KING ASGORE: Undertale's Most Misunderstood Character? UNDERLAB

While he attempts to kill you during your very first meeting with him, King Asgore is a character highly misunderstood. Many players despise him, and not necessarily without justification, though I believe it's difficult not to sympathise with him when you fully understand his motives. In this episode, UNDERLAB attempts to defend the king of monsters in the face of his many critics...

Underlab explores the secrets and obscurities of UNDERTALE, that game everyone seems obsessed with. There's a lot of said secrets and obscurities. Like, a lot. It also showcases and explains the lore and story of the game in an attempt to explain, clarify, and perhaps even discover completely new stuff...

UNDERTALE is a game by Toby Fox
Harry Wakamatsu created the UNDERTALE replica fonts used in this video
UNDERTALE sprites ripped by The Spriters Resource community (thanks UnderFail, JamminJelly, ShadeDBZ and ILLUUM)
UNDERTALE OST extended by Elu Tran
Extremely convenient save states provided by HylianAngel
Asriel sprite coloured by amazinganky
Special thanks to my best friend(s)

[FloweyFanClub]

I clicked on this thinking "what is there to misunderstand?? Asgore is a great guy! Right?" And then I realized that not everyone sees him as a giant cinnamon roll who needs to be protected.

[JonnySpec]

I (like many people) think that Asgore destroys the mercy button because he thinks he doesn't deserve mercy.

[primsine]

After hearing Asgore's plea at the end, I realized, out of everyone, he deserved mercy. He did all that he could, and after he knew he lost, instead of blocking his exit, such as toriel, he offers to die to free you. He would DIE for a human. He wasn't really pleaing for his life, so when flowey... finishes your decision, I felt heartbroken. He deserved mercy more than anyone else.

[ok-kvpm]

I loved Asgore because I was expecting a big awful boss fight, but I got goat dad instead.

[YoungNanner]

I agree with alot of the stuff you said in this video, but to add a point- alot of people seem to forget that Toriel wasn't the only one who lost two children that day. on top of dealing with the kingdom and wanting happiness for his subjects, he had to mourn the loss of not one, but two children. remember that they considered chara their child too. It's alot of weight for one man to bear, big fluffy monster king or no. while that may have made him feel numb to the murder of six children, the way he acts towards you seems to suggest otherwise. He honestly seems like he doesn't want to fight you. He probably feels crushing remorse and guilt for those children as a former father- which is why when you spare him he wants to be a family again- but he must continue in order to free his subjects, no matter how much it may break his heart. You can't not feel bad for king dad guy.

[mewtuwa]

I've always been cool with Asgore, but this video made me appreciate him even more. :) In fact, there's no Undertale character I really hate... except for Jerry.

[starblazing]

In other words, even the people who have committed the worst acts can be forgiven. Except Jerry.

[swiftswalow]

i remember that i loved asgore as a character since the moment i saw him.... i could relate to him easily: a kind man with a heavy burden of guilt and who would want to talk things out rather than fight but he have no option... so i asked myself: why do people hate him or don't respect him as much as the others? the answer? toriel doesn't like him much, and because the player grew close to toriel and liked her very much, the player felt inclined to hating asgore as well without realizing that just because a person you like doesn't like somebody you shouldn't dislike that second person.

[starmie]

Also most underrated character. Asgore needs a hug

[Donkevius]

asgore is my favorite character and i hate how people dislike him :(

[TwiIightWyvern]

One of the things that has always bugged me about the hatred for Asgore is that we don't know what the other humans did when they arrived in the Underground. Were they killed immediately upon exiting the ruins? Or were there.. "incidents", possibly indicated by the items they've left behind? We don't know for sure that Asgore killed all of them or whether other circumstances led to the souls coming into his possession -- just that they didn't "make it past Asgore". Its a little irritating that we don't get more info on the previous humans, you would think their arrival would be a memorable event for monsterkind, IF they made it safely past the Ruins. On the other hand, leaving it ambiguous does give a lot for the imagination to work with.

I think a major sticking point is that none of them could have left the Underground either way without killing Asgore or Toriel, and having known the care Toriel given them on their first arrival, what choice would they have made when presented with that fact near the end? Most likely Asgore. Should he have just offed himself or let them kill him and given his soul to the first human to confront him? What actual benefit would it have had? It would have left the Underground without a ruler and further sealed the fate of monsters. Should he have not tried to defend himself, if they decided to attack him?

Would they have resigned to live in the Underground until they died? This is what I believe happened to the Purple Soul at least, considering that their objects were left in Gerson's care, rather than hidden like the Blue Soul's or outright thrown in the trash like the Yellow Soul's. Their item effects are entirely defensive, even nerfing your attack power, which makes me wonder if this is a reference to the personality they had.

Speaking of the Yellow Soul, notice that the weapon was specifically antique and not a toy, and that its chambers were empty -- this could have been a parent giving their empty gun to a kid for them to play pretend with, or the bullets were spent in the Underground. It could have just been discarded from the surface as well and retrieved by a human while in the Underground. Its hard to say with any certainty. The Blue Soul's items have some interesting descriptions which sound like funny quips at first, but could possibly allude to more aggressive behavior on the part of the ballerina. Did these humans fight back against the fate that had been dealt to them? Did the Yellow Soul possibly try to mete justice -- either by trying to punish the monsters for killing other humans, or perhaps by giving up their soul for what they felt would be a just cause?

The Green soul is an anomaly that I can't pin much on. I like to headcanon that they taught monsters about human foods, hence why there's things like parfaits and hotdogs and burgers (which they could have learned from TV, I suppose). Given that their items are "stained" and "burnt" and the location is near edge of lava, maybe an accident befell them. Green supposedly represents Kindness, and the Ball Game mentions "concern and care" for the "ball". Its impossible to say for sure what kind of fate they met, but putting all this together makes me think they tried their best to be harmonious.

The Cyan soul is a bit of a mystery as well. Based on the item descriptions and ball game results, it makes me feel like they may have presented as kind while hiding a different intent, either for self-preservation or simply distrusting monsters' kindness. Patience, waiting for the right time to strike, the knife being a toy possibly alluding to deceptive appearances -- and the ribbon, pretending to be cuter so others don't hurt you as much. While this could be construed as a mechanism for coping with abuse, it could also be another sign of deception for the sake of self-preservation. Who were they waiting to strike at, if this could be the case?

tl;dr: We don't know how the humans died, just that they died and didn't make it past Asgore. We don't know what they may have done in the Underground, whether their deaths may have been justified or accidents, whether diplomacy was attempted or not, whether they died of sickness or even old age. But the hard truth is none of them could have left the Underground without trying to kill Asgore or Toriel.

[CappuccinoSquid]

I'm not sure, I feel like Toriel's more poorly understood than Asgore. She's openly hostile towards him, stopped supporting him, and abandoned him when he and the entirety of the Underground needed their queen the most. She wasn't disgusted with the plan of killing children, but on delaying the horrible task and being passive and complacent. To that end, Toriel's also a hypocrite. She, too, is a capable boss monster, she could've taken the soul, gone to the surface, and did the deed, instead she further impeded the Underground's freedom. She hated him for not doing what she wouldn't do for herself. That is despicable.

[Lord_Ocram]

I've always emphasized with King Dreemur, he did what was nessasary, even though he didn't like it.

[AtlasBlizzard]

Asgore is so misunderstood. I immediately sympathized with him and his story, and I thought nothing of it. That's just the point, right? So funny to me that some people can't deal with the complexities of Asgore, his character and tragic story. Asgore's far and away my favourite character in Undertale, and I agree that he is the most heroic one as well.

[kzdjarrard]

Thank god! Finally someone else noticed Asgore's effort and Toriel's hypocrisy!

Asgore is my 5th most favorite.
Toriel is my least favorite.


Toriel accuses Asgore, and yet her solution is to run away from her duties and shift blame!
She is the first to meet the children. She has the first and therefor most choice in what will happen.
Make up your mind lady!
Kill them and take their soul, or *god forbid* help them through the Underground if they don't want to stay, or even face the world and work with the rules!

Almost no government, can get any higher than Lawful Neutral. Those at the top? Lawful evil.
The reason you're at the top is you *can* make those horrible decisions. Toriel utterly fails in her duty.

*You can't make everyone happy. You can often only choice the path of least evil.*



(This is part of why I could never see Soriel working. Sans isn't the forgiving type. He *is* the judge.)

[AIWARAS]

Personally I never disliked Asgore for even a bit, the guy was almost crying when he was fighting you. Personally I find Toriel much more at fault than him, hell she could have genuinely made him stop at any moment as she did in the end of pacifist route, yet she knowingly chose to let six children die before saving the seventh, instead she left her grieving husband still unstable after the death of his children and abandoned her kingdom, betraying her people and going into hiding for centuries.

[bitzcrush]

Finally, someone has done this! Something I'd like to point out though is that it hasn't been fully confirmed that Asgore killed 6 humans. The one big thing that leaves a hole in that is, if Asgore killed 6 humans, how did Patience's items end up in the ruins? Seems a bit fishy if you ask me.

[Underlab]

Phew! I put a huge amount of effort into this episode (well, I put a lot of effort into my other videos too!) and I'm really pleased with how it turned out! It has some cool moments I particularly like (keep watching that introduction...). If you enjoyed my take on Asgore, please be generous with liking and sharing the video! 8)

[nullplusone]

I spared asgore on MY first playthrough. You monsters (wait isn't that a compliment?)

[Underlab]

I've decided to take down my "Why Are YouTubers Stealing From Undertale?" video. Not because I've had a change in heart, but because I'm not overly excited to see a metric ton of comments in my inbox shaming me (and saying some extremely explict things I won't bother to quote here) for daring to defend original, indie creators such as Toby Fox. I admit the video was far from my best work so I may very well recreate it sometime with the kind of facts you just can't argue with.

It's sad that we live in a world where people defend asset theft, but I guess I just have to accept that.