Hello Undertale scholar! I was typing out a discussion of what we know about the (somewhat confusing) timeline of Mettaton’s three bodies, asking your opinion, but I think I came up with my own theory? Fact checking welcome, haha. I don’t think Mettaton was ever supposed to be a human-fighting robot. Not only do I think his human-fighting functionality is a lie, I think the player is the only person who was ever told that lie. I think he and Alphys lie about that in the normal route and he lies about it in the bad time route, for different reasons.

a preview to a SUPER SOLID THEORY, I honestly have p much nothing to add except a bit at the end

Sources of information that are “reliable”/honest: what Bratty and Catty say (their opinions may be wrong but they have no reason to lie about what they’ve observed), Metta’s diaries, and Alphys’s lab entry that mentions Metta. From Metta’s diaries, these events happened in this order: Shyren’s sister, who later was experimented on and became an amalgamate, “fell down”

Metta writes “I’d never find the kind of body I’m looking for”

Metta and Alphys meet at Human Fanclub and quickly became friends (THEY USED TO BE SO CLOSE IT’S SO CUTE)

Alphys surprises Metta with sketches of a body she wants to make for him; he really likes them. “In a form like that I could finally feel like… “myself.” After all, there’s no way I can be a star the way I am now.“ True lab entry 11: "now that mettaton’s made it big, he never talks to me anymore. … except to ask when i’m going to finish his body. but i’m afraid if i finish his body, he won’t need me anymore… then we’ll never be friends ever again. … not to mention, every time i try to work on it, i just get really sweaty…” Bratty and Catty speculate that Alphys “created” a robot with a soul in order to impress ASGORE and say that after seeing Metta, ASGORE asked Alphys to perform experiments for him and she pretty much vanished. They only mention the “robot with a soul” angle; they don’t say anything about weapons or fighting humans. Also, they say that Mettaton acted like being built was his own idea.

What Metta and Alphys claim about the timeline of his creation: In normal route, Alphys says she made Mettaton a long time ago to be an entertainment robot and recently added human-killing functionality. Mettaton backs this up if you pick “ASGORE” as her crush during the quiz, saying that her crush on Asgore explains why she would decide to add combat capabilities to a showbiz bot. EX is his new form that he’s debuting. In the bad time route, Metta claims he was originally designed to kill humans as Mettaton NEO (his “true form”)’ “it was only after becoming a star that I was given a more… photogenic body”. Backing this up, he is able to use his NEO form, even though Alphys was probably too busy evacuating to install any new features for him. Mettaton can’t have been built and then had human killing added later and at the same time have originally been built with a special NEO form for human-killing that had to be replaced with a more suitable entertainment form. At least one of these is a lie and I think they both are.

Why I think they’re lying in the normal route: pretty much everything else they say is a lie; ASGORE can kill humans on his own and is supposed to become a god with seven souls so why would he care about a fighting robot; as Bratty and Catty point out, ASGORE is very into soul science, and he hired Alphys to work on that, not weapons; Mettaton’s whole bizarre tangent about “she made a fighting robot to impress ASGORE” sounds like he’s making stuff up on the spot to make fun of a plot hole in Alphys’s scheme (a TV personality robot altered to kill humans? what???) while also describing her crush in a really embarrassing way (“all women who build weapons secretly want a burly man” or whatever he was rambling about)



Why I think Metta is lying in the bad times route: he has to prefer the humanoid forms because he was super excited to debut EX, even though everyone already loved his rectangular form. Wanting to fit in with humans is like his whole thing! I think he paused during the “photogenic” line because he just doesn’t think that’s true. So why would he have replaced NEO with a box? And NEO? His original form is called “NEW”? Does that seem right? Plus, this alleged fighting form never does anything aggressive at all. I think he was panicking and decided to try to use showmanship to bluff you away, or was trying to bait you into losing determination, or felt like he needed to find out for himself whether or not you were evil enough to kill humans and hunt down Alphys/indirectly kill her through timeline destruction (if he was aware of such a possibility), or something like that. And he decided it made more sense to pretend he used to be a human-killing robot and then turned to showbiz, because unlike some little yellow dinosaur scientists he has a sense of how a plot should be structured, Alphys.

What I think really happened: Metta and Alphys agreed to try out the rectangular form for whatever reason. He wanted to get his showbiz career started as soon as he had hope for a body that suited him so he asked for an intermediate form that wasn’t his ghost form, or she wanted a “proof of concept” form to make sure he would be able to “interface” with a robot, or she wanted him to be in the body while she worked on it to test stuff out, or whatever. ASGORE caught notice of this alleged robot with a soul. Maybe they were pretending he was a robot/truthfully describing him as a robot with a soul without specifying it was a ghost soul because he didn’t like being a ghost and felt like he needed to ditch his past, or maybe Alphys had this as an ulterior motive (either from the beginning or developed later on), or maybe ASGORE misunderstood and they just ran with it, or some combination of these possibilities, or whatever. Alphys continues to work on the sexy humanoid form of Mettaton’s dreams but work is slowed by her sweatiness, the growing rift in their friendship, and her being distracted by accidentally creating terrible abominations. When Frisk shows up, the near-complete humanoid form is either developed into EX or NEO depending on whether they’re planning a con or an evacuation. I like my guess that EX’s completion was Alphys’s bribe for Metta going along with her plan to befriend you.

DUDE. DUDE. this is all super legit. it always kind of bugged me that Mettaton NEO didn’t actually… fight? like, at all? it’s kind of hilarious how short his fight theme is, it’s obviously not one you’re supposed to hear for long. When I first saw anything about NEO, I thought it was going to be something like Undyne the Undying, but nope.

I think the rectangular form might’ve been made because of the resources available, which might be a factor in why Alphys was presenting Mettaton in a way that would get Asgore’s approval. After all, there are only so many parts you can get in the trash - I’m sure that, as a royal scientist, Alphys would’ve gotten a lot more resources & equipment to use than if she was working independently. So I don’t think it was an intermediate form for Mettaton’s sake, rather, it was specifically to present to Asgore to get resources to make Mettaton’s actual body. That’s not to say Alphys was gunning for the position of royal scientist! It’s possible that she had that as an ulterior motive, but honestly, while she might like the feeling of being important, of being someone impressive, (the whole “this grass is super important for critical science research!” thing. no Alphys you just want to sound cool and make ice cream), and having this title might be a crutch for self-worth, she also strikes me as someone who balks under the threat of responsibility. In the Alphys ending she definitely steps up to the role of the leader, but that was only because she had no choice. I feel like it’s more likely that Alphys presented Mettaton classic as a way to get more parts so that she could “refine” this soul robot (imagine: Mettaton in front of Asgore going like WOW! I SURE AM A ROBOT. WITH A SOUL, BUT I COULD BE A BETTER ROBOT! WITH A SOUL-IER SOUL! IF I JUST HAD MORE ROBOT STUFF HAPPENING! IN SUMMARY, GIVE ALPHYS SCIENCE NERD THINGS.)

I’m of the opinion that the Royal Scientist position happened as a result of Mettaton, but wasn’t specifically the purpose of presenting Mettaton to Asgore. I can imagine Alphys accepting because she felt pressured to, she wanted to impress Asgore, and she was genuinely interested in soul research.

Assorted incoherent rambling: Their friendship becomes so dysfunctional and degenerates into them just using each other but I also love it and I bet they reconciled after True Pacifist end and it was adorable? Like, Mettaton thinks she’s a total dork with trashy taste but he still liked her and wanted to be friends immediately. Maybe Alphys always had motives for building him a body but I think originally she was just really excited to use her engineering to do something nice for him (like how she keeps upgrading everyone’s phones and makes Undyne that terrible hot fridge and so on).

The Mettaton ending makes me sad because honestly, Mettaton could’ve been a better friend, and the realization comes. too late. I think it’d be really easy for them to reconcile, as long as both of them recognize a problem and decide to talk it out, or just do something about it, because! it’s not like they stopped liking each other! Mettaton got caught up in fame, Alphys was struggling with all that guilt about the amalgamates (among other things), but neither of them really changed who they were that dramatically. they’re still nerds that idolize humans. Plus, I think if Mettaton was able to reconcile with Alphys in his ending, things wouldn’t have. gotten quite so. extreme. Mettaton really needs someone who knew where he came from to really ground him, y’know?? someone who knew who he was before he became a star. And as scared as Alphys is of disappointing her friends and losing them, she really can step up to the plate when push comes to shove. Although, that hinges on whether Mettaton making the underground into his personal paradise is. enough of a shove.

I love all the fanart of Alphys having a middle school weeaboo art style but, headcanon: she only draws like that if she’s trying to imitate manga style and she’s actually a proficient technical artist and decent at sketching from life, because of all her tech design work

It’d probably be PRETTY HARD to draft out & showcase the blueprints of a robot otherwise, and also, hilarious putting them side-to-side.

I’m heartbroken that my dream of Mettaton apathetically pretending to be a lean mean human-killing machine in front of ASGORE while Alphys sweated nervously in the background is probably not a thing that happened, but I’m okay with that.

It’s not much, but you can still imagine Mettaton wheedling Asgore for funding/equipment/parts. Or infomercial-level acting about how he DEFINITELY HAS A SOUL, BUT WOW, THERE’S JUST! SO MUCH WORK THAT NEEDS TO BE DONE! AND THAT WORK! CAN BE DONE! IF YOU GIVE THE DOC WHAT SHE NEEDS

How tragic is it that from the very beginning, Alphys’s career as Royal Scientist was based on a lie? Her and Mettaton are in this twisted pact together where they’re basing their careers on lies and shame. And if you're a terrible person and kill Mettaton in a non-bad times route, I’m sure she blames herself. She set up the whole scheme that led you there, and set you two up as enemies, and told you how you could hurt him, and maybe you wouldn’t have killed him if she’d made EX tougher or told you that he was a real monster. And all she can do is keep pretending that she can build another robot. Jesus, it’s so brutal. It’s like all her lies and failures have come full circle.

ah

God, I really don’t want to end on that downer note… okay, here, crack AU: middle school science fair! Sans’s project: is the tomato a fruit or a vegetable? His presentation is nothing but bottles of ketchup and a poster with a bunch of puns on it. Papyrus probably goes with something classic like a baking soda/vinegar volcano. Undyne’s project is about how many pushups she can do. Alphys had a really neat electrical widget but she stressed herself out too much and procrastinated and couldn’t debug it in time, so she panicked and recruited her theater kid friend to dress up in boxes and pretend to be a robot.



oh my god, that’s incredible, but consider: Undyne hits up Alphys for a collaboration and they make a project converting Undyne’s PUSHUPS into ELECTRICITY! SHE’S GONNA POWER THIS LAMP BECAUSE OF HOW BUFF SHE IS! Alphys gets to watch her strong fish gf show off how buff she is. everyone wins.