Deltarune Chapter 5's weird route goes to genuinely disturbing places

Deltarune Chapter 5 launched on June 24, and while the main story sends Kris and Susie through a festival and into a new Dark World inside Asgore's flower shop, the game's alternate weird route takes a far darker turn — one that's already unsettling players across the community.

The weird route, which only activates in Chapters 2, 4, and 5, centers on Kris exerting a deeply troubling level of control over Noelle Holiday. In Chapter 5, after Noelle says the SnowGrave spell makes her feel powerful and asks Kris to do "something crazy," she pulls Kris into a lake. The two walk hand in hand, deeper and deeper into the water, with the player repeatedly prompted to "proceed" as they appear to drown in real time. Noelle's dialogue grows increasingly detached as the scene plays out. It's a direct escalation from Chapter 4's already controversial ThornRing sequence — a scene Toby Fox quietly revised after launch in June 2025 following widespread community discussion about its implications.

Deltarune is a seven-chapter RPG that runs parallel to Fox's breakout hit Undertale. The first chapter dropped as a free demo back in 2018, and Chapters 3 and 4 arrived in June 2025 — meaning fans have been piecing together the game's mysteries for the better part of a decade. Chapter 5 largely sidesteps the overarching plot in favor of recapturing the lighter, wackier energy of the early chapters, complete with remixed music from guest composers and a flood of new characters. IGN's Brendan Graeber, who has covered the series since the beginning, notes that while this approach could have felt like filler, the chapter pulls it off through relentless, genuinely funny character writing — even if the deliberate avoidance of major plot payoffs will likely divide the fanbase.

The weird route scenes are already generating significant discussion, with players calling Chapter 5's lake sequence the most disturbing the route has produced yet. With two chapters still to come, the question of where Kris and Noelle's story ends up is now more pressing — and more unsettling — than ever.