#did u know sans undertale lives in my head rent free

[zirkkun]

Not to hijack your post, just interested in bouncing back ideas cause I love discussing this stuff lol but,

To a certain extent, I do think he does recognize resets -- however, I think he recognizes resets about the exact same as everyone else. Flowey tells you everyone will forget everything on a Reset, but there's a reason we have Resets vs True Resets, right? Resets don't fully wipe everything. It just rolls back time. But because they're still the same people from the later time, their memories are foggy. But the characters do recognize you: Toriel says you seem so similar to one of the other children and will recognize when you have killed her before (indirectly), Papyrus constantly discusses with Sans on how you look really familiar, Undyne gets frustrated that she can't remember you but feels like she should, Asgore will acknowledge when you have killed him before with a nod, and probably others, but those are the main I can think of. In a way, pretty much everyone has some sort of vague memory in their mind, but it's surpressed because, technically, it "hasn't happened yet."

Even if we look at this in a game perspective (since a lot of Undertale's lore tends to lean towards "This world is built in a game" rather than "This is a separate world from our world"), the game still has logged what you've done. That's still in the files because it alters things on a Reset. Notably, you can't get the True Pacifist ending unless you defeat Neutral once. You'll also get Soulless Pacifist if you beat Genocide and then go straight into a Pacifist run. The game still has a memory of what, timeline wise, "hasn't happened yet." But it has happened, otherwise the paths to unlock the certain points would not have been met. Timelines get confusing, I barely understand them myself tbh lmao.

In the case of Sans, we can infer that he did at one point work with the Royal Scientists at one point due to the evidence left in his house (quantum physics joke book thing, the lab in the back of the house with an old badge and photo of a group of people as well as a mysterious machine) and that they did some sort of research relating to quantum physics, or, more specifically, the theory of alternate timelines and alternate universes. We can't exactly understand why they would research this, but that's not necessarily important for this particular point lol. In this case, all that matters is that he did research it at some point in the past before the events of Undertale.

Because of this, Sans, probably at some point during the plethora of Resets, clicked together his déjà vu with his research, and probably just kinda had an "Oh no" moment when he fit the pieces together. I'll spare deeper speculation I have into this theory bc lemmie tell you I could write an essay... or, well, I guess an essay longer than this post already is lmao.

But, basically, to sum up his "memory" of Resets (at least how I've viewed them) is that, once he figured out what was going on, while he doesn't exactly remember remember, he recognizes that there are Resets, and because of that, knows exactly what to look for in the Player's actions. While this following aspect is a bit more speculation and theory from my head, I do think that by recognizing these Resets, he's able to better remember things that have happened, but it's about as patchy as a dream. I think of it kind of like how I trained myself to remember my dreams: when you write them down immediately after waking up, or note them in some form, they stick with you like any other memory. If you don't, they'll disappear. Again, that part's kinda more of theory, but it makes sense to me at least lol.

But we can be at least for sure that his research combined with recognizing Resets, Sans is able to predict what path the Player is going down very quickly and able to deduce what choices are available to lead them to have certain emotions or expressions, amongst other things.

I think it's also important to note that, in Sans's fight, he says to the Player that there's no hope to going back to the Surface, "cause even if we do, we'll just end up right back here, without any memory of it, right?" That includes him. He says "we." If he were to not include himself in this, he would likely have said "they." One could argue that he might still be covering up for something, but I think it's pretty safe to say that he's literally aware of the fact he's about to die, so there's no point in holding anything back. He has no reason to lie here. Sure, he doesn't really explain everything, but I don't think he's flat-out lying.

But. Additionally. He does know what will happen when you beat him. He says that shortly after. "all i know is... seeing what comes next... i can't affort not to care anymore." Him saying "seeing what comes next" is probably what leads a lot of people to the idea that he directly remembers resets. I can't confirm or deny that, I'm not Toby Fox lmao, but it seems to me that he has seen it... but he doesn't necessarily say when he saw it.

Anyway, this already got longer than I wanted lmao, hope this isn't;;; TOO insanely long lmao.

Hot Take About Sans

Ironically, Sans full on remembering resets makes his character more of an idiot, rather than intelligent like people think. Canonically he knows of them in a mostly theoretical context via observation of people and awareness of himself and familiar experiences. This actively makes him more perceptive and intelligent. Meanwhile him just remembering resets is easy, it’s cheap. He didn’t earn reset memory just because he’s got A MASSIVE 5000 IQ BRAIN. He’s aware of it because of his observational skills.

TLDR Sans remembering resets actively makes his character dumber