Sans the Skeleton

Description.

Sans is one of the main characters of Undertale. He is Papyrus' older brother and lives in a snowy town called Snowdin. His role in the game is to become friends or enemies with the player depending on the decisions they make. His only confrontation in the game is in the genocidal route. Sans is a very charismatic character and is known for breaking the fourth wall, being aware of the times we restart the game. He is known for making really bad jokes and being one of the most mysterious characters in the game.

Appearance.

Sans is a short, slightly overweight skeleton. He has a large head with round eyes. He has white pupils that disappear when he speaks in a serious or threatening tone. He always wears a smile at all times due to the shape of his skull. He only moves the corners of his mouth slightly every time he is going to speak while emitting sounds of what he says with some kind of magic or telekinesis. In battle, he emits a bright and flashing iris in his left eye that flashes between blue and yellow. Being a walking skeleton he cannot make many facial expressions, but he is able to move with great fluidity and perform attacks enhanced with telekinesis. Sans wears a blue hood that is unzipped at all times. He wears black shorts with a white stripe down the middle with pink slippers for sleeping. He also wears a white shirt guard under his blue jacket. As a detail, the bony shape of his missing nose is shaped like an upside-down heart.

Personality.

Sans is a guy with a lazy and relaxed attitude. He tends to fall asleep at work and take breaks constantly. Sans is shown to be a popular guy who loves to make bad jokes involving skeletons, which tends to constantly displease his brother. He acts as a comedian at the MTT Resort, as while he is aware that his jokes are really bad, he has a great talent for comedy. At first glance he looks like a good and friendly guy, always maintaining a relaxed attitude that is usually comforting and unique to other people, he never usually looks angry or sad since he never usually has a particular reaction, but he becomes sinisterly serious when he really feels abrupt, the closest thing to being annoying. This is shown when he confesses to Frisk that if it hadn't been for the promise he made with Toriel, he would have died right there. Sans usually constantly says that he doesn't like making promises. Sans is quite observant, and also very lazy. He's aware of how many times he's defeated the player and how many times they're resetting the game, which turns his laziness into a mix of apathy and denial, somewhat unsure if being aware of the game's resets has broken his spirit, knowing that everything he does will be worthless, since even if they manage to get to the surface, they'll return to the underground again. Possibly also an excellent excuse to be lazy. Sans is extremely playful, he often puts stinky pillows in his hand and shakes them with others, he also often unbuttons the salt and ketchup jars to ruin other people's food, and even sells hot cats (A parody of hot dogs).

Skills and Talents.

• Sans has knowledge of multiple timelines through the SAVE function, as he has a hidden laboratory behind his house where he records scientific operations, although he himself cannot use the SAVE option to save the game. Some things in his memory are usually not able to remember what happened when performing a RESET, although he can recognize when the player has performed one. • Sans has the ability to move incredibly fast and teleport using "shortcuts" to get wherever he wants. • During the final battle, he can fire a kind of beam using a weapon called the "Gaster Blaster". The Gaster Blasters whose name would mean Gaster's weapon or a weapon against Gaster bear similarities to the DT Extraction Machine found in the True Lab, Gyftrot's head, and the head of Asriel Dreemurr's final form. • Sans can also tell if the protagonist has achieved an impossible ending in a Neutral Route by calling him a "dirty hacker" in the phone call at the end. • Sans also knows how to play the trombone, although he is only seen using it once. • On one occasion, Sans can be seen combing his hair, obviously a joke about the fact that he has no hair because he is a skeleton.

Relations.

Frisk: Sans is the first monster she meets when she leaves the Ruins. At the end of the True Pacifist Route, Sans considers Frisk as a good and great friend, but in the Genocidal Route as a true heartless monster. His intentions of maintaining a friendship are good, as it is to try to stop the anomaly. Papyrus: Despite his lazy attitude and bad jokes, Sans admires and cares a lot for his brother Papyrus. Papyrus has a huge obsession and fanaticism for the human house as he always dreams of being a royal and popular guard. He reads his brother bedtime stories and helped him make his battle suit a few weeks before Frisk fell into the Underground. I also like to tease him from time to time by making one of his bad jokes. Sans worries a lot about other people taking advantage of Papyrus' innocence. Unlike Sans, Papyrus is a taller and more flexible skeleton. Asgore: Asgore is Asriel's father, and Toriel's ex-husband, he has a similar appearance to Toriel and is the king of the underground. Undyne: Frisk first talks to Undine during the first few battle encounters, after being chased by Undyne, she falls to the ground from the heat, to which Frisk quickly takes advantage by giving her water since her body is similar to that of a fish. Frisk visits Undyne at Papyrus' house, who helps them become better friends, showing a bit more of Undyne's prankster personality and even setting the house on fire in the process. When she finally decides to fight Frisk to regain her honor as a royal knight, she realizes that Frisk is a "weak loser with a big heart" just like Asgore, so she decides to be their friend. After the date with Alphys, she begins to fix and improve her past mistakes.

Relations. (2)

Flowey: Flowey is considered to be the only villain with bad intentions. He experiments on Sans using his SAVE ability, but it simply doesn't have any effect since Sans is aware of every reset, implying that Sans has been the only person capable of stopping him, just like Frisk in the genocidal route. Alphys: She is shown as a short scientist with many social insecurities regarding her tastes for anime and the admiration she has for Frisk, spying on him and helping him with whatever she can.

Curiosities.

• There are many clues that show that Sans may have had a scientific background; His work area, his dialogue in his boss fight on the Genocide Route, the quantum physics book in his house, the mysterious machine, Papyrus mentioning his passion for science fiction (especially if it's real), among others. • "Sans" is a preposition that means without anything. • If Sans' room is accessed, his bed can be seen to be in poor condition for proper sleeping (with the bedspread rolled into a ball and the pillow thrown to the side without a cover), which could explain the fact that he falls asleep at various points in the game. He also owns a treadmill which he uses to prank the player upon entering his room, though Papyrus claims that he is playing a prank on you across space-time. • Sans is one of three characters who will try to convince the player not to continue playing the Genocide Route; Flowey and Undyne being the other two. However, if we follow the Genocide Route twice, Chara will tell us to take another path. • Sans has the ability to teleport, although it is also believed to be some kind of super speed. • Near Snowdin, in the hallway to the mysterious door, Sans appears to teleport from one side of the screen to the other and jokingly asks the player if they are following him. In the Genocide Route, he occasionally teleports visibly, such as when he warns the player of a bad moment before entering the town of Snowdin. • Sans loves drinking ketchup, as seen in his interaction with the player at Grillby's, where he doesn't eat his share of the food but will drink the entire bottle of ketchup if the player refuses. > In Snowdin Forest, examining his lookout post near the ruins will reveal that there are a number of bottles of various condiments inside.

Curiosities. (two)

> This is why after the fight with Sans in the Genocide Route, Sans is seen to be the only monster seen to "bleed" in the game. There is a belief that because he consumes entire bottles of ketchup, he ends up "bleeding" ketchup from his wounds. > Sans' blood could also be due to the fact that the bones have traces of blood inside. It's a possibility since Sans wouldn't be any different than any other skeleton. > Despite that, Papyrus doesn't bleed, and just turns to dust like any monster. • It is possible to kill Sans multiple times by reloading a previous Save, which will result in extra dialogue. “...That expression on your face... You really are a weirdo, huh?” > Although the death counter does not increment, possibly implying that Sans never completely dies. • Despite appearing to have a cheerful and playful personality, Sans is very serious and calculating as can be seen in several more serious parts in the game and outside of it. • Going to the Laboratory and calling Papyrus on his phone, he will say that Sans loves science, so he would maintain some relationship between him and science. • In Japanese phonetics, Sans' name is homophonous with the name of the Sanzu River, a boundary between death and the afterlife in Buddhist tradition which, like Sans, judges all who cross it by their deeds. The Sanzu River is also a recurring location in the Touhou series, from which Toby drew inspiration for Undertale's hellish battles.

Curiosities. (3)

• If we do the pacifist route without saving the game and we lose against Asgore, Sans will give us the key to his room when we talk to him again, jokingly saying that he must learn the truth and that Frisk deciphered the triple-secret code, as soon as she sees, she already has the key in her pocket, due to Sans' speed. After walking around a strange empty place, Papyrus appears at the door, revealing that Frisk was simply using a walking machine in the dark, after some dialogues, you can notice in a corner a kind of garbage tornado. After taking another key from his drawer and seeing that Sans is too messy, we must go behind the house, there we see a secret room with a broken and damaged machine (possibly a time machine), and also a photo of Sans with other people, looking happy, also some kind of emblems and plans in symbols that can't be read, it seems to have something to do with the machine. (There is a strange machine behind the curtain, it seems to be broken...)

Theories.

> Sans' Origin: It is said that Sans was a human who lived on the surface, because at the end of the True Pacifist Route, his brother Papyrus asks him while looking at the sunset, "What is that yellow ball?" Referring to the sun, then Sans answers; "We call that The Sun, my friend." By saying they, it is implied that Sans already knew the surface and has been there, and it seems that Papyrus already knew that he had been there. The theory states that Sans simply came from another game, from "Earth Bound" in a Hack Room where Ness and his three friends enter a timeline distortion machine, they try to return to their correct timeline, but without Ness, who has disappeared for no reason, from here it could be said that Sans is a Ness who was lost in time and space. One of the vendors in Snowin tells Frisk that simply one day he and Papyrus appeared and sat together there. However, Sans tells the player that he really wishes he could go back home, but that he decided not to go back a long time ago, and that going to the surface no longer matters to him or simply does not satisfy or attract him, that is why he says he comes from the surface. When he mentions that he can control time and timelines, it is implied that he comes from another time, which is what happened to Ness with the time distortion machine, which implies why Sans appeared in the underground from one moment to another, and why he knows about timelines. In the secret laboratory behind his house there are more clues, such as a photo that he took with three friends, who Frisk cannot recognize, the same three friends that Ness had, along with some plans with illegible handwriting, who it is deduced could be the Mr. Saturdays since they have very bad spelling, the other drawer has a medal, possibly the one Ness was wearing, and finally, behind the curtains there is a machine, possibly the phase distorter that he arrived with.

Theories. (2)

However, if we have restarted the game several times, we will see that the photo he had with his friends is now a badly drawn picture with a note that says; "Don't forget..." Implying that even though restarts affect him, he can never forget that he was once happy, although on other occasions he doesn't seem to remember anything except a few exceptions. > It is well known that Asgore has great resentment and contempt towards humans, for which he proclaimed the law to kill any human who fell into the underground, although nothing is known about the previous human souls, it is theorized that they were all cared for by Toriel, and that Sans did not kill them because he promised Toriel that he would not kill any child who passed by there, hence the dialogue; "This is why I hate promises." that Sans says in the genocidal route. > The aquamarine soul is patience, the third soul is orange which represents courage, the fourth soul is a dark blue girl which represents integrity, the fifth soul is violet, which represents perseverance, the optaba soul is green, with the gift of kindness, and the seventh is light yellow, which represents courage. Chara strongly hates humans, possibly because of some mistreatment he suffered. > Chara is the name of Asgore and Toriel's daughter, who feeds on Frisk's body when she kills a monster. > Despite appearing on the surface in Deltarune, it can be seen that it is another timeline.

Theories. (3)

> Before Sans arrived at the town and Frisk fell into the underground, Sans comments that he used to pass by the Snowin forest very often and knew someone who understood and laughed at his jokes, although they were too bad, although he never saw her face since they spoke to each other through a door, possibly it is Toriel who promises him that she will not kill any human and that she will protect him with her life, anyone who passes that same door. One day he finds her sad and dull. Sans hated promises, but he could not deny the only person he loved and understood his jokes, after that, he never spoke to her again.

Legend.

"The easiest enemy. It can only take 1 damage."