Undertale Discussion Thread

Something's been bothering me as of late. Did the surface world in Undertale stagnate or go through some kind of dark age after Chara died?

There must've been a pretty big gap between Chara's death and Frisk's fall into the underground, right? Long enough for six other kids to fall down. Long enough for many monsters to forget what a human looks like. Long enough for Flowey to do everything he wanted to do and get bored. Centuries must've passed between Chara and Frisk.

So why do Frisk and Chara have such similar clothing? Shouldn't clothing styles have changed drastically over the centuries? Sure, fashions can come back, but even then they usually change the styles up a bit. It'd be pretty sily to think of someone today walking around with a tailcoat and perfumed wig, after all.

Also, lots of Underground tech is based off reverse-engineered garbage that got thrown into the Waterfall garbage dump, right? So Underground tech is probably a few years or decades older than surface-world tech. After all, You don't just throw a centuries-old object into the garbage, right?

We also know that they had VCRs when Chara was alive. So the surface world would probably have been at the tech level of the 70's or 80's.
But when Frisk arrives Underground centuries later, they're still using regular DVD's. So did recording technology on the surface really advance by only a few decades in hundreds of years? Or did something happen to set the tech level way back?

Or am I just overthinking things?


Edit: Can we still post images to support arguments in the discussions?
 
Last edited:
Flowey's time is Groundhog Day time; since he can reset, he's living the same few days over and over. And the tech we see the monsters use is like 98% magic; it copies the appearance of technology but not much else.

And if the village Chara came from and the village Frisk came from was poor, isolated, and very traditional, they could keep similar fashions and clothing styles for a very long time.

But if you want to come up with a timeline for events with upper and lower bounds, please go ahead.
 
PotentialPlateau said:
Something's been bothering me as of late. Did the surface world in Undertale stagnate or go through some kind of dark age after Chara died?

There must've been a pretty big gap between Chara's death and Frisk's fall into the underground, right? Long enough for six other kids to fall down. Long enough for many monsters to forget what a human looks like. Long enough for Flowey to do everything he wanted to do and get bored. Centuries must've passed between Chara and Frisk.

So why do Frisk and Chara have such similar clothing? Shouldn't clothing styles have changed drastically over the centuries? Sure, fashions can come back, but even then they usually change the styles up a bit. It'd be pretty sily to think of someone today walking around with a tailcoat and perfumed wig, after all.

Also, lots of Underground tech is based off reverse-engineered garbage that got thrown into the Waterfall garbage dump, right? So Underground tech is probably a few years or decades older than surface-world tech. After all, You don't just throw a centuries-old object into the garbage, right?

We also know that they had VCRs when Chara was alive. So the surface world would probably have been at the tech level of the 70's or 80's.
But when Frisk arrives Underground centuries later, they're still using regular DVD's. So did recording technology on the surface really advance by only a few decades in hundreds of years? Or did something happen to set the tech level way back?

Or am I just overthinking things?


Edit: Can we still post images to support arguments in the discussions?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Well, it may not actually be that long from when Chara and when Frisk fell. Maybe ten to fifteen years. Somewhere in the twenties at the most. There's no indication that it's been hundreds of years from when Chara fell. All we know is that Chara fell some time in 201X, and the skyline for the human world looked modern.



It can't have been that long.
 
MData said:
It can't have been that long.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...


It is most certainly much longer, because if Chara such a short time ago, then why does nobody know what a human looks like?

In fact, I'd give it at least 50 odd years between kids at the least, and then flowey is created a year or two before Frisk falls down when Alphys experiments with Determination.

Monster tech is also probably a century behind what humans have at any given point, as one bit of evidence. Alphys considers Toriels cellphone to be super ancient garbage, for instance.
 
Last edited:
Havocfett said:
please do not post images
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

That thread went out of hand really quick. :rofl:

What's with the tech in Undetale? They work on Naruto logic where people have spears and plate armor but somehow have computers and television.

And yet it somehow works and that's something very hard to do. Great that Toby could do it so seamlessly.
 
Hykal94 said:
That thread went out of hand really quick. :rofl:

What's with the tech in Undetale? They work on Naruto logic where people have spears and plate armor but somehow have computers and television.

And yet it somehow works and that's something very hard to do. Great that Toby could do it so seamlessly.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It think it can be chalked up to Undertale, barring some notable exceptions, being a mostly comedic and not particularly serious game. One isn't particularly inclined to contemplate the mechanics of a world that runs on comedy logic.
 
Hykal94 said:
What's with the tech in Undetale? They work on Naruto logic where people have spears and plate armor but somehow have computers and television.

And yet it somehow works and that's something very hard to do. Great that Toby could do it so seamlessly.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Monsters only use magic attacks so they don't use real weapons. Undyne's spears are magic, and the few characters that have actual weapons like the Royal Guards never use theirs in battle.
 
So apparently horrortale teaser is up.
Anyone played it? My internet provider sadly restricts access to Newgrounds so I can't play it.

EDIT: Apparently there's a download link in google docs and I tried it. This game has potential sadly the creator won't be continuing this.
 
Last edited:
PotentialPlateau said:
Something's been bothering me as of late. Did the surface world in Undertale stagnate or go through some kind of dark age after Chara died?

There must've been a pretty big gap between Chara's death and Frisk's fall into the underground, right? Long enough for six other kids to fall down. Long enough for many monsters to forget what a human looks like. Long enough for Flowey to do everything he wanted to do and get bored. Centuries must've passed between Chara and Frisk.

So why do Frisk and Chara have such similar clothing? Shouldn't clothing styles have changed drastically over the centuries? Sure, fashions can come back, but even then they usually change the styles up a bit. It'd be pretty sily to think of someone today walking around with a tailcoat and perfumed wig, after all.

Also, lots of Underground tech is based off reverse-engineered garbage that got thrown into the Waterfall garbage dump, right? So Underground tech is probably a few years or decades older than surface-world tech. After all, You don't just throw a centuries-old object into the garbage, right?

We also know that they had VCRs when Chara was alive. So the surface world would probably have been at the tech level of the 70's or 80's.
But when Frisk arrives Underground centuries later, they're still using regular DVD's. So did recording technology on the surface really advance by only a few decades in hundreds of years? Or did something happen to set the tech level way back?

Or am I just overthinking things?


Edit: Can we still post images to support arguments in the discussions?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

i think we can assume that the monsters themselves, bar boss monsters and i guess gerson, have much shorter lifespans. that would explain how gerson and boss monsters easily identify you, as the boss monsters are basically immortal unless killed and gerson could have the lifespan of a normal turtle.

if they had a shorter lifespan, then it would explain how they would slowly forget everything and things would seem to fade into legend rather quickly.

i guess i can explain it better by using a plot from an episode of a tv show i forgot the name of where these two countries were fighting for centuries, and every time people started dying they would clone a new entire generation. it was later revealed that they had actually been fighting for around a month, but due to the fact that they kept cloning more and more generations it seemed much longer to them, and things that happened not-too-long ago were passed down as if legend, and random things such as a piece of a ship were thought to be ancient artifacts that had magical powers.
 
Last edited:
Eh, another thing to think about - Even when Chara passed through the underground, did all the monsters get to see them? It might've only been a select part. As for the other kids, the monsters might've never recognized them as human either. Could allow for a few decades, or at least less than 3 generations, between the first and Frisk.

As for several centuries, sure, why not? I mean, in the far far future, maybe we finally solved the whole trash/environmental issue and everything is recycled. Or the technology is so delicate that they won't survive the journey through the water and trash heap to be of any use to the monsters (my current phone barely survives 2m). And that skyline isn't really detailed.

Basically, it could be anything.
 
I feel a bit guilty for my huge amount of image posts and tumblr embeds in the original thread.

But ah, for a discussion topic: Flowey/Asriel. His resets are gained because he's the onky thing with determination in the magically limited Mt. Ebott. However Asriel guarding the flowers until he turned to a soulless flower with a broken barrier would mean he can't RESET as freely with all the exposed human determination (though something of note is that Frisk is the first beingthat interrupted his time-loops, but that could be explained as his resets happening afterthe other 6 kids are gone). However he would be free to go out. I have hope that Flowey could be reined in with Asriel's wish for A Quiet Life/guarding the empty Underground, but he could cause Quiet Life shenanigans, JJBA Kira style.
 
voldydoitsu said:
i think we can assume that the monsters themselves, bar boss monsters and i guess gerson, have much shorter lifespans. that would explain how gerson and boss monsters easily identify you, as the boss monsters are basically immortal unless killed and gerson could have the lifespan of a normal turtle.

if they had a shorter lifespan, then it would explain how they would slowly forget everything and things would seem to fade into legend rather quickly.

i guess i can explain it better by using a plot from an episode of a tv show i forgot the name of where these two countries were fighting for centuries, and every time people started dying they would clone a new entire generation. it was later revealed that they had actually been fighting for around a month, but due to the fact that they kept cloning more and more generations it seemed much longer to them, and things that happened not-too-long ago were passed down as if legend, and random things such as a piece of a ship were thought to be ancient artifacts that had magical powers.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I think the average monster's lifespan is roughly the same as that of a human
Burgerpants says something about how he's 19 years old and already ruined his life (or something to that effect) which would imply that 19 years is young for a monster. So unless monster years are way shorter than human years, it seems both species have roughly the same lifespan.

Plus, monsters having a shorter lifespan than humans wouldn't explain how it faded into legend in the human world. The game's intro literally says "legends say that those who climb the mountain never return" and this seems to be from the perspecitve of the humans.

IIRC, Bratty and Catty also say something about being trapped here for "millennia" though they're not exactly the most reliable narrators.
 
I always thought of monsters as having longer lifespans than humans myself, or at least a longer potential lifespan.
 
Again: anyone also think Goat Mom, Goat Dad and Goat Bro are actually dogs wearing goat horns?
 
teslashark said:
Again: anyone also think Goat Mom, Goat Dad and Goat Bro are actually dogs wearing goat horns?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I mean, they could be seen that way, with pawed legs instead of hoofs along with fangs, but they also got different shaped snout than the dog monsters Probably better to think them as an amalgamation of animal traits (obviously not an Amalgamate).
 
cB557 said:
Just listen.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...


In retrospect, I'm not surprised Undertale's score contains references to classic games. Did you catch that on your own? If so, kudos.

It's an interesting design choice to reference a Pokemon game's battle theme in Undertale's battle theme. It was probably done to set the games up as foils. Most pokemon are harmless and many trainers are kids, yet there is no consequences for beating up these animals. On the contrary, the game encourages you to battle and K.O. pokemon and the in-game society sees this as normal. Undertale turns this classic RPG paradigm on its head.

Okay, literary analysis mode off. Man, my last English class was a long time ago. Those few sentences took more thought than I'd care to admit.
 
PhoenixMercurous said:
In retrospect, I'm not surprised Undertale's score contains references to classic games. Did you catch that on your own? If so, kudos.

It's an interesting design choice to reference a Pokemon game's battle theme in Undertale's battle theme. It was probably done to set the games up as foils. Most pokemon are harmless and many trainers are kids, yet there is no consequences for beating up these animals. On the contrary, the game encourages you to battle and K.O. pokemon and the in-game society sees this as normal. Undertale turns this classic RPG paradigm on its head.

Okay, literary analysis mode off. Man, my last English class was a long time ago. Those few sentences took more thought than I'd care to admit.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

...um. Please tell me you're joking?
 
Crimson Doom said:
...um. Please tell me you're joking?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

What do you think I'm joking about???

Unless the video cB557 posted isn't actually the battle theme from Pokemon Gold version, Undertale's battle theme does reference the Pokemon Gen 2 battle theme. That almost certainly wasn't an accident on Toby Fox's part. The games do take opposite stances on violence, so they are foils in some regard. The rest of my post is basically just somewhat pretensions dressing on that because its 1:00 am, I've had a headache for like 24 hours, and I managed to fire up the rusty AP-English section of my brain.

Or do you think I'm joking about not having caught the reference until now?
 
PhoenixMercurous said:
What do you think I'm joking about???

Unless the video cB557 posted isn't actually the battle theme from Pokemon Gold version
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It's not the battle theme from Pokemon Gold. The video is by SilvaGunner, who is fairly well-known for posting videos that claim to be a rip of one song, but in reality is another, completely different song in the same style. Sorry, I guess I shouldn't have assumed that everyone knew who SilvaGunner was... :oops:
 
Crimson Doom said:
It's not the battle theme from Pokemon Gold. The video is by SilvaGunner, who is fairly well-known for posting videos that claim to be a rip of one song, but in reality is another, completely different song in the same style. Sorry, I guess I shouldn't have assumed that everyone knew who SilvaGunner was... :oops:
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I played the video on the embedded player, so I didn't even see the username of the person who posted it. Even so, I have no idea who SilvaGunner is, nor do I know why you'd expect me to. Youtube's a huge place after all.
 
You must login or register to reply here.
Back
Top