W.D. Gaster and the Fandom Mandela Effect

out of all the mysteries within undertale dr w d gaster has captivated the fandom the most over the past six years it's easy to see why as we're introduced to just enough information to get our gears turning but left with a blank canvas from which fans can form many theories and interpretations however because he's such a hot topic in the fandom with so many popular fan works the fannin has blurred with the canon overshadowing the original content and sometimes contradicting it many aspects of gaster's fan lore are treated as fact when in truth several of those aspects do not exist in the original game while this doesn't mean these works are bad it leads to a fandom mandela effect and toby's original vision may be lost so in this video i'd like to pick into several popular fan concepts explore their origins and draw the line between fannin and canon if you want a more comprehensive overview in both undertale and deltarine check out misty sparkles video i'll link it in the description however for our purposes i'm going to focus largely on undertale itself with perhaps a few brief notes about deltarune where relevant the void the void is a fanon concept with no explicit basis in undertale it's often assumed that gaster was lost in the void but if you look deep in the undertale text dump the word void only comes up once in a metaphorical sense from mettaton not once is the idea of some grand void introduced at least not explicitly when you call undyne in the dump she mentions alphys once looked out into the abyss beyond the trash but this is less a supernatural void and rather shows her desperate state of mind given the dark implications of her actions there is the dark space surrounding photoshop flowey before the neutral finale as well as the empty abyss after you complete a no mercy run but both of these have no direct connection to gaster at most i deal with the world of the game being drastically altered if not destroyed it certainly exceeds beyond the framework of the game itself but that's all we know for sure it's most likely this trapped in the void concept originated from the mystery man room existing outside of the normal space of undertale's world with mystery man being gaster trapped within the redacted npc may also factor into this existing in a black void of a test room there is also the black screen where the entry number 17 text appears but even then these aren't concretely mentioned as being the void and there's a problem with gaster being a singular entity so to that let's look at the gaster followers and what they say the gaster followers are the only definitive lore we have on undertale gaster these rare fun events have only a slim chance of occurring in game and an even slimmer chance of being encountered with their corresponding fun values however data miners have long since discovered their existence thus they were our first clue to gaster's existence these guys confirmed the following gastler created the core gaster was an impressive scientist but met a tragic end as he fell into his own creation the creation is not specified gaster is listening even now asgore took a very long time to replace him gaster was shattered across time and space and exists in pieces some of which have taken a hold of other monsters because gaster is in pieces he cannot exist in a singular void guests are shattered and at least one of the gaster followers holds a piece of him this runs contrary to gas for being trapped as just one person and while some might cite the deltarune goner maker as proof of him being trapped somewhere beyond our comprehension one could just as easily assume that gaster is simply an ascended presence now that can look beyond the fourth wall see also the undertale twitter takeovers in addition to this gaster is not confirmed for goggle many fans speculate that when gasket was shattered across time and space he was scrapped from everyone's memories this interpretation has a few likely origins first there's the initial idea that gaster was dummied out content as when undertale first released almost all of the corresponding fun events did not function due to a typo in the game's code fun capitalized versus fun lowercase this was later updated with a patch however and now the events are accessible through normal play there's also goner kid who describes a world where you don't exist yet everything functions fine while i can see why people assume this applies to gaster it's still worth noting that ghana never mentions memory outright but rather an existential normal it is possible to read into this especially doubled with the fact that when you enter gaster's name into the name select screen the gamer starts and yet if we return to the gaster followers they never mentioned memories or erasure necessarily in fact they specifically mentioned how asgore took a long time to replace gaster which suggests that he wasn't completely scrubbed from memory as right gaskers never brought up in the main game doing so would have pulled the focus away from alfie's and her struggles and make her position as scientists in the main story carry less gravitas just look at how the fandoms treated her think of it this way toriel is the queen yet most npcs don't talk about her outside the ruins until the epilogue asriel wasn't mentioned at all until new home other than small hints like the dump flashback what about the don't forget drawing in sansa's lab for the longest time people assumed this drawing was a sans gasker and either alfies or papyrus however keep in mind that this only unlocks after you interact with clam girl and clam girl mentions a susie and in the switch version states that the time of meeting susie is fast approaching this is important context since the switch version of undertale released a few weeks before deltarune and in deltarune we meet susie albeit with a different spelling a trio of three heroes and the game's theme song don't forget basically this drawing might be related to deltarune and has its own interesting implications about sans that i may cover in a future video furthermore the gonorkit dialogue is very loose in how you can interpret it for instance it could be commentary on how the fun events do not have meaningful impact on the main story in a run without the event everything functions perfectly without them this still does apply to gaster in the fact that the average player will not encounter his followers in normal gameplay or learn about him outside of fan content but ultimately his erasure from memory is simply one popular take and not definitive speaking of popular takes mystery man and gaster as mentioned many people assume mystery man is gaster however it's not without reason for instance his fun value is 66 and gasker has many connections to the number six for instance his in-game stat values are all consisting of sixes additionally when interacting with mystery man he makes the following sound only two other npcs make this noise one of the gaster followers and goner clam girl the sound in question when you slow it down and reverse it it actually contains the gaster light motif which you can hear here so if nothing else we can connect the mystery man to gaster in a loose sense perhaps he's merely another fragment like the one that merged with the follower's hand however due to gaster shattering it's very unlikely that mystery man is the sole physical form of gaster a such a form likely no longer exists in undertale's world it's also worth noting that the official tarot cards replaced gaster in the hierophant arcana and used gerson instead if nothing else this means toby does not wish to confirm gaster's appearance one way or the other at least not yet but what about redacted redacted could be another fragment but it is worth noting that this room is blocked by dog check and cannot be accessed without additional modding tools or hex editing while the assets and codes still exist the fact that dog check blocks it makes the whole redactive scenario a bizarre outlier it might not be worth treating it as definitive given how heavily removed it is compared to the fun events that said mystery man's appearance does lead into another popular interpretation of caster that he is a skeleton skeleton and sands you may wonder where the gaster skeleton head cannon came from disregarding mystery man's vague skeletal appearance there are a few other things of note the hidden entry number 17 room contains a cryptic message left by gaster that i'm sure most people know by now darker yet darker shadows cutting deeper all that good stuff however the distinct trait of this room is the texan capital wingdings font which has led to the belief that the wd and gaster's name is wingdings the thought matters because the only two characters who are shown to speak in a non-standard font are sans and papyrus both skeletons this precedent is further emphasized by sans's battle and specifically the gaster blasters he uses this in turn connects sams to gaster at least in some vague sense much of sansa's story remains a mystery so it's hard to say what sort of connection it was but it's clear that sans had a history with science new monsters outside the core cast and something went wrong judging by the broken machine in his lab there are also the blueprints which can be read as strange symbols or poor handwriting the former leading people to connect them to gaster while the latter may imply alfie's involvement perhaps both but from this idea stem the popular headcanon that gaster is sans and papyrus's father and rarely their brother there's not a lot of proof of this in-game so this is really more fans filling in gaps in their backstories and having fun with their fan concepts some people even view samson papyrus more as fragments from when gassed or shattered ultimately it's all up in the air with no hard confirmations within undertale or deltarune just yet it is a pretty harmless headcanon though and i feel that people are way too harsh when they criticize it considering that at the end of the day fans are just having fun plus there is this concept image from toby with names censored that may suggest some familial tie to gaster or some other character we did not meet however until we get hard confirmation this is still merely fannin that being said there is one larger issue i take when it comes to gas for discussion and speculation as it comes at the expense of another character the determination experiments there are those who believe that gaster was involved in the determination experiments and was the main guy behind them too too often i see people attribute alfies work to gaster or even sands from flowey to the discovery of dt itself often i see the following reasons cited several of the lab reports use proper grammar and others do not this has led people to believe that two different people wrote the lab reports but this simply is not true note how the first few lab reports match up with alfie's monologue at the end of true lab alphys was the one who discovered dt who worked with human souls who created flowering the amalgamates true lab is about her struggles and her mistakes the poor punctuation can easily be justified as her riding under stress and putting less effort into her work it's consistent with the report about mtt's body making her sweaty too but what about the determination extractor alfie's mentions using blueprints to pinpoint determination in the first place and since sansa's lab has the most apparent blueprints in the game surely that means gaster is involved right well no while they could be the same blueprints from sansa's lab she could have had a hand in writing them as previously mentioned after all messy handwriting did come up in the flavor text and even in the event that they were based on gaster's work that doesn't mean that alfie's work should be discredited and that she didn't do her own research separate from this ultimately i think shifting the bulk of the responsibility to gaster undercuts her agency and there are already so many fan works that prioritize gaster over alfie's and make him the important science guy rather than the character who is a part of the game's central cast i may cover this more in depth in an alfie centered video so let me know if you want to see something like that in the future closing thoughts and interesting observations while this isn't specifically about fannin i thought it in the video with some interesting observations first there is gaster's connection with phones in the follow-up runes the phone does not function in mystery man's room no one picks up oddly this is not the case with goner the phone connection has a lot of interesting implications though first we have the wrong number song which requires about a g possibly gaster then we have the memory heads whose app interfaces all play based on the game's menu who are only able to speak and act upon after you use your cell phone add that to their freaky attack text their weirdly skeletal features and their attacks resembling the mystery man's face and the connection could exist and of course there's the garbage noise in deltarune and spammed his connection to said garbage noise plus the mysterious eggman officers say there are many mysteries about gaster that remain unsolved and a lot of unique angles for fans to pursue in their content and speculation i hope that by watching this video you found new ideas or at least feel a little more informed if you like what i do please consider giving a like subscribing for more and leaving a comment as that all helps fight the algorithm i do have a patreon and a coffee if you wish to support the work i do and help me create more content full-time i also have an undertale webcomic called inverted fate with some video and interactive elements too links to all these will be provided on screen and in the description however i'd like to discuss a more serious manner before we go you see over the holidays our household had a bit of an emergency our plumbing stopped working our tub and sink started filling with disgusting water and we had to call a plumbing company that could work as fast as possible otherwise our household could not stay afloat unfortunately said company overcharged us and is now expecting thousands more than the initial quote they gave us because of this we had to open a gofundme in case we end up having to pay the full amount i will put the link on screen and in the description as well we have thankfully made a great start in raising the money we need but we have a long way to go and this ordeal has put a tremendous strain on both of our finances and my mother's mental health so even if you can't donate it'd be awesome if you could share the link around i'll post a link to a twitter thread in the description as well as the pinned comment for those who just want a signal boost anyway thank you for watching and here's to a better 2022 [Music]

Channel: Dorked

Views: 153,991

Keywords: wd gaster, undertale gaster, w.d gaster, wd gaster theme, wd gaster undertale, wd gaster theory, undertale gaster secrets, entry 17 undertale, gaster followers, mysteryman, undertale mysteryman, undertale redacted, determination, undertale, deltarune, undertale theory, toby fox, sans, sans undertale, sans the skeleton, mystery man gaster, the void, all gaster evidence, w.d. gaster, fandom, alphys, fanon, who is gaster, undertale secrets, gaster undertale, sans gaster, dorked

Id: Phd0cjrc1F8

Length: 13min 59sec (839 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 18 2022