Prunsel

About

Prunsel is a fictional boss from Undertale resembling a large high-contrast and photorealistic eyeball that came to Tumblr user Nyanoraptor in a dream. The post inspired fan art and memes about Prunsel on Tumblr and Twitter over the course of the year, many acting as if Prunsel is a real character found on an alternative path in the game or its sequel series, Deltarune. Prunsel is sometimes depicted as Sans' sibling.

Origin

On February 27th, 2021, Tumblr^[1] user Nyanoraptor(formerly tammycat) posted a photoshopped screenshot from Undertale of their character standing in a snowy field with a high-contrast black-and-white eye floating in front of them (shown below). The eye is much larger than the other characters and is photorealistic. A blank text box for the character is at the top of the image but shows no text, just a red hue. Nyanoraptorwrote on the post:

i had a dream i was playing undertale and i got to the snowy area and it was mostly the same but papyrus was replaced with this new character Prunsel. Prunsel’s sprite was a high-contrast black and white photorealistic eyeball, roughly twice as big as papyrus, and looking directly at the viewer. whenever Prunsel “spoke”, the music completely cut out and instead of text it was an ominous red glow emanating from the text box

The post gained over 27,600 notes in seven months and inspired numerous works of fan art on Tumblr over the following months depicting Prunsel in Undertale and Deltarune. For example, on May 17th, 2021, Tumblr^[2] user paintedhen posted a comic depicting Sans bringing the character to meet Prunsel, gaining over 4,400 notes in four months (shown below).

On June 27th, Tumblr^[3] user fru-89 posted a comic featuring Sans and Prunsel talking, gaining over 1,300 notes in three months (shown below).

Spread

In September, Prunsel started to become popular on Twitter. On September 21st, Twitter^[5] user @BoneMonk5 posted a number of photoshops (shown below) adding Prunsel to various images of Undertale writing, "My favorite Undertale character without a doubt has to be Prunsel, all of this guy's jokes hit, and they hit HARD. Classic gags left and right with this guy. It'd be hard to imagine Undertale without a landmark character like Prunsel." On September 25th, 2021, Twitter^[4] user @slaz_is_here posted a screenshot of Nyanoraptor's post, gaining over 51,000 likes and 6,100 retweets in two days.

On September 26th, Twitter^[6] user @MrMagicMan__ posted an edited video showing Prunsel approach Spamton in Deltarune Chapter 2, claiming it's from a new path in the game, gaining over 450 likes in a day (shown below).

New Deltarune Path#spamton #DeltaruneChapter2 #prunsel pic.twitter.com/kEwKef1S9B

— Mr. Magic Man (@MrMagicMan__) September 26, 2021

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References