On Fallacies
- Savannah Mikus
- Feb 21, 2018
- 2 min read
"The Song That Might Play When You Fight Sans"
"Meglovania"
Toby Fox, the creator of the 2015 Bestselling Game Undertale, released a soundtrack alongside the game. The soundtrack contained all the music from the game Undertale. Track number 072 was titled "The Song That Might Play When You Fight Sans", and was a MegaMan X style remix of Sans' and Papyrus' themes. Track number 100 was titled "Meglovania", an original piece, unique in sound and style. Players waited for the Sans boss fight in order to hear "The Song That Might Play When You Fight Sans", however, they were met with disappointment. Not only was Sans' boss theme the track "Meglovania", but the track "The Song That Might Play When You Fight Sans", never once appeared in the game.
This is an example of a Red Herring fallacy. By definition, a Red Herring is a hint used to lead someone in the wrong direction. The Red Herring is an intentional placement, not a mistake. A fallacy due to a mistake would be "Mistaken for Evidence". The game designer, Toby Fox, intentionally created a track to mislead the audience into believing it would be used for a specific purpose. The word "Might" in the title was to be taken seriously. "Might" does not always mean "Will".
In this case, the trope is also paired with another trope, Never the Obvious Suspect. The title "Meglovania" has nothing to do with a scene, a key word, a character name, or a place. Therefore, the audience could easily write it off as an unimportant track to be used in something trivial, such as background music. In hindsight of course, the most unsuspecting track title was the most important and anticipated all along!
(Word Count 278)
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