Ohhoho you found my blog~~

Alright, so Toby came up with Deltarune as a concept back in 2012... and I believe I have read that he came up with the ending first, and he was so inspired that he created the series AROUND that ending. That means he has had all of the major plot points formed and kind of mapped out already - for a long time. I feel like whoever posted this might actually be someone with some inside information!

The 4chan post was published May 8th 2022, so like 7 months after chapter 2 dropped. Plenty of time to have content for future chapters mapped out at the very least, and we see in a later newsletter that yes, lots of progress was made towards chapters 3, 4, and 5 by September of that same year.

The columns for chapters 3 and 4 reference more specific moments in those chapters and even some gameplay elements, but as you move to 5, 6, and 7 they become more vague, general concepts. This lines up perfectly with where the game was in development at the time.

Let's look at each chapter now and break down what it all means!

--------

First things first, this all probably looks ridiculous but don't look at it too literally! And I am not going over them in any linear fashion, I kinda jump around a bunch... sorry...

The one image of a game show is pretty straight forward, we basically see that exact scene play out... but most of these are deeper than that. First let's look at the purple heart and the chess piece!

We didn't get purple soul mode in chapter 3, so what's the deal with that? Well, the purple soul in Undertale limits you to moving along precise horizontal lines in the Muffet fight. You can move left and right, or up and down, but you are locked to that grid. The chess piece is a rook which can move "horizontally and vertically across any number of unoccupied squares." Just like how you would move in a video game.... like the one we play for a good chunk of chapter 3.

Alright alright, I know, it's not exactly the same... since chapter 3 came out in the year 2025, you can move diagonally and all over the place because that is how we expect to be able to move in video games today. But the games are remniscent of the original NES Legend of Zelda, which was very much on a grid. If you want to go from one corner of the screen to another, you are going up and over, up and over... much like a rook moves one direction at a time.

So these seemingly random things foreshadow a gameplay element that was probably being implemented right around the time of that post! Same thing with the bullet, I am guessing that they were working on the shooting mechanic used in shadow guy battles and the fight against Tenna.

On to story elements, we have good ol' Chairiel and a surprised sprite of Toriel... this could relate to her being held captive asleep in her chair, and the face sprite maybe relates to how she might feel about that whole situation. The fish at first made me think of some kind of reference to a nasty TV dinner, but with what we see with Undyne at the end of the chapter, a cooked fish may take a different meaning...

Finally there is a fan-made sprite of Kris and Susie bringing a TV to the school. Remember this was posted in May of 2022... people were obsessed with Spamton and the idea of him being screwed over by some dude named Mike... if anything, they were theorizing that a TV character would be a Very Bad Guy. Of course what we ended up with was funny TV dad who Kris and Susie can bring to their castle town... and that is why I think this particular picture was chosen.

There is one last image of a rose on fire... and honestly that one's got me stumped. I imagine it has to do with the Thorn Ring scene that ended up getting censored, since that was originally a rose. It isn't impossible for something like that to get shifted from chapter 3 to 4... The only other time we see roses is in Rudy's room as a gift from Asgore, so maybe there is some connection with the fire there? But it's a stretch and not too relevant to anything in chapter 3. Bummer. Alright, next!

--------

The column for chapter 4 is real heavy handed in showing that it happens in the church! The chess piece we get here is the bishop so that might allude to Alvin (and by relation, Gerson) being relevant in this chapter. Gerson is also alluded to in the green soul and the hand image... another instance of gameplay elements that were probably being implemented at the time. Like, just look at the Hammer of Justice fight. Even the way these images are positioned look like the battle. This part really got me!

Then Ralsei and amogus guy are just kind of there, superimposed on a church. I see it as silly references but portrayed as a red herring of something deeper... Ralsei is a traitor? Betrayal in the church?? THERE'S AN IMPOSTER AMONG US??? Nah. The way Ralsei is stretched out is a silly reference to how you can step on him and he goes flat. The newsletter right after the one I showed earlier actually teases that sprite too! (Dec 19, 2022)

That newsletter also had an Among us reference, which also got a reference in Noelle's house in the final game. Toby was just writing some funny gags at the time and these reflect that. Hey, they never said they were spoilers, just leaks...

Alright so... the rest of that column. How about that. We have a very... cylindrical stone monument, maybe a grave marker? Next to that is an Ophanim, or "biblically accurate angel" - here is the original image.

It looks familiar in some ways!

So the "angel" and the cylindrical monument directly relate to the titan! The titan spawns look like the baby shape in the middle of the angel, and the stone thing is related to another gameplay element - climbing up a giant pillar (which happens to be covered in eyes, just like the angel).

Finally we have a person praying and part of The Fallen Angel (painted in 1847 by Alexandre Cabanel). Definitely more church symbolism here. Beyond just that though, the subject of the painting is Lucifer, the fallen angel whose name translates to "light-bringer."

Considering all the talk about the angel and banishing heaven and whatnot, it is interesting to consider the idea of a FALLEN angel in this story. I wonder what their desire would be... And then we have all the symbolism of Noelle with her angel costume and Kris with their devil horns. There must be a deeper meaning to all of that... and I am sure we will learn more about that in chapter 5!

--------

Alright so at the time of writing this, chapter 5 isn't out yet so this can obviously be very inaccurate! But let's see... the fireworks probably have to do with the festival. Someone is gardening at the bottom, and we also see Kris with all the flowers in Asgore's shop. Everyone basically agrees that chapter 5 takes place in the flower shop, so that all makes sense. Now, about everything else...

Here is Noelle with some Angel wings! I mean. They aren't on her, so it's not like it's saying she IS The Angel... but I wouldn't count that interpretation out either. I believe that depending what route you do, the roles in the prophecy will be filled by different people. The Angel could be Noelle in one route, Kris/the soul in another... it could even be YOU! Anyway, I think Noelle will be essential in this Angel storyline, and we will learn a lot about it in this chapter.

(ah yes, another thing to mention is that we have a lot of unused equip/use text for items that have Noelle's reactions... so she will likely be in the party in this chapter!)

On to the next point... so, I do not know much about Attack on Titan so forgive me for missing any specifics... but that second image is a panel depicting The Rumbling. It is a "cataclysmic event" where Titans showed up and killed a whole bunch of people... so I mean... we've already seen one titan, and "The Rumbling" sounds a lot like "The Roaring" ... haha, uh oh! We're in danger!

I would not be surprised if we actually get The Roaring in chapter 5... no one expected to see the Knight so early, no one expected to see a titan so early... we really might get end-of-the-world kinda stuff next! And speaking of the Knight, that's the chess piece we have in this image! Now I don't know if this hints towards their identity being revealed this chapter, or maybe we defeat the Knight for good in this chapter? Maybe there is an Even Bigger Bad Guy and the Knight has served it's purpose and will... go away. We gotta wait and see.

Another fun thing about these chess pieces - I am not experienced with chess so yeah, I was looking this stuff up and I am not afraid to admit it! Anyway, I wanted to understand a "checkmate" since that sounds really important in chess. I liked this definition here!

"When a king is attacked, it is called check. A checkmate (also known as "mate") occurs when a king is placed in check and has no legal moves to escape."

So a king under attack with no way to escape? Hmmm...

Ultimately, all of my chess research made me realize there are a lot of parallels there... kings (Lancer's dad and Asgore), queens (uhh... Queen. and Toriel!), knights (The Roaring Knight and Kris who is dressed like one kind of), bishops (Gerson maybe? and Alvin).... and the pawns. Oh how many pawns there are... and in chess, you gotta sacrifice pieces sometimes.

Moving on! We have a grave, and a note saying "don't forget!" These might be hinting at some big plot point about December, since we don't really know if she is dead/trapped/otherwise a goner, if you will... so I bet we will learn a lot more in this chapter. Especially if the Roaring really does happen... whoever "don't forget" is all about (whether it's Dess or someone else) will be "with us in the dark." Because... everything will be dark. They got no choice!!

My other thought about the grave is that a lot of people have been waiting for the other shoe to drop with poor Rudy in the hospital... if he isn't gonna make it, I bet that it happens in this chapter. (Tying in to my earlier point about "defeating" the Knight, uhhh Rudy Knight believers this is your time to shine lol)

--------

Alright, so now we are at content that would have been entirely conceptual in 2022. As such, it is very vague. But the main theme is pretty obvious... a puppet losing its strings, a pawn, "freedom." This is the chapter where Kris finally escapes our influence. Or, is it that Kris isn't needed anymore and we ditch them? Hence "I don't want to play with you anymore." Either way, a connection is severed. It seems to... have negative effects on someone's psyche based on the last two images. I wonder who we will play as next?

There's also that random Spongebob screencap! It's from an episode called "Copybob Dittopants" and basically Plankton takes a scanner and copies Spongebob in an attempt to steal the secret formula... the copy is the one on the left in the blue tie. When he first copies Spongebob, he comes out with a white tie and Plankton colors it blue, which is... interesting!

So I guess we might also get an explanation on why Kris is blue in the dark worlds? And bigger picture, we will probably learn more about The Voice from the beginning of the game, when you create your vessel that is... promptly discarded. I just think it's all gonna circle back around here!

In a meta sense, I am reminded of Mother 3 (which obviously was a huge influence for Toby). Without getting into spoilers, that game also has 7 chapters... but chapter 6 stands out as the shortest one. It is basically a playable cutscene. I can't really link any of these images here to gameplay elements, so I wonder if we may have a similar thing here... it unfortunately would, however, mean that chapters 6 and 7 would probably launch together and we would be stuck with endless SIX SEVEN memes.

Speaking of numbers though!! I wonder if we will see a full version of that song Kris plays on the piano in Noelle's house... Seven Four. It seems to be important for them in some way. Also interesting... a commenter points out that the name of that track is also kind of a pun!

--------

Oh boy, it's the end! Okay we got chess again, but I said my piece on that in chapter 5's section. There is a file directory which implies we might get some funky save file manipulation like Flowey does in Undertale? Or maybe it has to do with the (so far) minor differences between save files? Or maybe it's referring to the voice in the language files?

Next we have Eggman! So... that forgotten man with the eggs... I guess we will remember him by this point. I feel like the eggs are something I will simply not understand until we get more information in chapter 5. For now, all I know is that we have multiple instances of eggs multiplying themselves... but I do not know what purpose they serve.

Then we got a visual representation of the phrase "fever dream" and "man-made horrors beyond my comprehension" ...uh oh. Plus the "what are you looking at? (you)" part reminds me of the Angel panel of the prophecy, and how people interpreted the black screen as a sort of mirror for the player. Clearly, there is gonna be some sort of trippy situation with the player being acknowledged in some way by some entity in the game.

Alright now the big one! Giygas. The final boss of Earthbound, he is a manifestation of pure evil and darkness! Important to note, he doesn't necessarily USE that evil and darkness to battle with you. He is basically trapped, unable to think, and mindlessly lashing out in ways we cannot comprehend. I dunno, I just feel like that will be relevant in some way in the end... Maybe we find that lost girl but she isn't herself anymore, having been corrupted by darkness. Maybe we finally get to see Gaster or the Voice or whoever the hell it might be communicating with us. Maybe, in some way, we are the villain... I honestly have no idea how this thing's gonna end!

But, I will put one idea out... Toby has said there is only one ending to this game.

He is also implying here that acting or fighting won't really matter either. I feel like this is all... technically true, but realistically false. I feel like we will indeed get different outcomes for certain characters, different interactions, etc. All of the things that matter to us as a player will be addressed differently depending on your choices! But for the characters... I think their world is doomed.

I believe that the "one ending" is the world being reset, essentially. There must be some sort of connection between Undertale and Deltarune, and I think this is how it would happen... alternatively, it could just loop over and over! Think of games with a "new game+" once you complete it. That is fun and cool for us as players, but if you were made aware of it as a denizen of that universe? You wouldn't be like "it's fine, the world will come back better!" You'd be like "what the hell?? No, I want MY world to STAY!"