The Undertale Effect is a cycle that any form of entertainment media community can fall into.
Essentially, the community will COMPLETELY over rate the show/game/book/movie/etc., and defend it as if it is their life. The community will almost always turn the lovable, funny characters into cringe, and rapidly spread throughout the internet.
The strange thing is that the only outlets to suffer from The Undertale Effect are those from something that by itself is great. The show/video game/movie/etc. is usually great, and has many redeeming qualities but it is overshadowed by the atrocious and toxic fanbase.
Quite obviously, this is based off of the worst case of this ever happening yet - Undertale. I won't get into it now, but the smallest peek into the (dead now) community will tell you.
This has infamously happened to: Steven Universe, Five Nights at Freddy's, Minecraft, and unfortunately even Rick and Morty.
Right now, Rick and Morty has fallen into the Undertale Effect. Just look at Musical.ly, the fan art, the cancerous reddit copypasta, etc.
8๐ 1๐
Loves all of the undertale characters. Usually loves sans the most
May "That sans character is really hot. Wish he did some things to me"-Undertale fangirl
8๐ 2๐
A term used when a video game or television show becomes unbearable to play/watch because of its fanbase.
"It sucks how badly the Undertale Effect ruined Rick and Morty."
17๐ 5๐
Once something popular releases, the community and any content made about it WILL degrade and become worse overtime.
"hey have you noticed the twitter community on welcome home keeps getting worse?"
"That, my good friend is the undertale effect happening in practice"
The Undertale fandom is a diverse place, there's comics,animations, memes, remixes and fanart
A lot of brainlets assume that the entire fanbase is cringy, just because of the loud minority, that, A. get off the lewd images of skeletons, goats, fish, etc. , B. ship themselves with Sans (why Sans would never want to be with any of the fangirls, he'd definitely be filing restraining orders left right and center), C. unleash their annoying fanboy rants, with vulgar language, if someone dares say any slightest bit of criticism. I'm sure there's probably more examples, but I'm way too lazy to list any more...
Btw there's a majority of the Undertale fandom (or any fandom, for that matter) that aren't cringy, and just wanna show there amazing fanart, music, comics, whatever!
So the lesson is don't judge things to harshly. (I think that's what the lesson is, eh, whatever...)
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Scott: "Hey, man, wha'cha doing?"
Steve: "Nothing much, besides joining the Undertale fandom
Scott: "Ok..."
28๐ 12๐