10 Deltarune Characters Who Feel Completely Different After Learning Their Hidden Motivations

3 weeks ago 13

Published Jul 6, 2026, 2:08 PM EDT

Daniel Trock is a Contributor at DualShockers specializing in PC games, lists, and reviews. He has been writing professionally since 2018 and covering games since 2020, with previous work spanning guides, news, lists, and reviews across multiple publications.

Before joining DualShockers, Daniel contributed guides to GamerJournalist and lists to TheGamer. He currently covers tech topics for SlashGear and BGR. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology from Marist College and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative and Professional Writing from Western Connecticut State University.

Part of what keeps Deltarune firmly planted in peoples’ minds despite its lengthy release schedule is commitment to playing the long game. This manifests in the enduring mysteries of its major story and lore, of course, but also in its characters and their individual motivations. Much like Undertale before it, Deltarune is good at introducing a character and setting them to be a very specific type of character, only to subvert that expectation later on.

Deltarune: 10 Best Boss Themes, Ranked

Deltarune's boss fights show some of the absolute heights of the game's soundtrack.

That subversion can occur either in the same episode a character is introduced, or be staggered out over the course of multiple chapters, but it’s always going to happen sooner or later, and when it does, you often end up being surprised by the revelation. Every character in Deltarune has something to hide, and it’s when we learn those secrets that we start to appreciate them more as a character, not to mention as a moving part in this evolving story.

Spoilers for Deltarune chapters 1-5 ahead!

10 Toriel

Loving Mother to Stressed Working Adult

Toriel is the first character we see at the start of Deltarune besides Kris, and at a glance, she’s more-or-less the same as she is in Undertale. She’s a loving and responsible mother with two kids she cares very much about, one of whom she can’t help but miss while he’s in college. She encourages Kris to be good before going about her day as a schoolteacher, and is happy to see them making friends with Susie.

However, the domestic setting of Deltarune versus Undertale brings about its own problems for Toriel. She’s holding down that whole household on a single teacher’s salary, with her relationship with Asgore being irreparably damaged. Toriel is stressed, to put it mildly, so perhaps it shouldn’t be that surprising that she swiftly strikes up a relationship with Sans. She was so pent-up that, the first time she brings Sans home, she gets blackout drunk to the point of genuinely frightening Susie, and effectively forgets about Kris in the process. She’s not a bad mother or a bad person, but she’s fraying under all the pressure.

9 Flowery

Smarmy Pretty Boy to Desperate Hero

Flowery is introduced not long into Chapter 5’s Dark World, and he certainly makes an impression. He’s perpetually sparkling, has his own audible voice clips for some reason, and never seems to find a good place to hang that jacket. He seems like he’s kissing up to Asgore, as well as going out of his way to ensure that Kris and the party never make contact with him, and that is certainly true, but he’s not doing all that just for the heck of it.

As Ralsei explains, plants like Flowery are technically living beings both in and out of the Dark World, and both Flowery and the other Flowers have wanted to do right by Asgore ever since he started caring for them. Flowery, in particular, also wants the other Flowers to have their full, ambulatory bodies and expressible personalities rather than just being plants confined to jars. In opposing Kris and protecting the flower shop Fountain, Flowery does want to keep Asgore from leaving, but that world is also the only way he and his friends can live out their dreams. Unlike the other major Dark World players, Flowery is a hero to those who follow him, and he intends to live up to that.

8 Spamton

Weird Goober to Mad Puppet

I didn’t think much of Spamton when I first encountered him in that random alleyway of Chapter 2’s Dark World. He seems like a textbook throwaway meme character, speaking in broken English and random shouts, arbitrarily picking a fight with you, and yammering on about making great deals and whatever the heck he’s referring to when he says “Hyperlink Blocked.” I guess that’ll show me for making assumptions about people.

It’s a little difficult to parse Spamton’s motivations due to his speech patterns, but it’s through a combination of his secret boss fight and some lore from the Addisons that we piece together what happened and what he’s looking for. Spamton was originally a proficient salesman who went into business for himself for the “freedom” it offered, only to find himself rendered nothing but a puppet, more literally upon his transformation into Spamton NEO. Spamton is perhaps the most literal case in the longing for “freedom” that all the secret bosses seem to share.

7 Berdly

Obnoxious Nerd to Validation-Yearner

From the moment he’s introduced in Chapter 1, it’s easy to assume you’ve got the full scope of Berdly’s character: he’s an extremely obnoxious overachiever and a capital-G Gamer who absolutely refuses to stop egging on about either quality. Those qualities are on full display during Chapter 2, when he’s in much greater focus, alongside a mildly possessive streak over Noelle as his fellow “smart kid.”

However, as Berdly himself reveals late in Chapter 2, his commitment to smarts is mostly a smokescreen. He just happened to win over Noelle in a spelling bee when they were little, and everyone around him got a little too zealous with the compliments, making him think that the only way to get any kind of validation is to keep overachieving, something which he needs Noelle’s help for because, again, he’s not actually that smart. He does start to improve after the chapter’s events, being a little nicer to Kris and maybe a little too nice to Susie. As an aside, when he sees Noelle being manipulated by Kris in the Weird Route, he immediately drops the holier-than-thou shtick and takes up arms to help his friend, so I think we can say that, at his core, Berdly is a good person.

6 Asgore

Bumbling Divorcee to Obsessed Detective

In the same vein as Toriel, Deltarune’s relatively more grounded setting doesn’t do Asgore any particular favors. He’s divorced and lives separately from his family, sleeping on a naked mattress in the basement of his flower shop. He seems to be a bumbling sort, not really getting why Toriel doesn’t want to talk to him, apparently getting by by taking odd jobs from the townsfolk like Carol.

10 Deltarune Mysteries That Feel Even Bigger After Chapter 5

We're more than halfway through this thing, and the mysteries keep piling up.

In the background of all of this sitcom dad stuff, though, Asgore is a man obsessed. Ever since he lost his position as chief of police and got a whiff of the Dark World, he’s been feverishly researching everything about it, quietly working to piece together its mystery in a likely foolhardy attempt to win back his family. When he finally enters a Dark World himself in Chapter 5, he gives some token service to Flowery and the Flowers, but his investigation still takes precedent, and he’s more driven than ever. He makes it very clear that he will get whoever is responsible for all this, and is prepared for whatever it takes, up to and including first-degree murder.

5 Tenna

Showy Schemer to Lonely Appliance

Just about everyone clocked Tenna as Chapter 3’s antagonist more or less from the moment he first appeared on-screen. He’s boisterous and overbearing, a constant showman who wants nothing more than for Kris and company to play his games, all while none-too-subtly scheming in the background with the Knight and the sleeping Toriel. He also responds very poorly to the party saying they don’t want to play anymore, and it seems like a given he won’t let any of them go without a fight.

That’s technically true, but scheming isn’t all Tenna has going for him. He is, at his core, extremely lonely, as the Dreemur family hasn’t watched TV together consistently in many years. Even assuming you recruit enough Darkners to fix him after the Knight’s attack and bring him back to Castle Town, that loneliness doesn’t let up. He doesn’t really want to live with all the other Darkners, he just wants to be watched, like a proper TV should. That’s why he’s so excited when Mettaton agrees to take him in; even if he’s not an ambulatory being anymore, he gets to resume his one proper purpose in life by providing a willing watcher with entertainment.

4 Noelle

Girl-Next-Door to Troubled Youth

Noelle doesn’t get much in the way of focus in Chapter 1, but you can definitely glean a few things from the ways she talks to Kris. She’s your textbook girl-next-door: kindhearted and friendly to a fault, eager to keep the peace, and accommodating to authority figures. However, you can see hints of what’s under the surface from her burgeoning attraction to Susie, and this becomes much clearer in Chapters 2, 4, and 5.

Noelle feels extremely stifled in her life, thanks in no small part to her terrifying, overbearing mother and perpetually-bedridden father. She tries to maintain the status quo more out of obligation than anything, but she wants some kind of big change in her life, someone to show her what more the world has to offer. In the best-case scenario, she gets this from her blossoming relationship with Susie, who helps her get up to some mischief without getting carried away. In the worst-case, i.e. the Weird Route, she basically suffers a full psychotic break, under the belief that she can do literally anything so long as Kris (or rather, the SOUL) commands her to.

3 Susie

Stereotypical Bully to Genuinely Good Person

Susie’s introduction in Chapter 1 has all the same energy as a stereotypical bully character in an old Nickelodeon movie. She shirks authority, threatens other kids, and generally disregards things like schoolwork. Even when she and Kris enter the Dark World, Susie is adamantly against any kind of prophesied heroism, and just wants to leave and forget about it all as quickly as possible, no matter who she has to pummel along the way.

Of course, this is a far cry from the Susie we’ve come to know. Susie has always had the capacity for kindness and heroism in her heart, but the frequency with which her family moves around and the way other people treat her forced her to close herself off. In bonding with Ralsei, Kris, and both Lightners and Darkners, Susie has come to be a very broad-hearted person. She still won’t tolerate punks, but she’s more than happy to try Kris’s (or rather, the SOUL’s) method of roundabout mercy and recruitment, both to keep peace and to have some fun with it. Of course, she’s still a very emotionally vulnerable person, and has perhaps come to rely on the kindness of the Darkners a little too much…

2 Ralsei

Friendly Guide to Destiny’s Slave

Ralsei is initially introduced in Chapter 1 as the party’s guide and Darkner representative. He’s very happy to have finally met the prophesied heroes and tries to guide them on the path of nonviolence, Susie especially. However, it is also very clear from the start that he’s withholding some details, and may end up having a somewhat darker agenda. The first half of that is definitely true, but maybe not the latter half.

As Ralsei reveals, he has had full knowledge of the prophecy and all of its important bits from the start, which is why he’s been trying so hard to keep things on track. Apparently, this prophecy is going to happen no matter what, but he hopes against hope that if he can influence things just slightly, we can get to a better ending. Of course, this desire is at odds with Ralsei’s belief that Darkners are inherently subservient to Lightners and shouldn’t step out of their lane, which causes him no shortage of distress and cognitive dissonance, potentially worsened depending on your interactions with him.

1 Kris

Empty Husk to Crafty Double-Agent

At the very beginning of Deltarune, when your created character is unceremoniously dumped, you’re suddenly dropped into the role of Kris one sunny morning. It’s very easy to assume, and many of us did, that Kris was just this game’s Frisk; a human avatar to serve as our means of interacting with this world. However, this is very much not the case. Kris is their own person, they are all too aware of what we are doing to them, and do not care for it.

From the moment Kris first rips the SOUL out of their body at the end of Chapter 1, it’s clear that Kris is working at opposite purposes to our own. Whenever our POV isn’t on them, they are making moves to obscure or destroy hints and information, aid their mysterious benefactor over the phone, and of course, tear open new Fountains. Clearly, they wish they could be rid of us, but seeing as how being separated from us slowly kills them, they literally can’t, so all they can do is hinder us in every possible way until they achieve their goal, whatever that may be.