So, speaking of Live-A-Live and Deltarune...
There might be a reason why the Cats(?) are Cats(?), besides the contrast to Endogeny and the possible pun of Concateny.
Check out...
...THIS FUCKIN' THING.
That is Death Prophet from Live-A-Live. He's an optional boss. He shows up in the Dominion of Hate, and he will JUMP YOU if you run from battle 100 times. It's implied that he has been following your party around unseen, and waiting for you to run too many times. He claims that any coward he faces will be turned to stone as punishment (the Watanabe father and son can be seen petrified), and he has a MASSIVE weak point: his tail.
D.P. doesn't LOOK much like Friend apart from being a sable feline with big teef, and their personalities are REAL DIFFERENT...but the persistence and stalking behaviour is there.
Friend also has some callbacks to the Jaggedy Jacks (little asshole shits that THOSE things are).
This isn't to say that any of this is bad! Far from it! Live-A-Live itself is FULL OF SHOUTOUTS (TV Tropes has a page dedicated to 'em), so Deltarune's following an inspiration.
In closing, if I had to bet on a fight between Death Prophet and Friend...my money is on the latter, because Friend is more Cat and is going to start tail-biting just to be a dick.















