under-lore:

In Undertale, there are 10 numbered SAVE files, going from “file 0″ up to “file 9″.

The UNDERTALE folder on the player’s computer may contain file 0, file 9 and file 8 depending on certain conditions.

These files mutually take each other into consideration. The fact that “file 6″ exists means that there was a “file 5″ already, otherwise file 6 would have just been called file 5. File 5 implies the existence of file 4 and so on.

This means that either all of those files are canon, or none of them are.

The game makes it pretty clear that we are in the first scenario given that the Flowey X fight directly refers to those files being an in-world thing.

Another case in which we can clearly see the impact of the different files within the game has to do with Frisk.

Lets say that a neutral route is played, then, the player SAVES just before fighting Asgore. Afterwards, instead of fighting the king, the player decides to RESET. The player then decides to go through the ruins without SAVING even once, but is eventually killed by a monster.

Where does Frisk come back to after dying in this situation ?

One would expect Frisk to either go back to the flower bed at the very beginning or to LOAD back to near Asgore where the player last SAVED.

But neither of those is what happens. Frisk actually comes back to this location :

And that’s not all. Lets say that now, the player closes the game and opens it up again. Where does Frisk LOAD to then ?

This time, they do LOAD back to near Asgore.

Frisk has just LOADED to two completely different points in space and time without having SAVED in between the two. This should be impossible with Frisk having control over only a singular SAVE file.

What happened here was that two different SAVE files were actually used :

“file 0″ and “file 9″.

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