YMMV / Undertale Yellow

• Accidental Aesop: Just because you love someone, doesn't mean you should have complete blind faith in them. Much of what happened to Ceroba's family stemmed from the fact that Ceroba never once even considered that Chujin could have his faults or flaws. From believing it was Asgore's fault for snubbing his robot designs (despite several of the prototypes either flat-out not working or being legitimately dangerous even to monsters), to having complete faith that the serum her husband was working on would work, despite remaking it from incomplete research and her not being a scientist, and said serum being her husband's ultimate demise due to testing it on himself. The latter of these would ultimately cause her daughter to become a fallen down.
• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Is Flowey nice since the game might be placed when he was good, or is he simply using you for his own personal gain? Upon the game's release, it's revealed it's the latter, as Flowey organized all of the events to get Clover to Asgore when Clover kept dying on the path they would have taken with Toriel.
  • Starlo's mother says that Starlo used to have a crush on Ceroba, to the point that he was so devastated when she married Chujin he didn't leave the house for days, yet he doesn't show any deeper feelings than friendship with her. Has he gotten over his crush or is it because he knows she still isn't over Chujin's death?
  • Is Mooch not allowed to drink alcohol due to likely being a minor, or does she simply go haywire whenever she gets her hands on that stuff?
  • Were Chujin's experimental failures because he was incompetent, or because he was the first to break new ground and thus had no way of knowing what was successful from the get-go? There were cases of real-life inventors who spent their lives experimenting with unsuccessful prototypes (or even just conceptual designs) that were retroactively recognised as revolutionary precisely because they were the first to do so.
• Awesome Art: The game blends Undertale's iconic pixel-art style with smooth, expressive animations for most enemies and every major character. Add in a handful of impressive landscape shots and you've got a game that looks positively gorgeous from start to finish.
  • Special attention goes to Flowey's second phase in the Neutral route. His first was already delightfully terrifying even by this game's standards, but the second completely ditches the pixel-art for a Photoshop Flowey-esque finale. This time, however, his attacks are hand-drawn with animation reminicient of a traditional Disney movie, and Flowey himself has enough detail to look more like a painting than a sprite. It doesn't stop there, though; every time Flowey makes you shoot one of his petals, the animation style changes completely, from stop-motion to PS1-style models to a unique, Skullgirls-like form of traditional animation. The whole fight is a downright visual masterpiece in a game already full of fantastic visuals.
• Awesome Music: Now has its own page.
• Best Boss Ever:
  • Flowey's fight in the neutral run is often stated to be one of the game's strongest points, with Flowey's trippy attacks in the first phase ringing true to his Undertale characterization, and his second phase evoking the same feeling Omega Flowey did, with the various switching of vastly different art styles for each phase being a testament to the team's creativity. Add in the Awesome Music that is "BEST FRIENDS FOREVER" and "AFTERLIFE", and you've got one of the coolest bosses in any Undertale-related media.
  • Ceroba's fight in the Pacifist route is a very frantic and fast-paced encounter. Her visual design, variety of attacks and mechanics, and the absolute banger that is "A Mother's Love", makes for an absolutely epic, yet tragic final boss fight.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • Big-lipped Alligator Character, more like: El Bailador. He shows up at the mountaintop of the East Mines, challenges you to a dance battle, then leaves, having no bearing on the plot. He's only seen again in Hotland, hosting a dance party, and continues to have no bearing on the plot.
  • The secret boss fight against Macro Froggit in the Steamworks is a bizarre battle that otherwise has no connection to the story and has a unique mechanic where the fight only ends once Clover collects all 5 frogs. Once the fight ends, an intimidating "Mega Froggit", a muscular humanoid figure with a Froggit head slapped onto it, will also approach Clover and hand over a sixth frog in a rather dramatic cutscene. Then the screen fades to white and Clover wakes up outside the now-locked room with the only indication that anything happened being a chest that has the Golden Bandana. It's as weird as it sounds.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Starlo's obsession with Western culture, as well as his tendency to pace around talk to himself (seen as a common stimming behavior) has lead quite a few fans to see him as autistic or otherwise neurodivergent.
• Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: Clover jumping on Martlet's boat and crossing the river in the vision in the middle of Flowey's battle as opposed to taking it downstream; just another bit of surreal imagery before Flowey ambushes Clover, or a literal depiction of Clover crossing the River Styx?
• Fandom-Specific Plot:
  • Combined with Fanfic Fuel; considering the bittersweet nature of Yellow’s true pacifist route and Clover’s sacrifice, and the ambiguous fate of the human souls with their coffins being open in Undertale’s own pacifist route, writers (and a few artists) have taken up writing stories and drawing comics (mostly the former) of Clover, post Undertale’s true pacifist ending, finding themselves revived right after Asriel’s barrier destruction. Expect these stories to contain, in some way or another, Clover pushing and crawling their way out of their own coffin, meeting the Undertale cast, and eventually reuniting with Yellow’s cast.
  • Many fans have discussed a potential Deltarune version of Yellow, with the teenage Clover^NoteUsually under a different name, such as Cole or Rovel and Kanako as the main protagonists. It is almost unanimously agreed that, in the dark world, Clover gets a cowboy outfit along with a six shooter.
• Fanon:
  • The game is generally accepted as how the Justice SOUL's journey had happened.
  • Due to their similar appearances, some fans like to interpret Martlet and Berdly being relatives, with Martlet being either his mother, aunt, or sister.
  • There is a recurring headcanon of Martlet being an amputee and having prosthetic legs, mainly due to her namesake being a mythical bird that lacks any sort of feet. With that said, her Zenith Martlet official ref sheet ref reveals she does indeed have organic legs and feet with talons, her shoes and pants just hide them very well.
  • Martlet resigning from the Royal Guard because of her kind nature, and refusal to perform the darker elements of the job, is the reason why Undyne won't allow Papyrus to join the Royal Guard.
  • Kanako being separated from Alphys' other patients in the True Lab because she's a Boss Monster is a common concept with fanworks, although it's completely undiscussed what actually happened in the True Lab or what happened to Kanako besides the obvious. This is usually to give her an amalgamated design that doesn't require other monsters to be fused into her, although in these cases Kanako usually dominates over the rest of her components' personalities, sometimes hand waved as being either thanks to being a Boss Monster or the Integrity injection.
• Friendly Fandoms: With Deltatraveler, given the fact that section 3 of that game released around the same time Undertale Yellow did.
  • Also with Twin Runes, due to the comic's creator akanemnon creating art of some of the game's main characters in the comic's art style, even with unofficial Dark World forms for Clover and Martlet.
• Genius Bonus: One of the elements that can be found in the Steamworks element-mixing room is Rutherfordium, although it's mainly just played for a quick gag. Astatine can also be found, prompting a question about how Clover even managed to get it, referencing it being the rarest naturally-occurring element.
• Good Bad Bugs: The Golden Cactus is an item that, upon use, hurts you for 5 HP, and then for three turns afterward, heals you for 15 HP per turn. It's a risky, but powerful healing item, and you only get one… However, the counter that tracks the turns that it can heal for is not reset after death or at the end of battle, meaning that if you die immediately after the first bite, you start the battle again with all three turns of healing ready for you. Okay, that's useful, but not super broken, right? Except that by dying, you get it back in your inventory again. And if you use it while the previous one is still in effect, it extends the timer. Meaning you can build up dozens and dozens of turns of passive healing, and still keep it in your inventory when you stop abusing the glitch and finally take on your opponent for real, to use it again when you come to the next one. The bosses of the Genocide route aren't exactly a cakewalk even with this glitch, but it does significantly lower the difficulty into a more manageable range.
• Goddamn Bats:
  • On a pacifist playthrough, Sir Slither can be a bit hard to figure out how to spare at first. Unlike most monsters, you have to be a jerk to him by declining his offer to join you twice in a row. If you do anything else after declining once, your progress resets.
  • Dunebuds also apply. While they're pretty easy individually, their attacks get really difficult to evade when they show up in pairs. This stands out on a Pacifist Route, where you have to use two ACT prompts to successfully make them sparable, extending the number of times you have to deal with said tricky attacks.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Martlet (a blue bird monster who is a Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass) and Mo (a flamboyant sharp-dressed salesman) share close similarities to Deltarune characters Berdly and Spamton respectively, and both were teased before their respective Deltarune characters appeared, although due to the game's lengthy production time, they were only officially released afterwards.
• I Knew It!: Most people liked to think that Kanako became the spoon-like amalgamate that tucks you into bed in Undertale, since an optional conversation with Ceroba in Steamworks has her talk about how Kanako wanted to be tucked in by her mother every night. This was eventually confirmed by the developers during an art stream in April 2024.
• Idiosyncratic Ship Naming:
  • Starlo x Dalv is called "Corn Yaoi".
  • Inspired by the above, Ceroba x Dina is sometimes called "Beer Yuri".
  • Martlet x Moray is referred to as "Prison Yuri".
• Memetic Mutation:
  • One popular meme that resulted after Clover's reaction to Axis' reveal that he killed the human with the Integrity SOUL is to compare it to the scene where Ego reveals to Peter Quill that he put a tumor into his mother's brain due to the similar scenarios.
  • It's Clover^note Based on the "It's Joever" meme. It's made even funnier when Clover's name already has the word "over" in it.
    • It's Starlover^note A variant of the above, this time with Starlo.
  • Following a random joke edit posted on Twitter, people have made Chujin obsessed with Ben 10, nearly to the level of Memetic Personality Change.
  • "The Myth Of Consensual Copyright" / Let's Unpack the Music of Undertale Yellow ^ExplanationIn December of 2023, Undertale Yellow's soundtrack was hit heavily with copyright issues due to Materia Publishing (the distribution service that put Toby's works for Undertale and Deltarune under copyright protection on platforms like Youtube). This was in spite of the fact that Toby has always promoted the usage of his songs in fanworks and video essays, as well as the fact that Toby gave permission to the creators of Undertale Yellow to use certain familiar Leitmotifs in their game. The fact that it's only Materia Publishing making such a big deal about the copyright claims has not been lost on the fans, as such memes about "Materia not giving Consent" and copypastas in reference to Materia's opening Tweet about the Undertale Yellow situation have been made of the subject matter because of it.
  • Referring to Martlet as "Twitter", solely thanks to her being a blue bird (despite Twitter's blue bird mascot being phased out following its rebranding as X earlier that year).
  • "Guys hear me out" / The 12/03/2024 incident^Explanation One Reddit user on the Undertale Yellow subreddit, made an post claiming to "Hear Him Out" about an childhood picture between Ceroba and Starlo, where he explains that what he saw was not Ceroba sticking her tougue out, but saw it as her Buck Teeth. However, due to the explanation only being available after clicking on the post, the initial appearance of the picture and the words "hear me out" were...not the greatest. This sparked many similar posts, with "Hear me out" titles, which grew to the point of annoyance in the subreddit. "Someone calls for help, you hear them out." truly.
  • "hey clover, check out my new cut" / Bald Flowey^ExplanationTwitter user marsh_ber posted a Discord screenshot of themself with a profile picture of a petal-less Flowey stating the aforementioned quote. The image quickly spread throughout the fandom due to the sheer hilarity of it, with many creating their own versions of the "Bald Flowey" sprite. Many artists have also taken to depicting the scenario in comic form, where Clover usually tries hard to hide their dismay when a Bald Flowey shows off his "cut" to them. Became Ascended Meme when an official artist posted sprites of Bald Flowey.
  • Trial by Hummer^ExplanationOriginated from a video that mixed Ceroba's Genocide theme with the Hummer Driver cutaway gag from Family Guy. This has led to jokes about Ceroba committing vehicular manslaughter against Clover.
  • "See that heart? No shit!"^ExplanationYouTuber CiblesGD had an AI rewrite the entire script of the game, which led to Flowey saying this over and over. The line quickly became a meme, being spammed in livestream chats whenever Flowey is onscreen.
  • "See you in 7 years!"^ExplanationSince Undertale Yellow's development took 7 years, whenever someone decides to make a prequel to Undertale based on another fallen human, people like to joke that any such prequel will also take 7 years.
  • Ningen/Chujin hates Ningens^ExplanationWhenever Kanako and Clover are shipped together, Chujin is often depicted as a an overprotective father who disapproves of their relationship and uses "Ningen" (the japanese word for "human") as a derogatory term towards Clover.
  • Cool Ceroba^ExplanationA trend that was made as a sarcastic response to people complaining about Ceroba's sexualization with the Rule 34 Community (aka Hot Ceroba). Said trend has Ceroba taking on a Totally Radical persona, complete with a skateboard, a backwards baseball hat, and Cool Shades .
  • Juandice^ExplanationA comedic misspelling of "Justice" that also sounds close to a medical condition that turns your skin yellow. Because of this it has become widely used in the community, being commonly used in "I remember you're genocides" style "brainrot" memes as well as Clovers soul beam attack they gain at the end of the Genocide route being referred to as "Juandice Blast"
• Narm Charm: The vision in the middle of the Neutral route battle: "Martlet suddenly appears alive but then she MELTS and a hyperrealistic eyeball appears out of her melted remains with a deep laugh!" sounds like something out of a bad 2010s Creepypasta, but not only does it happen, but it's executed horrifically well.
• Popular with Furries: Just like with the Original, Undertale Yellow has proved to be very popular with the furry fandom, with Martlet and Ceroba getting the most fanart. While arguably not as popular, characters such as Chujin, Moray, and even more obscure characters such as Dina or the Honeydew Shopkeeper have gotten a fair bit of attention, too.
• Self-Fanservice: Sometimes you may come across fanart of Starlo with a stronger build. Some also get rid of his Nerd Glasses and simply give him opaque eyes.
• Ships That Pass in the Night:
  • Although the two have barely interacted (outside of seeing each other in the True Pacifist ending), people were quick to pair Dalv and Starlo together, likely due to their opposite personalities.
  • Kanaclover (Kanako x Clover) is a pretty popular ship despite the fact that they never interract with each other due to the the fact that Kanako is either dead or amalgamated. Though usually it is takes place in an AU where Kanako is alive and well. One of the main motives for the ship is that neither kids have a happy ending and shipping them offers a happy ending for them both.
• Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: You may find yourself spending a lot of time playing the Six Shooter card game in the Wild East; not only it's a very good way to farm money, but it's surprisingly fun to boot.
• Signature Scene:
  • For people who took the Pacifist or Neutral routes, the scene in the Steamworks where Clover activates the first switch and turns on the facility's power, prompting a visually stunning scene set to "Meltdown", is widely cited as the moment when the game starts to rival the original Undertale in quality.
  • Of the 3 final battles for each route, the Battle in the Center of the Mind against Flowey in the Neutral route is generally considered the most iconic, namely for the sheer Psychological Horror of it all, the amazing art shifts in the second part, the numerous references to the route Frisk takes in Undertale, and how much the scene works to develop the character of Flowey.
• That One Attack:
  • El Bailador's final attack is a long stretch of notes you have to hit in rapid succession. Turning on auto-rhythm eases the pain slightly, but you still have to hit those notes quickly.
  • Axis seems to have a few of these, but special mention goes to his circular attack with orange lasers in Neutral/Pacifist, and his final attack in Genocide where you must find a way to dodge blue lasers as an energy ball aggressively chases you down.
  • In the final Genocide fight against Martlet, she can use an upgraded version of her attack that drops assorted objects onto you while she flaps her wings to push you downwards. This attack is pretty unpredictable, and some of the things thrown at you are an absolute pain to dodge, most notably a bowling ball that rolls across the bottom of the box.
• That One Boss:
  • Axis on pacifist definitely qualifies. It takes a long time to bring down, its attacks hit decently hard, and some are very, very hard to avoid taking damage from multiple times, let alone at all. Granted, there are points where you can heal for basically free, but if there's a single non-final boss fight on the pacifist route where you'll die, it's most likely this one.
  • While Ceroba is necessarily hard on the Pacifist route as the final boss, she’s far from a slouch on the Genocide route. Her attacks involve a multitude of blue and orange waves traveling near the entire length of the movable area, as well as red attacks which decrease your maximum HP if you’re unlucky enough to be hit by one. She takes it up a notch in her second phase by making it so the walls themselves not only do damage, but decrease your maximum HP like the red attacks. It certainly doesn’t help that she’s one of the most resilient bosses in the game in terms of HP, making it so that anyone who would attempt a Genocide run is in for a very rude awakening.
  • Some of the bosses in the Genocide route are often compared to Touhou Project for a damn good reason, but in the final boss' case, it's an unfavorable one since Zenith Martlet is seen by many as unfair if not borderline. Her attacks are incredibly hard to dodge even for experienced players to the point where dealing with the faster-paced ones boil down to "spam the fire and dash buttons and hope for the best." Autofire, top-tier healing items such as Gunpowder, and spamming the Endure option during the second phase of the fight when said items inevitably run out^note which was only added in Version 1.1, by the way. are outright mandatory to stand a chance, and you're still likely to get your ass kicked even then.
• That One Level: Prior to version 1.1 that had them slowed down each time you get caught, the Axis chase in the pacifist route was notoriously difficult, due to how fast they can catch up to you, leading to plenty of frustration from players on launch day.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Starlo, at least in a Genocide run, might as well be the Mettaton NEO of the game when comparing it to the original. With Martlet being an absolutely brutal Final Boss and Ceroba getting a second gruelling boss fight, one might assume Starlo would get the same treatment. Maybe he finally becomes the sheriff everyone believes he is, or drops the facade and fights Clover as himself? Instead, he challenges you to a shoot-out that can't be lost due to him using a Toy Gun against the person who's been killing everyone.
  • Speaking of Starlo, the other four members of the Feisty Five — Ed, Ace, Moray, and Mooch — don't have it much better. Despite being a gang of characters with unique personalities and designs, all they get is a short fight that ends automatically after a few turns and a couple minutes of extra screentime on the Pacifist route. They don't even show up on the Genocide route, despite the opportunity for a boss fight with the entire Feisty Five all at once. While this is justified due to them evacuating, it's still a disappointing waste, especially considering Starlo's role in the route.
  • Dalv has so little screentime and story relevance you can pretty much forget he even exists as soon as you leave the Dark Ruins. The only time he ever appears again is optional dialog if you backtrack to Snowdin during a Pacifist run after completing the Wild East and at the very end in the True Pacifist ending cutscene where he attends Clover's funeral. The only significance he has to the plot is related to him being a victim of Integrity's attack on Snowdin, which is something that you will only find out about once you start digging deeper into the lore and is not something that is that well explored in the actual story.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Kanako is shown to be one of many monsters who were sent to Alphys’ lab after Ceroba injected her with the Determination. At the end of Axis’ fight on a Pacifist run, given how Ceroba’s motivations revolve around her daughter and thinking she’s still alive, you would think that the True Lab would be where she’s rushing to with Starlo in pursuit. Barring that, at the end of her Final Boss fight, the idea of investigating what happened to Kanako is brought up. Other routes seem to indicate that the story would go in that direction, with part of Flowey’s boss fight in Neutral has Clover hear him in what’s implied to be him waking up there for the first time, and Martlet going into the lab in a flashback during a Genocide run. Instead, Ceroba unexplainably runs off to New Home, Clover decides to sacrifice themselves, with the others reluctantly agreeing way too easily (Ceroba especially), and Kanako isn’t touched upon again.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The Ketsukane family's circumstances are depicted as a tragedy caused by desperation to escape their confinement in the Underground, but their attempts are so short-sighted and almost maliciously inept that their backstory reads like a comedy of errors instead. Kanako's actions are more excusable considering her age, but her parents are another story:
  • Chujin's Axis prototype murdered a human instead of capturing it thanks to a programming oversight, but instead of owning up to his mistake, he concealed the evidence, took the SOUL for himself, and tried to get Axis approved for mass production — only to present so many failed attempts that even Asgore got fed up with him. When he was finally dismissed from the Steamworks for his engineering mishaps, he again hid the truth from his family and turned his attention to the stolen SOUL, using himself as a test subject for his Determination theories. It's implied his experiments fatally damaged his own SOUL and resulted in a drastically shortened lifespan, leaving his family to grieve without accomplishing any of his goals.
  • Ceroba continued her husband's faulty research, and when Kanako naively asked to be used as another test subject, applied his Determination serum to her SOUL against Chujin's explicit wishes not to involve her, which promptly cracked. Kanako was sent to Alphys's lab, and Ceroba stewed in her guilt for weeks before Clover came along and she deceived them into "rescuing" Kanako when she really just wanted their SOUL for more experimentation. While the story tries to depict her as being half-crazy with grief and hopelessly trapped in the Sunk Cost Fallacy, her continued ranting that Asgore is no better or different than her sounds laughable in light of what happened to the Dreemurr children, and she ends the story either provoking a Suicide By Deputy or moving on with her life with no acknowledgement of her mistakes beyond finally discarding Chujin's research.
• Viewer Gender Confusion:
  • Some have thought Martlet was a boy at first sight, because of her color scheme that is covered in blue.
  • Guardener has a deep voice and doesn't look feminine in the slightest, aside from the platform on her head vaguely resembling a flowered wide-brimmed hat, so the mention of her gender during the battle has come as a surprise to many players.

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