okay. this post might just be a lot of horseshit disorganized rambling but i wanna get my image_thoughts together. the tldr is that in-universe it represents "imaginary friends", and on a meta level it represents our immersion in the game falling apart.
the image_friend -> imaginary friend pun seems way too obvious and i still haven't let go of the theory that susie's chair friendogeny is her imaginary friend. like say what you will about how literal we should be taking that cutscene, i myself don't even put stock into the other thingies present, that is obviously meant to represent susie's bedroom. with how many times the game tells you over and over that the dark worlds are Real and Important it'd be strange to me for the light world part here to be a story clue and the dark world part to be bullshit. so okay susie growing up struggling to make friends going home to a barren ass room with no other belongings to make darkners out of. how impossible is it that she'd pretend the shadow of her chair at night was a friend. IMO that's way more compelling than just... every chair turning into evil mafia cats... for some reason...
it's also now been completely spelled out that shadow crystals form from broken dreams, which imo with how connected friend is to the shadow crystal plotline could be pointing to something like "wishing hard enough something fake was real" or "forgotten imaginary friends". darkners are already sort of like imaginary friends, but they have objects/concepts for lightners to build off of. what separates the two concepts for me right now is the level of emotional attachment.
the other time friend has been connected to something in the light world is a cat petterz glitch that noelle and most likely kris have seen, which is. drastically different from a chair. and also something i wouldn't expect susie to know about. but this ties it further to video game secrets/glitches which are obviously important to the metanarrative. friend is both a secret in deltarune and an in-universe video game secret, which in my opinion, most likely parallels how dragon blazers is based on the prophecy and thus has all kinds of paradoxical reality bending gunk on it.
i DO want to point out as well while less substantial than the susie or noelle connections it does seem plausible to me it's connected to alphys as well? mew mew talks about knowing someone who really likes cats and the two possibilities for who that is imo are 1. the person handing out shadow crystals, or 2. the person who used to own the mew mew figure and just likes cats in general. she even plays cat petterz. i think it could be either or even both but i only bring up alphys to further point out that multiple people can "have" image_friend without necessarily knowing each other or anything like that. through this read the pack of cats are most likely the cats from her save file, or even her mod 'pack' XD this could potentially explain the endogeny thing. i could honestly keep going on about potential alphys friend connections but i'm cutting myself off here.
...the last two connections kinda muddy the specifics of the imaginary friend side though. i'm more just thinking about how it represents imaginary friends and how that could even work. like, why would all imaginary friends coagulate into one species rather than be personalized to their creator? it's possible that noelle and alphys just really really wish their cats were real and i wouldn't put it past them but i also don't want to jump to that conclusion. i'm jumping to enough conclusions in this post as it is -.-" but, a virtual pet is a sort of imaginary friend, right? uhh, i don't know, pivot: alphys literally has an imaginary friend who's a cat. she leaves out milk convinced it's for a cat named mewmew without seeing it. i don't know. i didn't know how to work that into the post but if i'm going full corkboard i think it's worth mentioning??
so. until the new mew mew dialogue friend's kinda been popularly characterized as something that helps you with impossible secrets, ~For A Price~, a la really difficult teacups puzzle or becoming an enemy that attacks you before dropping candy or the weird shit it does in battat. but now that one of the prerequesites for a spooky ominous warning about cats hunting down protein is having an egg it seems possible they're... anti-secret as well? it's confusing. while i do like this read, if it is the case then it's odd that they'd help you out in blatantly game breaking ways yet draw the line at the forgotten man. could be they just have beef with the man specifically of course.
but, this sort of... "keeper"? of easter eggs? does sort of tie together with the imaginary friend thing. they both have weird places on the reality hierarchy. every time you find a secret or a glitch it reminds you that you're playing a video game and that nothing inside of it is real. maybe if you get too detached, you'll give up on the game too.
"ohh but doc what does it all add up to when do you think we'll meet friend what do you think it'll be like" idfk
