"Foreboden" or "X is foreboden" (a corruption and combination of the words "forbidden" and "verboten")^[1] is a catchphrase most commonly associated with Toriel in the Undertale fandom.

Origin

The phrase "foreboden" originated in a comic posted to Tumblr by phillip-bankss on September 28, 2015. In the comic, Frisk asks Toriel how to access the Internet at her house. Toriel imagines Frisk searching for the phrase "booby" on Google, then promptly denies access to the Internet, declaring it to be "foreboden".^[2]

Spread

The spread of the "foreboden" meme has, unfortunately, been rather limited. It seems to be most prominent on Tumblr and YouTube.

As of April 18, 2017, there are only 8 results when searching for "foreboden" on DeviantART^[3], and only 3 of those are relevant to Undertale and make any reference to the meme. None of them are actually examples of the meme; one is a DeviantART drawing meme that cites the foreboden meme in its description^[4], and the other two use "foreboden" as a declaration that art theft will not be tolerated^[5][6]. (However, it is possible that more instances of the meme exist on DeviantART and are simply not tagged to properly appear when searched for, as DeviantART's search engine cannot find words or phrases inside images.)

"Foreboden" may be most prevalent on message boards – more research is required. TV Tropes' page on Undertale memes claims that Undertale fans are known to use "foreboden" as a code-word for pornographic content, and have created spin-off words for different levels of explicit content; safe-for-work and/or softcore porn gets labeled as "threeboden" or less, "regular" porn is called "foreboden", and severely explicit content is labeled as "fiveboden" or more.^[7] The practice is cited as occurring mostly on Reddit.

A post on Reddit asking about the origin of "foreboden", put on the site on November 22, 2015,^[8] was met with a deluge of memetic comments. The original post achieved 21 upvotes before being archived.

Sometime in 2016, Drawception hosted a 12-player public game with the theme "Internet is Foreboden – Toriel 2016". The game concluded on June 14, 2016.^[9]

As of April 19, 2017, there are 8 results for the tag #foreboden on ifunny.com.^[10]

Interest

References

^[1] Answers.com – "What is the definition of foreboden?"

^[2] Dundertale by phillip-bankss on Tumblr

^[3] DeviantART search for "foreboden"

^[4] "This is a meme I used for no particular reason" by BowserFanFreak

^[5] OFF-esque Napstablook sprites by Addicted2Electronics

^[6] OFF-esque Gaster sprite by Addicted2Electronics

^[7] TV Tropes – Undertale – Memetic Mutation

^[8] Reddit – Can someone please explain to me the origin of the foreboden thing?

^[9] Drawception – Internet is Foreboden – Toriel 2016 (12-player public game completed on June 14, 2016)

^[10] ifunny – #Foreboden