Fanfic / Visiontale

Visiontale is an Undertale Fan Fic written by Sans Wingdings Gaster, posted on Archive of Our Own. It recounts the story of Undertale with one major difference: the protagonist is visually-impaired. It expands on several aspects of monster culture, as well as the Chara-as-narrator theory.

She also made an Audio Adaptation for Chapter 41, which is now defunked. The first half of which can be found here, and the second half can be found here.

Unmarked Undertale and Visiontale spoilers ahead.

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Visiontale contains examples of:

Tropes A Through L

• Adaptation Expansion: The entire story. Pauline pays particular attention to Dreemurrite (later on called Zealdian) culture, using the material in the game as a foundation.
• The Ace: Many monsters consider Gaster to be one. Also, any monster with a wide enough breadth and depth of knowledge by default becomes one, because knowledge is power in Zealdia.
• Actor Allusion: An extremely obvious one in Mettaton. Gaster even begins calling him Mettaplier.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Chara, on behalf of Pauline and themselves, in Chapter 41. It fails.
• All There in the Manual: Mentioned in the preface of Visiontale, as well as most chapter summaries, leading readers to the endnotes if they're confused or curious about Pauline's thought processes behind certain aspects of the story.
• Alternate Calendar: The Dreemurrite, and later on, called the Zealdian year. Explained by Gaster in Chapter 32.
  • Gaster: Our year does not correspond to your Gregorian calendar. We utilize it for the sake of convenience, to at least synchronize somewhat with the surface. After all, units of time derived around the movement of the Sun and stars is… hollow for us. We use an identical hour-minute-second system. However, our months have seven weeks. And there are seven months in a year. 343 days in total. There are twenty-two days in the year we, do not count regarding business or school days.
  • Their calendar begins on July 10, 1814: July 10 being Nicola Tesla's birthday and the surface year the Inertia Society was founded.
• Ascended Extra: Notably the Snowed Inn owner, Snowdinn Shop owner, Nice Cream Guy, the River Person, Monster Kid, and two of the Gaster Followers.
• Atomic F-Bomb: Pauline and Chara drop one right before they begin fighting Papyrus.
• Audio Adaptation: The first half of an audio adaptation of Chapter 41, which is now defunked, can be found on Soundcloud here. The second half can be found here.
• Aura Vision: Checking stats works this way.
• Author Appeal: She states frequently that she's a Xenoblade Chronicles 1 fan, in chapter notes and within the fic itself. Exploited by the Inertia Society members who created her skell, the interface being designed around her gaming experiences.
• Back from the Dead: Gaster, Annie, Murry, and Chara.
• Background Magic Field: Explicitly stated by Gaster. The Barrier emits magic, which the CORE, and via proxy, all other magitronic devices, harness. Within that field, the DMT within humans' bodies becomes determination.
• Badass Bookworm: Pauline figures out that combat in the Underground operates like an action RPG by analyzing Toriel's language when discussing monster encounters. Also Adam, Alphys, Sans, and monsters trained via Inertia Society methodology from a young age.
• Badass Longrobe: Sans, in the Judgment Hall.
• Beige Prose: They reflect Pauline only being able to describe her experiences with four senses, and, as the fanfic progresses, via sound and soulological impulses alone. Emphasized during particularly confusing, emotional, and or overwhelming situations. Used notably in Chapter 42, while Sans attacks Pauline and Chara, after gaining control of the resets.
  We die. Sans loads.
• Berserk Button: Don't insult Asgore in front of Papyrus or Chara. Don't try hurting Pauline in front of Chara or Sans.
• Big "YES!": Pauline and Gaster when excited.
• Black Comedy: Any jokes about Pauline's blindness leading to pain, and the Cards Against Humanity segments. Every character indulges in it more often as the fic progresses.
• Blind Weaponmaster: Pauline becomes one, by the end of Determination 201X, via an Unusual User Interface consisting of a BFS used to cast magic, and a modified Wii U Pro Controller.
• Bloodier and Gorier: When compared to Undertale itself.
• Boots of Toughness: Papyrus, Undyne, and later Sans.
• Brain in a Jar: The Second Six Souls.
• Buffy Speak: Most characters, but especially Pauline and Chara.
• Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp":
  • The most prominent example is monsters calling electronic devices magitronic devices. Yellow magic is their electricity equivalent.
  • They've renamed many scientific terms to suit them, most notably those related to electricity.
    • Power, measured in watts, is measured in degrees instead.
    • Current, measured in amperes in real life, is measured in channels instead.
    • A volt, the product of current and resistance, is called an impact.
    • Resistance, normally measured in ohms, is measured in Tourings, named after the monster who discovered them.
  • They call the Internet the Undernet, like in Undertale itself. They use their own form of HTML to format website names, like how "uww", standing for "Underground wide web", replaces "www", or "world wide web".
• The Chosen One: Deconstructed. Gaster acknowledges that in the timeline Visiontale takes place in, Pauline is the chosen one, but that he found a massive pool of equally-qualified candidates, each of them equally likely to be chosen in another timeline.
• Conveniently Coherent Thoughts: During Pauline and Chara's mental conversations.
• Cliffhanger: Combined with Wham Line, at the end of most chapters.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Pauline, Robin, and Murry. Chara somewhat.
• Cross-Cultural Handshake: The Inertia Society handshake, where the two participants press their palms, or palm-equivalents, together.
• Cultured Badass: Undyne discusses American civil rights several times and how Malcom X's teachings have influenced her life.
  Undyne (referring to Malcom X's militant philosophy and African Americans living separately from white people): I know this! That's exactly what I think monsters should do! When we go free, we have to stick together! We... we can't rely on humans for everything again. We already use so much of their technology and ideas. We... we have to... to prove we're good enough. Our values. Our reasoning. Our mastery of the world around us."
• Despair Event Horizon: Several.
  • Gaster's death for the Inertia Society in particular. Many monsters, including Undyne's parents, fell down due to grief.
  • Chara's and Asriel's deaths for monsterkind as a whole, as in Undertale itself.
  • After the Determination Study fails, for Alphys and Dewey specifically.
  • Sans learning of timelines where he's living happily on the Surface. The last event in his own Trauma Conga Line.
  • Pauline and Chara's occurs when Sans begins decreasing their stats.
• Deconstructed Trope: Frequently.
  • In Chapter 28, when Alphys and her colleagues discuss the Determination Study and its outcome.
  Dewey: I just knew that this study would garner ire and hatred and disgust from any human who found out about it. That, they wouldn't understand how desperate we were. That, us comparing our efforts to breaking the barrier to MK Ultra and the United States' attempts to best the USSR via research into psychic powers, by giving, 'volunteers', LSD to see what would happen, would go completely over everyone's heads.
• Dysfunction Junction: Everyone in the story has some… issues…
• Dramatic Ellipsis: Used liberally.
• The Dreaded: Sans, after he becomes most determined and becomes The Judge.
• The Empath: Monsters by nature, and humans, in the presence of especially powerful monsters. It's explained well in Chapter 11, in one of the Snowdin librarby books.
  This empathy inevitably makes it immensely difficult for monsters to exist near humans. They are guaranteed to come in contact with humans' emotions, and become weaker because of it. So the crueler the intentions of our enemies, the more their attacks will hurt us, because the crueler their intentions, the more negative emotions we feel. And the more negative emotions we feel, the weaker we become. And the weaker our magic becomes, the less able we are to fight back.
• Fantastic Science: Several.
  • Soulology: the study of the properties of the colors of magic/how a monster or human becomes cemented in the color/colors of magic they do.
  • Psychophysiology: How emotions impact a monster's soul, combining human psychology/anatomy/physiology.
  • Ethermetry: How ambient magic, called ether, interacts with the environment.
  • Magitry: Studying the relationship between each color of magic and technology, the Underground's equivalent to the T and E in STEM.
  • Translationism: A school of thought that applies preexisting, human fields of study to monsterkind, like translational sociology or translational theology.
• The Fettered: Sans, due to him following a variant of Kantian ethics. He even quotes the categorical imperative to justify his actions.
• Fix Fic: Gaster, the Gaster Followers, and Chara have been brought back to life, Alphys's and Will's families have been reunited, and Sans has regained his will to live and the stats he lost starting after Gaster's death. Also when Pauline explains how she wrote Visiontale to expand on monster culture, which she feels hasn't been done enough in the vast majority of Undertale fanfics.
• Funetik Aksent: Most notably Sans, but Pauline and Murry as well.
• Fun with Acronyms: The CORE, or Central Operation Repurposing Ether. Also EXP and LOVE, as in Undertale itself.
• Genius Cripple: Downplayed. She received high grades in high school and attended an acclaimed university before falling underground, but otherwise, Chara describes how the Underground works, making her outwardly seem like one.
• Gentleman and a Scholar: Gaster and Dewey.
• Good Is Not Dumb: Invoked by Papyrus in Chapter 42.
  Papyrus: Even I think Chara and the human must suffer the consequences of their actions. And I agree that only someone who knows the extent of determination's power should wield it. Even I'm not that foolish. I may be an optimist. And I may see the good in everyone... but I'm no fool.
• Good Is Not Soft: Sans, even more so then in Undertale itself.
• Grey-and-Grey Morality: Rampant throughout the story, especially regarding monsterkind's conscious decision that killing humans is the only way they can go free. Especially important regarding Papyrus, who acknowledges the hypocrisy of believing in the importance of individual dignity at the same time.
• Grew a Spine: Alphys and Papyrus, and oh, where to start with Sans?
• Handicapped Badass: Deconstructed. Chara helps Pauline understand the more confusing aspects of the Underground, including dodging attacks, giving off this impression to others. Reconstructed after she receives soulological training from Dr. Gaster.
• I Did What I Had to Do: Chara's retort to Sans, when they tell him about their efforts to protect Frisk and Pauline.
• I'm Having Soul Pains: Pauline, Chara, Papyrus, and the monsters spectating on Pauline's Judgment, while under the effects of Karmic Retribution.
• Inconveniently-Placed Conveyor Belt: Averted with the raised conveyor belts in Hotland, used in place of paved roads for cars. The residents use them in conjunction with sidewalks on ground level.
• Incredibly Lame Pun: Sans laughing at Dewey calling monsters' fields of knowing spheres of influence.
  Dewey: Just 'cause fields of knowing are traditionally drawn as spheres doesn't mean they're puns!
  Sans: Course not…
• In-Series Nickname
• Shout-Out Theme Naming: Sans, by nicknaming his friends after video game characters, especially the party members in Chrono Trigger.
  • Sans starts calling Pauline Shulk, the name of the protagonist in Xenoblade Chronicles 1.
  • The following are the nicknames from Chrono Trigger specifically:
    • Chara: Chrono.
    • Alphys: Lucca.
    • Undyne: Marle.
    • Sans: Glenn, to his friends.
    • Asriel: Magus.
    • Burgerpants/Salt: Fritz, an NPC the player has the option to save while breaking out of jail. When they do, Fritz’s store becomes available.
    • Flowey: Lavos.
• In the Hood: Sans, in the Judgment Hall.
  Chara (referring to Sans wearing a robe): [He's not wearing a hoodie! He always wears—wore a hoodie! Well he's still wearing a hood but—]
• Judge, Jury, and Executioner:
  • The Judge in wartime has this kind of autocratic power. Even a civilian performing a Judgment in peacetime has absolute power within the Judgment Hall.
  • Sans takes up this role at the end of Chapter 43.
    Sans: Me? Spare YOU? You defied me. Why should I spare you? I shall defend my title. Even if it kills you!
• Large Ham: Papyrus, like in Undertale. Gaster also has his moments.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: The population of the Underground, after Gaster's death. Slowly undone as Pauline talks to his former colleagues, friends, and family. Defied by the Moores, who constantly looked at footage of Gaster after his death so they wouldn't forget him.
  • The First Seven Souls, the seven humans who sacrificed their lives to seal monsterkind Underground, harnessed their determination to do this to monsterkind’s influence on the surface. All but the most vague traces of their presence remained in historical records and archaeological sites across the world.
• Like Is, Like, a Comma: Pauline and Chara most often. Bratty and Catty, like in Undertale itself.

Tropes M Through Z

• Mad Scientist: Subverted with Gaster.
• Magi Babble: Monsters created vocabulary to describe magic as rigorously as humans have done for scientific fields of study. Liberally mixed with Techno Babble.
• Meaningful Name: Adam, the Second Soul of Perseverance and the fifth soul Asgore collected, shares a first name with one of the main characters in the first Saw film, and one of the hosts of MythBusters. He is a horror fan and science nerd.
• Mind over Manners: The only time a monster sees what's inside someone else's field of knowing is if they become a cemented monster's judge.
• Mind Probe: There are two main varieties: a surface-level one, used when checking a monster or human's stats, and a deeper one, used during the Judgment, both performed via telepathy.
• Misery Builds Character: How Chara thinks monsters view the position of judge. They complete Shakur's explanation of the Delta Rune with this speech.
  Chara: The top of the triangle. That's the Judge, isn't it? The circle's not connected to anything cause they don't answer to anyone. And that's 'cause they're above everyone else. Even the king. 'Cause their power sets them apart. Everybody thinks that. And everybody thinks power is knowledge for the Judge. And the Judge has to do sooo much stuff to get so strong so they know more about magic and the soul and... and what's moral and what's not... than we do. And we AAAAAAAALL know knowledge is power.
• Mister Exposition:
  • Gaster, Alphys, and Dewey. Justified for the three of them being experts in their fields and that the Unified Theory Papers state that they must explain monster culture to any humans they meet.
  • Murry and Annie take up some of this responsibility after being revived.
  • Sans, in the Judgment Hall, regarding both the history of the Judgment as a custom, and the experiences which broke, and subsequently restored, his will to live.
• Motherly Scientist: Gaster toward Sans and Papyrus. Dewey and Murry toward Alphys. Allen and Touring Moore toward their children, especially Will.
• Motor Mouth: Pauline after making a revelation about the Underground, but especially Gaster when excited. Gerson even lampshades it.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • Papyrus, at Grillby's in Chapter 17.
  • The reactions of the monsters who worked on the Determination Study.
• Named After Somebody Famous: Inertia Society members, and those associated with them, name themselves after Humans they admire.
  • Gaster adopted the middle name Tesla in honor of Nicola Tesla's speculation and research into wireless power, and how it helped him create the CORE.
  • Dewey named Sans in honor of the use of the word "sans" in Shakespeare's play As You Like It, in the last line of the "All the World's a Stage" monologue.
  • Dewey Durkheim Curie's first name refers to Melvil Dewey, a 19th and 20th-century educator. His middle name refers to Emile Durkheim, a 19th and 20th century sociologist. He educates Pauline and Chara in the Underground's customs and conducts soulological and psychophysiological research heavily-inspired by human psychology and sociology.
  • Murrie Durkheim Curie's first and last names are a clear reference to the Polish and French chemist Marie Curie. He studies ethermetry, the Underground's chemistry equivalent.
  • Annie, Will, Allen, and Touring Asimov Moore's middle and last names refer to the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, and the engineer Gordon Moore, who invented Moore's Law, respectively.
  • Allen and Touring are an obvious reference to Allen Touring, who, among many achievements, created the thought experiment called the Touring Test. They work in magitry, the Underground's equivalent to electrical engineering and computer science.
  • Gerson Webber's last name refers to the sociologist Max Webber, who studied religion and its influence on economics, though Gerson's interest in translationist theology is more similar to Durkheim.
  • Mettaton Plier, later called Mettaplier, admires the YouTuber Markiplier, and uses him as a model for his own Undernet persona.
  • Undyne, Booker, and Betty el-Shabaz's last name refers to American civil rights activist Malcom el-Shabaz, better known as Malcom X. Undyne advocates for the separation of monsters and humans on the surface, as well as training monsters in self-defense, similar to Malcom X doing so for African Americans.
  • Booker refers to African American writer Booker T. Washington.
  • Betty was Malcom el-Shabaz's wife.
  • Though his original last name is unknown, Robin Crusoe changed his last name due to him and Willis/Sodochlo bonding over Robinson Crusoe in translationist literature class.
  • Burgerpants/Salt’s preferred name comes from a Portmanteau of sodium and chloride, to express the copious amounts of salt he harbors for many in his life. At least, before Sans gives him a new nickname.
  • Sans’s middle name, Rene-Kant, refers to the Enlightenment philosophers Rene Descartes and Immanuel Kant, respectively. The former wrote about the nature of existence, and the latter devoted his life to creating a moral system intended to hold everyone accountable equally. Considering Sans’s experiences regarding his existence being toyed with during the resets, and the moral code he adopts, both names are more than fitting.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Sans. Hypothetically, the monster who would have adopted the title of Judge during the War, though no one ever did so. The Judge becomes even more worthy of this status after Sans grants himself the title.
• Noodle Incident:
  • The Fishbock Fiasco.
  • Sans sticking Pauline's hand in his mouth while drinking ketchup to prove to her that he does so becomes one.
• Oh, Crap!: Notably when Pauline angers Papyrus enough to genuinely hurt her, when Sans discovers Chara's presence after examining Pauline's soul, and when Sans gains control of the resets.
• Oh, My Gods!: Characters use both normal and Inertia Society-exclusive swears. Inertia Society members have two God variants: Tesla in positive situations, like "by Tesla" or "thank Tesla", and Edison in negative ones, like "Edisondamned".
• One-Man Industrial Revolution:
  • Justified in the sense that Gaster and his colleagues have lived for centuries, so they have had centuries to develop their ideas in their respective fields of study.
  • Downplayed since they still need other monsters to help them conduct research or transform their ideas into concrete results.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Sans, when he repeatedly kills Pauline and Chara in the Judgment Hall, and when he lowers their stats, so they may feel the same way he felt while Frisk and Chara reset in the other timelines.
  Sans: Now you feel my weakness.
• Personality Powers: Zig zagged with a monster or human's cemented colors of magic. What color or colors they end up using depends on personality, the monsters they hang around with, and their life experiences.
• Portmanteau:
  • "Longivator", a portmanteau of "longitude" and "elevator". Used in the Inertia Society headquarters alongside regular elevators.
  • Also "Skelebros", when Chara refers to Sans and Papyrus simultaneously.
• Powered Armor: Mjolnir.
• Power Makes Your Voice Deep: Usually, the stronger the monster, the deeper their voice. Lampshaded by Chara, when Sans reveals himself to be Pauline's Judge. Unbeknownst to either of them, by this point, he has become the most determined being in the Underground.
  Chara: [If his voice wasn't deep before… (whistles) daaaamn!]
• Psychic Radar: Monsters and humans can sense others' presences if they have enough knowledge of a location, and can identify them if they know enough information about them.
• Psychoactive Powers:
  • Explained by Dewey in Chapter 26. A monster or human must channel a color of magic's defining aspect (patience, bravery, etc) to cast it.
  • A Snowdin librarby book explains how fear inhibits monsters’ magic, and how strong, non-frightening emotions produce the strongest outbursts of magic.
  • When she explains how her and her colleagues discovered determination, Alphys says how determination is driven by desire, not a specific emotion. This makes it logic-defying in-universe.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Used frequently.
  • Chara, after Pauline calls out Asgore forming the Royal Guard
  [You. Did. Not. Just. Say. That. About Asgore.]
  • Sans, in Chapter 41, after examining Pauline's soul, and seeing Chara.
  Show yourself. CHARA DREEMURR!
• Pungeon Master: Sans, even more than in Undertale itself. The first time he and Pauline meet, he makes a braille pun.
• Rapid-Fire "No!":
  • Chara and Pauline when panicked.
  • Notably in the Judgment Hall in Chapter 41, when Sans drinks a solution of determination and becomes the most determined being in the Underground.
• Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic: Zig zagged.
  • They apply to Pauline, Chara, and the other "younger" characters most often , particularly the disfluencies, uptalking, and the gasping/hiccupping.
  • Gaster, Dewey, Allen, Touring, Shakur, and Sans, Chapter 41 onward, avert them.
• Reality Warper:
  • Humans in the Underground, regardless if they can save or not. Determination allows them to cast the other six forms of magic without training.
  • Gaster, Murry, and Annie, while in the Void.
• Really 700 Years Old: Discussed. Pauline's horrified to discover Undyne was born in 1976 in surface years, and that Sans was born in 1970, when they don't act their human ages.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Invoked when Alphys describes Simon and Tailor, the Second Soul of Patience and the Second Soul of Bravery, respectively. Also Sans and Papyrus, Dewey and Murry, and Gaster and Dewey.
• Rite of Passage:
  • In peacetime, the Judgment affirms a monster or human's belonging to society via a candid assessment of their moral impact on their peers, concluded by ceremonial combat with their judge. Notable because Pauline is the first human to undergo the Judgment. Chara died before they could cement themselves, let alone become sufficiently-knowledgeable in monster culture to be considered mature enough for their peers to choose a judge.
  • In wartime, the Judgment affirms that a monster possesses the moral and magical strength to fight humankind. The Judge decides which monsters undergo it.
• RPG Mechanics 'Verse: Alluded to by Toriel. Magic became RPG-like starting in the 1990's in surface years.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Supernatural Powers!: Some monsters' perspective on the position of Judge, especially when Sans grants himself the title. Being the strongest monster in the Underground, he deserves to wield the absolute power associated with the position. That, and because Misery Builds Character.
• Screw the Rules, I Make Them!!: Inherent to the position of judge, in wartime and peacetime. Invoked by Papyrus, when he says how Sans could justify killing him because Papyrus defied Sans's authority.
• Self-Insert: The premise of Visiontale.
• Sensory Overload: In Chapter 42, Sans exploits Pauline's blindness while attacking her, by overloading her senses, deafening her, and via many other measures besides.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Gaster.
• Sharing a Body: One interpretation of Pauline and Chara's relationship. Within the Void, Chara sees Pauline's whole field of knowing, so they combine their field of knowing with hers to help her.
• Shout-Out:
  • There are frequent Xenoblade Chronicles 1 references, starting from the first chapter.
    • As the story progresses,the characters begin making ‘’Chrono Trigger references more frequently. These references are very plot-relevant.
  • Chuggaaconroy also receives some shoutouts, since Pauline recommends his let's Play to the cast. Doubles as Author Appeal.
  • There are also many Super Smash Bros. references, especially regarding Shulk's mechanics and shirtless costume.
  • Chara watches Crash Course.
  • Pauline compares Papyrus’s puzzles, or as Chara calls them, "traps", to the traps in the Saw films. She eventually discovers that Sans is a fan of the series.
  • The cast plays Cards Against Humanity multiple times.
  • There's a Masamune in Sans's room… and a larger one in Undyne's house.
  • The River Person is a fan of Tupac Shakur. They even named themselves after him.
  • Sans annoys Papyrus by mentioning Portal and the cake being a lie.
  • He also compares the lasers in the CORE to the thermal discouragement beams from Portal2.
  • Several characters are Pokémon fans.
    • Pauline and Undyne bond over sharing Pokémon cards. Undyne even plays the English theme for the first season on piano.
    • Will plays Pokémon Red via emulator.
  • Pauline and the Moore family are huge MythBusters fans. Will even quotes them.
  • Dewey uses the color pie from Magic: The Gathering as an analogy for how the seven colors of magic work.
  • Sans mentions that he and his colleagues named Pauline's Powered Armor a skell, the same name as the line of Mini-Mecha from ‘’Videogame//Xenoblade Chronicles X’’, because Pauline is already familiar with how a skell functions, and this will help her use it more easily.
  • Before Chara fell, they mention playing games on the Nintendo Entertainment System, Super Nintendo Entertainment system, and arcade machines. Among them are Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter II, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, Kid Icarus, and the first few Mega Man games.
    • They also gifted Frisk a Gameboy and a copy of Tetris.
  • When Chara fell into the Underground, they had copies of Chrono Trigger and Super Mario World, the latter being a pack-in game with the system.
• Shown Their Work: Pauline, regarding many fields of study, but especially regarding DMT and its effects, and the experimental design of the Determination Study. Also evident through her attention to detail regarding Undertale more generally.
• Sophisticated as Hell: Murry, in contrast to Gaster.
• Speech Impediment: Alphys's stuttering, which she developed due to having stunted soulological development from an early age. It takes her more time to focus her magic enough so others can understand her when she is speaking. appears when she's especially emotional. Dewey stutters as well, but less often.
• Spell My Name with a "The": The Judge, particularly after Sans grants himself the title.
• Squee: Pauline when hearing Gaster's voice in the flesh for the first time. Her and Chara both squee when he is especially happy and or excited.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: Sans, to Pauline and Chara's very frequent annoyance.
• Suddenly Shouting: Sans, in Chapter 41, when Pauline and Chara claim they didn't intend to kill or grievously harm Jerry.
  Sans: HOW DARE YOU LIE TO ME!
• Symbiotic Possession:
  • One interpretation of Pauline and Chara's relationship. Chara takes control in unfamiliar/dangerous situations, or when Chara feels like contributing to conversations.
• Sufficiently Analyzed Magic: To the extent that monsters created their own Magi Babble and Techno Babble to describe it, heavily-inspired by human Techno Babble. They use magic to power their computers, smartphones, and televisions, called magitronic devices in-universe.
• Tears of Fear: Chara, at the end of Chapter 41.
• Techno Babble: Human and monster. Liberally mixed with Magi Babble. Discussed when the Inertia Society mentions how they appropriated and adapted human language to describe magic.
• Telepathy: Mostly monsters, but humans as well, to a limited extent, in that humans can only use it to check others' stats. Monsters' telepathy activates when they extend their fields of knowing into other monsters' and humans' fields of knowing. Only socially-permissible during the Judgment.
• Took a Level in Badass: When a monster cements themselves.
  • In Chapters 18 and 19, when Dewey cements himself in yellow magic, after not being able to use magic at all for decades.
  • Alphys, when she cements herself in yellow and purple magic and rescues Pauline.
  • If Sans wasn't badass enough, when he gains control of the resets.
• Totally Radical: Pauline, Chara, Will, and Murry most frequently. Parodied in Chapter 23, when Pauline cringes when Sans calls their friends from Snowdin "The Crew," when Sans is actually young on monster standards.
• Traumatic Superpower Awakening: Several.
  • Dewey cements himself in yellow magic in Chapter 20, after protecting the librarby.
  • Alphys cements herself in yellow and purple magic in Chapter 32, when she rescues Pauline.
  • Papyrus cements himself in bravery in Chapter 42, when he intervenes in Pauline and Chara's Judgment.
  • Sans cementing himself in justice, during the stage of the Determination Study involving living subjects.
  • Papyrus also mentions how only traumatic events cause monsters to cement themselves in a third color of magic.
  • The Second Six Souls, when each of them fell underground.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Bacon for Pauline, and later, Chara. Chocolate for both of them. The canon Undertale characters have the same trademarked favorite foods as in Undertale itself.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Chara, when they take control of Pauline after Jerry steals and breaks her cane, subsequently threatening to kill him. Also when they tell Pauline they'll help her gain more stats, when Pauline realizes that her encounter with Jerry gave her stats equivalent, if not greater, to a player on a no mercy run of Undertale
  "{Ninety-nine health. Forty-eight attack. Thirty-five defense… that's sooo much."}
  [And if anyone else hurts you again, I'll help you. I can get you more.]
  "{Sounds good.}"
• Terse Talker: Sans, Chapter 41 onward.
• Truly Single Parent: Gaster.
• Unusual Euphemism: Nicola Tesla, Thomas Edison, and Michael Faraday's last names, within the Inertia Society. "By Tesla!" replaces "oh my God," "Edisondamned" replaces "Goddamn," and humans and monsters alike use "by Faraday's lisp!" when particularly upset.
• Uterine Replicator: Sans, Papyrus, and Alphys were born via CAD&CAD machines. Also the Third Seven Souls were created using them.
• Verbal Tic: Shakur saying "trala" at the end of sentences.
• Virtual Soundtrack: There are music annotations throughout the story to add to the atmosphere.
• Wham Line: The endings of many chapters, notably Chapter 29.
• Wise Beyond Their Years: Chara, after viewing and participating in many, many timelines of varying quality.
• World of Ham: ALL OF ZEALDIA, BY TESLA! Justified, because monsters are inherently empathetic, the believed for centuries that only emotional drove someone’s magic, and their society does not value emotional self-control nearly as much as humans.