Something I Found on Tumblr: Papyrus Never Moves

Another thing to note: Undyne says that she won't let Papyrus into the Royal Guard because he's too kind and innocent, NOT because he's weak. In fact, he's "pretty freaking tough!"

papyrus really decided a date required more of his energy and power than a life-or-death battle and im here for it

One thing I noticed is that everyone hypes up asgore as a big scary final boss except Papyrus, who calls him a "big fuzzy pushover"

Papyrus: literally walks on air without a problem Theorists: I sleep Papyrus: stands still Theorists: REAL SH*T

I love how this implies that temmie is just absolutely bloodthirsty

My headcanon is that he's been trying his damnedest to make the perfect battle pose, and in this instance, he finds it so perfect that he doesn't ever want to make a single movement to ruin it.

I would like to add to this that the reason sans hardly moves despite trying so hard (other than just being a wild card) is because he’s trying his best to conceal his tiredness. He keeps cracking jokes and using extremely powerful attacks despite clearly not being able to handle it. You can see beads of sweat going down his face. He’s so exhausted by the end that he literally falls asleep standing up. Even when you kill him, he keeps acting nonchalant. He’s clearly actively putting in effort to appear unphased in front of the player.

my headcanon is he doesn't move because he really wants you to pay attention to how cool his attacks are. also, this heavily implies neither of the skeleton brothers need to move to speak, and papyrus just does it to be polite, which is hilarious.

This makes his death even sadder. He could've defended himself but he trusted you enough to not kill you

Almost every character's mind on the game during a battle: "i must kill them" Papyrus during a battle: "Loading 13%..."

I think the funnier option is that Toby just forgot to animate him and was like ‘fuck it whatever’

I prefer the take that he looks like a cardboard cutout in his fight not because he's not putting in energy, but just because he actually genuinely put up a cardboard cutout cause he didn't want to fight you

I mean, Undyne does say Papyrus is super tough, but just doesn't have the heart to actually hurt somebody. I agree with this entirely.

He's mastered the ability of standing so incredibly still that he becomes invisible to the eye

Papyrus is actually a fairly strong monster for the point you meet him if you decide to try to fight him and you arent doing a genocide route. Despite being an entire area earlier he has the same defense as Undyne. Undyne obviously has over doubly papyrus' attack stat but just the fact they share the same defence is wild to me.

You're only ever able to kill him with betrayal kills, he CAN and DOES ALTER HIS DEFENSE, his body stays intact in separate pieces when we do kill him. Are we sure we ever really fought this guy?

Papyrus' pure chad energy is so powerful he has to not move while in battle to contain it

Papyrus is also one of the few people who get REALLY strong deja vu after a reset, stronger than Toriel's "wait, is it THIS flavor you like? ha, had a hunch" and Sans's ability to read expressions. "Sans, have I met this human before? They look REALLY familiar!"

The interesting thing is this fits perfectly with undynes' reason for her unwillingness to let him be a guard referring to him as tough but unwilling to fight.

personally, i feel like one of the points mentioned becomes a lot stronger when you notice that while flowey uses vines to grab people, two is the baseline. weaker monsters like alphys get the same vines as sans or asgore, but the fact flowey goes the extra mile of using 4 on papyrus speaks volumes. ontop of that everyone is normally grabbed by the torso to mostly just hold them, but flowey has a firm grip of papyruses legs and foot too. flowey actively restricts his movement more then the rest so he cant do anything.