Game Theory - What IS Sans?!

Episode Date: August 10, 2026

MatPat was mocked for YEARS about his infamous “Sans is Ness” theory but…was he actually right?! Sans is back in the spotlight in Deltarune Chapter 5 and there’s a lot here that seems to imply that he may have been right all along…

Was Matt Pat right about Sands? For years, he was mocked by the community for his infamous Sands' Nest Theory. However, with the release of Delta Rune Chapter 5, Sanz is once again back in the spotlight, and it seems to imply that Matt may have been onto something all those years ago. Hello, internet! Welcome to Game Theory, the show that has a lot more to say about Delta Rune Chapter 5. If you missed our last video, we mostly covered the main route of the game.

Talking about Chris's father Asgore, his involvement in the game, his involvement in the old dark world, how the dark world is what turned death into the night, and how that's forecasting the potential fate of Susie, as she too is beginning to spend a little too much time in the dark world. However, during that last video, I said this. Now, I don't have time to do a deep dive into the weird routes, or the connections it has with Sands and Gaster right now. Well, now I do have time for it, and it turns out we may have been more right about Sands than anyone ever suspected. Deltaroon just didn't exist. to give us the full answer.

And it's all because of the alternate route that you can take in Delta Run, which has been dubbed the Snowgrave or Weird Route. This route started all the way back in Chapter 2, where Chris can take their childhood friend Noel through the city and start pushing them to become more violent towards the monsters. In each subsequent chapter, we've been given the choice to continue this path, continuing to manipulate Noel and force her to become stronger, leading to a little red dot appearing on the screen that says,

Thank you. We previously theorized that this is Noel's soul growing, similar to the soul Chris holds within their chest. It's her heart and her will to make decisions that has grown. We believe the goal of this was to make Noel the second hero of the prophecy instead of Susie, as we see the image of a girl in a robe with a heart that says love finds its way to the girl. Love being levels of violence, a measure used in Undertale. But as I've alluded to, the connections to Undertale don't stop there. Because even though Chapter 5's Weird Root is super short, Chris and Noel's actions, as well as Sands' appearance, confirm so much about the foundation of Deltaroon, its future chapters, and how Sands ties everything together. All will be revealed as we follow the trail of breadcrumbs

that's being left for us, loyal theorists. I just hope you don't mind getting a little wet. If you've taken the weird route thus far, at the start of the chapter, instead of Chris waking up early to go to the festival, Chris sleeps in. Having missed the whole festival, Susie takes Chris to meet Noel because Noel wanted to speak with them. Noel is acting very different here. She talks about how she has changed. Since death disappeared, she just kind of carried on. But Chris has shown her a new way. The free will that we, the player,

have been forcing upon her. Noel grabs Chris by the hand and says to go somewhere no one has ever been before. As you near the edge of the lake, you continue to say, proceed. Noel and Chris walk deeper and deeper. You continue to select proceed, and as it looks like the screen is whiting out, Chris and Noel slowly drown. Suddenly, screen goes black and text appears that says insert Chapter 7, side B. And that's it. That's the end of Chapter 5. We skipped over the entirety of the chapter, and even chapter 6. You don't even get to go to the Dark World and hang out with my boy Floury. But despite the weird route being so short, the limited interactions you do have reveal a lot.

In this route, the festival has already ended, but there is one can. character still standing around waiting for you. Sands. In both routes, when you find him, Sanz asks Susie to draw her friends on a punch card. In the normal route, she doesn't specify who she draws, but based on the fact that Noel is standing right there, it would make sense for Susie to be drawing Noel

in this image alongside herself, Chris and Rolesay. However, in the weird route, she specifically calls out that it's just her, Chris and Relsay. This is where we get to the part I spoke about in the last episode. Because long time Undertale fans know, if you go to the secret lab in Undertale, you will find a poorly drawn picture of three smiling people and underneath is written the words,

Don't forget. Sands drawing in Undertale specifically calls out three smiling people. So this is implying that the drawn picture from Susie is the same one from Undertale and that it's specifically the one from the Weird Root. It's also worth mentioning that this interaction with Sands in the Weird Route is mandatory, but the one in the normal route is actually just optional. Sands is well known as a bit of a multiversal being given his interactions in Undertale, But Sands holding onto this note from the weird route means that this is the canon route of Deltaroon.

Not just a fun alternative, but the way it's supposed to go. Noel choosing violence is how Delta Rune ends. But then Sands does something else that's even more interesting. Just before we head to the lake to meet Noel, he says he's run out of ice cream and instead gives us bread. Just bread. This does not feel like equivalent exchange, my friend. Although we are getting it for free, so maybe I shouldn't question it. Regardless, it feels like a super strange gift until you read the description.

A loaf of bread tends to leave crumbs wherever it goes. Sands, giving us this bread, is purposefully designed to have us leave a breadcrumb trail. Now, immediately my theorist alarm bells were going off, because this is actually an item in Earthbound. You use bread to make breadcrumbs that can teleport the player to the location where the breadcrums began, or if that area no longer exists, it sends you out of bounds. Hands is Ness confirmed in the big 2026, everybody! Of course, I'm kidding. Well, kind of.

Sans isn't really connected to Ness or Earthbound, but it does finally give us an explanation for Sands and where he actually came from. During your dinner date with Sands in Undertale, he says that Frisk must really want to go home and that he knows the feeling, Buddo. And during the genocide route, he tells us, look, I gave up trying to go back a long time ago

and getting to the surface doesn't really appeal anymore either. The use of either here is communicating that going back is one option and returning to the surface is another. Meanwhile, the Snowden Shopkeeper talks about how Sands and Papyrus showed up one day and asserted themselves. Combine this with the fact that Sands can bleed, something which characters in Undertale cannot do, and it becomes very clear that Sands isn't originally from Undertale, but somewhere else. Instead, it appears he's from Delta Room, and he used the breadcrumbs to escape. Monsters in the underground of Undertale don't bleed. Sands is the only one, But you know where monsters do bleed, Delta Room.

When you're on the dinner date with Sands in Undertail, the song that plays is called It's Raining Somewhere Else. However, at the end of Delta Rune Chapter 4, the song that plays is called The Place Where It Rained. Sands' special song ties directly to the Delta Rune location. And we all know how much care and attention Toby Fox puts into the music of these games. And for more evidence, look no further than the exclusive interaction you can have with Sands in Undertale's Dog Casino. By making it look like it snows,

Sands says putting down presents for everyone. Papyrus, the yellow kid, the antlerd girl, and her big sis. The yellow kid is Chris with their yellow skin. The antled girl is Noel and her big sis is DES. Sands has memories of his time and the people in Delta Room. And tragically, he can't go back. And the only way to try is by creating determination. Right after the moment, we're given the bread by Sanz, we head to meet Noel,

which leads to the whole glitching through the Matrix thing and skipping to Chapter 7. But what is actually happening here? It's hard to say for sure. Noel just says let's go somewhere no one has gone before. But I do think it's interesting that we have Chris, a human containing our soul, and Noel, a monster who is also gaining a soul of some kind. Now, think back to Undertale. There, monsters were sealed in the underground, only able to break the barrier and transcend

to the surface if they use the souls of a human and a monster. That is what we're seeing happen now in. Delta Roon. Both Chris and now Noel have souls and so their determination is helping them to transcend to an upper plane. Maybe the one we've talked about before, the Angels Heaven. We're still not 100% sure what that is. All we've theorised is that we are in some way the angels, the ones controlling these souls. And so wherever we are is where the control is coming from. It's widely theorized that Deltaeroon is part of the experiments that we saw WD Gaster performing before the events of Undertail. Gaster, for those of you who don't know, was the Royal Scientist within the

Undertale universe before the events of the game. He does have a chance to appear in the game, depending on certain in-game values that you're assigned, but by the time the game happens, he has mostly disappeared, appearing to have shattered across time and space. But before that, he was running experiments on determination, the key driving force behind our character in Undertale and the monster's only way to break the barrier, leading to the creation of the Gona characters, monsters that have been corrupted by determination. In the secret lab, you can find notes about his experiments. But there's one that's missing. Entry 17. If you hack the game, you can access this journal entry, which is written in wingdings, hence WD Gaster. But when translated, it says

this. Darker, darker yet darker. The darkness keeps growing. The shadows cutting deeper. Photon readings negative. This next experiment seems very, very interesting. What do you two think? hear during this sequence can actually be heard if you use your phone in the dark world in deltero. And in the intro sequence for delteroon, a character speaks to us and their speech pattern seems very similar to Gaster's. But alongside that, the file is called Goner Maker. Gaster made the Garner's theme plays during this sequence, implying that this is in fact Gaster who is speaking to us at the start of an experiment. These references to dark, darker yet darker, the shadows cutting like how Chris opens the dark fountains with a knife,

and the references to this particular determination experiment being interesting, has led the community to believe that this experiment from Entry 17 is the Delta Rune that we have been playing. Gaster and Undertale are the higher plane of existence above where these experiments take place, the world of Delta Rune. And so if Noel and Chris are transcending thanks to them having the souls of a human and a monster, there's a good chance they end up in Undertale in Chapter 7. leaving behind a breadcrumb trail for Sands to follow, taking him to the world of Undertale before the events of that game.

Or at least, that's where I was going to leave this episode. I figured it was a pretty solid end point before the next chapter. Chris and Noel are heading to Undertale and Saz was originally from Delta Roon. The weird route is showing us that Matt was actually on the right track with his original Sanz's Nest theory. Delta Rune just didn't exist at the time, so he did the only logical thing and connected it to the other franchise that Toby Fox took a lot of inspiration. from, but the more I looked into Sands, the more I realised that, yes, he's from somewhere there is an Undertale, we all agree on that, but it's not Delta Rune either. You see, when you first meet Sands in Delta Rune, he says that he's new in town. Now, we know that Sands is a very good lie. In

Undertale, he consistently uses jokes and casualness as a front for him knowing more than he lets on. So him claiming to be new in town could very well just be him lying. But Susie actually confirms this part of his story, saying, that the house itself is also new and not being able to remember what came before. And when you look at the house, something else stands out about it. It's identical to his house in Undertale. While we've seen plenty of characters repeat from Undertale to Delta Roon, they've always had distinct differences like their personality, visual differences and things like their houses. But Sans isn't different or even similar. It's the exact same house. Almost like, much like we're told in Undertale,

he just showed up one day and asserted himself into the world, transporting the house along with him, because even the house is considered to be new, just like Sands. In that first conversation with Sands about him being new, he also does another one of his classic Sandsisms, where he says, considering we've never met before, and then winks. This is a classic sign that Sands is lying, knowing more than what he's saying. In Chapter 4, he also actively stops Toriel from going to look for Chris and Susie, telling her that they're just fine. And in Chapter 5, when he refused to give you ice cream, if you look really carefully, there is an ice cream there. A suspiciously Gaster blaster shaped ice cream. He does

know us. Not because he's from here, but because he's been part of Gaster's team since before the existence of Deltaroon. We theorized before that Sands is actually a scientist working for Gaster. His signature weapon is a Gaster blaster, so duh, but Sands also has an interest in science. He has a history with the current royal scientist Alfis. A bunch of entries in the secret lab are also written in entirely lower case, which is how Sands speaks in the game. When Gaster says, What do you two think in entry 17, he's referring to Alfies and Sands. So, I'm proposing that the reason Sands knows so much about Deltorun in Undertale and why he's present in this game is not because he's a local, but because he used his space manipulation powers to transplant himself and his

home inside the experiment. In Sand's home in Undertail, we see a broken machine and Toby Fox seem to imply that they could never fix it. I believe that this machine is likely what Sand's used to transport himself and his home between the world of Undertale and Delta Run, only for it to break after the final events of Delta Run upon his final return. Delta Run is Gaster's experiment to see if determination can be formed if they can choose their own destiny. If he's going to succeed, he needs to make sure that Chris, or more importantly, we stay on track. Sands gives Chris the bread to form a trail of crumbs so that they can track what's about to happen within the experiment. Right after that, the human and the monster's souls

transcend. A true showing of determination. And that is what Gaster has been after. This is the turning point for the experiment. And if it worked like in Earthbound, these breadcrumbs will allow Sands and Gaster to keep returning to this moment again and again to repeat the experiment as much as much as they need to. It's no secret that Sands hates humans. He says so a few times. Going as far as to say to Frisk that if he hadn't promised Toreal to protect humans, you'd be dead where you stand.

Of course, the hatred of humans is expected in the world of Undertale. The humans banished them to the underground. There's gonna be some emotions that go with that. But in Deltaroon, Sands is nice to Chris, a human. He even tells us to take it easy. So something between then and now changes his outlook on humans. And it's the weird route. The weird route is full of violence, much like the genocide route where he revealed his hatred for us.

Sands is seeing firsthand the destruction we are causing through Chris. All the monsters we destroy with no care, and that is going to lead to Sands's hatred of humans, or more specifically, humans with soul and determination, because given the choice, they will always choose violence. Fun fact, in the undertale soundtrack, there's a song called The Song that Might Play When You Fight Sands. It never shows up. zero chance of it showing up when you play the game or when you fight Sands. But if it's raining somewhere else was foreshadowing Delta Rune, maybe this song is doing the same thing. Maybe in Chapter 7 side B, we are going to end up fighting Sands, who, despite being

there to keep things on track, doesn't want to see us all go down this road. He doesn't like seeing where determination leads, and if it's successful, Gaster would put the whole of Undertale on the same path. During the fight, his machine will likely be damaged, only offering him one more trip to Undertail before it's broken for good. That is why Sands writes don't forget on the punch card, so he can always remember the route that Chris took and what they did, how they revealed the true nature of determination. Sadly, that means we're still none the wiser as to where Sands was originally from. My pad, I know that's what I sold this whole episode on, but I do think what we found today is really interesting. And wherever he is from,

he doesn't see any way of going back, and whatever happened there, it led him to just appear in Undertail one day. Maybe wherever it was, was also destroyed by that same determination. And now he's begun studying, working with people like Gaster to make sure it doesn't destroy anything else ever again. Matt, or maybe Matt was right, and he is just Ness. But hey, that's just a theory. A game theory! Thanks for watching.