to see if I can find any info about their souls” but the previous entries already talk about the “persistence” of human souls.

Also, I briefly mentioned how the voice of entry 16 couldn’t be determined, but what I find interesting is that it… technically has both Alphys and Gaster’s voice. I don’t know for sure, because this could absolutely just be me reaching into an abyss right now, but Toby Fox’s attention to detail has driven me completely insane so fuck it… the entry specifically reads “no No NO NO NO NO NO” in which the first no isn’t capitalised and yet the second one is.

It feels like their timelines are crossing, but never fully meeting, if that makes sense, and entry 16 seems to be the start of everything going wrong. It’s the last entry before (Gaster’s) entry 17 and after that we get the mysterious “the flower’s gone” entry which you know what? Hot take, but this entry has even more mystery surrounding it than entry 17 because WHO WROTE THIS ENTRY?? Gaster didn’t; by this point he’s already yeeted himself off into space, and Alphys didn’t because I already said that this isn’t the flower she was working on (and hey… before anyone says “ummm but she literally knows Flowey when Papyrus mentioned him, she freaked out about it”. Okay smartass just because she didn’t work on Flowey doesn’t mean she doesn’t know about him, Gaster could have kept notes lying around… give me a break I’m tired). Point is, I don’t think either of them wrote this entry.

And yeah okay I am about to bring up that old ass theory that Sans may have a connection to the True Lab Entries because he’s the only other character who doesn’t capitalise his letters (curse you MatPat for being a defining figure in my childhood) but like… guys. Remember I said that Gaster’s failed experiment may have had side effects on everyone in the lab, including causing Flowey to become aware of the timelines?? Yeah, how do we know that didn’t happen to Sans too? That experiment fucked everyone up, and Sans sure as hell knows everything that goes on in Undertale. There’s no way he isn’t connected to Gaster in some way or another, like there’s no argument about that atp we’ve been over this time and time again already.

(oh and is now the time to mention that Gaster’s entries were the ones to mention the blueprints he used to begin his experiments on soul power, which means those blueprints predated Gaster’s experiments and also there are blueprints in the shed beside Sans and Papyrus’s house? I know the common theory was that Sans and Papyrus came after Gaster, but like… what if they didn’t? And I don’t mean that they were there at the same time, because I know about the “Gaster is Sans and Papyrus’s father” theory, but I mean like… what if Sans actually predates Gaster? I know it sounds really tinfoil hat-esque but we honestly can’t rule anything out by this point).

Someone wrote entry 18 and I don’t think it was Alphys or Gaster.

Okay cool, so what does this have to do with Deltarune?

Let me answer that with a different question:

What if Deltarune is the creation that Gaster fell into?

There’s plenty of theories out there about Gaster being connected to Deltarune, possibly even more so than he is to Undertale, but like… what if that’s because he literally created the whole universe? He fell into this parallel universe that he wasn’t supposed to enter and it caused him to shatter, throwing off timeline hopping side effects that may have caught both Sans and Flowey. I mean, Sans does show up in Deltarune, and it’s odd that he’s the only character there that clearly hasn’t been established as a long-time resident. He doesn’t really know anyone there, he’s asserted his store into the street by rubbing out Grillby’s name and he winks at the player when he says he doesn’t know you. He’s like… the only character there who definitely still remembers Undertale (and like I don’t think we talk enough about the fact that Papyrus just straight up isn’t there. Like, yeah we assume he’s locked away in his house and that’s his parallel version to his Undertale self– a shut-in introvert, but the “distant trousle of bones” line might suggest that he actually just isn’t there at all. How distant is distant, Toby?).

Like, it’s obvious by this point that Gaster has some major control over the Deltaverse, and that entry 17 has a lot of parallels to the creation of dark worlds, but we don’t really ask how that parallel world existed in the first place. We know that parallel timelines exist, but Flowey said nothing about parallel worlds. Flowey doesn’t even seem to know about parallel worlds because if he did, I’m sure he wouldn’t have gotten bored so quickly and turned into a homicidal maniac if he had whole other WORLDS to explore. How did this world suddenly come into existence if not a creation by the one and only W.D. Gaster?

And while we’re on the subject of funky little guys who haunt the Deltarune narrative, it’s funny how Dess has disappeared from the world, rather than explicitly died. There’s already a theory floating around that Dess is somehow connected to Gaster in the same way that Spampton and Jevil may be but again her circumstances feel… different somehow. Not only that but unlike Spamton and Jevil, Dess is potentially present in Undertale if we take the Undertale alarm clock dialogues from 2017 as anything to go by, wherein Sans mentions “that antlered girl and her big sis” (it may also be notable that it’s Sans who seems to know Dess and Noelle but… I’m too tired to go much further on this theory right now).

So, I think what I’m saying is, Dess is almost definitely incredibly significant, and is potentially linked to Gaster in more ways than we first thought, although again… we probably all did think this and I’m just late to the party (if you can believe it, I’ve been in the Undertale fandom since the game came out, but I never frequented Reddit or Tumblr at the height of the fandom so… I’m definitely repeating a lot of old stuff here).

Basically, this whole analysis is just a recap of everything we know about the Lab Entries, while also potentially throwing out a few tidbits that may interest Deltarune theorists far better than I could ever be.

Also the song Don’t Forget at the end of chapter 1? That’s 100% Dess and I take no other suggestions on that. “When the light is running low and the shadows start to grow” Hey that sounds fucking familiar *said with the most deranged smile on my face*

#undertale #undertale theory #undertale thoughts #undertale meta #undertale meta analysis #deltarune #deltarune theory #deltarune meta #wd gaster #dess holiday #sans #sans undertale #alphys

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