Woobie / Undertale

Suddenly, you started to think about the characters that populated the beautiful world of Undertale, and realized that, having been condemned to live in the Underground by the humans, their lives have been just pitiful. Seeing that you can give them a happy ending... It fills you with DETERMINATION.

WARNING: Due to the nature of the game, all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

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Straight Woobie

• The entire Dreemur family qualifies. Despite being doomed to live underground, all three seemingly held no ill will towards humanity. After the first human fell into the Underground, they adopt the fallen human, who they treat like their own family member by blood. The death of the fallen human and the eventual death of the family's only child leaves both of the two royals a scar that will not heal.
  • What about each family member by themselves? Asgore was The Good King to the monsters living in the Underground, and kind of a Bumbling Dad with his family, but the death of both of his children affects him to the point that, out of sheer rage, he wages a war on humanity... one he probably will never win, and he knows it well. Unfortunately, because all and every monster gets hope from it, he is unable to relent when he cooled down, and he is abandoned by his own wife over his actions and ends up spending his days confined to his palace, waiting for the rest of the humans to come down to harvest their souls because he can't bring himself to go cross the barrier and reap them. When you do finally confront him, he treats you sincerely nice and gives you multiple chances to prepare yourself before you two finally battle, even though it would make more sense for him to kill you immediately since he has already reaped six out of seven souls. After his defeat, the way he says that he only wishes to be reunited with his wife and son suggests he has also broken under the trauma and that he has become a Death Seeker. And if you accept to stay with him and be like a family, his good ending gets either cut by Flowey (the first time sparing him) or stopped by himself by sacrificing his soul (the second time onward).
  • Toriel, as she puts it when the player character asks to leave the Ruins, has seen humans come, leave, and die, because Asgore will kill them. If "I cannot save even a single child" doesn't break your heart on a Pacifist Run, it's knowing she failed to save potentially seven of them, one of which was her adopted child, the Fallen. Because of her Thou Shalt Not Kill policy, she won't Do Wrong, Right and merge with one dead child's soul to go above and reap the remaining souls needed to break the barrier, as she pointed out Asgore could have done, and that policy isn't popular with the rest of the Underground. Add in the player potentially killing her, either accidentally or on purpose, and you have parental fears incarnate. Finally, if you're on your last legs of HP, Toriel will stop her current attack and stop aiming for you on her next attacks, as a last desperate attempt to protect you.
    • To add insult to injury, Toriel can fail to save not seven, but eight children if you somehow fall to her in her battle. Blink and you'll miss it, Toriel's expression changes from dead serious to utter shock from killing you before the usual Game Over. And given you can simply reset the fight, thus you never see the rest of her reaction...
  • Asriel, from what we know, was a kind child who loved the fallen human, his adopted sibling, and treated them like if they were his own sibling by blood. Yet, his kindness and love led to his death and unholy reincarnation as Flowey, due to the fallen child manipulating him into the plan that would free all monsters. Considering this, plus what he suffered as Flowey before the latter went full-on "kill 'em all" mode, Asriel has suffered more deeply than probably any other character. Literally every scene with him is a Tear Jerker, and he's the only character you can't save. At least you and Frisk can potentially visit him before he transforms back into Flowey.
• The other humans that fell. It's heavily implied that at least half of them, possibly more, were children, and mere mortal children at that. Children without the protagonist's power to reset, stranded far away from home with only one life in a land full of creatures who hate them for daring to breathe, and faced with the prospect of being hunted down, murdered, having their souls harvested, and then kept in jars for decades, if not centuries, forced to contemplate their seemingly-inevitable fate of being forcibly used as a weapon to destroy everyone they have ever loved. Is it any wonder a few of them were implied to have snapped and racked up a huge body count, such as the blue soul? It's a miracle that wasn't all of them.
• Although she doesn't get much recognition for it, Alphys also falls pretty squarely into this trope in literally every playthrough type.
  • Before the story even starts, she's been forcing herself to hide in her lab with her tragically failed biological fusion experiments for an excruciatingly long time because she's too terrified of what their families might do to her if she were to tell them, and is heavily implied to be suicidal because of this; Undyne herself claims to have found Alphys at Waterfall looking down at one of the endless waterfalls, before Undyne talks her out of it and recovers Alphys' will to live. In fact, the death of Undyne or Mettaton (in a non-Genocide playthrough) will push her over the edge.
  • In the Pacifist Run, after her date, she leaves a note at her lab where she claims she doesn't want to be afraid anymore and will now face her problems, those being her failed experiments at the True Lab. While she fortunately doesn't go with the deed (she appears at the end of the True Lab quest to save the Player), the note heavily implies, once again, that she is commiting suicide.
  • In one of the near-Genocide playthroughs, if you complete the game after halting your Genocide run at the Mettaton NEO fight, Alphys becomes the new Queen of the Underground as an effective replacement for Toriel; saddened by the fact that there's hardly anyone left to rule over, she deeply regrets the fact that she didn't murder you in cold blood when she had the chance.
  • Worst of all, in the Genocide ending, she turns out to be more strong in will than the rest of the game would have you believe; after the tragic death of Undyne, it is implied that she gathers all of her fellow monsters into the True Lab as a last-ditch attempt to protect them from Chara, with everyone learning about her little Amalgamate secret. Oh, and just to top it off, the entire world ends up being erased anyway.
• Napstablook is a pitiful character who is very passive and obviously depressed. When one finds out that their friend (Shyren) has become more reclusive due to her sister "falling down", and that their cousin (Mettaton) has abandoned them to pursue stardom despite his promises not to forget them, you can see why Napstablook is so depressed.
• For a minor character, Snowdrake manages to garner a lot of sympathy. At first, he's just endearingly pathetic, telling awful puns and responding "See? Laughs! Dad was wrong!" if you laugh at them. However, when you get to the MTT Resort, you find out his dad is a successful comedian that doesn't approve of his son's attempt at humor, and that soon after his mother passed away, Snowy and his father had an awful fight, and he ran away from home. Then you can see Snowy is actually really dejected that he's not able to attract an audience.
  • It gets worse if you complete the Pacifist run. At the True Lab, you find out that after Snowdrake's mother "fell down" comatose, she was sent to Alphys for experimentation. Soon after, Alphys sent a letter saying all the monsters that had "fallen down" were alive and she'd send them home soon, Snowy's mom included... and then, she goes silent and stopped answering any letters from the subjects' families. In other words, thanks to Alphys' experiments going awry and her being too afraid to own up to what happened, Snowy and his father have no idea what happened to Snowy's mother. Not only did he have to endure losing his mom, he doesn't even get the closure of knowing for sure what happened to her, much less being able to have a proper funeral. And that's all after we find out every other problem mentioned before. Poor kid. At the very least, he gets thrown a bone at the end of the route by making it clear the family is now reunited, regardless of his mom's appearance.
• And speaking of Snowdrake, his Amalgamated mother definitely falls into this as well. She is corrupted almost beyond recognition, barely able to attack or speak, is accompanied by a heavily distorted version of the peaceful "Snowy" music, and manages to hang onto just enough of her original self that she speaks of her missing son. Everything about her is played for tragedy, much like Asriel. Again though, she is thrown a bone at the end of the route when she reunites with her family.

Jerkass Woobie

• Flowey, all things considered, is this. His resurrection as a flower (after Alphys injects determination on a flower where Asriel's deceased remains lied) began with him waking up in Asgore's garden, terrified and alone, calling in desperation for his parents to help him, only for nobody to come to his aid. When his father finally did find him, crying, Flowey soon discovered that he was unable to feel anything despite his father's attempts at consoling him, and after running away, discovered that he similarly couldn't feel his mother's love. Missing the ability to feel love, and missing his deceased friend the Fallen Child, he lost all hope and was Driven to Suicide. He was saved from death via his determination, the realization of what could potentially happen to a being without a soul when they die, and his fear of dying, which is where he learns about the ability to save and reset, but reset after reset left him severely jaded as he realized that without the ability to care for those around him, everyone may as well have been nothing but a scripted actor. This eventually leads to him turning towards killing out of sheer curiosity, to see what would happen (up until this point, he had used his powers for good, trying to help solve everyone's problems), and after realizing he likes this, said curiosity turns into cruel amusement. His initial wakeup in the garden seems to have deeply affected him, with him attempting to torment Frisk with the same fate during his boss battle, and similarly he seems convinced that his mother had forgotten and replaced him prior to his resurrection.
  Flowey (speaking into an Echo Flower, imitating Toriel's voice): "Where oh where could that child be...? I've been looking all over for them..."
  Flowey (speaking into an Echo Flower, his own voice): "Hee hee hee. THAT'S not true. She'll find another kid, and instantly forget about you. You'll NEVER see her again."
  • On top of all this, the Genocide route has him attempting to rekindle his friendship with the Fallen Child —seemingly the one person he still cares about— only to mercilessly be slaughtered by them in the end. When he tries to do so, his face slowly changes to that of Asriel and his Last Words are, in fact, spoken in Asriel's tone.
• If they really did want to free all monsters, then the Fallen Child/Chara becomes this. They killed themself (by poisoning themself with buttercups) so they could use their adoptive brother to gather six human souls from the surface to destroy the barrier. When they got to the surface, Asriel was so terrified by their hatred for humanity that he took back control from Chara, even if it meant the humans would kill him (and Chara along with him). Not only was Chara's sacrifice in vain, but they lost their brother and best friend. You'd think this would be bad enough, but then their simultaneous deaths destroy all of the hope Chara previously brought to the Underground as detailed above, and Chara ends up trapped dormant in Frisk: either as a voice in Frisk's head, an anomaly guiding Frisk's actions, or just merely stuck. And if they succeed and set everything right? Their only reward is ending up alone and never seeing their friends again, just like their adopted brother that they were responsible for killing, while Frisk and their friends live on with their happy ending. After all that, would you really blame them for wanting to embark on a Genocide Route and possess Frisk's body on any file you play from thereon?
  • If you subscribe to the "Narrator Chara" view (you and Chara are different entities), their Woobie status just amplifies. Under this school of thought, Chara never wanted to embark on a Genocide Route to begin with. In both the Pacifist and Neutral routes, Chara is snarky, yet helpful towards Frisk. In a Genocide Route, however, Chara's narration is a lot more cold and distant, and when you get to the end of a Genocide Route, Chara says that the "human SOUL" and "determination" were actually yours. Chara may have hated humanity, but still wanted to free all the monsters, until the Anomaly —you— ends up being The Corrupter and tainting Chara's mannerisms and thoughts during a Genocide route. And when killing Flowey, Chara hesitates, leaving you to press a button to give that final push to kill him. So Chara is, in essence, mentally destroyed by you in order to have enough power to destroy everything that they once held dear.
  • If you don't subscribe to the "Narrator Chara" theory, but still agree with the "Chara is not evil" point of view, then Asriel's post-pacifist dialogue about Chara climbing the mountain for an "unhappy reason" could also imply that they were abused in their village and climbed Mt. Ebott because they wanted to disappear. But the "unhappy reason" could be many things.

Stoic Woobie

• Sans. After gaining awareness of the fact that he exists within a world where time can be reset and manipulated at any point, he tried in vain for who-knows-how-long to fight it until he devolved into a pit of despair and nihilism. He can't bring himself to fully enjoy anything except the company of his dear brother (who you can murder in cold blood, by the way) and drinking, so much so that even making it to the surface doesn't really appeal to him anymore; why bother if it's all going to be reset anyway? The way he acts during his Genocide battle, smiling and chatting dismissively despite the pain and exhaustion in his eyes, makes it seem like even the idea of dying barely fazes him anymore. On top of that, assuming he has subtle memories of previous timelines like most monsters do, his mind could potentially be flooded with half-formed recollections of anything from losing everybody he loves and dying with the knowledge that he failed, to finally achieving his happy ending only to have it be snatched away like a toy, except unlike everybody else, he knows that they actually happened. The worst part about all this? Unlike nearly every other character on this list, the average playthrough would give you practically no indication of this. While a normal playthrough does drop hints that there's more to him than meets the eye, it's only at the end of a Genocide route where the full magnitude of his Hidden Depths is made apparent. Only then, where he's been pushed to the absolute end of his rope, does he finally bare his soul in a last-ditch attempt to get the player to go back on their evil ways and reset.
  • As an extra kick in the teeth, the little information we can gather about his backstory strongly suggests that he's carrying even more baggage that we don't even know about yet. The contents of his secret room all but outright state he used to be a far different, far happier person some unknown time ago, and had many more close and meaningful relationships before something took them all away. Nobody but Toby knows exactly who the "people you don't recognize" in the photo album were, what exactly their relationship with Sans was, or what happened to them, but considering the fact that Sans also has an unknown connection with Gaster, a character who was shattered across time and space in a terrible accident, who exists and yet doesn't exist, there's little room for any interpretation that isn't horribly, horribly tragic. What's even worse is that Toby once made a tweet that heavily suggested Sans worked tirelessly for a very long time trying to fix the machine in his room, which many fans believe has something to do with the disappearance of these people, only to have it all be in vain and him to eventually just throw in the towel and give up trying. Bearing all this in mind puts a lot of his dialogue in the game in a darker light, especially his Lost Soul segment, where he's not only speaking without his usual speaking font (which even Papyrus is doing at that point), but the text is actually wavering and shaking, which suggests it's full of emotion unlike anything else he's ever said before. Considering the fact that the lost Soul Segment is all about the characters baring their souls and revealing their deepest and darkest fears and pains, plus the fact that he does not contradict himself unlike every other soul when you bring their memories back, but rather just states he's rooting for you, it's safe to say whatever the hell happened to him is still a very heavy weight on his mind. Somebody, please, give this poor guy a hug...
    just give up. i did.
    why even try?
    you'll never see 'em again...
• If you subscribe to the theory that you (the Anomaly) and Frisk are two totally separate entities, then Frisk becomes this. They were once a kindhearted child whose personality and desires were independent from yours. Unlike Asriel, who had the power to resist the Fallen's control, you (whether you believe you're playing as the Fallen or yourself) can flat-out force Frisk to kill absolutely everyone against their will. While most of the main characters have a Dying Moment of Awesome, Frisk's SOUL just fades away over the course of the story as it's replaced with that of an inhuman monstrosity — and, for whatever time they have left, the other characters won't know Frisk as anything else. The one person that comes even slightly close to realizing it —Sans, who asks you whether or not there is anything gentle left in you during his boss fight— gets just as brutally slaughtered as everyone else. And what do they get in their end? The world is destroyed by the Fallen, and the only way to bring it back is sell Frisk's soul. And whenever you get the Pacifist Ending, the Fallen will be there to remind you who's really in control.

Other kinds of Woobies

• Papyrus is an Iron Woobie. His pre-battle dialogue reveals that he has a strong desire for companionship and sees joining the Royal Guard as a way to fulfill that, but not only does Undyne have no intention of letting him join, she won't admit it to him. He's frequently treated like a child and even jokes about his own death when killed on a Neutral run without changing his expression (whereas Sans drops his smile once he's hit in the Genocide route). And that's not going into the King Papyrus ending, where not only does Sans lie to him about the others' deaths (and Papyrus is implied to be aware of it), but Papyrus hides his misery from others, waiting until Sans has left to admit to the player how he really feels. And in a Genocide playthrough, upon killing him, he will still admit that he has faith in you, the person that killed him, that you can do well at the end.
• When you think about, every single monster can qualify. While sure, some of the monsters are kind of jerks, the fact all of them are doomed to live in the underground and that who knows for how much time they have lived there firmly puts them in this category. They become full of hope about being able to see the surface after Asgore wages war on humanity, but knowing how Asgore can't bring himself to cross the barrier to reap the rest of the souls, or that he really isn't looking forward to reaping them from every human that falls here, it's hard to not feel sorry for them as a whole.
  • It gets worse if you're on a Genocide playthrough. Again yes, some of the monsters are jerks, but... did any of them truly deserve to have someone they don't even know burst into their homeworld and murder them for no reason except "I was bored and wanted to see what would happen"? It gets worse when you realize that every important character you murder (Papyrus, Sans, Undyne and so on) has a major revelation that completely changes their outlook on life seconds before you sadistically cut them down to ribbons for the sole purpose of "seeing what happens". You Bastard!
• Finally, while little is known about Dr. W.D. Gaster other than for his meta-filled, Nightmare Fuel easter eggs, he's a tragic character all around. He created the CORE, which provides power to the whole Underground, and it's implied that he has ties to Sans. One day, a freak accident with one of his creations caused him (and possibly several others) to be scattered across time and space, and to make matters worse, time goes on and nobody, except his followers, remembers who he is. It's also implied that he still exists and still has awareness of the world ("It's rude to talk about someone who's listening."), but there's nothing he can do to truly reach out of whatever hell he's trapped in. There's a machine in Sans's secret room that's broken and people believe was part of, if not, the cause of his disappearance, but Word of God has stated that it will never be fixed, meaning that poor Gaster is doomed to be scattered across the space-time continuum for eternity.
  • It does get a little better for Gaster if you subscribe to the theory that he's the voice you meet at the start of Deltarune, but considering he remains as nothing but a voice and that he still doesn't appear in the flesh, it probably doesn't help to think about just how much whatever remains of him is scattered across the space-time continuum, bound to never ever be physically interacted with again.

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