• Abandoned Catchphrase: Flowey’s catchphrase, “In this world, it’s kill or be killed!” He says this multiple times during the game. However, after the fight with Asriel Dreemurr, he changes to ”Don’t kill, and don’t be killed.” Even after he turns back to Flowey again, it’s implied that he’s changed and doesn’t believe this anymore.
• Aesop Amnesia: Induced inadvertently by the game. Specifically, near the end of a Genocide Run, Flowey finally realizes that "kill or be killed" means not even he is safe from you, and tries to warn Asgore, orchestrating his own demise. Despite this, if you bail out, reset, and complete a Neutral Run - which you can do as late as when he reverts to the form of Asriel to beg the First Child not to kill him, beyond which lies the point of no return - he will call out the player to complain about how you screwed up their chance at true victory as he does in some other Neutral Runs, unaware that you'd prevented his death.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Flowey's (optional) demise isn't terrifying just because of its brutality. At that point, the Fallen Child has fully possessed Frisk, and in his terror, Flowey's face and voice have reverted back to his former self, Asriel. In other words, it's not the douchey flower villain we came to know getting his just desserts; it's Asriel getting murdered in cold blood by his adopted sibling: the person he thought was his best friend.
• Already Done for You: In the No Mercy route, one switch in Snowdin is pressed down by vines, indicating Flowey solved it before you arrived. Several future puzzles are already solved as well, but this is the only one definitely solved by him.
• And I Must Scream:
  • Flowey threatens you with this by overriding your save states in the Photoshop Flowey boss fight so you would be trapped having him kill you again and again. You manage to persevere, but not before he maliciously abuses his save states to briefly fulfill his promise.
  • In the more psychological version of this trope, while it was alluded to in the other playthroughs, Flowey fully reveals himself to be this in the Genocide run. He describes how scared he was waking up and not being able to feel his arms and legs, or any sort of love for another being, no matter how hard he tried. When he discovered he could SAVE, he tried to play out multiple scenarios in the hope of feeling something: a loop where he befriended everyone, a loop where he killed everyone, and so forth. Eventually, he grew to know the monsters so well that he saw them as little more than scripted actors, and having exhausted his options, turned into the nihilistic psychopath you come to know.
• And Your Little Dog, Too!: Flowey attempts this in both the Neutral and True Pacifist Route.
  • In the Neutral ending, Flowey threatens to kill everyone the human loves if they spare him.
  • In the True Pacifist route, Flowey captures the souls of everyone in the Underground (except for Napstablook) to restore his true form as Asriel Dreemurr to fight you.
• Anonymous Benefactor: Several puzzles are solved for the player on the Genocide Route. However, this is strongly implied to be Flowey since one switch is depressed by vines, especially considering he’s one of the few characters who’s actually friendly towards you on said route.
• Artificial God: He started out as a seemingly ordinary flower, but after absorbing the six human souls, he evolved into a Eldritch Abomination.
• Art Shift: Played to utterly horrifying effect during the Photoshop Flowey boss fight. He looks like a collage of actual images of human and plant body parts jumbled together, with a screen showing a human face in 2-bit color that is constantly laughing, screaming or making creepy faces.
• Asshole Victim:
  • He is the most evil creature in the Underground. Also the only character who can never get a happy ending, even if you redeem him.
  • This is played with in both Neutral and Genocide. In Neutral, he wants you to kill him after the fight, and the player arguably gets more satisfaction if they choose to instead prove him wrong. In Genocide, while you can say he would initially have it coming should the player get their hands on him, when they finally do, he instead reverts to his original identity of Asriel, robbing some satisfaction from the player's choice of killing him.
• At Least I Admit It: In the No Mercy route, while speaking to the human towards the end of the game, he says that the two of them are better than the people who watch others commit atrocities because they're too scared of actually doing those things themselves.
• Ax-Crazy: Most of his personality is this, going from attempting to kill the player within five minutes of meeting them, to literally killing his father when it would have been just as easy to let him live. It turns out that this is at least partially because his lack of a soul makes him unable to feel either empathy or compassion for others.
• Back from the Dead: As per the usual, even if Flowey dies on a previous run, the player can just reset the game and he'll be back the same as he was. If you kill him at the end of one Neutral run and reset for another, he points out that since doing so for anyone else has the same effect, it's kinda weird that you really believed his death would stick. There's also his true nature as a resurrected Asriel Dreemurr that Came Back Wrong.
• Bait-and-Switch Character Intro: Flowey first presents himself as a friendly and helpful flower with silly music... before tricking the player with his "friendliness pellets" to kill the Human Child and steal their SOUL, while the music either cuts abruptly (if the player falls for it) or slows down before fading in silence (if the player does not fall for it).
• Big Bad: On a Neutral run. While Asgore is responsible for most of the Underground's hostility towards the human, Flowey ultimately proves to be the far bigger threat when he kills the king, steals the SOULs, and attempts to trap you in a endless battle where he can kill you over and over again. He also serves as the Big Bad of the True Pacifist run, consuming the souls of every monster in the underground to regain his true form.
• Big Bad Wannabe: On a Genocide run. He believes that the player is willing to cooperate with him, but they're perfectly willing to kill Flowey. Flowey ends up trying to save his own skin, which leads to him becoming the final fatality of the Genocide run.
• Bishōnen Line: For first-time players, it could be assumed that Flowey has a straightforward One-Winged Angel form upon retrieval of the six human SOULs. However, on the true Pacifist run, it's revealed that Flowey's true form is none other than the lost prince, Asriel Dreemurr, who then takes on the sleeker, more adult-like form "God of Hyperdeath".
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Flowey happily welcomes you to the Underground and pretends to be your friendly tutorial, but this act doesn't last very long before he reveals his true nature. It's implied he's been acting like this towards Papyrus as well.
• Black Bead Eyes: His eyes are usually just dark spots that almost look like seeds. However, when making some of his various nightmarish faces, he can gain white pupils or his eyes can go completely white.
• Book Burning: In addition to reading every book as stated below, Flowey also claims to have burned every book as well once he was done reading them and knew what they had.
• Bookworm: Flowey claims that he has read every book in the Underground. This is in part thanks to him once having the power to reset and find ways to get access to them.
• Boring, but Practical: His favoured attack pattern is an 'inescapable' circle of bullets (he calls them "Friendliness Pellets") surrounding his target, which then closes in on them. Oddly, he never uses this while actually fighting you, which is your first hint that he's just toying with you. He actually uses them in his Photoshop form, but target circles outline where they'll appear, giving you a chance to move away. Again, he's probably playing with you. He also uses this attack to kill Asgore in both the Neutral and Genocide routes, and then uses it once again to destroy his SOUL.
• Boss Remix: "Your Best Friend", the song that plays when you first meet him in the Ruins, gets a reprise in "Your Best Nightmare", "Finale", "Hopes and Dreams", and "SAVE the World". These are, respectively, the battle themes of the seven phases of Photoshop Flowey and the two phases of the fight with Asriel, both of which are more powerful forms of Flowey. In addition, "You Idiot", his endgame Leitmotif, is also remixed in "Your Best Nightmare".
• Botanical Abomination: He's a soulless Asriel Dreemurr who Came Back Wrong after one of the plants where part of his dust lay was injected with Determination. He can (or rather, could) save, load and reset all "life" underground, breaks the fourth wall repeatedly and is aware of the player. And all of this is ignoring his form as Photoshop Flowey...
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Flowey frequently references the game's mechanics such as LV, EXP, and the player's ability both to save their progress and restart from a save point as well as to reset the game and start over, all of which technically exist in-universe as well as being game mechanics. When he takes over as the final boss of the Neutral path, Flowey even seizes control of the player's ability to save their progress and uses it for himself. Flowey also calls out people who watch YouTube videos of the Genocide run, claiming that the player is at least better than "those sickos who just watch" for actually going through with the extermination of all life in person. He also gets rather miffed and suspects you're on to him if you "botch" his tutorial.
• Break Them by Talking: Flowey really enjoys attempting to do this to you. At the end of the Ruins, for example, he'll give you a piece of his mind which varies depending on your actions up until that point. For instance, if you're in the clear for a Pacifist Run and didn't kill anything without reloading to fix it, he'll question you on how long you can keep it up.
• Break the Nihilist: This appears to be a near-constant for Flowey, with the only exception of this being on a flawed neutral run where you kill him.
  • On the Pacifist run, Flowey - being influenced by the SOULs of all the monsters of the Underground and the memories of Asriel - ultimately lets go of his "Kill or be killed" mentality and begs the player to leave Frisk and the other monsters alone post-Pacifist, even going so far as to try and guilt them into leaving the others alone by assuming you've heard him beg like this before.
  • Subverted on the Pacifist-Neutral run where you spare Flowey. Initially, it appears that after experiencing a Villainous BSoD in the face of Frisk's pacifism that he changes his ways and helps you achieve the Golden Ending. In reality, this is a ploy to gather all the monsters in one place to steal their SOULs and achieve their true form.
  • Played for Horror on the Genocide run, where near the climax of the run, he realizes that his "Kill or be killed" mentality could be turned around on him—by the one person he believed was his best friend, no less. This results in the first emotion that Flowey feels being fear: he begins to sheepishly suggest you turn back from the run, then yells at you to back off of him before he ultimately sobs and begs you not to kill him. This doesn't stop him from berating you if you back out of the Genocide run at this point.
• Bullet Seed: His little white "friendliness pellets" are likely just seeds that Flowey is able to weaponize by using his natural magic.
• Bullying a Dragon: After he's defeated in the neutral route, he continually goads the Human Child into killing him, even going so far as to threaten to kill everyone they love if spared. This is despite the fact that he knows he has no soul and that he can't load if he's actually killed. But why bother when the Human Child'll eventually do so anyway?
• Cannibalism Superpower: Powers up to Photoshop Flowey after he absorbs the human souls and gains powers based on each of them.
• Catchphrase: Flowey has quite a few. Asriel co-opts two of them and flips them into more positive statements at the end of the game.
  • "In this world, it's kill or be killed"!
  • "Don't you have anything better to do?", for when you go out of your way to speak to him over and over again through resets.
  • He also enjoys calling you and all of your friends "idiots".
• The Chessmaster: In a Neutral-to-Pacifist play through, Flowey shows just how cunning he can be. After the Human Child defeats Asgore, Flowey kills him and absorbs the six human SOULs to become Photoshop Flowey. When the human SOULs rebel against him and he's defeated, should he be spared, Flowey suggests the player prove his philosophy wrong by playing through the game again without killing anything and be nicer to Alphys if they want to get a better ending, making it sound like he's undergoing a Heel–Face Turn. After Frisk's trek through the True Lab, they get a mysterious call that says everything is falling into place before the elevator is rocketed up to the castle and jammed shut with vines. Flowey then tells Papyrus to round all the monsters up at the castle, where he absorbs not only the six human SOULs, but all of the monster souls to restore his true form and become a god.
• Creepy Child: Considering that he is actually Asriel Dreemurr, who died when he was a child, you could say that he is this — the only thing he seems to enjoy to any degree is causing pain to others.
• Creepy High-Pitched Voice: Invoked with his high-pitched Voice Grunting sounds, as well as the high-pitched way he says, "That's a wonderful idea!" in a Genocide Run after the player wipes out the Ruins monsters and kills Toriel. As we quickly learn, he is cruel and sadistic. Justified in that his true form is that of a Boss Monster child.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: On the worst ending, Flowey attempts to beg for mercy, only to be utterly mutilated and cut in half. Not one, or twice, but eight times. It should be noted that the player is probably more than capable of doing it in one clean blow, but they draw out Flowey's death specifically to make him suffer.
• Cutscene Boss: If you've already completed a Pacifist run but fail to achieve True Pacifist the second time around, Flowey just plain skips the fight, already knowing how it ends. On the flip side, if you finish the No Mercy route, the player doesn't even get a prompt to fight Flowey before he's defeated.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of what it takes to be The Sociopath as a villain, and the sheer nature of being a Manipulative Bastard. And neither case is exactly natural.
  • From the get-go, he's explicitly SOUL-less, effectively meaning that despite being revived as a sentient entity of Determination, he cannot actually feel anything in terms of genuine, heartfelt emotions towards other people, already hampering his connections. He's also an accident, as Alphys didn't pick that flower for any reason but that it was growing faster than the others.
  • With his formerly-exclusive power of Determination, he's been able to do everything with the abilities of LOAD and SAVE, from being the hero to being the villain — but because he cannot feel anything and he can't surpass Asgore, he's effectively stuck with countless loops of knowledge and nothing to actually do that would interest him anymore, which is probably why he's bumming around in the Ruins doing nothing of note until Frisk drops down.
  • His plans to use Frisk as a Spanner in the Works are not born of some destiny or foresight, but by pure happenstance and boredom after initially writing off Frisk as just another child to die, until he he lost his Determination abilities. This led to him stalking Frisk wand witnessing the child's victory over Asgore—taking the Human SOULS and becoming a Physical God was essentially a spur-of-the-moment improvisation, which means the SOULs possibly rebelling against him were something he simply never could've seen coming for all those loops he ran.
• Defeat Equals Explosion: Subverted. When you defeat him as Photoshop Flowey, he initially starts exploding… and then instantly reloads a SAVE. His proper defeat at the hands of the other human SOULs is quite a spectacle, but there's no explosion in sight.
• Defiant to the End: If you choose to kill him in the Neutral run, he gives one last evil grin and proclaims "I knew you had it in you!"
• Despotism Justifies the Means: Flowey's ultimate goal is to take every SOUL that Asgore has gathered to become godlike, make the meaning of life as we know it "kill or be killed," and… not much beyond that, really. Even before that, however, he was stalking Frisk from afar along their journey primarily because Frisk gained the power to SAVE and unknowingly stole it from Flowey — and he wants it back.
• Deuteragonist: Essentially becomes the tritagonist of the No Mercy run. Despite mostly vanishing after the Ruins, he is the closest thing the player has to an ally throughout the route, encouraging them onto their genocidal path and solving most of the puzzles for them in advance. Doesn't save him from the player's wrath at the end of the route, unfortunately.
• Didn't See That Coming:
  • He initially just wants to kill the Human child and take their SOUL, and doesn't think anything of it. Then he realizes by the end of the Ruins that this Human stole his ability to SAVE and LOAD because their Determination trumps his, though he only admits loosely to knowing about it if you used it to save Toriel. The rest of his actions for the game stem from improvising around this revelation.
  • Given that using the information around SOULs is still incredibly sketchy and not entirely known, and he himself wasn't exactly privy to research or even acquiring them until Asgore's finally out of his way, he has no way of realizing that the SOULs are still technically "alive" and very much cognizant of their unwilling state.. and freaks the everliving hell out when the Human Child awakens them enough to fully rebel and undo his power as a god.
• Didn't Think This Through: This goes for the Genocide Route as a whole. Throughout the regular game, he'll encourage you to kill people to get you on it, and he'll become much friendlier to you if you do. And then, somewhere around New Home, he mentions that people like him and the player are the sort who would kill anyone they want to, and then figures out that he's no exception… His actions after realizing Chara wouldn't hesitate to kill him if it served them in the Genocide Route can basically be summed up as him giving them every reason to, from selling them out to Kill Stealing to destroying their primary means of escape, all in an (obviously poorly-planned) attempt to save his own stem.
• Dirty Coward:
  • Flowey is confident that the player will do little that can actually harm him, but when he finds someone who is willing and able to hurt him, his entire persona crumbles. He's not afraid of the Human Child in a Genocide run since he seems to know that being killed will never have any permanent effects, and that he can still try to manipulate both of you toward his own ends. Once face-to-face with that Child after they've killed most of the Underground, however, he crumbles when he realizes he's dealing with an unrepentant murderer who'd happily kill him for sheer amusement. Whereas in other playthroughs Flowey has little problems fucking around with you, after this point he's entirely devoted to saving his own neck, right down to pitifully and tearfully begging for his life.
  • He also refuses to openly fight Asgore, only killing him if he is very weakened and you spare him in a neutral run.
• The Dragon: Somewhat becomes this to you in the Genocide run, completing puzzles for you and making your playthrough quicker. He stops being your dragon when he figures you'll be out to kill him as well.
• Driven to Suicide: In the Genocide run, Flowey confides that he attempted suicide after turning into an unfeeling flower, but stopped himself after thinking about what might happen when a being without a soul dies. Through this, he realized how he could SAVE.
• Dying as Yourself: Throughout the Genocide Route, Flowey remains a sadistic monster. But when he realizes at the end that you're about to kill him, his face and Voice Grunting revert to Asriel's as he begs pitifully for his life.
• Dying Smirk: He sports a demented grin if you (as the player) decide to kill him in the Neutral route.
• Easily Forgiven: Despite all the torment he puts you through, it's possible to see past it and spare him. He's completely baffled by this choice.
• Escaped from the Lab: Flowey was created in the True Lab by Alphys injecting a flower (namely one with the essence of the dead prince Asriel) with Determination.
• Establishing Character Moment: The first thing he does in-story is introduce himself as the player's "best friend" and claim he wants to help them, but there's something about the whole thing that just seems off. Then he tries to convince the player to walk into a trap, taunting them for falling for it if they do, and saying his classic line, "In this world, it's kill or be killed!" Then he tries to kill you, grinning all the time. Yeah, that about sums up what we can expect from our old friend Flowey.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Flowey still shows signs of Asriel's fondness towards the Fallen Child. This proves to be his undoing in both the True Pacifist run and the Genocide Run—in the True Pacifist run, desperation to have his dear friend all to himself again leads him to give the player a fair fight and ultimately lets them talk him down, while in the Genocide Run his realization that the Fallen Child is just as willing to kill him as they are anyone else lead to his Villainous Breakdown, and thus ensuring his death.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • When you kill Toriel after sparing her, you're greeted with Flowey saying "Wow, you're utterly repulsive." If you kill Toriel and then reset to kill her a second time, he calls you a "disgusting animal."
  • While it may be just him getting under your skin, he gets visibly angered when you kill Asgore while doing a true pacifist run.
    Flowey: What the hell is wrong with you?
  • Flowey's greatest example of this trope is if you start the game again after the True Pacifist ending. You will have the option to either let the characters live out their Golden Ending in peace, or True Reset and undo all of that progress. For the first time, Flowey is genuinely hopeful of the new world and will beg the player not to ruin everyone's happiness, claiming that not even he would ever be that heartless. Considering the sheer depth of his sociopathy and dickery throughout the entire game, his plea stands out as one of the most memorable moments in the game and has even deterred players from resetting the True Pacifist route.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Flowey was created by giving Determination to something without a SOUL, and so he can't comprehend love. When you defeat his Eldritch Abomination form and decide to spare him, he doesn't know why you're being so nice to him, and starts crying that he can't understand why you're not giving in to killing him.
• Evil Counterpart: To Sans the skeleton, the other Fourth-Wall Observer of the franchise. Saying that both of them present themselves through alliterative names and have two Voice Gruntings to make the difference between their silly and serious moments would only be a stretch on both their surfaces.
  • Both introduce you to the game's mechanics in different ways where they alternate between their silly and serious side: Sans poses himself as a threat for the Human Child when they exit the Ruins, then reveals his more silly side to show them than even the most aggressive monster can become a friend. On the other hand, Flowey shows a childish side before stabbing you and makes you believe that Violence Is the Only Option. On a lesser note, they're both the only characters that introduce themselves with similar wording.
    Flowey: I'm FLOWEY. FLOWEY the FLOWER!
    Sans: i'm sans. sans the skeleton.
  • Both are smiling, trolling, nihilistic, and have discovered that an unknown entity can rewind time and undo everything they did. However, while Sans' knowledge on the matter is is implied to only be slightly better than most of the cast due to making inferences about the Human's actions and he hides his knowledge for the most part, Flowey used to be able to rewind time and took advantage of it to see everything himself, remembers everything you did in detail and won't hesitate to taunt you with it.
  • Both of them are pranksters, have a talent for imitations, and watch for the protagonist in the shadows. Sans frequently chats with them, plays childish pranks on them, offers them a dinner where he shows his talent by imitating Toriel, judges them before they meet the King, and intervenes if they go too far. On the other hand, Flowey avoids contact, plays cruel pranks that consist of giving you a Hope Spot, makes imitations in the same vein ^note for example, the infamous Echo Flower's one in Waterfall where he mimics Toriel's voice before taunting you and only springs into action once you've fought Asgore yourself to take the Human Souls for his own benefit.
  • Unlike the other monsters who are evocative of monsters, both Flowey and Sans look cartoonish in almost a deliberately cute way. However, Sans uses his appeal to try and convince the player onto a pacifist route (or at least a route that isn't caked with dust), whereas Flowey does it to lull you into a false sense of security so he can try to get a free kill on you.
  • Amusingly, they have different opinions on Let's Players and their audience. In the neutral and pacifist routes, specifically while experiencing the Xbox-exclusive content, Sans asks why you wouldn't just watch a video of the "exclusive [Xbox] game" instead of playing it yourself. In the No Mercy run, Flowey calls the audience of Let's Players cowards and sickos for wanting to watch the Genocide route without doing it themselves.
• Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: Has a suitably sick and twisted taste in comedy, taking amusement in various cruel and unfortunate events due to his own detachment. He ends up on the receiving end of this and calling the fallen child out for their own cruel sense of humor as they scare him on the No Mercy route. This still holds true after his Heel–Face Turn, apparently, as in his alarm clock, he muses that the best part of winter is the white snow being indistinguishable from the dust of monsters with a Slasher Smile.
• Evil Is Hammy: He doesn't even bother holding up his cute facade, as within moments of his introduction, he tries to kill the Human Child, and brings out the Nightmare Faces and Evil Laughs. He lets it all out as Photoshop Flowey, in which he hijacks the game, turns into a photorealistic monstrosity, and torments the player with all his might.
• Evil Is Petty: It really doesn't help his plans any to mock and insult you constantly. He's just kind of a dick like that.
• Evil Laugh: He's a real big fan of these, belting out a high-pitched cackle out every now and then. They get even worse when he becomes Photoshop Flowey, as his laugh is deeper, echoing, and much more distorted. And if you finish a Pacifist run after previously completing a Genocide run, the last thing you hear before the credits roll is that laugh again, at an even lower pitch that sounds downright demonic.
• Exact Words: If you complete a Neutral non-pacifist run and choose to spare him, he challenges you to get to the same point from the beginning without killing anyone, promising he won't kill Asgore if you do so. Indeed, if you do so, you get to hear Asgore's full speech, which Flowey won't interrupt this time around... which ends with Asgore realizing that he can't keep you trapped underground and committing suicide so that you can take his SOUL and go through the barrier. Which Flowey then promptly destroys, as he didn't say anything about letting you have Asgore's SOUL as well, since that would interfere with his plans.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: In Genocide, Flowey explains that he was suddenly not able to reset after the player fell into the Underground because the player's Determination exceeds his own, while lamenting about the possibilities of dying without a soul and that monsters like himself and the player wouldn't hesitate to kill each other… at which point he realizes the player can kill him for real and fully intends to.
• The Fake Cutie: He's an adorable, talking flower who introduces himself as supposedly your best friend, but that charade doesn't even last a minute.
• Faking the Dead: If you kill him at the end of a Neutral run and then restart, he is absent from most of his scripted encounters. However, he still stalks you as before, and he'll fully reveal himself if you get another Neutral ending just to taunt you, saying that he comes back whenever you reset. All killing Flowey does is prevent him from giving you the hint for the True Pacifist route (though it's still achievable).
• Fallen Hero: As Asriel, he was heroic enough to choose a violent death over harming the misguided human villagers who attacked him. And even after losing his soul, he spent multiple timelines saving everyone before bitterness and boredom took hold of him.
• False Friend: Papyrus speaks of him fondly in phone calls. He manages to manipulate Papyrus into convincing Undyne to request the Human to give Alphys the date invitation, and bringing everyone to Asgore's castle in the True Pacifist Route.
• Faux Affably Evil: Flowey operates under a facade of friendliness and politeness. He often greets the protagonist with southern slang, such as "Howdy!" In truth his personality is malevolent and cruel, and will drop his facade during his most horrid moments.
• Final Boss: Flowey is one of three (or four if you count Asgore) bosses the player can fight at the end of a route. Specifically, he's the Final Boss of the Neutral route the first time. He must be fought at least once to open up the True Final Boss for True Pacifist, and in No Mercy he is a Cutscene Boss.
• Finger Gun: During his boss fight, one of his possible attacks is conjuring hands that are performing the finger gun pose. Which then launch the fingers as projectiles. Did we mention the fingers also have flower faces at the fingertips?
• Flower Motif: He's a flower, which has a deeper meaning than it seems to have. Yellow flowers in general mean friendship. In the end, Flowey is the re-incarnation of a little boy, whose main motivation is to be with his dearest friend, Chara.
• Foul Flower: He initially uses his flower form to deceive the player into trusting him, but quickly reveals how monstrous he is despite his appearance.
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: There's no hiding what you did from Flowey. Not even if you reset. Did you kill Toriel, then reset, do her battle again, and spare her? Flowey's speech at the end of the Ruins makes it very clear he knows. And that's just one of the more blatant examples of this trope.
• Freak Lab Accident: Alphys is implied to have attempted to replicate the experiment that created him, given the logs and the large number of yellow flowers in the lab, but never succeeded, making Flowey a freak occurrence. Justified, as the experimenter was unaware he was the only flower with Asriel's essence that was used.

• Game-Over Man:
  • Flowey is one of the few characters to narrate the Game Over screen, alongside Asgore and the Genocide Final Boss. If you lose to him in the Photoshop Flowey fight, he'll tell you (using Asgore's voice, no less) that "This is all a bad dream... and you're NEVER waking up!" before descending into mad laughter that covers the screen and crashes the game.
  • While this is his first and most notable hijack of the Game Over screen, he does have other quotes. None of them are quite as extensive, though.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Flowey will call out the player for aborting a genocide route late in the game no matter what, even if the player aborts it by the time he realizes he'll be killed by the player eventually, and if the player does reach Asgore, kills Flowey, and resets the game before the world is destroyed, Flowey will still sound disappointed over the aborted genocide.
• Giggling Villain: Even though Flowey does a full Evil Laugh quite often, he will also occasionally just chuckle.
• Giver of Lame Names: It's implied he named himself Flowey after being resurrected as a flower. It's an indication that he does take quite a bit after dear old dad.
• A God Am I: He proclaims himself the god of the Underground after absorbing the six human SOULs in the Neutral Path final boss fight, and announces his intent to absorb Frisk's as well to become truly all-powerful.
• Gold-Colored Superiority: Flowey isn't just a regular flower. He's a golden flower, that once possessed the power to control the flow of time in the Underground thanks to his sheer amounts of determination. This gave him a huge advantage over the various monsters as he was able to relive his mistakes and learn from them.
• Gone Horribly Right:
  • Oh sure, Flowey, go on and push your 'Kill or be Killed' philosophy. Let's see how you like it to be on the receiving end on the Genocide route.
  • In a way, Flowey is this trope. Alphys created him to be a vessel for SOULs to break the Barrier, since monsters couldn't take another monster's SOUL. Right before the True Pacifist Final battle, he does exactly that. To everyone.
• Good Is Boring: After getting the ability to SAVE, he did try to use his abilities for good, but got bored due to the repetition and decided to see what would happen if he started killing people.
• Green Thumb: Well, he is a flower, after all. He seems to prefer to act out of sight, but he does uses vines to press down a switch in the Genocide route, block access to elevators, bind other Monsters in the True Ending... and then there's Photoshop Flowey.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: In the Genocide ending. Once Flowey realizes you plan on murdering him once you're done with the rest of the Underground, he tries to warn Asgore about you. Unfortunately, the kind-hearted king fails to recognize the threat you pose, prompting Flowey to try and get back into your good graces. This doesn't save him, as the Child utterly destroys Flowey immediately afterwards.
• Heel–Face Turn: If you beat Flowey in the neutral path and then spare him, he comes back and begins to realize that killing everything is unnecessary, and wishes for you to prove this to him by running a Pacifist Run. By doing that and sparing him again, or by playing a Pacifist Run in the first place^note doing so on a first playthrough results in the same boss fight as the neutral run, Flowey tells you how to obtain the best ending. However, all of this turns out to be a ploy to absorb everyone's souls and turn back into Asriel. It's only after this final battle that Flowey seems to honestly regret what he did, even begging the player to not set everyone back from their happy ending by replaying the game. In the dialogue for the special anniversary Q&A and the cancelled clock app, which are implied to be after the post-True Pacifist ending, Flowey is clearly more of a grumpy straight man to everyone else's shenanigans, but he's genuinely turned a new leaf.
• He Knows About Timed Hits: Flowey initially guides you through some of the game's mechanics, before revealing he's evil by lying about one of those mechanics.
• Hidden Depths: In the Genocide ending, Flowey reveals why he became a sociopath. He'd been trapped in the underground with nothing to do but play god with a bunch of people whose every word and action he'd seen before. And had to do this for centuries. He even tried the good guy options at first, but a literal lack of ability to feel empathy and the predictable nature of his playthings eventually left him bored of existence but too afraid of dying to kill himself. It's implied that the only way to cure him is to show him what TRUE violence is. In the Pacifist ending, once you show him that there is a way out, he ends up hopeful of the new world and willing to protect it, even if he still is a heartless megalomaniac.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: A tragic example in the Genocide route occurs when Flowey learns that Chara is willing to kill anyone in their way—and that this includes him. It's not clear if Chara had any inclination towards killing him, but when Asgore remarks about seeing a flower "cry" and indicates that Flowey had tried to warn him, it becomes a moot point. Chara easily strikes Asgore down, but Flowey decides to steal the kill and destroy Asgore's soul for good measure, desperate to prove himself useful to his "best friend"... who needed Asgore's soul intact, since a monster soul and a human soul are required to cross the barrier and Flowey is soulless. He's acting out of desperation, and it's most likely that absorbing the human souls (as in the Neutral routes) would likely only delay the inevitable—nonetheless, Flowey's fate is sealed, and as Chara's (and the player's) last "obstacle", not even the face of Asriel is enough to stop them hacking and cutting him apart until there's nothing left.
• Hopeless Boss Fight:
  • His demonstration of how to acquire "LOVE" at the beginning of the game is a trap that nearly kills you. Toriel intervenes to save you from his follow-up attack. If you deliberately dodge it several times, Flowey briefly reveals his true colors.
  • The first phases of the fight against Photoshop Flowey is basically this. Survive against him until the SOUL attack warning comes up, then dodge everything that SOUL throws at you until ACT appears. And you get to do this six times.
• Horrible Judge of Character: While savvy in most runs, it takes him all the way 'til New Home in a Genocide run to realize that the Fallen Child doesn't reciprocate the friendship he so desperately wants to rekindle.
• Hostile Show Takeover: In the neutral run when Asgore dies and he becomes Photoshop Flowey.
  "Long ago, two races ruled over Earth. HUMANS and MONSTERS. One day...THEY ALL DISAPPEARED WITHOUT A TRACE"
• Hypocrite:
  • If you dodge his "friendliness pellets" at the start of the game, he berates you for toying with him… which is exactly what he was doing to you mere seconds ago.
  • During the finale of the Genocide Route, Flowey performs his Take That, Audience! to people who watch the genocide route instead of playing it, calling them "sickos" and "pathetic", which is rich when not 5 minutes later, once he realizes that his "kill or be killed" philosophy includes himself, he cowers in fear of you and runs off and tries to hide behind Asgore—the man he admitted to killing time and time again because he was bored. What makes this worse is that earlier he says he doesn't want anyone to pity him, but right before you kill him, he cries begging you to pity him and spare his life… it doesn't work, sadly.
• If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!: Invoked. If the player decides to kill him after the first playthrough in a Neutral or Pacifist run, just to rub it in, his dying words will be gloating about it. Ultimately, this is averted by the game itself, as Flowey is the only monster the player can kill without gaining any EXP or LV.
  Flowey: (displaying a Slasher Smile) I knew you had it in you!
• I Just Want to Have Friends: The Fallen Child was the closest thing he had to a friend and he simply cannot let go his memories of them, to the point of projecting the Fallen onto Frisk as Flowey; he just wants to see his friend again that badly, and does whatever he can to keep them underground. This is part of why he is so elated to see Fallen Frisk at the beginning of the No Mercy route.
• Immortality Immorality: Flowey's been around far, far longer than he initially lets on. Flowey possesses Determination just like the protagonist, and can and has reset several times after being killed. Once he realized the implications, he started doing whatever the hell he wanted, including and not limited to mass-murder.
• Interface Screw: As the first tutorial character, Flowey has some knowledge of the game's mechanics and uses this to his own advantage. He says that he once had the power to SAVE and LOAD like the player, but lost that power when the player character arrived. However, he is still aware of yours. If you kill Toriel, reload, and replay the battle to save her (a common mistake among new players is to think you need to weaken her sufficiently before she accepts your Mercy, then kill her by accident), he will call you out on it, as well as various other possible save and reload scenarios. When he becomes Photoshop Flowey, his will supersedes the child's, allowing him to alter the very fabric of the game and to easily Load his way out of your attempts to defeat him… at first.
• I Shall Taunt You: Repeatedly, especially if you're on your first Neutral run. It comes to a head when he outright breaks the game as Photoshop Flowey just so he can torment and kill you over and over again. If you choose to kill him after defeating his Photoshop form, he'll praise you for "having it in you," and in future Neutral endings, he'll tell you that killing him didn't solve anything, and that he'll take away your happy ending whenever you get within reach of it.
• It's All About Me: Flowey early on claims that he is the "prince of this world's future". He's actually not wrong — after all, he is an actual prince, and as the SOUL vessel created by Alphys, he technically does exist to determine the world's future.
• Jagged Mouth: A couple of his Nightmare Faces have jagged sharp-edged mouths.
• Jerkass: To put it mildly. His Establishing Character Moment alone has him attempting to exploit the player's naivety, to try and convince them to walk straight into his attacks.
• Kick the Dog: If you spare Asgore in the Neutral Run, Flowey takes advantage of Asgore's speech to kill him.
• Killer Rabbit: In Undertale, you meet all kinds of monsters, from skeletons to fish knights. And yet the most utterly depraved of them all… is a cute smiling flower.
• Lack of Empathy: He is incapable of feeling any love. And not for lack of trying — he spent weeks with both his parents (separately) trying to feel something, but failed.
• Large Ham: His Photoshop form comes off surprisingly hammy with lots of scenery-chewing, considering that he has no voiced lines. His lines as the human SOULs rebel against him are of particular note:
  Photoshop!Flowey: Wh...where are my powers!? The souls...? What are they doing? NO!! NO!!!!! YOU CAN'T DO THAT!!! YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO OBEY ME!! STOP!!! STOP IT!!!!! STOOOOPPPP!!!!!
• Last-Second Word Swap: During your first encounter with him, if you dodge his bullets twice, he'll say, "Is this a joke? Are you braindead? RUN. INTO. THE. BULLETS!!!" before glancing at his own speech bubble and changing "bullets" to "friendliness pellets".
• Laughably Evil: He has some darkly humorous moments and snarky lines despite being a vicious darwinist, especially if the player knows how to get some of his more obscure dialogue.
• Laughing Mad: Flowey's a violent, insane sociopath that has some of the most disturbing Evil Laughs in all of video game history.
• Leitmotif: "Your Best Friend". For his first appearance, at least. His endgame appearances on Neutral and Pacifist get "You Idiot" instead. The former gets a Dark Reprise (or a dozen insane ones) and the latter gets a boss remix or three in "Your Best Nightmare".
• Manipulative Bastard: He's been talking to Papyrus for a while, pretending to be his friend so that he can exploit his naivety near the end of the True Pacifist run. He also attempts to do this with the player after a Neutral run, where he suddenly seems to have a change of heart and gives you real advice towards getting the True Pacifist ending. Both of these are plots that further his true goal.
• Medium Awareness: He briefly looks at his speech bubble when he slips that the "friendliness pellets" are actually bullets, before switching it out and going back to his usual smile. More seriously, he knows about the power to Save and Load, and not only that, he knows that there's a better ending that can only be achieved if the player kills absolutely no one.
• Mirror Boss: As Photoshop Flowey, he uses Save Scumming to undo his mistakes, not unlike most players of the game. His attacks involving the Human SOULs also have him use the same weapons that the player can acquire throughout the game, just in Bullet Hell form.
• Morphic Resonance: His overworld sprite shares a color palette with his previous incarnation, Asriel Dreemurr. He can also replicate Asriel's face and voice, but only does so once in a moment of extreme panic and desperation at the end of the Genocide route.
• Mythology Gag: His laugh is the same one heard in the Homestuck song "The Lordling", with Homestuck being a project that Toby Fox previously worked on.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain!:
  • In the demo, if you kill Toriel, he'll leave a little message for you: "YOU DIDN'T EVEN TRY TO SPARE HER, DID YOU?" In most cases, this would be standard Evil Gloating, but for many people, this was the first time they realized Toriel could be spared. So they reset and spared her that time.^note This can double as a Kick the Dog if you did try to spare Toriel, only to get impatient and give in to violence. Thanks for the tip, Flowey!
  • During the Photoshop Flowey Final Boss fight, he's taken the ability to save or load back from Frisk, and thus is one of the few characters in the game capable of actually killing them for good. However, it's Flowey who reloads the save file to keep torturing them for eternity, meaning the only reason he doesn't win (barring the player beating Photoshop Flowey in one shot) is ultimately his own sadism.
  • After he realizes that the Fallen Child wouldn't hesitate to kill him if he got in the way, he tries to warn Asgore about them, and when they still bring Asgore to his knees, Flowey takes him out for them — soul and all — in an attempt to curry favor. Up until then, even if they no longer cared for Flowey (assuming they're aware of Flowey having once been Asriel), they still had some pragmatic reason to keep him alive — Flowey'd been solving most of the puzzles for them, after all. By warning Asgore about the Child, then Kill Stealing and destroying Asgore's soul (their main — if not only — hope of getting out of the Underground at that point), he proved to be the very kind of hindrance that they wouldn't hesitate to kill, regardless of their initial motives.
• Nice, Mean, and In-Between: Out of the trio who are aware of the resets, Flowey is the Mean to Sans' Nice and Frisk's In-between. Throughout the game, he serves as the player's shoulder devil, constantly taunting them and encouraging them when they're on a more violent path. At least, until the player gets to the endgame on the Genocide Route. Then he regrets it, but by then it's already too late. On the Pacifist Route, however, Flowey is capable of being redeemed.
• Nightmare Face: He can shapeshift his face into monstrous forms. The worse ones are near the end of the Neutral Route. And those are before facing him in the final battle of said route!
• No Final Boss for You: Played with, in that it's not due to a player missing something or playing poorly. If you've already done a run where you've beaten him and you haven't done a True Reset or No Mercy run since, and you get to him again in a neutral run, he decides to not fight you after you kill Asgore since he knows you'll just beat him again.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown:
  • His boss fight is this, directed towards you. With nonstop barrages of vines, star projectiles, venus fly traps, and bombs with his face on them, among other crazy things.
  • He's on the receiving end of this at the end of the No Mercy Route as the player brutally slashes him until there's nothing left. Despite how horrible he's been, the act is more horrifying than cathartic for the player.
• Non-Standard Character Design: Photoshop Flowey doesn't look like he belongs in the game at all. Every enemy in the game is animated as a stylistic black-and-white sprite, but when Flowey takes on this form, he changes to a photorealistic mash-up of technology and vines, attacking with nuclear bombs that descend from the sky and fingers that shoot bullets. This enhances his unsettling character and makes clear that the player is fighting something that extends beyond the universe of the game.
• Not Now, Kiddo: On the Genocide Route, Flowey realizes you're soon going to kill him as well as the rest of the Underground, so he flees to warn Asgore about you. Unfortunately for both, Asgore responds by brushing him aside.
• Not So Above It All: In the Undertale Alarm Clock dialogue, Flowey takes up a portion of it talking about how useless it would be to get him a red bike with a golden basket and how it would waste everyone's time.
• "Not So Different" Remark: He says this during the No Mercy run after you kill Toriel in cold blood. He's got a point.
  Flowey: "Hahaha... You're not really human, are you? No. You're empty inside. Just like me."
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: While he does bring you to 1 HP and say that the world is "kill or be killed" at the beginning of the game, it's not obvious that he's the true Big Bad. After all, who would expect the flower with a god complex?
• Not-So-Imaginary Friend: To Papyrus. Sans and Undyne don't believe he's real, despite Papyrus insisting otherwise.
• Odd Friendship: Flowey, the sociopathic Omnicidal Maniac is shown to be surprisingly decent friends with Papyrus, seemingly being the only person that knows his favorite food and doesn't even deny Papyrus calling him his friend (even if he accidentally misnames him by calling him "Flowery" and "Flowy").
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Giving all of his talk about the Underground living by the "kill or be killed" rule, he eventually realizes that the Human Child has no qualms about killing him or anyone else who gets in the way. Given your large body count and the creepy expression you give him near the end of No Mercy route, you can't blame him for breaking down into tears.
  • One happens in the Neutral Route during his Final Boss fight, when he realizes that the human souls have started rebelling, causing his power of loading save states to no longer work.
  • You can definitely see this at work in the Genocide ending. In fear of you, Flowey tells Asgore that you're coming, presumably so he will fight you. Instead, Asgore mentions that a Flower warned him about you and tries to talk you down. You attack and mortally wound him instead, and, in a panic, Flowey kills him in a desperate show of loyalty. He tries to say how useful he can be to you as he obviously cowers in fear and then begs that you spare him. You proceed to butcher him. You don't get a choice for sparing either of them.
• "Oh, Crap!" Fakeout:
  • Flowey has one at the end of the fight with him. He starts to scream in defeat… only to reload File 3 with a "gotcha, bitch!" look on his face, and then proceed to gloat about how he'll kill you again and again and again. But then he later has a genuine Oh, Crap! moment when the souls rally against him and disable his savestates.
  • One more happens at the tail end of the True Pacifist run once he sees that the entire population of the Underground have come to back Frisk up against Flowey's assault. He's faking shock before making everyone realize he has them all right where he wants them, ripe for a mass soul steal.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Flowey is a sociopath whose first action is to try to lull the Child into a false sense of security so he can kill them and take their SOUL. He later reveals that using his save scumming ability, he's killed the inhabitants of the Underground multiple times out of boredom, but was unable to access the human SOULs needed to break the barrier and complete the Fallen Child's mission of destroying humanity. However, he mistakes Frisk for the Fallen and, in a pacifist playthrough, forgoes destroying the world for trapping Frisk in a time loop so they can be together forever.
• One-Winged Angel: Flowey takes on a new appearance for the battle with him, similarly to Mettaton. Namely, his Photoshop Flowey form at the end of the Neutral Route. He goes from a simple flower to a horrific biomechanical plant monstrosity.
• Only Friend: If you spare him in the Neutral route, then defeat Asgore repeatedly to see all his reactions, he tells you to stop trying to be his friend, because he could only care about one person. He also points out that, without a SOUL, he doesn't really care about even that person, but they're the only one he's not bored of, and that's as close as it gets. In the True Pacifist ending, he finally says who that person is: the Fallen Child.
• Only Sane Man: He's presented as this in the various anniversary conversations between the characters that take place after the True Pacifist Ending, generally acting annoyed at the antics of the others. For example, he's the only one who knows that Papyrus's favorite food is actually dinosaur oatmeal in the Q&A (much to his own incredulity), and in the Alarm Clock conversation about Rudolph Holiday, he calls out everyone else for celebrating Christmas in September.
• OOC Is Serious Business: Twice, each in a different route.
  • There's only one moment where Flowey is genuinely empathetic on his own accord: His message to you when you attempt to restart a new game after achieving the Golden Ending. He pleads with you to not take away the happy ending of all the other characters by resetting the game with utmost sincerity, as he has nothing to gain from feigning kindness further. He even apologizes in case you've heard his spiel before. Given that he seems to be directly Addressing the Player here, it's probably justified.
  • There's only one moment where Flowey is absolutely terrified: if you attempt a Genocide route, Flowey will come to realize the depths of the player character's depravity and that even he's not safe from you. This realization causes Flowey's smug demeanor to instantly vanish and he becomes very meek and terrified. Even in other Villainous Breakdowns, such as when the Human SOULs rebel against him, he doesn't seem so helplessly frightened, to the point where he runs to his father and bursts into tears. This is one of the more blatant hints to the player that continuing your No Mercy run might not be the best idea.
• Patricide:
  • Should the Player Character spare Asgore (Flowey's father) in most neutral routes, Flowey will slay him and destroy his SOUL. Granted, he only does the latter if Asgore commits suicide or is killed by the Child.
  • In the Genocide route, Flowey kills his father Asgore as a last-ditch effort to convince the Child he's worth keeping alive. It doesn't work.
• Perpetual Smiler: Almost always seen smiling smugly or in a fake gentle attitude. And, of course, he makes scary sharp grins sometimes. When he stops smiling, shit's officially gotten real.
• Pet the Dog: Apparently, both at times when a self-neglecting, depressed Toriel would collapse on the ground in her days of isolation in the ruins and again when she ended up passed out drunk in the garage, Flowey moved Toriel to her bed and left a cup of water next to her. He still laughed at her and mocked her as pathetic for this, however, but it's slightly difficult to take those words seriously when contrasted with his actions.
• Point of No Return: While Mettaton NEO serves as this for abandoning a Genocide route without a Reset, he himself serves as this for the route and the subsequent corruption that follows, period, as his Cutscene Boss 'fight' is the last time the player can quit the game outside of using the Task Manager (on Windows) or Force Quit (on Mac).
• Post-Final Boss: On No Mercy, the game basically ends with a brutal final boss fight. After that, the player deals with Flowey in a cutscene with no gameplay involved.
• Powerful and Helpless: The one thing Flowey couldn't do when he had the power to reset was leave the Underground, because he didn't know where the human SOULs were stored and could never get Asgore to show him. But Flowey knows Asgore will show them to the Human Child and spends the game stalking you to get his opportunity.
• Power-Upgrading Deformation: Flowey is a pretty cute yellow flower as long as he isn't actively making a Nightmare Face, but after absorbing the six human souls Asgore's harvested and gaining godlike power, he becomes downright eldritch.
• Pragmatic Villainy: In Neutral endings when you spare him, he tells you that there's a much better ending and how to reach it. He isn't telling you this as thanks for not killing him, said ending is actually part of his plan to obtain godlike power.
• Precision F-Strike: When you continuously keep trying to fight Asgore after fighting Photoshop Flowey, he says "Quit looking at me with that stupid expression. You're pissing me off."
• Psychopathic Manchild: Flowey is a selfish, petty Troll who delights in using his Medium Awareness to taunt the player. That's because he's actually Asriel Dreemurr, a monster who died while he was a child and Came Back Wrong in the worst way. He claims to want to become a god, but what he really wants is to trap the player in a Hopeless Boss Fight so that they'll be forced to play with him forever.
• Quaking with Fear: Flower begins to quiver in pure terror once he realizes that the Human Child will eventually want to kill him, and since he has no way of coming back, he begins to panic and tries to reason with them.
• Reality Warper: After absorbing the SOULs of the six other humans, Flowey states that once he absorbs the protagonist's SOUL, he will become GOD. Not a God. The God. Until then, however, he turns into a terrifying Lovecraftian abomination and repeatedly warps reality, even erasing your save file and overwriting it, trapping you in his boss battle forever. Until you figure out his weakness, that is…
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Flowey gains red eyes that appear to cut through his regular black eyes when he takes the human SOULs and becomes Photoshop Flowey.
• Reformed, but Not Tamed: If outside material such as the scrapped alarm clock dialogue is anything to go by, even after his Heel Realization and getting a (however brief) taste of the compassion he lacked for so long, Flowey still ultimately acts like a dick, comparing snow to the dust of dead monsters, and mocks Toriel's mental state while she was alone in the Ruins. At the very least, he's not above taking care of his mother, putting her in bed when she passed out, and filling her a glass of water the way the Fallen Child was implied to do.
• Reluctant Psycho: His monologue in the No Mercy run brings up that he's genuinely upset over his inability to feel love and compassion along with the ensuing insanity, but doesn't think about a better life than toying with the people of the Underground along with his new human "playmate".
• Replacement Goldfish: Flowey will see the player as this, mistaking you and Frisk for the Fallen Child. This Mistaken Identity will become more heartbreaking when at the end of a Pacifist Run, Asriel, when he regains his compassion, also realizes that you are not the Fallen Child and admits the latter "has been gone for a long time."
• Retconjuration: Prior to the player character's arrival to the Underground, Flowey had the ability to SAVE and LOAD, thus being able to create and erase different timelines. He regains it momentarily during his Final Boss fight.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: At the end of the No Mercy route, Flowey realizes the sociopathic Child has no qualms about killing him and tries to warn King Asgore. When the Child knocks Asgore away, Flowey attacks him in order to prove his loyalty and then outright pleads for his life, but is brutally hacked to pieces by the Child.

• Sadist: Lacking a SOUL, it's debatable whether Flowey can feel genuine joy or not. But if he can, he definitely feels it when inflicting pain and suffering on others.
• Safety in Indifference: After completing the best possible Neutral ending (killing no one, befriending Papyrus and Undyne, but not befriending Alphys), he advocates not caring as a way to avoid being emotionally hurt.
• Save Scumming: A battle tactic as Photoshop Flowey. He'll SAVE the game before launching an attack, and then if the player dodges it, use another attack to lead them the other way and then immediately LOAD in an attempt to trick them into moving into the first attack.
• Schmuck Bait: He introduces himself by acting overly friendly and telling you to catch his "friendliness pellets." The fact that he hesitates before calling them that doesn't help his façade.
• Seen It All: He's practically experienced nearly every outcome of exploring the Underground through his SAVE ability, aside from Genocide routes where he's always stopped by Sans. The sudden appearance of the player character and the loss of his SAVE ability leads to new possibilities, which intrigues him.
• Self-Made Orphan: Heavily implied subversion. Given that he claims to have killed everybody multiple times, it's all but certain that Toriel and Asgore have fallen to him at least once prior to Frisk's arrival.
• Series Mascot: He is on the official site and on the first page of the manual.
• Sharing a Body: Photoshop Flowey may think he has full control, but the human souls are actively Fighting from the Inside to help the Human Child. There are also disturbing elements in his design that confirm this trope:
  • The dark and writhing face in Photoshop Flowey's TV screen does not appear to be Flowey himself. It looks nothing like any of Flowey's other shapeshifted faces, which still have the rim of petals, nor does it look like Photoshop Flowey's deranged smiley face (which looks like Flowey's normal face pressed against the screen).
  • During his ending speech, the face appears to warn the Player Character that, "You're HOPELESS. Hopeless and alone...", a statement that Flowey seemingly reacts to with "Golly, that's right!".
• Signature Move: The most used attack in his arsenal is an unavoidable circle of bullets that slowly close in on the target. Even after going One-Winged Angel in a Neutral run, he doesn't ditch it. It's notably absent in the Pacifist run once he becomes Asriel — a sign that he's not giving it his all.
• Slasher Smile: When he's in a particularly evil mood, he'll break out a toothy, horrific grin.
• Slowly Slipping Into Evil: During the New Home segment in the Genocide Run, he describes how he started off doing the right thing and even felt bad when he killed someone for the first time. By the time the player encounters him, however, he'd already done multiple Genocide Runs of his own.
• Smug Smiler: He keeps his grin even as he taunts, insults, and tries to kill you. It's enough to make you want to reach through the screen and punch him in his stupid, grinning face.
• Smug Snake: He's condescending, often refers to the Human Child and their friends as "idiots", and is overall an unrepentant, sociopathic Jerkass.
• The Social Darwinist: Flowey's motto, which he never misses an opportunity to inform the Child, is "Kill or be killed".
• The Sociopath: His defining feature — being a soulless creature means Flowey lacks a natural capacity to empathize or 'feel love'. On a surface level, he may appear as the typical cartoonish evil brand of this trope who cares and feels for no-one but himself, but development on certain routes like his monologue in the No Mercy run reflect a far more realistic and sympathetic portrayal than that. Flowey's Lack of Empathy is something that caused him incredible amounts of distress as it became apparent to him, but spending however long living with a numbness to love in a predictable, dull world has pretty much withered away every shred of his detached sense of goodwill by the beginning of the game, allowing him to 'experiment' and commit cruel actions and plans without remorse to a point where he's no longer able to understand why someone would be kind to him with no benefit. Several of his actions prove that like an 'actual' sociopath, Flowey isn't truly incapable or devoid of genuine goodwill or love^note among obvious in-game ones, he very clearly loves the fallen human he knew even as a soulless flower, and he genuinely pleads with them and the player to not reset the True Pacifist ending and let the others live in peace with zero benefit to himself, but after becoming a flower, he began to struggle immensely with forming connections to anyone, leading him to conclude otherwise.
• Sociopathic Hero: What he claims he was on the Genocide Route. He helped people for the longest time, despite not really caring about them or their plight before he got a little too curious.
• Soul Jar: Flowey manages to combine this with The Soulless due to the unique nature of his birth. Alphys created him to become this as a vessel for all the monster SOULs they had — Flowey was meant to be the weapon that would destroy the barrier; chosen so because a monster cannot absorb monster souls. Flowey is fully aware of this, and when Frisk arrives, he decides to finally live up to it… in the most destructive way possible.
• The Soulless: A being with Determination and memories, but no SOUL and no compassion.
• Stalker Without a Crush: Throughout the game while he doesn’t directly impact the plot until you reach near the end of the game, he’s shown to periodically pop up and watch your every step. It’s revealed he holds platonic love for the Fallen Child and is awaiting for their return inside the Child’s body.
• Starter Villain Stays: Flowey is the very first person you meet in the Underground and the first enemy to battle you, and while he shows himself to be a murderous asshole he basically vanishes from the story after being quickly driven away by Toriel before he can do any serious harm. However, he does stalk you, and is revealed to be a central figure in the game's backstory and the real endgame villain for the Neutral Run.
• Stealth Expert: Flowey can be seen snooping at the Child from the entrance of some rooms if you walk forth and turn back. Throughout the game, he is aware of everything you do.
• Stop Poking Me!: He will eventually ask if you have anything better to do if you keep restarting the game or beating Asgore. (Or if you lose to him as Photoshop Flowey multiple times.) He also gets annoyed if you try to repeatedly run into his circle of bullets after he's about to finish you off as Photoshop Flowey.
• Story-Breaker Power: Unlike the player and Frisk, Flowey's LOAD and SAVE abilities aren't as limited. Though we never see these abilities before Frisk falls into the Underground and usurps them from Flowey, when he regains them from Frisk during a Neutral Route run, we learn that he has save states and can SAVE and LOAD at any time, effectively giving him absolute control over the timeline—as the Route's Final Boss, Photoshop Flowey abuses it liberally, and the only way to win is to strip him of it again.
• Strike Me Down with All of Your Hatred!: Flowey to the player after you defeat him at the end of a Neutral Run. If you continue to spare him, he'll claim that he's learned nothing, that killing him is the only way to end it, and that if he's allowed to live, he'll come back and kill you and everyone you love. If you kill him at any point during this scene, he'll give a Slasher Smile and say "I knew you had it in you!" before seemingly fading to a normal flower. Continue to spare him despite this, on the other hand, and he'll become increasingly bewildered, asking why you're being so nice to him and exclaiming that he can't understand before running off.
• Stunned Silence:
  • Flowey tends to have this reaction any time his powers don't work. This is Photoshop Flowey's response when his attempt to load his SAVE file fails—his face is basically a nonverbal Flat "What".
  • If you spare Flowey, for a couple dialogue boxes, he will say nothing and just stare at you in stunned, confused silence.
• Suddenly Voiced: If you kill everything in the Ruins and then meet him afterwards, he recognizes you as The Fallen Child and reveals that he has a plan to become all-powerful by killing everyone, followed by saying "Ooo, that's a wonderful idea!"
• Tactical Suicide Boss: Photoshop Flowey uses an array of deadly weapons, as well as directly harnessing the power of each human SOUL to use special moves... Said moves eventually reveal an "act" command that allows you to call for help, eventually freeing that SOULs from Photoshop Flowey's control—once all of them are freed, they turn on Flowey, even after he reloads to the start of the fight in a last ditch effort to win.
• Take That, Audience!: In a rather meta sense in a No Mercy run. Besides his typical You Bastard! moments, he leans on the fourth wall and essentially calls out anyone who watches a livestream or video of the No Mercy run because they want to see the carnage, but lack the stomach to do it themselves.
• Tears of Fear: Used to heartbreaking effect in the No Mercy route. Once the player reaches New Home, Flowey tries to reconnect with his one-time friend, only to realize that said friend is now an utterly deranged murderer who is fully intent on his death. Flowey flees while the player takes on Sans, running back crying to Asgore and clearly hoping for some measure of protection. When the player effortlessly dispatches Asgore, Flowey deals the deathblow to try and curry favour and, when that doesn't work, changes his face back into that of Asriel before breaking down crying and sobbing in terror while begging for his life. It doesn't work.
• This Cannot Be!: In both the neutral and pacifist endings, he says something of this sort… right before he springs back to full power, laughs, and calls you an idiot. Shortly afterwards, however, he has a similar reaction, but for real, when the human SOULs turn on him and disable his powers.
• Time Loop Fatigue: Before the player character arrived in the Underground, Flowey alone possessed the power to LOAD and SAVE. Omega Flowey's Hostile Show Takeover shows save data that's long-sinced hit the 10,000 hour (~400 day) cap. After being brought to life, he used this power an untold number of times — to save everyone, to kill everyone, to explore every action and reaction he could… until there was nothing new left for him to do. He was left with the doldrums of omniscient knowledge and no capacity for love, driving him further and further into his single-minded sociopathy until something new finally happened: the player arrived.
• Time Master: Flowey has a knowledge of the Underground like no other, and seems to know what each person's decisions will lead to in their future. At least as Omega Flowey, he can even use save states to flip through timelines on the fly.
• Time Travel for Fun and Profit: Flowey reseting couldn't let him escape the Underground or otherwise gain the power of the six human SOULs, so he decided to just Try Everything there was to do there. It didn't keep him entertained for long, but he still couldn't think of anything better to do.
• Tragic Monster: As revealed throughout the final moments of the No Mercy and Pacfist runs. The reason why he is so utterly evil is because, despite being sapient and sentient, he lacks a soul and a heart. He is literally unable to feel empathy for anybody or understand why anyone would feel empathy for him. On top of that, he has lines that reveal he regrets his actions as a human soul-empowered Asriel when he refused to unleash his power on the human village at Chara's behest, as this led to nothing but pain and misery for everyone. Coupled with the above issues, the experience of making a decision out of love and empathy that seemingly backfired, while refusing to accept the fact that his beloved Chara was not really a good person and is actually at fault, has severely jaded him.
• Traumatic Superpower Awakening: He discovered his ability to SAVE and RESET after a suicide attempt.
• Treacherous Advisor: The manual sets him up as an ally, and he's the first character the player meets, but it doesn't take long for him to reveal that he does not have your best interests in mind. Instead, he's only out for himself.
• Troll: Enjoys messing with you; near the end of the fight, once you lower his health to zero, he appears to experience a Technicolor Death… only for him to resort to Save Scumming and take you back to the beginning of the fight, complete with this expression◊, so he can repeatedly kill you.
• The Undead: As he's wrongly and accidentally resurrected Asriel Dreemurr without a soul, he's this by definition.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: The boss fights in Undertale are all slightly different, but Flowey's takes the shooting mechanics to an extreme. His Photoshop form turns the game from a turn-based RPG of sorts into a straight-up Vertical Scrolling Shooter, minus the ability to actually shoot.
• Unique Enemy: Of a sort. Photoshop Flowey is fought only once at the end of the Neutral route and refuses to fight you again in any subsequent playthroughs because, due to him retaining all his memories across the resets, he knows how it will end. The sole exception is if you do a True Reset, which erases his memory of your journey through the underground, including his boss fight.
• Unwinnable by Design: Exploited. His favorite attack pattern is an undodgeable ring of bullets slowly closing in on your SOUL, usually after he's already reduced you to 1 HP through other means. Fortunately, fate tends to conspire and keep him from actually finishing you off.
• Verbal Backspace: Flowey has done this twice.
  • If you dodge his "friendliness pellets" twice, he orders you to run into his bullets already, then glances at his speech bubble and corrects himself.
  • In the Kickstarter video, he says that you can "murder" monsters before hastily rewording it to "fight".
• Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: Flowey is an emotionless murderer in an otherwise quirky and beautiful world, and the game makes no effort to hide it. Flowey himself is revealed as completely chaotic right from the get-go.
• Villainous Breakdown:
  • If you don't play along in your initial encounter, his saccharine facade cracks quite quickly and he becomes enraged with you.
  • Flowey enjoys faking a Freak Out only to call you an idiot and reveal that he's still winning; he does this once in the neutral ending and once in the True Pacifist ending.
  • He does get some genuine breakdowns, though. The first is when his powers fail him in the final boss fight of a Neutral playthrough, leaving him screaming in impotent rage. The second is immediately after if the player chooses to spare him, since he's unable to understand why the player would grant mercy to someone like him.
  • Near the end of a No Mercy playthrough, when Flowey realizes that the Fallen Child can not only permanently kill him, but fully intends to do so, he begins to stammer in fear and yells at them to stay away from him before fleeing in terror.
• Villainous Friendship: During a No Mercy run. Flowey is much less condescending and much more genuinely kind in this route, treating the Human Child like an old friend, which may not be far from the truth. Unfortunately, this comes back to haunt him when he realizes just how horrible the Child really is…
• Villains Want Mercy: An inversion. In the Genocide run, the Player Character sees Flowey begging for mercy in the face of an evil far greater than himself. Flowey will start to break down and pleads with Chara that he can help them before he is murdered himself, to the point where his Voice Grunting will take the sound of his past self, Asriel.
• Vine Tentacles: He can sprout vines from his roots, which are thick, covered in thorns, and seem to possess a nigh-omniscient reach throughout the Underground. They'll see use at least once per playthrough, whether it's pressing switches, jamming doors, or trying to kill you.
• Voice Changeling: Outside of both his Voice Gruntings, Flowey has a certain talent for impersonating people. He uses this talent to play cruel pranks on the player, like the infamous Echo Flowers in Waterfall where he mimics Toriel desperate to find you or struggling in The Nothing After Death, or the Game Over screen when you fight him as Photoshop Floweym where he impersonates Asgore (who's dead at this point) before going to his glitchy grunt, then suddenly putting his Evil Laugh.
• Voice Grunting: He normally "speaks" with a high-pitched, squeaky chatter, but he switches to a creepy static noise when he shows off his monstrous side. The latter seems to be his default voice when he becomes Photoshop Flowey. His Evil Laugh is also fully voiced, no matter the form he is at the moment.
• Walking Spoiler: It's no secret that Flowey is antagonistic to the player, but there are way more details surrounding his character than it would initially appear. Specifically, everything about his Neutral Route Boss Fight, his true identity of Asriel Dreemurr, and that he is one of the two Fourth Wall Observers.
• What the Hell, Player?: Play through a pacifist run perfectly, except for killing Asgore at the very end. Flowey will not be amused and will sputter something that pretty much amounts to "What the hell's the matter with you?! You were SO CLOSE!"
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: He's done anything and everything, good or evil, through his save ability, but now everything has become predictable, so he wants your help to destroy it all.
• Wishful Projection: Flowey truly believes that Frisk is the Fallen reborn. It ends up being more than wishful if you're on the No Mercy route.
• Yandere: Platonic example with Frisk in Neutral and True Pacifist, while projecting the Fallen Child onto them. The human's unpredictable nature and Determination that dwarfs Flowey's own gives them the ability to SAVE and RESET, which means as long as they're around, every loop is different. Flowey thus does everything within his power to keep Frisk from escaping the Underground and stalks them constantly, but at the same time never fully finishes them off when he has the upper hand.
• You Bastard!:
  • Flowey loves to call the player out for their choices. In most cases, though, he doesn't actually disapprove and is more than likely trying to get under the player's skin.
  • During the No Mercy New Home walk, he makes a jab at "sickos" who watch others commit acts of wanton violence without having the gut to do it themselves (i.e. watch a Let's Play of the No Mercy route instead of playing it), and wonders out loud if someone like that is watching right now.
• You Have No Chance to Survive: Quite a fan of this, and taunts the player in this fashion when you defy him even after he's absorbed the human SOULs and gained godlike power.
  Flowey: "You really think you can stop ME? Hee hee hee... You really ARE an idiot."
• Your Soul Is Mine!: While most of the monsters strive to obtain a human SOUL in general, Flowey almost says this verbatim when he absorbs every Soul in the True Pacifist route.
  "ALL OF YOUR SOULS ARE MINE!"
• You Will Not Evade Me: His favorite attack is surrounding you with pellets you can't easily evade. When he's got the drop on someone, he'll close a circle of pellets around them.
• You Wouldn't Shoot Me: A variant; killing Flowey in your first Neutral ending just makes him happy you've vindicated his selfish nihilism, as he assumes you'll just reload to when he's alive, after which he skips the fight and doesn't give you a chance to kill him. However, near the end of the Genocide route, Flowey realizes the player would kill him without looking back, and he's absolutely terrified.

Asriel Dreemurr

^{Click here to see Asriel during his boss battle.}The absolute GOD of Hyperdeath!

^{Final Form} "Behold my TRUE power!"

• Abnormal Limb Rotation Range: When using his Chaos Saber attack, he rotates his head 360 degrees vertically before delivering the last slash.
• Amazing Technicolor Battlefield: In his powered-up form, he will wait for the music to swell before turning the background into a trippy rainbow tunnel.
• Animesque: In the final battle, he crosses the Bishōnen Line, gives himself an over-the-top Large Ham Boss Subtitle, calls his attacks, and the attacks themselves are visually stunning and look like complete overkill. It's actually a kind of sad twist on this trope by reminding you that under that almost demonic looking exterior, he's just a little kid fighting like how he would have seen in a cartoon or read in a comic.
• The Anti-Nihilist: In contrast to Flowey, once redeemed, Asriel expresses the opinion that while the world can be a dark place filled with Floweys, what should be strived for is an existence where nobody kills and nobody is killed.
• Anti-Villain: Really, he is just a child who was betrayed by his adoptive sibling, whom he still loves and misses. He just doesn't want to be alone anymore.
• Archangel Azrael: Asriel is partly based on Azrael, right down to the name, and as such features numerous parallels with the archangel. Among others, his use of SAVE points as Flowey mimics Azrael's control over the book of men's names, his four-eyed, toothy-mouthed Photoshop Flowey form alludes to Azrael's design in the Islamic Book of Dead, and his One-Winged Angel form in the Pacifist Route's final battle is called the "God of Hyperdeath."
• Arm Cannon: One set of his attacks in the first stage of his boss fight has him morph one of his arms into a gun.
• Assimilation Backfire: Poor Asriel had no idea what absorbing the SOUL of their beloved sibling, the Fallen Child, would result in. In fact, this happens to him again later as Photoshop Flowey, when the six Human SOULs he claimed turn on him. He's only able to finally negate this drawback when he achieves godhood on the Pacifist Route, as The Absolute GOD of Hyperdeath, when all the assimilated monsters in the underground (bar Napstablook) act as one last required SOUL, in place of the Human Child's SOUL.
• Became Their Own Antithesis: The All-Loving Hero who died because he refused to lift a finger in self-defense against his people's ancestral enemy was twisted by forces beyond his control into an Omnicidal Maniac. And when he returns to his old self, he's soon paralyzed by the accumulated guilt his Flowey form had suppressed all those years.
• Berserker Tears: Once you save the souls of all your closest friends from within him, you are given the opportunity to save him. Soon, he starts to break down. He'll begin to sob while begging you to let him win, that you and he will be happy together, eventually bursting into a bawling scream as he fires a point-blank Death Ray at Frisk.
• Big Sibling Worship: We don't know if The Fallen was any older than Asriel, but Toriel vaguely admitted that he greatly admired The Fallen and copied some of their habits.
• Bishōnen Line: His final boss form is far more powerful than the boss form he assumed as Flowey in the Neutral run, and is also much more anthropomorphic, simply being a grown-up version of himself with slightly demonic features. This ends up getting played with a bit upon his transformation into his final form, which is strange and mechanical-looking, but is still nowhere near the abomination Flowey became.
• Black Eyes of Evil: In his Bishōnen Line form, his sclerae are black with narrowed white pupils, contrasting both of his parents, who have standard white sclerae and dark pupils.^note In battle, Toriel’s eyes are actually a dark burgundy color, which is one of the few instances of battle sprite coloration in the game.
• Blasting Time: Both of Asriel's Final Boss forms have attacks that involve raising his arms above his head first. Justified, as Asriel is still at the maturity level of a child, and is probably copying shows he watched where the characters did this, making it an In-Universe example of Rule of Cool.
• Boss Remix: His battle music ("Hopes and Dreams"/"SAVE the World") combines the game's main theme and Flowey's theme into a climactic rock guitar remix befitting of the True Final Boss.
• Boss Subtitles: He's the sole individual who actually has a boss subtitle during his introduction, which makes sense, given that he's a little kid given god-power, and everything he does in this form is his idea of Rule of Cool.
• Break the Cutie: Asriel Used to Be a Sweet Kid and was best friends with Chara. They lived happily until Chara's Thanatos Gambit got both of them killed. When Asriel Came Back Wrong as Flowey, he was incapable of feeling attachment to others due to not having a soul. Because all the determination injected into him by Alphys gave him the power to SAVE, Asriel was trapped as an emotionless flower for a very long time, during which his mental state deteriorated until he became the Psychopathic Manchild he is during the events of the game.
• Calling Your Attacks: During the first phase of his fight, the text box will announce which attack he'll use (Star Blazing, Shocker Breaker, Chaos Sabers, and Chaos Buster). The same attack types even have upgraded versions with different names he uses halfway through (Galacta Blazing, Shocker Breaker II, Chaos Slicer, and Chaos Blaster). Funnily enough, Asriel isn't actually saying the attacks in his text speech balloons; it's the narrator describing them. This trope still applies, though, because it's clear that at least someone is describing them.
• Came Back Wrong: When a monster's ashes are scattered onto their favorite thing, their essence lives on, permeates it, even without a SOUL. Unfortunately for Alphys, she had no idea that the flower she'd chosen to bring to life through Determination was carrying Asriel within it. Thus, the product was a soulless vessel carrying the will and intelligence of their crown prince, with no capacity for any kind of love: Flowey.
• The Chosen One: In the True Pacifist route, he becomes the Angel spoken of in the Delta Rune's prophecy; he has seen the surface before, having gone there in his attempt to return Chara's body, and upon returning to his true form and being redeemed, he uses his power to shatter the barrier.
• Clipped-Wing Angel: He's far less aggressive and 'unfair' than Photoshop Flowey, and despite being far more powerful, his attacks are likely a little easier to deal with (even discounting the player getting permanent Auto-Revive for the fight). This makes perfect sense, really, as absorbing all those love-filled souls restored his conscience, and he's clearly struggling to sustain the hatred powering his attacks.
• Crucified Hero Shot: After you save him and get him down to his normal child form, he releases the souls of the monsters and the Fallen Children this way. This also shatters the barrier.
• Determinator: Manages to force control from Chara and run away from the humans, even while being murdered. As a reminder, Chara is a borderline eldritch abomination who usurps the player (aka God) in the No Mercy run.
• Entitled to Have You: The non-romantic variety. His love and fawning for The Fallen Child has consumed him, becoming a warped and twisted one. If he has to cause a Time Crash to keep them forever, then so be it.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: His base-power form is borrowed from Toriel's appearance — same height and width, though he wears a tabard with the Delta Rune on it, and has horns that curl outward, as well as the aforementioned Black Eyes of Evil.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: It's the driving force behind his villainy. He simply cannot let go of the Fallen Child.
• Fallen Hero: In life, he was selfless enough to choose death over murder. After his reincarnation, he'd come to regret his sacrifice and, as a result, adopt a worldview antithetical to it.
• Fallen Princess: Gender-flipped. As shown in Flowey's entry, a bad combination of brutal death, botched up resurrection, boredom, and grief eventually twisted this poor monster.
• Fate Worse than Death: No matter what choices you make, you can't save Asriel and bring him to the surface with you. He is either stuck in the underground as Flowey for the rest of his reincarnated life in a True Pacifist run with no one other than Frisk knowing that he was ever brought back (Downplayed in this regard, as dialogue from the 5th Anniversary alarm clock app implies Toriel is starting to piece together Flowey's true identity), or has that vessel mercilessly hacked to pieces in a Genocide run (presumably, either Cessation of Existence or And I Must Scream apply for the latter).
• Fighting from the Inside: Tragically, while this doesn't happen when he's Flowey, when spoken to in the True Pacifist's epilogue he states that the Fallen Child wanted to use their combined power to annihilate the humans living in their hometown (probably to defend themselves). Asriel resisted, and they were mortally wounded as a result.
• Final-Exam Boss: Rescuing the Lost Souls involves fighting them in the Red (Toriel and Asgore), Yellow (Dr. Alphys), Green (Undyne), and Blue (Sans and Papyrus) heart modes.
• Final First Hug: With Frisk, if the player chooses to comfort him at the end of the Pacifist Run.
  Asriel: Ha… ha… I don't want to let go.
• Foil: As a boss, he's one to Sans, who's fought at the end of the polar opposite route of the one that Asriel is found in. Despite being labeled as having infinite ATK and DEF, Asriel's attacks aren't too difficult and only deal a finite amount of damage, plus you literally can't lose. Sans, on the other hand, is claimed to be "the easiest enemy", and despite having only 1 Attack and 1 Defense, he packs brutally hard attacks intended to wreck you in the most unfair ways possible. You fight Asriel to get back all the souls he absorbed and automatically revive when killed out of sheer determination to save them, while Sans fights you to protect what's left of monsterkind by kicking your ass until you give up. Story-wise, he tries to manipulate you into a "kill-or-be-killed" mentality as Flowey, while Sans tries to befriend you to prevent such a thing from happening.
• Forced Transformation: Alphys' experiments on monster souls and Determination led to him being inadvertently reincarnated as a soulless flower known as "Flowey." In the Genocide route, Flowey recounts how horrifying it was when he awakened to find that he couldn't feel any of his limbs; in the True Pacifist route, when he regains his original form as Asriel, the first thing he does is test his newly-regained arms, silently laugh to himself, and mention how he was so tired of being a flower.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: During the final boss, he'll comment he feels the other characters forgetting Frisk every time they die, and he will say this even if the player did not die during the fight.
• Godhood Seeker: His ultimate plan, both as Flowey in the Neutral route, and as his resurrected self in the True Pacifist route. He thinks he and Chara will become gods in the Genocide route as well. He's wrong.
• Grand Theft Me: A victim. Asriel absorbs Chara's soul in the backstory, acquiring a new powerful body, but much to his horror, finds out that Chara also has control over that body and wants to attack the people of their home village with their newfound power. It takes every ounce of willpower to resist the Fallen Child's will.
• The Greatest Story Never Told: At no point in a Pacifist Run (the only run where Asriel can actually come into being) can he be reunited with his parents, or even have the fact he exists again be known to any other character. After he redeems himself, he purposely puts himself out of sight from anyone who knew him, knowing the joy of reuniting with his loved ones would be tragically short-lived, given that he still lacks his own soul and will eventually revert back to a soulless flower. However, dialogue from the 5th Anniversary alarm clock implies Flowey still cares about Toriel and watches over her, even if he tries to say otherwise.
• Heel–Face Turn: Asriel pulls this at the end of the True Ending, having regained his ability to feel compassion (at least temporarily).
• Heel Realization: Asriel during his boss fight with you, when you reawaken the monster souls he has absorbed and he starts to regain his compassion. After he turns back into Flowey, he uses this trope as the reason why the player should erase his memories too, should they decide to start a new game — he feels so bad about how terrible he was to everyone around him that he doesn't think he'd be able to play the same role again.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • Throughout the game, especially in a Pacifist run, he repeatedly exploits the trust and compassion of the people around him in order to get all monster and human souls in one room and devour them simultaneously. When he finally does, he gains the power of a god — but also regains his own compassion, and Frisk's pacifism turns him from a sociopathic maniac to a sobbing wreck who can't bring himself to hurt people anymore.
  • If you do the True Reset after a True Pacifist ending, Flowey points out you're enacting the very same insane, evil plan he was trying to do after even he himself had let it go.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: Just like when you face him as Flowey, Asriel tries several times to convince Frisk that they are completely helpless. In actuality, Frisk is this for Asriel. No matter what Asriel does, or how many times Frisk is brought down to 0 HP, Frisk's determination keeps them going.
• Horrible Judge of Character: The Fallen Child claiming that they hate humanity, all the info they give about their past, and the reason for climbing the mountain being only a vague and cryptic "unhappy reason"—and then planning a suicide mission against their own kind—should've raised some red flags for Asriel.
• HP to One:
  • If you get hit by his first powered-up form's final attack, the Hyper Goner, you instantly drop to 1 HP.
  • His final beam attack will reduce your life meter to 0.0000000001/20 HP — one ten-billionth of a hit point. Subverted in that's supposed to kill. Frisk is just that determined to stay alive.
• I Hate Past Me: In the epilogue of the True Pacifist playthrough, he expresses sincere remorse for his actions as Flowey, to the point where he asks Frisk to consider his two forms to be separate individuals should they meet again after he's reverted to being Flowey.
  spoiler:Asriel: Let's be honest. I did some weird stuff as a flower.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: The Fallen Child was the closest thing Asriel had to a friend, with the monsters suggesting that spoiler:Asriel and the Fallen Child were like siblings. Asriel simply cannot let go of his memories of them, to the point of projecting the Fallen Child onto Frisk; he just wants to see his friend/sibling again that badly. This is part of why his Flowey persona is so elated to see the similarities between the two at the start of a Genocide route.
• In-Universe Catharsis: Asriel experiences this at the end of the True Pacifist route. Part of his jaded views as Flowey stemmed from the fact that he blamed himself for his and Chara's deaths and their plan failing, since his Fighting from the Inside to prevent Chara from killing the human villagers led to the humans killing them instead due to a misunderstanding. At the end of the game, Asriel is finally able to let go of his guilt and regret, since meeting Frisk makes him realize that Chara wasn't as great of a person as Asriel had been trying to convince himself they were, and that he did the right thing by preventing Chara from killing them.
• It's All My Fault: He explains that his "Kill or be Killed" outlook as Flowey came from him blaming himself for preventing the Fallen Child from attacking the humans, which resulted in them dying and Asriel being reborn as a flower. His jaded belief that "love and compassion" only cause pain and suffering is due to this as well, as he refuses to believe that his beloved Chara is at fault and blames his decision to spare the human village instead, as the cause of everything that came after and the pain he and his loved ones experienced because of it. Luckily, he finally gets over this at the end of the True Pacifist run, realizing that he did the right thing and accepting that Chara "wasn't really the best person".
• Kiai: In his first phase, Asriel’s Chaos Saber attack includes a barely-noticeable voice clip of him saying “Jafe” each time he swings.
• Large Ham Title: After the music swells, the "Check" command declares Asriel "The Absolute GOD of Hyperdeath!"
• Leitmotif: "Memory", which is further reprised in "Undertale" and "His Theme".
• Light Is Not Good: His hyperdeath form looks like an angel and has rainbow light attacks.
• Like Father, Like Son: There is at least some hints of it. Most notably in how he names himself "Flowey the Flower" after having been reincarnated as said flower. He clearly has inherited his father's penchant for coming up with lame names.
• Living on Borrowed Time: In the Playable Epilogue of the True Pacifist, he's restored to his true form, but says that without a soul, he'll eventually return to being Flowey.
• Luke, You Are My Father: Odd example. Neither Toriel nor Asgore find out that Flowey is Asriel, but Frisk does.
• Many Spirits Inside of One: His final form, comprised of every soul in the underground.
• Meaningful Echo: After you go back to the first screen of the game and talk to him, he'll end the conversation with "Don't you have anything better to do?"
• Meaningful Name: His name is chock-full of meaning:
  • Asriel's name shares the Theme Naming of angels and means 'Prince of God' in Hebrew, or 'One who helps God'. Fitting for someone who will be the key of freeing his people from the Underground.
    • Asriel sounds similar to Azrael, the archangel of death in Abrahamic faiths. His final boss form has giant wings and is called "the God of Hyperdeath. The Delta Rune prophecy also tells of an "Angel" who has visited the human world and will empty the Underground of monsters, though whether it be by setting them free or exterminating them depends on player choice. While there's argument to be made of it referring to Frisk or Chara, Asriel is a good choice.
  • "Asriel" is an amalgamation of Asgore and Toriel. As mentioned before, Asgore is really bad at naming things.
  • If you rearrange the letters in "Asriel Dreemurr", you get "Serial Murderer". Doubles as an Ironic Name for Asriel, but plays straight in his later life as Flowey.
• Morality Pet: It's pretty clear that whatever Chara was really like, they had some level of fondness for Asriel, possibly at the exclusion of everyone else. Whether this fondness was shallow and ultimately unimportant to them in the grand scheme of things, genuinely deep and familial, or anywhere in between is still hotly up for debate.
• Morphic Resonance: Flowey and Asriel share the exact same color pallette: green, yellow, white, and black. Asriel has a fifth color in his overworld sprite, purple, but otherwise uses the exact same colors. Also, at the end of the Genocide route, Flowey reveals that he can still mimick Asriel's real face and voice, whipping them out only as a last ditch attempt to stop the player from killing him, which still fails.
• Murder Into Malevolence: He was a good-natured child before being murdered, and his turn towards becoming the cruel, murderous Flowey after his death is partially formed from realizing that his Suicidal Pacifism had gotten him killed, so now he knows the world is only kill or be killed. Well, that and being The Soulless with a Lack of Empathy and feeling his actions have no moral import or guilt attached to them since he can just reset the timeline.
• Names To Run Away From Very Fast:
  • Asriel is also a reference to Azrael, the name of the Archangel of Death. In one of his forms, Azrael has four faces and four thousand wings, and his whole body consists of eyes and tongues; the number thereof corresponds to the number of people inhabiting the Earth. Sound familiar?. He will be the last to die, recording and erasing book the names of men at birth and death constantly in a large, respectively, paralleling his control of the game overs as Flowey. His name is also an anagram that spells Serial Murderer.
  • The Absolute GOD of Hyperdeath is something that Asriel (and the narrator) calls himself during his fight.
• Nigh-Invulnerable: You cannot harm him in the final battle. Asriel becomes everything the human ancestors feared. Thank goodness, like all monsters, he regains his love and compassion, or else you'd be screwed.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: All he wanted to do was return the Fallen Child's body to their village out of respect. The humans thought he killed the Fallen Child, and attacked him, leading to his own death.
• Non-Standard Character Design: During the fight against Asriel, the screen suddenly starts displaying rainbow patterns in the background, and his name is listed in dancing rainbow text in the ACT menu.
• Older Alter Ego: When he fights you, he ages himself up from a child to what looks to be a young adult. He reverts back to his child form once he loses the will to fight, though he briefly assumes his older form again for a gag during the True Pacifist credits.
• One-Winged Angel: After absorbing the Fallen's SOUL, Asriel was stated to have undergone a transformation into a powerful form, which is presumably the same form he takes during the first stage of his boss fight and simply resembles an adult version of his species, similar to his parents. His final form also qualifies, as it resembles a winged, demonic version of himself.
• Only Friend: Chara. The entire reason he's putting Frisk through a fight is because he thinks they are Chara, and if the player gets their "happy ending", "Chara" will leave him forever. Whether his fears are founded depends on if the player subscribes to the "Chara is the Narrator All Along" theory or if they've cleared a Genocide route previously, though the second case could be a blessing in disguise...
• Our Ghosts Are Different: Unlike the Blook family, Asriel is dead and only persists due to having been accidentally revived as Flowey. Once he collects all the SOULs in the Underground, he gains enough power to recreate himself, but chooses to restore everyone instead.
• Overly Long Gag: If you exhaust conversation with Asriel in the Playable Epilogue, you get this:
  Asriel: Frisk, don't you have anything better to do?
• Physical God: In his Boss Monster form, he not only has the power of six human SOULs, but of all the other monsters the Child has encountered except Napstablook, making him even more powerful than Photoshop Flowey.
• Platonic Declaration of Love: While the word "love" is not used, this is how his boss fight ends. Asriel starts by saying the player (who he's projecting his feelings about Chara onto) is special and the only one who is still fun to play with, but then isn't satisfied until he adds how much he genuinely cares about them.
• Playing with Fire: One of his attacks, shared with both his parents, is a storm of fireballs. Also, like his mother, towards the end of the fight, the fireballs will intentionally start avoiding the player's SOUL.
• Please, Don't Leave Me: Said almost verbatim during the final fight against him on the pacifist route and combines this with Berserker Tears.
• Portmanteau Couple Name: Asgore + Toriel = Asriel. An In-Universe example given Asgore's bad naming.
• Post-Final Boss: The Pacifist route's final battle, Asriel Dreemurr, is impossible to lose since you revive each time you die, and you can "dream" for as many healing items as needed. His fight serves less as one final challenge and more as an interactive cutscene which ends the game's story on a high note.
• Power Floats: He levitates in the air during his battle with you. According to Toby, this was done because he "looked like a doofus while standing".
• Power-Upgrading Deformation: The Pacifist final boss goes from flower to formerly-dead little boy into something made of edge but still recognizable, ending up as half-abstract goat-machine abomination.
• Prince Charming: The monster kingdom remembers Asriel as a gentle, noble prince who loved Chara, honored their dying wish, and was tragically slain by cruel humans. The True Pacifist Route reveals a darker truth: Chara's "wish" was part of a suicide pact to give Asriel their SOUL so he could break the Barrier and liberate monsterkind through revenge. Asriel refused to kill, was murdered by humans, and later returned as Flowey—a bitter, soulless result of King Asgore's SOUL experiments.
• Prone to Tears: Particularly in his child form.
  Asriel: I always was a crybaby, wasn't I, Chara?
• Redemption Equals Death: A downplayed example. He considers Flowey to be a completely different being, so by releasing all the souls to destroy the barrier, he knowingly goes through Death of Personality.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: His original child form is this to many fans of the game.
• Rotten Reincarnation: After an unknown length of time passes after his death, Alphys's experiments with determination resurrected him against his will as the traumatized, jaded, and cruel Flowey.
• Rule of Cool: The form he takes in his adult form during his boss battle is this to a T; his attacks and his appearance all incorporate things he really loves—stars, prismatic color schemes, and (as mentioned before) his mom.
• Sad Battle Music: While you save him more than you fight him, the battle against Asriel ends on the triumphant but dramatic "His Theme".
• Significant Anagram: His name is an anagram of "Serial Murderer", of all things. Not so appropriate for Asriel himself, but it fits Flowey to a T.
• Slap-on-the-Wrist Nuke: "Hyper Goner", the ultimate attack of his powered-up form, where the dodging space expands to cover the entire screen (including the status bar). He forms a black hole that sucks you and several damaging diamond shaped projectiles in towards it. Despite the incredible animation, it can only leave you at 1 HP. After that, he transforms into his final form, where you're unable to use items at first and you're forced to dodge several tricky volleys of projectiles.
• Spanner in the Works: In the backstory, Asriel in the Fallen Child's Thanatos Gambit. The plan was to go above after Asriel absorbed the Fallen's soul, collect at least six more human souls, and free everyone Underground. When humans attacked with Asriel being Mistaken for Murderer for holding his sibling's human body, Asriel refused to lash out. Instead, a wounded Asriel returned to the Underground and died from his injuries, accomplishing nothing.
• Suddenly Shouting: If you take his Boss Subtitles as this, especially the way the letters shake and leave afterimages on being spelled out.
  Asriel: It's me...your best friend...
  [transforms]
  ASRIEL DREEMURR
• Suicide by Cop: Unintentional, but Asriel purposely held back his power and the Fallen Child's influence when the latter went to attack their hometown. The humans merely saw a monster carrying the Fallen's corpse and believed they were avenging them by slaying the monster — Asriel accepted this fate rather than let the Fallen annihilate them and possibly kickstart another war.
• Superpowered Evil Side: Asriel has no powers by himself, but he is nearly godlike when he is reincarnated as a murderous flower and also when he absorbs the souls of the Underground to become the Absolute GOD of Hyperdeath.
• Tender Tears: Even admits that he's "a bit of a crybaby."
• That Man Is Dead: Invokes it on himself to Frisk, claiming Flowey is so different that he's someone else.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: Played With. In the past, he refused to kill humans; in the present, while fighting him, he tries while attempting to do an infinite "game" with you, but your soul "refused" and will not die.
• Time Crash: Seeks to cause one after another using the power of the Six Human SOULs along with every Monster SOUL — locking Frisk in an eternal loop of life with him so he'll never have to let them go.
• Tragic Villain: He clung desperately to the memory of the Fallen Child, and was Forced into Evil as a result of his soulless reincarnation. He has suffered more than any other character, and despite all of Frisk's determination, you can't save him.
• True Final Boss: Of the True Pacifist ending, which requires having gotten the Neutral-Pacifist ending.
• Understatement: The conversation with him during the epilogue has him state both "Maybe [Chara] wasn't really the greatest person." and "I did some weird stuff as a flower."
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Every indication from the story is that Asriel was just as kind as his parents, if not more so. Things quickly went downhill following his friendship with the Fallen Child, the subsequent Demonic Possession, and finally his reconstruction as Flowey without a soul. Getting killed because he refused to fight back and coming back unable to feel love twisted him into something totally unrecognizable from his former self.
• Victory Is Boring:
  • After his reincarnation and acquiring the power to "save", he actually did a lot of good deeds throughout the Underground, achieving the "best ending" possible. But lacking his love and emotions, he found it was all hollow and pointless. He started going down evil paths to see if that would give him any satisfaction — only to brick-wall when fighting Sans.
  • As Omega Flowey, he promises to subject you to an endless Resurrection/Death Loop. But if you repeatedly fail to survive long enough for the SOULs to rebel, it doesn't even take ten deaths for Flowey to show a mix of boredom and confusion that you're even still trying.
• Villain Respect: Being able to stay alive after being attacked by barrage after barrage of his god-like power makes him admit that Frisk really is "something special."
• Voice Grunting: He uses a much higher-pitched version of Toriel and Asgore's Voice Grunting. It becomes deeper in his God of Hyperdeath form.
• Walking Spoiler: As the folder name suggests, his very existence is a huge spoiler.
• Wise Beyond His Years: Asriel is pretty well-spoken in his child form, probably due to how many times he's reset the world as Flowey; despite not much time actually passing for the world, Asriel/Flowey himself has had a very long time to learn about things beyond his age.
• Wishful Projection: Like he did during his time as Flowey, Asriel believes Frisk is the Fallen Child reborn, the difference is he finally loses the delusion upon his final defeat. Whether he's mistaken or not depends on if you did the Genocide route before the Pacifist route — if you did, the Fallen really is along for the ride, but Asriel doesn't really know this… which might be for the better, since that Fallen Child has long since stopped being the human Asriel knew.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Asriel was a sweet child who took Chara in and just wanted to be their best friend. Even though he agreed to help Chara complete their plan out of platonic love for them, he still had his reservations about it, and tried to stop them when it came to fruition. Then he was killed because of it, lost the person closest to him, was stripped of his ability to care about anyone, and gradually lost all interest in trying to be a good person and turned into what he is when you fight him. While his murderous actions are no means justified, everything before he reached that point was only in the best of intentions.
• Yandere: Just like his Flowey persona and for the same reasons, his desire to keep Frisk (who he thinks is the Fallen Child) in the Underground is a platonic variant. Unlike Flowey however, he grows out of it when he finally comes to his senses since unlike Flowey, Asriel is at least capable of empathy and introspection.