I think I might have solved the Sans mystery. Like, actually. For real. I have an answer for what's up with Sans.
Yeah, yeah, I know. Clickbait title, but this is one of those things where I want people to bear with me and see the logic here. Something in Deltarune led me to realize there's one big commonality between all of Sans's appearances.
In Undertale, we see him taking various royal guard posts and odd jobs. This is relatively normal. It's weird, especially how he keeps being in various different spots across the game with no explanation, but he can just kinda teleport? Seemingly? So we just... accept it as being part of that. Sure, he's the one skeleton in an otherwise entirely dog themed area, but it's... dogs and bones, it sorta works.
In Deltarune, we see Sans in... six places.
We see him fixing the Cattenheimers' grill, acting like a maintenance worker.
We see him running the Ice Cream stand at the festival. That's fine, that makes enough sense.
And on the same street we see him taking the place of two other NPCs. Ones that should exist.
Noelle and Kris have childhood memories of riding the Ferris Wheel.
There's a picture of Toriel going hyper mode in the teacup ride in one of the scrapbooks in her house. Someone else, someone we never see, should be running those rides. It should not be one skeleton.
And, of course, there's his primary role in the game: the store operator.
The building exists. But the name is gone. Erased. If it was a cherished landmark- this would be a defacement. But it's not.
In the entirety of Deltarune's script, there are no direct mentions of Grillby.
The most we ever get is an indirect mention. * (A grill upgraded by Sans.) * (... but how important to Sans can a grill be?) There is something that hints that he and Asgore were once friends, even, though. After all, one of Asgore's flowers is an echo of Grillby, aren't they?
Every place we see Sans in is a place where another character should be.
Even when we see him acting as the final boss in Undertale's No Mercy run, he's using another character's attacks, along with his own.
In fact? I made this entire theory. Damn near this entire post. And then I remembered Sans talking about being a janitor, and looked it up. In Chapter 2, he says it himself.
* hey, what's up? * Hey, you the boss around here? * me? i'm just the janitor. * Then where's the cashier? * cashier? we don't have one. * Then who do we buy stuff from!? * me. * Then that makes you the cashier. * nope: i'm the janitor. * i'm just filling in.
Sans is everywhere, in every spot he needs to be- because he's a placeholder character in spots where there should be someone else, and you can take it right from the skeleton's god damn mouth.
