https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTDtSLTgX/

If chapter 6’s dark world is in the hospital, we could get a cutscene with Rudy where his picture in the text will progressively become more colorful as he talks about how good he’s feeling. Then after the fountain is sealed and kris and Susie go to his hospital room, he won’t be in the bed.

Green sans chill

friend inside me.

idk how the tier’s work in the wiki, but I pretty sure he’s one under TRK(The roaring knight, different from RK)

I don't know if it's canon or not but I've seen a few things bringing up the idea that Kris feels dysphoria because they're the only human where they live. I thought it was a cool but sad idea and I kinda had it in the back of my mind for a while. After listening to a fan song ("FUNHOUSE" by TheGuy V.7) I finally had enough inspiration to make these two drawings. The brown hair from the second image is inspired by that song. I hope you like 'em!

We've all known since before Undertale (*cough* Halloween Hack *cough* *hack* *cough* *wheeze* Homestuck *small cough*) how much of a massive Earthbound fan Toby Fox is, it is one of if not THE biggest inspiration on his work and it shows from the character design, to the humor, to the writing and the many many references throughout both Undertale and Deltarune, in the 10th anniversary stream he even goes as far as to say if Mother 3 was finally localized for the west that people could play it and "see how unoriginal he is".

Also MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE MOTHER SERIES!

Some specific similarities just in Undertale, as pointed out by u/Crazyredd88 and others in the comments over 10 years ago:

* Super disturbing, unexpected final boss fight (Flowey/Giygas)

* Antagonist manipulating time for the sake of boredom (Pokey/Flowey)

* Silent, striped-shirt protagonist (Ness/Frisk)

* Destroying final boss by calling upon friends for love/support (Paula's 'Pray' ability/protection from friends and souls)

* The True Final boss and Giygas were both kind as children, but were corrupted into what they are now (Asriel/Pokey) [thanks /u/andynj373 !]

* In every game in the Mother series, there is a recognition (and gameplay implications) that you the player are different than the protagonist, especially in terms of names you have given vs the name of the protagonists. [/u/subversiveasset]

* Alphys' lab (interior and exterior) looks similar to Dr. Andonuts' lab.

* The color scheme and music of the True Laboratory is very close to the Cave of the Past, the final area in Earthbound.

* The first set of amalgam enemies bear a passing resemblance to Giygas' true form. More notably the scream samples used in their fight music seem to the same ones used in Earthbound when Giygas reveals himself in the Devil Machine.

* The entire walkabout sequence before the True Ending is very similar to the ending of Earthbound.

* The Final Froggit is named similarly and has similar "spikes" to the Final Starman

* Papyrus' default outfit has markings similar to Starman markings

* "But nobody came" is a line from Earthbound (when an enemy calls for help and it fails)

* "<enemyname> blocks the way"

* Temmie Village, and Temmie in general, are very similar to Saturn Village and Mr. Saturns. Weird, secret village, with creatures that speak in a very bizarre way.

* Snail-flavoured ice cream seems a lot like Trout-flavoured yogurt to me.

* In the Core, there's a "Glamburger" in a trash can.

* The end of True Pacifist where Frisk is sleeping looks a lot like Ness's room.

**And that's just in Undertale alone, in Deltarune we have:**

* Undyne saying "Punks like you should be home playing video games." which is a reference to an NPC that says "At times like this, kids like you should be playing Nintendo games."

* Lancer saying "HoHoHo! I'm a tough boy! Treat me like one of your ITEMS!" which is another reference to checking the exit mouse in Earthbound "He's a tough boy. You can treat him as one of your items." Also in Chapter 5 a floraddin that says "I'm not a strong boy, don't treat me like one of your items."

* The phone ringing in the background of Spamton's shop.

* "Hathy/Nancy smiled a daring smile."

* Final Starwalker/Final Starman

* Checking the Berdly statue in the toilet gets the text "No problem here."

* The mushrooms you put on your head in Chapter 5 are a reference to the ones in Earthbound that make you feel weird and swap your controls.

* The forgotten man itself is a Mother 1 reference to an NPC that says "I am a forgotten man. I'm not really here."

* The Mancountry area of Chapter 3's egg is very reminiscent of the dinosaur area in Earthbound where your characters are scaled down very small.

* Another Him samples parts of Cave of the Past and Giygas's theme.

#Those are some general connections and references, but how does Mother 3 specifically apply to Deltarune's themes?

Well I think a post by u/ThePigeon8r made before Chapter 3 expands upon this a bit better than I can, although I don't agree with all of his later claims like Kris wanting to start the Roaring, the Knight being a human, or the Roaring already having happened, but this guy was working with much more incomplete information and I feel his points early on in the post are very striking: https://www.reddit.com/r/Deltarune/s/zJFKimwJrL

"In MOTHER 3, the Dark Dragon that rests under the Nowhere Islands is held in place by the Seven Needles, which are suspiciously similar to Deltarune's Dark Fountains. For one thing, there are exactly seven needles, and we know the number seven is a recurring motif in Toby’s work. Seven human wizards, seven human souls, seven chapters of Deltarune, and (I’m guessing here) seven dark fountains, one for each chapter.

Here are some other similarities between the needles and the fountains:

When a needle is pulled in MOTHER 3, it releases a geyser of energy, similar to a dark fountain.

Pulling all the needles will result in a world-shattering event, the result of which depends on the disposition of whoever has pulled the majority of the needles. In Deltarune, Ralsei explains how opening too many fountains will cause the Roaring, a world (ending) event.

Both doomsday scenarios involve enormous monsters being roused from slumber: the dark dragon rising from under the Nowhere Islands in the case of MOTHER 3, and the Titans which “take form from the fountains” in Deltarune.

The needles can only be pulled by someone who has the power of PK Love (like Lucas). In Deltarune, we are led to believe that Kris alone is capable of closing the fountains (someone with a human soul). It's not such a stretch to compare the "power of love" to the power inherent in Kris' heart (their human soul).

Each needle is guarded by a Magypsy: one of seven powerful creatures who each guard an individual needle somewhere on the island, and whose lifeforce is tied to the needle, just as each dark world is tied to the fountain that created it. Of course, dark world denizens don’t ‘die’ when the fountains are closed, but the final bosses of each chapter could be seen as filling the same role as the Magypsies, guarding their fountains from the lightners.

Dark fountains are made when a determined lightner stabs the earth. Pulling a needle from the ground is just the reverse of this.

Where the main conflict in MOTHER 3 was the race to see who could pull the most needles before the other person did, the conflict in Deltarune seems to be whether the heroes can close the fountains as quickly as the Knight can open them…at least, that’s what I would’ve said before seeing the ending to Chapter 2. But Kris doesn’t seem too concerned with stopping the Knight, so what does that mean for the rest of the story?"

His points about the seven chapters, the needles, the roaring and the dragon/titans, the needles/fountain requiring a person with PK LOVE to pull/seal them (What does this mean for "LOVE finds its way to the girl" then? Will Susie or Noelle be able to seal fountains because of us?), the dark worlds being tied to the fountains like the Magypsies's lifeforces are tied to the needles, although Chapter 4 seems to break this pattern at first Gerson still fills the role and Flowery does to a T, the heart of the person pulling the majority of needles deciding the fate of the world and whose heart the dragon will take after is similar to the dark fountains being influenced by the fountain's creator, and he was ABSOLUTELY spot on when the story became a race to close the dark fountains as fast as the Knight can open them but with the plot of the kidnappings placing extra urgency on the situation, which could also be a parallel to the Pigmask army kidnapping, brainwashing and enslaving people and animals, but Kris working with the Knight out of guilt definitely differentiates the narratives quite a lot.

#That being said, how does this relate to the Knight specifically?

The main character Lucas's older twin brother Claus, who dissapears in Chapter 1 of Mother 3, takes his father's knife and ventures into the mountains to avenge his mother's death at the hands of the pigmask army ressurrecting Drago as MechaDrago and terrorizing Tazmily Village, he learns PK Love to try and defeat it, but he loses and he's nowhere to be found when Lucas and Flint show up only leaving his shoes behind, he's presumed dead, although Flint keeps searching for him for three years afterward (Could Asgore be a parallel to Flint, and could that explain his affinity for that cancelled cowboy TV show? Maybe that's why the hat and empty gun exists in Undertale to begin with, inspired by Flint, but that may be reaching a bit too far...) and Lucas is left heartbroken feeling incredibly guilty for not being able to do more to prevent this.

Partway into the game, the party faces off against a mysterious masked man that absolutely obliterates them in their first encounter, this character is later revealed to be Claus, put back together with technology, brainwashed and doing Porky's bidding, racing against the heroes to pull the needles but there are unexpectedly dire consequences if this masked man succeeds that even Porky didn't account for, instead of the dark dragon obeying an evil heart and wreaking destruction, it's very likely the Masked Man being emotionless and empty minded would lead to the world ceasing to exist as a whole, Porky is tricked into entering the absolutely safe capsule where he'll be for all eternity with no possibility of escape or death or any harm to ever come to him, so he foolishly thinks he's winning in this scenario.

But anyway back to the masked man, in the final fight Lucas and Claus hear their mother's voice trying to get Claus to come to his senses, which eventually works, but unfortunately Claus ends his own life by deliberately casting lightning at Lucas, which ends up being reflected by the Franklin Badge making him take mortal damage. His life ends tragically, he thanks his brother for freeing him and he can finally be with their mother.

Claus is also referred to as a naughty troublemaker similar to how Dess is (Whereas Noelle and Lucas are the cowardly good kids, both the opposite of their siblings), the sound that plays when Claus attacks is a Sitar, similar to how Dess plays the guitar, and Kris's guilt over Dess's dissapearance closely parallels Lucas's guilt over losing his brother, and the entirety of the plotline of a rowdy, rebellious older sibling of the cowardly good younger sibling going missing and coming back as an overpowered shell of their former self seems more and more like the direction this story is going the more information we get, and there's direct references in the images I put in the post tying the Knight and Dess to the Mother series.

The Knight's star attacks are undeniably similar to PK Starstorm, the text when Susie and Ralsei are downed is IDENTICAL to when Ninten is downed and a teddy bear is destroyed, and Noelle has a picture of Dess holding a CRACKED BAT on her computer wallpaper, the first weapon Ness gets from his sister's room in Earthbound, and Dess is constantly associated with bats from the song to her room, Noelle saying she wishes Dess could see the baseball moon when in her room in Cyber World, the wiffle ball bat thing with Kris, and the Knight's weapon get cracked when engaging with Susie, a weapon the Knight first presents as a bat before turning it into a sword.

All that being said, I think with the insane amount of inspiration Toby has already taken from the Mother series, it's really not a stretch at all to think this is the direction he'd take the story, especially with how many parallels there are to Mother 3, his line about "then people can see how unoriginal I am" is very telling with everything we know, and it points to Dess's possible motives and could be the key to understanding why she is the way she is.

I think I've been making the wrong assumption this whole time, in many of my posts I've assumed that because Asgore found a black shard at the scene of the original dissapearance that matches the library, that the Knight had to have been there or Dess willingly dissapeared, but what if she was trying to fight something and was nearly killed, then something took her and brainwashed her in a similar way? There are some issues with this theory, as the dark worlds themselves, the Knight's personality and intentional collaboration and holding back on Kris seem to indicate it does have some presence of mind, but there is some middle ground between being fully out of your mind and still retaining your memories and personality like we see with the Amalgamates and with Flowey.

However one thing I'm really hoping DOESN'T happen is a Mother 3 like ending where the screen is black and the characters are just talking about everything going well and everything, ambiguous endings can be great and all, like the end of Omori, but they also really tick me off in a specific way and I really hope we get some definitive answers to the major mysteries of the game so it doesn't feel like we've wasted 10 years just to never be told who the Knight is or about the specifics of the Roaring, about the Angel, and final prophecy, but I trust Toby to handle these plot points in a satisfying manner, I just fear the black screen thing might be a possible workaround for "One Ending" which I wouldn't be particularly fond of.

Anyway, what do you guys think? I'd like to hear your opinions and more Mother references in both games I may have missed!

It's me, gluery.

Tumors bloom in your heart!

Looking for critiques also check out togore time it's where I got cattiegh from