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* [[Adaptation-Induced Plothole]]: An extremely minor example. {{spoiler|Since the [[PlayStation]] versions replace all dialogue referring to the F4 key, the "secret fourth frog" [[Brick Joke]] during the [[Playable Epilogue]] comes off as completely random}}.
* [[Adorkable]]: Quite a few characters qualify, but this is especially the case for Papyrus and Alphys.
** Papyrus is a skeleton with aspirations to hunt humans, but despite his choice in career, he comes across as an [[Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain]]. {{spoiler|Even if he defeats you in battle, the worst he'll do is bring you down to 1 HP and escort you to a [[Cardboard Prison]]. Undyne even lampshades that Papyrus is too nice to be a Royal Guard}}.
** Alphys is a straight-up Otaku who spends way too much time on social media and nerds out over her favorite anime. {{spoiler|She's also a [[Woobie]] with crippling self-esteem issues}}.
* [[Adult Fear]]:
** The backstory is full of this. A long while back, {{spoiler|the Dremurrs rescued a child that fell into the Ruins and was injured by the fall. They took care of the Fallen Child, who loved Asriel and their adoptive parents but seemed to have a nasty sense of humor about things. The Fallen convinces Asriel that to break the barrier, the Fallen would need to die, via ingesting buttercups. Asriel said it was a bad idea but reluctantly agreed when the Fallen pointed out all the monsters would be free once they got seven souls. Toriel was unable to heal their child, and the Fallen passed away that night. Asriel absorbed the Fallen's soul, ostensibly to cross the barrier and bury their body in the village but to actually gain seven souls. It didn't go well; as Asriel put it, he realized that the Fallen wanted to slaughter everyone in their village when the humans attacked Asriel as he lay the body down on the grass, mistaking him for killing his adoptive sibling. Asriel refused to fight back and crossed back over, coated in golden flower seeds, dying in his parents' garden}}. As the monsters on the Neutral and Pacifist Route put it, {{spoiler|Asgore and Toriel lost two children in one night}}.
** Since that night, {{spoiler|Asgore's grief turned into anger. He mandated that any human who fell into the Underground would be killed, and their souls used to break the barrier. Toriel broke up with Asgore over this; she exiled herself to the Ruins and locked out the other monsters, to ensure that she could at least try to save anyone that ended up within the mountain. While she says she hates how cowardly he was that ''he'' didn't think to use the Fallen Child or another human's soul to cross the barrier and take human souls, Toriel is not a killer. She tells you that she saw ''five'' children leave the Ruins, and none of them survived. (She's right; you can find their items strewn across the four areas). If you manage to spare her and leave, Toriel realizes that you are the seventh soul but in good conscience, she can't let you kill Asgore or Asgore to kill you. The True Pacifist ending has her stop the fight before it begins; while she's mad at Asgore for killing her adoptive children, she asserts that no one has to die, and they can live happily}}.
* [[All Lowercase Letters]]: Frequent in characters, and used as a shorthand for depression, judging that the characters more prone to it are [[The Eeyore|Napstablook]] and the self-deprecating Alphys. Sans seems to be the exception, as he is part of the all lowercase speech group, but his [[Meta Guy]] qualifications make credible that he is so lazy he just doesn't bother capitalizing things. {{spoiler|Except that he is revealed to be as depressed and self-loathing as the others}}.
* [[Animalistic Abomination]]: {{spoiler|Endogeny, one of the Amalgamates, takes on the vague shape of a large canine: it has two pointed ears atop its "head", a single vaguely mouth-like orifice [[Eyeless Face|where a face would be]] that produces "Happiness Froth" when it's excited, and a wide body with six digitigrade legs that form the silhouettes of five smaller canines, which display satisfied faces once it's content. For all its ''weirdness'', though, it's very much like a normal dog, and treating it like one by playing in a specific way with it is the key to Sparing it.}}
* [[Animal
* [[Apocalyptic Log]]: Two of them, both in the same hidden location. {{spoiler|The True Laboratory has the written logs from Alphys and the audio tapes from before the deaths of Asgore's children}}.
* [[Arc Words]]:
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** [[Memetic Mutation|"You're gonna have]] [[Oh Crap|a bad time."]]
* [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking]]: At one point in Snowdin, Papyrus sets up a gauntlet of traps including such dangerous weapons as a cannon, a flamethrower, a spiked ball-and-chain, a spear and... the Annoying Dog dangling from a rope.
* [[Ascended Fridge Horror]]: Toriel at the beginning prepares to destroy the entrance to Snowdin because every child that has fallen into the Ruins goes out, dies, and gets their SOUL harvested by Asgore. Before that, however, they spent enough time with her to outgrow their shoes, win her love, and evolve her into the [[My Beloved Smother]] that you encounter. She says that she saw ''every'' child that fell into the Ruins die eventually.
* [[Bad Guy Bar]]: In Snowdin Town's local restaurant Grillby's, you can find all 5 of the dog mini-bosses you encountered along the way (assuming they're alive, of course). Subverted in that they don't treat you like an enemy anymore and talk to you normally.
* [[Be Careful What You Wish For]]: Burgerpants says this word for word, after admitting that he initially came to Hotland because working with Mettaton was his greatest dream. Now that he ''does'' work for Mettaton, he realizes he's a [[Bad Boss]] that somehow coasts entirely on [[Popularity Power]] despite the MTT Resort being, in Burgerpants's words, "a labyrinth of bad choices."
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** This is a core feature in the perspective puzzle in the Ruins, in which coloured switches are hidden from the player by pillars, but would be perfectly visible to the character.
* [[Better Than a Bare Bulb]]: If there is a JRPG or general video game cliché present in the game, it ''will'' be commented on. Either it'll be for a quick gag, or it'll become a major [[Deconstruction]] that the game ends up revolving around.
* [[Betty, Veronica and Archie Switcheroo]]: Parodied: when you go on the date with {{spoiler|Alphys}} during the route to the Golden Ending. You by default are the Betty while Undyne is the Veronica and {{spoiler|Alphys}} is the Archie. Thing is you can be a rude pacifist, or have committed a No Mercy run beforehand. She tries her best to make it work, but {{spoiler|Alphys admits that she has feelings for Undyne, the one who actually wrote the letter that you delivered.}} You can then choose to roleplay as either Undyne or Alphys, making the real Alphys blush just in time for {{spoiler|Undyne to walk in, giving Alphys the courage to confess her feelings}}.
* [[Big Bad]]: Asgore Dreemurr, king of the Underground's monsters. His goal is to gather seven human SOULs and shatter the barrier keeping the monsters locked in Mt. Ebott so they can finally be freed from their imprisonment and exact their vengeance on humanity. {{spoiler|As it turns out, he's more of a [[Tragic Villain]], and only wants to end the monsters' oppression, but feels that a peaceful resolution is simply unattainable by this point}}. In fact, it seems that {{spoiler|Flowey is a better candidate for the title}}.
* [[Big Bad Ensemble]]: Mettaton and Asgore. Asgore is king of the monsters and is the overarching threat of the game, while Mettaton is simply a superstar robot who, however, is responsible for many of the bosses you fought over the game and is revealed to have independent goals from Asgore, appears more than Asgore does and has more presence. It's only after Mettaton's defeat that you fight Asgore finally. {{spoiler|Flowey the Flower is also with them and is the final big bad of the game}}.
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** Beware that some of the attacks will come from out of the square your heart is in.
* [[Burger Fool]]: MTT-Brand Burger Emporium, even down to the mandatory slogans. Management is incompetent in several respects and outright sadistic in others, alternatingly micromanaging and operating entirely on whims. The leitmotif is the same pitched-down version of "Shop" you'd hear in other stores during a Genocide run, no matter which end you go for.
* [[Cardboard Prison]]: Papyrus's attempt to use his and Sans's shed as an impromptu prison for the player is quite unimpressive to say the least. His only measure for hindering escape attempts is placing a fence across the room, which has such large gaps between the bars that it can be circumvented by ''walking'' out between them, and the door to the shed turns out to be locked from the
* [[Collectible Cloney Babies]]: Alphys collects merchandise from the ''Kissy Kissy Mew'' anime franchise. In the Switch version, you can even get into an optional boss battle with one at the Dog Shrine.
* [[Color-Coded for Your Convenience]]:
** Some bosses can change the color of your SOUL, which changes the way its movement works. Red is the default
** Enemy projectiles have colors as well. White projectiles are normal and do damage when touched. Light blue attacks won't hurt you as long as you aren't moving, while orange ones will only hurt you if you're staying still. Green attacks will heal you when you touch them and/or must be touched to spare an enemy. Grey attacks (only so far used by ghosts/objects possessed by ghosts) do nothing at all. They're used to relay messages in a non-harmful manner. Red attacks, similar to grey attacks, are often used as a warning in order to allow you to know when an attack is coming.
* [[Context Sensitive Button]]: The ACT option in battles. When it is selected for an enemy, a set of options unique for them pops up, and you can choose any one of them. The effects they have include doing nothing, changing your stats or the enemy's stats, affecting their next attack, allowing them to be spared or making them leave the battle, and any number of miscellaneous effects depending on the enemy.
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** {{spoiler|The final boss of the Genocide route has his torso diagonally slit in half all the way from his shoulder to his hip}}.
* [[Hand Wave]]: Whenever the player is slightly out-of-bounds (when it should be impossible), "magic glass" appears underneath them so they won't be walking on air.
* [[Harsh Life Revelation Aesop]]:
** Asgore's story shows how your anger can destroy everything. When the humans killed Asriel, Asgore and Toriel's son, shortly after they lost their adopted human child, Asgore in a fit of grief declared that all humans who come to the Underground will be killed and their souls forfeit to open the barrier. This ends up driving Toriel away to the Ruins, and soon a few bodies pile up, much to Asgore's horror. He can't rescind the policy, however, because the Underground needs the hope that they will be free.
** As the Golden Ending shows, some mistakes are plain unforgivable, something that Toriel states. She's still mad at Asgore for declaring the "Kill All Humans" policy but not having the courage to go to the surface and kill six more humans, which would have saved decades of imprisonment for everyone. Toriel would have preferred to stay Underground and find another way. Though Toriel doesn't believe her ex deserves to die, she turns down his efforts to reconcile with her and spends most of her game time glaring at him.
* [[Have We Met?]]: When you restart the game, any of the main characters that you had befriended in a previous playthrough will vaguely remember you. For example: when Toriel asks what your favorite is between cinnamon and butterscotch, she will instead take a guess, which will be whatever you picked in the last playthrough.
* [[Healing Checkpoint]]: They also serve as save points.
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* [[Lethal Lava Land]]: Hotland, the last major region of the Underground, is dry, volcanic and has many fire-based enemies. It also has some [[Eternal Engine]] elements, given that Mettaton has reign over it.
* [[Literal-Minded]]: A fishlike NPC in Grillby's tells you he "put out a line" for some girls and is taking the "plenty of fish in the sea" phrase literally. The fishing pole can be found north of the ice room with the save point, and there's a note with a phone number at the end of the line as bait.
* [[Loose Canon]]: Which of the three endings is the canon ending? Simple, according to [[Word of God]], whichever one the player interprets it to be.
* [[Made of Magic]]: Monsters are described as having bodies made mostly of magic, as opposed to humans' bodies being mostly water.
* [[Manly Gay]]: The duo of Royal Guards stationed at Hotland are this to a T, especially the guard who speaks like a stereotypical "bro". Defeating them peacefully has you {{spoiler|get them to confess their feelings to one another}}.
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* [[Murder Is the Best Solution]]: Flowey seems to think so, and advocates it. In gameplay, however, unless you're majorly overlevelled for the area you're in, most fights take just as long to kill someone than they do to spare them (about three to five turns, depending on the enemy setup), making killing, even in self defense, unjustified.
* [[My Beloved Smother]]: When you first meet Toriel, it seems that her character is being built up as this... and it is, in the most benevolent sense. She's just a sweet and overly-protective old monster lady with no ill will at all.
* [[My God, What Have I Done?]]:
* [[My God, What Have I Done?]]: This is how the player is expected to feel when {{spoiler|a certain skeleton}} stands before you in the Final Corridor, and proceeds to lay down the truth for you. {{spoiler|That EXP you've been collecting to raise your LV? Those were Execution Points, and you were increasing your Level of Violence through acts of murder}}.▼
** If Toriel manages to kill you, the screen will show her making this face before the Game Over screen hits. Mind this is hard to achieve, that you would have to be running directly into the bullets.
▲*
** This revelation could occur much earlier for the player; if you decide to grind in an area an end up killing a lot of monsters, {{spoiler|your next encounter won't have any monsters, only a message indicating "there's no one left". The area music then turns into a creepy low-pitched rumble. Since it's an RPG, initially, you might think that killing monsters during random encounters, and doing it a lot in order to LV up, is something that's expected of you to do. But if you take it too far, you'll realize your mistake... The game itself will make sure of it}}.
** This also turns out to be how {{spoiler|Asgore}} feels about {{spoiler|declaring war on humanity as revenge for his children's deaths. Normally a peace-loving, friendly fellow, he made a horrible decision due to a brief moment of grief and rage, and he has no way to take it back now that his subjects expect him to aquire the human souls needed to break down the barrier and slaughter the humans on the surface. It's shown when you meet him that he's been eaten with regret for it ever since}}.
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* [[Occam's Razor]]: The factor resulting in the acceptance of certain theories such as Gaster being Sans and Papyrus's father or the Narrator Fallen Child.
* [[Official Couple]]: {{spoiler|Undyne and Alphys in the true ending}}.
* [[Old Save Bonus]]: In order to even start the Pacifist or Genocide routes, you have to complete the game on this route first.
* [[Ominous Fog]]: There's a heavy fog east of Snowdin that completely blocks visibility. Papyrus fights you the first time you walk through.
* [[Our Ghosts Are Different]]: Ghosts in ''Undertale'' are just another type of monster, although they have all of the typical abilities of ghosts in fiction. ''SOULs'' are something else entirely (see below).
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** On the Pacifist route, after the pretend date with Alphys, Papyrus sends her home from training early and wants you to find her at her lab for no apparent reason except he feels you should.
* [[Sword and Sorcerer]]: The monster "Knight Knight" (a large hulking knight) tends to appear alongside the monster "Madjick" (a floating, grinning wizard).
* [[Talking the Monster to Death]]: The standard way of "disposing" of enemies (and bosses) in a Pacifist route. {{spoiler|Reversed in the Genocide route where Papyrus tries to do this to ''you''}}.
* [[There Are No Therapists]]: Many major character can be reasonably theorized to be mentally ill or otherwise dealing with serious emotional issues, especially Alphys, {{spoiler|Sans and the Dreemurrs}}, but nobody ever mentions therapy. Granted, the game does take place over one or two days, so it's possible it's offscreen or the characters in question aren't taking the effort to seek help.
* [[They Wasted a Perfectly Good Sandwich]]: Sans treats you to a a burger or fries at Grillby's and talks to you about Papyrus and a suspicious flower that whispers things to Papyrus. After that tense moment, you and Sans leave the counter without eating. An NPC remarks that the food is probably cold by now.
* [[This Is Gonna Suck]]: As put by the intro to the final boss fight on the Genocide route: "You feel like you're going to have a bad time." You will, due to said boss being the hardest in the game.
* [[Toe-Tapping Melody]]:
** You can put on some ghost tunes at Napstablook's house - while Napsta loves the rhythms and vocalizations, if you leave afterward and encounter Aaron and Woshua, they won't bother fighting because the music leaves them too freaked-out, and the pair eventually flee. As a [[Brick Joke]], {{spoiler|Aaron will become a ghost inspector in the Pacifist Ending credits}}.
** If you want to give Shyren lots of love, you can keep singing with her during her battle - by doing so, you start a band with her that gets popular, while Sans sells tickets and tosses toilet paper and socks at you. She's so catchy that the Golden Ending features her {{spoiler|getting over her stage fright and performing with Napstablook and Mettaton}}. The hitch is that it's easy to die to her, because the more confident she gets, the more "musical note" bullets she will send your way. {{spoiler|The scene is also ''much less funny'' if you killed Papyrus during that run.}}
* [[Too Awesome to Use]]: The slice of cinnamon butterscotch pie Toriel gives you is specified to replenish ''all'' HP. When you're at a point where the cheapest foods will replenish most health, it'd be a shame to just waste this. [[Invoked]], considering it has a special effect on Asgore at the other end of the game.
* [[To Win Without Fighting]]: Refusing to kill monsters is necessary to obtain the Pacifist route (and the [[Golden Ending]]).
* [[Tradesnark]]: A couple of
* [[A Tragedy of Impulsiveness]]: {{spoiler|This is likely the ending a first-time player will get. See [[Wrong Genre Savvy]] below for more details}}.
** The backstory: {{spoiler|Asgore made the proclaim of actively hunt for human souls very shortly after the death of his children, while he was still hurt and grieving. By the time he actually got a human soul, he found himself unable to follow the quickest way to get more (namely, absorb the soul and get outside for them), as he actually was too nice to do it. This, on turn, caused Toriel to abandon him, as she saw this hesitation as cowardly. By the time the player character enters the Underground, Asgore is still chained to the words he said in impulse while mourning, unable to take them back because that would mean the loss of hope of his subjects, but dreading that another human falls as he doesn't actually want to commit more murders.}}
* [[Train Problem]]: During his quiz show, Mettaton throws an "easy one" at you, to trip you up. Likely put there to make you notice (if you hadn't already) that Alphys spells out the letter of each answer to the quiz show with her hands.
* [[Trauma Inn]]: Snowed Inn and the MTT Resort heal your HP beyond max if you stay in a room.
* [[Tsundere]]:
** Examining a cactus in Toriel's home will result in the observation, "Ah, the cactus. Truly the most tsundere of plants." Coming back at the end of the game, and this changes to "It's not like this cactus was waiting for you to come back or anything...".
** The Tsunderplane enemy in Hotland is [[Portmanteau|a tsundere ''airplane'']]. Its in-battle actions are reminiscent of the typical tsundere behaviors in anime (like turning up its nose or "accidentally" bumping you with its wing). The way to peacefully defeating it, of course, is to get it all flustered by {{spoiler|making a romantic advance towards it}}.
** Undyne's behavior towards the player ends up being quite tsundere, should you attempt to befriend her. [[Yandere|Though arguably, it's more of a different "dere".]]
* [[Tutorial Failure]]: Flowey's tutorial [[Parodied Trope|parodies the trope]]; the player will likely find that they've learned nothing from it. Then Toriel comes in to pick up the slack; she's a bit more informative, though the player might be somewhat frustrated by all the [[Visual Pun|hand-holding]].
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* [[Unstable Equilibrium]]: As your LV increases, your attack stat increases and enemies' defenses passively decrease. Thus, as you gain XP and increase LV, you get stronger and stronger until you steamroll almost everything in your path, and nothing can stand up to you.
* [[Unwinnable Joke Game]]: The word search that Sans lays out in hopes of stopping you (yet can not only be walked past, but still does nothing to stop you if you read it). Every word can be found... except for the gibberish word that looks like the top row of letters but is actually a letter off.
* [[The Very Definitely Final Dungeon]]: In the Genocide and Neutral routes, the CORE is the final area that has random monster encounters before the [[Final Boss
* [[Video Game Caring Potential]]:
** To be caring, there's a lot more to it than just being "kind". In order to get the best ending, you have to work your ass off sparing monsters, being nice to everyone, and so on. This takes a lot of work, and one of the points that Flowey makes during the Pacifist run is that you may not be able to keep this up for long.
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* [[Watsonian Versus Doylist]]: The game thoroughly explores the dilemma behind and between both of these stances and ultimately deconstructs the whole concept.
* [[Well-Intentioned Extremist]]: The majority of monsters only want to kill you so that they can use your SOUL to escape the Underground.
* [[Wham! Shot]]: Has a few that set the stage for the rest of the game:
** If you feel forced to fight Toriel, you may take it a little too far. She collapses, gives a speech that she is proud that you are strong, and fades away. On a a genocide route, or if you backstab her, she'll die [[Laughing Mad]] saying that you will fit in just fine in the Underground. You can only avoid either option if you refuse to fight her, and convince her to let you go into the Underground. Toriel's [[Final First Hug]] when she lets you go peacefully isn't as dramatic as her death, but it has made a few players cry.
** As you walk into Waterfall, a spear nearly hits you in one area. You pause in alarm, as a knight emerges, Lady Undyne! Time to run for it before she grabs your soul.
** Some optional areas show monsters with eyeless faces that disappear as soon as you talk to them. You may even unlock a secret room with a figure named Gaster.
** The first Neutral run ends with you defeating Asgore. Yet...you can still spare him. He offers that {{spoiler|if he reconciles with his wife, they can all live together and be a family. Cue very familiar pellets surrounding and killing him. Flowey appears, giving an [[Evil Laugh]] as the souls surround him; he reveals that he took the time to grab the souls while you were fighting Asgore. He glitches out the game, having written the world by wiping everyone out.}}
* [[When All Else Fails Go Right]]: The starting point is the westernmost point in the game, and you largely move towards the east, with the end of the game being the easternmost point.
* [[Wrong Genre Savvy]]: In a way, ''the player'' may befall to this, specially when playing blind. Play in a way typical of a traditional gamer, ignoring the Mercy mechanics (and the game slogan), and you are for a nasty shock {{spoiler|when you either get in the darker side of the Neutral run, with the characters hate you and berate you for your murderous ways, or you get locked in the Bad route, where you basically are treated as [[The Dreaded]]}}. The game is intended as a [[Deconstruction]] of JRPG mechanics and [[100% Completion]].
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