nochocolate:

(undertale spoilers)

there’s a lot of debate about why chara laughed off asgore’s horrible buttercup poisoning despite being the cause of it. some argue that it was a kind of nervous laugh, but i think there’s enough evidence in the game to disprove that idea. some narrachara included.

pacifist route: true lab / tape 3

in the tapes, asriel is heard saying to chara that the two of them accidentally put buttercups in a pie instead of cups of butter. this got asgore terribly ill and made toriel “really upset”. asriel felt horrible about it. chara, however, apparently just “laughed it off”.

to figure out what exactly this laugh means, we have to look at the other times chara is seen to be laughing about things.

genocide route: hotland / fight with the royal guards

if you check rg01 in the genocide route, the text is notably in first person. considering the text later in new home, first person text clearly represents chara’s thoughts and actions.

but the interesting part comes when you check rg02. at the thought of both of the royal guards dying together, even knowing how they love each other, chara responds in a peculiar way: “i couldn’t stop laughing”.

although the royal guards’ checks are a direct quote from a book (“kitchen” by banana yoshimoto), toby fox has stated that references must be able to be taken within the context of the game as well.



so we have at least two occasions where chara is shown to laugh at the suffering of others.

pacifist route: true lab / fight with snowdrake’s mother

the genocide route provides evidence that chara is capable of speaking through white text. rg02′s check proves that chara is capable of speaking in the middle of battle. so it makes sense that the second person text is also chara’s narration. assuming this is true:

it seems that chara found the amalgamate’s existence hilarious. the above is the dialogue that occurs if the player chooses to laugh at snowdrake’s mother. but in the pacifist route, chara has no control over frisk’s body because they haven’t gained any LOVE. so although chara seems to find it funny and also seems to expect frisk to laugh as well, frisk doesn’t find anything funny about it. frisk doesn’t laugh.

choosing to laugh after the first time will prompt chara to acknowledge that frisk doesn’t find snowdrake’s mother’s existence to be amusing. but that didn’t stop chara from trying to laugh about it the first time.

choosing to heckle snowdrake’s mother will prompt an even more horrifying reaction. this seems to cement the idea that chara really was laughing at an existence they found to be pathetic. again, chara realises that frisk never said anything like that. but chara still thought it.

if the above is the case with snowdrake’s mother, it shows that no monsters even need to be killed in order to evoke that kind of response from chara. it proves that it is not the player who “corrupts” chara. this is chara’s default response to the pain of others. these are chara’s genuine feelings, regardless of the route the player chooses.

genocide route: the dog food in the lab

but there was something else that chara didn’t just laugh at – they quite literally found it funny. although laughter can be interpreted in many different ways, something being called “funny” outright is a little harder to question. of course, i’m talking about the dog food in alphys’ lab.



here is the text that shows up in the genocide route:

on its own, it doesn’t seem to prove anything. however, a full genocide route up to alphys’ lab isn’t the only thing that triggers this.

here is what does trigger the “just remembered something funny” dialogue:

genocide, but spare papyrus and everyone after him



genocide until the end of the ruins, killing toriel, and then only kill the dogs in snowdin forest after that

things that don’t trigger this dialogue, only giving the “half-empty” message without the “funny” message:

genocide until the ruins end and kill nothing after toriel



genocide until the ruins end and then kill only one dog in snowdin

neutral route and kill anything

neutral route and kill all of the dogs in snowdin

“something funny” will only be remembered in a partial genocide route – when chara gains some amount of control over frisk – where all the dogs in snowdin are slaughtered. as a result, it cannot be referring to the amalgamates (this text can be seen without doing the pacifist route anyway) and it is very unlikely to be referring to something innocent. it only shows up when the snowdin dogs are dead. the only conclusion that makes sense is that chara finds the dogs’ deaths “funny”.



in undertale, “you” isn’t always referring to frisk – the snowdrake’s mother example above seems to be pretty clear proof of that. although the narration says “you said”, it turns out that those thoughts didn’t match frisk’s at all; it is far more likely that they belong to chara. if the “you” here isn’t chara, then frisk is the one who finds the deaths funny, which seems a bit more out of character. the “you” is more likely a case of projecting, similar to how chara does this when heckling snowdrake’s mother.

in this case, the text never appears in any route that hasn’t been at least a partial genocide where all the dogs have been killed. partial genocide and the deaths of the dogs is absolutely the trigger for this text. killing just one of the dogs isn’t even enough, either.

pacifist route: soulless pacifist ending

the “soulless pacifist route” is just the pacifist route when completed after a successful genocide route. it occurs after chara is given a soul in the abyss. nothing at all changes in the soulless pacifist route… until the very end.

if the choice is made for frisk to stay with toriel, frisk can later be seen sleeping in their new bed while toriel leaves some pie for them. once toriel leaves, frisk spins around – but it’s not actually frisk.

after chara’s eye glints, the screen goes black. while the screen is black, a laugh can be heard. this laugh is a pitched down version of flowey’s laugh. chara is laughing. after the laugh, the player is greeted with “the end” in chara’s red letters, along with some genocide route music (actually a very slowed version of anticipation, which is used in a select few scenes/battles, including the one with monster kid).

so what happens next? that’s left up to our imagination. choosing not to go with toriel, however, makes the ending feel a lot more clear-cut.

instead of frisk smiling with all their friends, we see chara smiling with everyone’s faces crossed out. we are to assume that chara, without any help from the player this time, murdered them all. a slowed version of anticipation plays here, too.

in this ending, chara laughs. chara laughs out loud, and then they slaughter everyone. this is certainly not a panic response due to circumstances they cannot control (ie. the player forcing them to kill) as they choose this ending all on their own.

genocide route: erasing the world

there’s another instance of chara laughing that isn’t shown through text. this one isn’t sound, though – it’s visual.

if the player decides not to go along with chara in erasing the world by selecting the “do not” option provided, chara will let the player know that either they aren’t the one “in control” or that the player “made [their] choice long ago”. immediately afterwards, the jumpscare begins. chara attempts to terrify the player, and they probably often succeed.

during this scene, however…

chara is laughing. if the movements weren’t clear enough, the file names for chara’s jumpscare sprites prove it. even knowing what they’re about to do, chara laughs. at the end of the jumpscare, they destroy the world (against the player’s wishes, in this case).

genocide route: flowey’s story

just prior to the fight with sans, at the conclusion of flowey’s story, flowey suddenly becomes terrified of chara.

most likely, flowey’s fear is a result of chara’s change in demeanour after hearing the “creatures like us” lines. flowey tells chara to “back off”, but chara proceeds anyway.

although we can’t see it, chara then apparently makes a “creepy face”. it’s hard to know what kind of expression this actually is, but flowey soon gives us a hint.

flowey probably wouldn’t feel the need to say that “this isn’t funny” unless chara actually looked like they found something funny. maybe chara is laughing. maybe they’re not. they probably look entertained, at the very least. either way, it seems to be implied that chara finds flowey’s fear “funny”.

then there’s the line that says it all, the line that explains everything that chara laughs at and all the things that chara finds funny: flowey states that chara has “a SICK sense of humor”.

given what is presented in the game, i can conclude with confidence that chara really does enjoy the suffering of others. they laughed when asgore got sick. they laughed when they were about to kill both royal guards. additionally, it’s quite possible they found snowdrake’s mother’s painful life to be amusing. without much room for doubt, the dog food brought up a “funny” memory, the deaths of the snowdin dogs – and it is most probable that chara was the one who felt that way, not frisk. chara laughed at the very end of the soulless pacifist route, just before murdering everyone. they laughed before destroying the world in the genocide end, while attempting to frighten the player. finally, it seems that chara found flowey’s fear “funny” – and flowey even says himself that chara has “a SICK sense of humor”.

asriel, who knew chara better than anyone, said it best: