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under-lore · 2 years

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File attribution theory

In Undertale, there are 10 numbered SAVE files, going from “file 0″ up to “file 9″.

The UNDERTALE folder on the player’s computer may contain file 0, file 9 and file 8 depending on certain conditions.

These files mutually take each other into consideration. The fact that “file 6″ exists means that there was a “file 5″ already, otherwise file 6 would have just been called file 5. File 5 implies the existence of file 4 and so on.

This means that either all of those files are canon, or none of them are.

The game makes it pretty clear that we are in the first scenario given that the Flowey X fight directly refers to those files being an in-world thing.

Another case in which we can clearly see the impact of the different files within the game has to do with Frisk.

Lets say that a neutral route is played, then, the player SAVES just before fighting Asgore. Afterwards, instead of fighting the king, the player decides to RESET. The player then decides to go through the ruins without SAVING even once, but is eventually killed by a monster.

Where does Frisk come back to after dying in this situation ?

One would expect Frisk to either go back to the flower bed at the very beginning or to LOAD back to near Asgore where the player last SAVED.

But neither of those is what happens. Frisk actually comes back to this location :

And that’s not all. Lets say that now, the player closes the game and opens it up again. Where does Frisk LOAD to then ?

This time, they do LOAD back to near Asgore.

Frisk has just LOADED to two completely different points in space and time without having SAVED in between the two. This should be impossible with Frisk having control over only a singular SAVE file.

What happened here was that two different SAVE files were actually used :

“file 0″ and “file 9″.

The first question that asks itself is a pretty straightforward one : What are those SAVE files ?

As the term “SAVE” file implies, any character who at any point inhabits a body that has enough determination to see or manifest SAVE points (and thus to use the SAVE power) has a numbered file attributed to them.

That character will be refered to as the “owner” of the file.

In the case of bodysharing however (such as when a soul is absorbed), the one that actually has control over the SAVE file is not necessarily the same person as its owner.

That person will be refered to as the “controller” of the file.

For a concrete example : Flowey is not the owner of file 3, but as he absorbed the six humans souls, he became this file’s controller and is the one using it in a neutral route.

Those files have been sorted in a specific order. One that is simple and instinctive :

Its in chronological order. The order in which the owners of the respective files first got into the underground.

By examining what exactly each files does within the gameplay, in the code, and in the files, its possible to attribute all of those files to a specific character within the game : their owner.

Let’s start by what is likely the simplest one.

File 8

File 8 can only be seen in a concrete way in one place : The UNDERTALE folder.

However, file 8 originally isn’t present in this folder at first. This file only appears at the exact frame where Flowey absorbs the six human souls, and thus gains back the power to SAVE. One single frame before the game crashes.

File 8 is the second to last file and thus belongs to the second to last determined being to have set foot (or vines here) in the underground.

Flowey is indeed the one using this file in a neutral route.

In fact, we get to see something very interesting once we relaunch the game afterwards.

Now, it is impossible to have a LV superior to 20, which means Flowey likely edited what we see of his own stats to make the whole thing seem more creepy.

However, seeing this file clearly labeled as being that of “Flowey” and the location being set as “My World” (With “My” being refering to Flowey) makes it pretty clear that this is an edited representation of Flowey’s own file. Which he has indeed just gotten to use again after obtaining the souls and creating “His world”.

The owner of file 8 is Flowey. It is the file that he used back when he could still SAVE before Frisk’s fall.

File 9

Following the same pattern, the owner of file 9 is the last determined entity to have been in the underground chronologically and the one that came after Flowey.

This is the file that LOADS whenever Frisk dies. It is the one responsible for Frisk going back to the room below the candy bowl room in the Ruins earlier.

File 9 is also one that gets SAVED on without player input on a number of occasions, gameplay wise it acts similarly to how an autosave would.

The file first appears either when Frisk uses a SAVE point or when reaching certain particular points in the game. (There is debate on the canonicity of those autosaves, i won’t be getting into details for now but it’ll be addressed in a future post.)

The owner of this file also shares their stats with the owner of file 0. (See later)

This file is Frisk’s own file.

File 0

The owner of file 0 is the first being with high determination to have ever fallen into the underground, before the latter two file owners or the six fallen humans, who were also SAVE holders.

This file is inactive until it is used by the player. The file is initially EMPTY until we first make use of it.

It also doesn’t appear in the UNDERTALE folder until its been used to SAVE.

This means that despite belonging to someone from a long time ago, it was only just now awakened and made use of when the game began.

(Note : To say it in different words, the determination used by their own file wasn’t theirs but ours.)

Despite it not being Frisk’s own file, this file is still associated with the stats of Frisk’s body on several occasions.

The stats that show up here are clearly that of Frisk’s body. However, those stats are associated with file 0 and not file 9 when the player LOADS a SAVE manually. On that regard, the two files are pretty much interchangeable.

This is something we can also see whenever SAVING. The file displayed here is file 0, yet the LV, the time shown and the location set here are all that of Frisk. Not anyone else. This contrasts with Flowey’s case from earlier.

Same also applies to the in battle HP bar.

Both owners share common stats. Frisk’s stats.

Frisk is also described as being filled with determination when SAVING it, it is SAVED with Frisk’s DT and Frisk can indeed control this file. (Note : Its possible to SAVE file 9 without SAVING file 0 but not the other way around, file 0 is Frisk’s “extra” file out of the two they have).

Frisk isn’t this file’s owner, but they are however its controller. This also means that this file’s owner must share a body with Frisk.

In addition, once this file is used at least once, we get to see it labeled with a certain name :

The name that file 0 is labeled by is... Whatever name the player gave to Chara at the beginning of the game.

That file’s owner is the first fallen human.

File 1-6

Unlike the three other files that were already brought up, those files do not appear in the UNDERTALE folder. Not even during the in-game sequences where the files are explicitly stated by the game to be in use.

File 2, 3 and 6 are the ones we see Flowey actually using in the neutral route fight, however he had control over all of them in this sequence. In fact, there is unused code in which we see Flowey was intended to use file 4 too.

The fact that Flowey has gained control over files that are not his leads to a single conclusion : The owners of those files are now inhabiting Flowey’s body at the end of a neutral route.

Moreover, Flowey was created as a vessel to be able to wield the souls. In Asriel’s fight, all the souls within him, whilst they still exist individually, have become a part of “Asriel’s soul”.

This might be as reason as to why despite canonically being used during those moments, we don’t see them in the UNDERTALE folder, but we do get to see Flowey’s own file in it.

Regardless, the owners of those six files that Flowey takes control of during a neutral route and that came before him chronologically but after Chara isn’t much of a mystery, especially considering that we know that the six fallen humans could see SAVE points via some dialogues from Asgore and Toriel.

They are the owners of files 1-6.

File 7

File 7 is the outlier of the bunch. Unlike all the other files which we can all see one way or another, file 7 is completely absent from the game’s code. However, we do know that there is a file 7 owner as otherwise, file 8 would have simply been called file 7 and file 9 would have been file 8.

There is only limited information on file 7 that can be of use to deduce its owner :

- File 7′s owner is or is part of an entity that must have had enough determination to see SAVE points.

- File 7′s owner first got in the underground after the 6 fallen humans, but before Flowey.

As monsters have very little determination compared to humans, the only logical place to search for a SAVE owner at this time period would be among the amalgamates, born from multiple monsters all of which were injected with human determination by Alphys.

Out of all the amalgamates, the one with the most determination would likely be the one that has the most DT injected entities merged within it assuming Alphys was at least somewhat consistent in her dosage.

We get to see Lemon Bread having at least 12 components, its however likely there are actually far more than this which simply cannot even be fit on the screen here, which would make it a likely candidate for this position along with Snowdrake’s mother.

On top of this, Lemon Bread behaves like a hive mind (That not being the case could result in issues like those Flowey faced with the 6 souls at the end of the fight in neutral and thus prevent getting access to the SAVE) which also plays in its favor as Snowdrake’s mother does not.

And finally, there is only one file in between the humans and Flowey. This means that our candidate is considered to be a single entity file wise despite being composed of multiple people in one body. (Unlike Frisk and Chara for instance) This again makes the option of the hive mind amalgamate seem more likely.

For these reasons, if any of the amalgamates had enough determination to see SAVE points and thus be a file owner, its likely it would be lemon bread.

How does the fight against lemon bread begin again ?

It disguises itself as a SAVE point.

Lemon bread does just so happen to know what a SAVE point looks like. Which would indeed make it a SAVE file owner.

File 7 is that of lemon bread, but never actually affects the gameplay much as Lemon bread has limited lore relevance compared to the other file owners.

File attribution theory and its implications allows to answer some questions that seemed impossible to answer before or to patch a couple issues that might have seemed like plot holes beforehand. There is still far more to say about the files 0-9 that will be addressed in future posts.

Here is a summarised representation of the 10 SAVE files and some of the most important things to know about them :