Water Theory Masterpost (v1.0)

compiled and written by Agent Raven
(@agentravensong on tumblr and discord )

TL;DR Darkness and the Dark Worlds are compared or connected to water (or the other way around) numerous times in DeltaRune. The intent and larger implications of this are yet to be determined.

Currently, this document is organized in chronological order of my experience with all the pieces of this theory, but if I want to turn this into a video essay then I’ll probably reorganize it to present all the evidence in a manner that flows (heh) and coheres better.

Part 1: The Beginning

This started, for me, with HalfBreadChaos’s video from the very end of 2021:

5 Times Undertale majorly Forshadows Deltarune Cat Edition

One of the things discussed in this video (the third section specifically) is the fact that the sound effect that plays between Kris falpng into and waking up in the Dark World is named ocean.ogg. It’s the same sound effect that plays if you let Kris and Susie sit at the edge of Hometown’s lake in Chapter 2.

That moment of the video inspired me to look through DeltaRune for anywhere else there might be relevant references to water or water symbopsm. I left a pretty long comment (that I believe HBC referenced in a following video).

Jump ahead half a year, to August 1, 2022, and I find a post on tumblr from @ susielesbianism, first posted the previous day:

It reads:

I think that while we are rightfully suspicious of that bunker, we also need to pay a little closer attention to that goddamn lake. I might even go as far as to say really ANYTHING where water is concerned actually.

The fact that the portals to the Dark World are fountains [and geysers in a few places, most notably by the save point in Castle Town in Chapter 1]

And how it uses the exact same graphic as the vessel creation sequence’s background

Onion’s secret that they reveal to Kris — “Sometimes… I hear a song at night. It sounds like… it’s coming from under the water. Deep.”
And the soundbyte that plays on the black screen before Kris wakes up in the Dark World… being called ocean.ogg.

There was an addition from user @eudevie as well, of something the OP said they had meant to include but had forgotten:

I would also like to add the Riverperson says this. You know, the person who warns you about “The man who came from the other world” and “Beware of the man who speaks in hands”

If stuff about the sea is THIS far back, it has to be a major plot thing.

This is where I came in with all the stuff from my comment on HalfBreadChaos’s video.

• This line from if you beat Jevil by fighting him: “SOON, THE “QUEEN” RETURNS, AND HELL’S ROAR BUBBLES FROM THE DEPTHS…” We now know this was foreshadowing Queen and the end of Chapter 2, but the phrasing of the roar bubbling from the depths definitely catches my eye.
  
  
• The shadow crystals are described in your dark world inventory as “A sharp shadow moves like water in the hand.” Other than the naming of the fountains, it’s the most direct association I’ve found of darkness/shadow with water.
  
  
• Character-wise, I can’t help but think of Gerson and Alvin , two monsters based on turtles (animals that live in the ocean and on land), and wonder if they were made turtles for the sake of a metaphor about them dwelling in both the dark and light worlds. There are certainly hints that Gerson was involved in dark worlds in the past (the bench in his honor which encourages students to dream, his old classroom being the first proper dark world we visit, his knowledge of the Delta Rune in UnderTale, and him having been an author in a game where dark worlds seem to be a metaphor for fictional stories), and considering Alvin is involved with the light world’s Angel-based religion, and is apparently planning something with Gerson’s hammer, I’m fairly sure they’ll play into the history of the Dark Worlds.


• While we’re on the topic of suspicious ocean-related characters, there’s obviously Onionsan, but also, Clam Girl . You know, the one who teased “Suzy” in UnderTale, who can become a Goner in the switch version with a line that teased DeltaRune’s release, and who you get faked out for in Chapter 2 if you fail to talk to Onionsan in chapter 1.

And then, there’s this bit from UnderTale: “Humans are made mostly of water.” Which, yes, is just a true fact. But it’s pointed out in comparison to monsters being made of magic. And considering everything here, with water potentially = darkness and (by extension) dreams… If we then look to our friend Kris, who turns pale blue in the dark worlds, and who, if they look at themself through the shadow crystal, briefly finds their hand to be transparent… Perhaps there’s something concerning there.

I also had some thoughts in the tags of my reblog:

• There are other ideas I had - like how is a conduit for electricity - that I never really fleshed out; but other than that, this is what I’ve got.


• Side note: The Riverperson thing reminded me of how Ralsei is dressed like them when he first appears. And isn’t it interesting how Riverperson is the one who transports us through the underground (via water), considering that it’s currently a mystery how Ralsei travels between dark worlds on his own? Perhaps his mode of transportation is similar?


• ALSO also: If the dark worlds are water... it gives a potentially worse angle to Noelle’s whole ice magic thing , considering what we can make her do with it... and what she might be able to do at full power.


• ALSO also also: The tea stuff might tie into this? The tea itself being water that gains flavor from the drinker’s perception of the person it’s named after seems like it functions on the same principle as the dark worlds being influenced by lightners’ perceptions.

Part 2: Collaborative Contributions

From this point, user @abandoned-quiche and I went back and forth adding to Water Theory, finding things on our own and then adding them to the post. Their first addition to the post was one day after mine:

• Allegedly the Grand Fountain has existed for millennia, and I highly doubt the school has existed for all of time. You know what is unfathomably ancient? The ocean. and when you enter the closet dark world, unlike with all other dark worlds, you’re able to walk inside, and there are normal objects inside, until the floor collapses. So what I’m thinking is, the Grand Fountain isn’t in the closet, but rather under it.
• Perhaps some sort of underground reservoir connected to the ocean through a cave system, idk. Maybe just the bunker. Maybe the bunker is connected to the lake. Maybe it goes under the lake and that’s where the singing is coming from. One of these has gotta stick right?

In the following month, Quiche made a post about how the punctation of WORLDS’ EDGE in the legend implies that it is at the boundary of multiple worlds, likely the boundary between light and dark. Seeing this post from them, with the screenshot from the legend, I had A Thought. It goes as follows:

What landscape are we actually looking at here?

Because my first assumption (and I’m fairly sure I’m not the only one) was that it’s a desert. But what if the sepia tone is disguising the true nature of what we’re seeing (like how it helps players to confuse Chara for Frisk in UT)? I mean, Hometown certainly doesn’t seem to be near any deserts.

So what if those lumps aren’t sand dunes, but something else? Like snow? Or… waves?

I mean, look at the weird ripple effect on the ground at the base of the fountain in the third image. Consider that the fountains are just that - fountains, geysers. Liquid.

And it kind of makes sense, right? For the border between worlds, one light and one dark, to be physically represented by a border between land and lake/sea? Especially given, well, everything else?

The next day, September 4th , Quiche linked this post in the notes of the main water theory post, as well as adding something else.

Now, have yourself a look at this observation about the background of the GonerMaker sequence by u/LimeLampShape on Reddit.

Let’s take a closer look at that “original sprite.”

It’s the ocean. It’s waves! It’s WATER! 🎉 And I do think it looks quite a bit similar to what the artist was trying to portray in the LEGEND.

So… what does this mean? Does the gonermaker sequence take place at WORLDS’ EDGE? It would make sense that it would have the same texture as the fountains, which connect the two worlds and thus could absolutely be described as “WORLDS’ EDGE”.

A note from the future: while watching the first part of Mollystars’ excellent Device Theory on YouTube, I noticed that the process in-game that puts the background together in this manner is called DEVICE_OBACK_4.

OBACK. What’s with the O in there? What does that stand for? Maybe “object”, but the way “DEVICE” is used in the code is basically as the Gaster-y version of that. So, what else could it be?

Perhaps… ocean.

No major additions were made to the original tumblr post until after the Spamton Sweepstakes, when @aretheextrovertsokay came in with this.

TL;DR, the sound that plays when you click on the chair on the page deltarune.com/chair, the chair that goes all dark and glitchy, with the page title that reads “What if it could… get darker than dark?”
That sound is an edited version of mus_ambientwater , a sound file that plays quite often when passing through quieter areas of Waterfall.

@susielesbianism reblogged this person’s addition and added a link to an ask they got about the page damn-you-tenna. As a reminder, that’s the page that turns to TV static when you click on the crossed-out TV, with there then being a link hidden in the white noise to a seemingly all-blue version of the page with a water sound effect playing on it. The id for the section of the website’s code that is active here is “ocean”, and the sound effect that plays is called ocean.mp3. As you scroll up, you see snow/ice particles, and then a black door that leads to the page icepalace-glaceir.

Additional stuff:

susielesbianism points out that the old classroom seems to have water damage

When we see Kris make a fountain at the end of Chapter 2, once the light turns to dark, the hole they make in the earth starts emitting smoke. Fountains are made with determination, which is implied in UT to be a hot substance. It melts monsters, and Undyne describes it right before going Undying as a “burning feeling”. And when a liquid is exposed to enough heat, it turns to gas.

@kaunaz pointed this out: Kris uses running water as a distraction to throw off Toriel and Susie's suspicions via the sink during the ending sequence of Chapter 2. While not directly connected to Dark Worlds, it’s part of their plan to create one. As they said, this could be nothing significant, but combining it with how Kris stores the Soul beneath the sink, aka beneath the water… idk, maybe there’s some 4d level foreshadowing there.

pinkhuman99's addition to the main post from Dec 31, 2022 (just a little over a year from when HBC posted the video that started all this):

• There's definitely a water theme going on here. But there are also lots of connections to water when we talk about space and time. Space is like a vast ocean, full of unknown and unexplored depths and creatures. Go far enough, and you'll see mysterious floating lights as it gets darker and darker. We also require special equipment, as fragile humans, to explore both outer space and the deepest ocean.
  Time is also described as “flowing”. The “sands of time” are like a beach. Different timelines are like branches in a flowing river.
  All I'm saying is… this is very, very interesting.

Part 3: What’s the Point?

This is the thing I’ve struggled with. I think the evidence for there being a deliberate connection between water and darkness in DeltaRune is frankly staggering. But, what does this connection add to the game? What is the theory?

Well… as I mentioned way back up in my original comment, I think this parallel serves as further evidence of Gerson and Alvin’s importance to DeltaRune’s narrative.
And speaking of parallels, one thought I had back when I first left my comment on HBC’s video is that the dark worlds, by being tied to water are maybe meant to parallel (or be foreshadowed by) the trash dump in Waterfall. An area full of discarded items, flowing down into an unknown depth. A place where at least one of those items (thanks to Mad Dummy) gets new life. A place Frisk falls into, much like how Kris initially falls into the dark world.
I don’t know what would be being said by such a parallel, though. Unless Deltarune is literally taking place at the bottom of the waterfalls in the trash dump. Somehow. (It’s not.)
It’s perhaps worth considering that both Gerson and Clam Girl come from Waterfall, which generally is one of, if not the, most mysterious areas in UnderTale. @everysongineverykey has a great post about this that you can read here.

But, none of that is quite enough for me. If Toby’s going to tie darkness, in his game about darkness, to this primordial element in this all-encompassing manner, I’m confident there has to be a strong narrative or thematic reason for it, beyond just a tie back to one of UnderTale’s areas. There’s got to be something he’s using it for or saying with it. The question is what.

One thing I thought of about two weeks after the sweepstakes was this:

• Could Water Theory provide an explanation for why Darkners in other Dark Worlds turn to stone? Like, what’s the symbolic or real-world connection Toby’s going for there?
  Pondering this, on a whim, I searched “can water turn things to stone”, and Google responded by informing me of petrification wells. Wells where the water has such a high mineral content that objects left in them will gradually become encased in stone.
• Remember how Ralsei says all Darkners can live in Castle Town because his fountain is made of “pure darkness”?
  My thought is that the minerals metaphorically are the elements of the light world location the fountain is made in, and/or the stuff that comes from the knight’s will/imagination. A Darkner introduced to a different environment, a darkness (water) filled with foreign elements (minerals), becomes, in time, petrified.
• What exactly it therefore means that Ralsei is not contaminated by either of those influences… is a question for another time.

That’s something, at least, but it’s relatively small, and there could easily be other explanations for it that don’t rely on this concept. So, what else?

• The dark worlds are reflections of the light world. Both in how they’re based on the light world locations, and with certain characters seeming to parallel light world characters (like Queen seemingly paralleling Noelle’s mother in some ways). And, well, you can see reflections on the surface of bodies of water. But those reflections disguise the true nature of what’s under those depths.
• You know how there’s a weird dissonance between Queen saying the Cyber World fountain was just made the day of chapter 2, but the characters seem to have a history older than that, including stuff like Tasque Manager somehow recognizing Jevil’s items even though he’s from a whole other dark world? Maybe the *versions* of the dark worlds we see, reflections of the light world maintained by the fountains, are new… but the “depths” of the dark worlds are both older and connected to each other, in ways we are so far unable to perceive or explore.
• This could mean, depending on the actual mechanics of it, that we could seal all the fountains, saving the world and cutting off the light and dark worlds, without destroying the dark worlds and darkners. Assuming that’s the resolution DeltaRune is building to.

This feels like a more substantial reason to have this water connection; it could be used as an analogy for explaining this lore concept in a way that people might get more easily.

But, if that were enough, then I would have a video out of this much sooner.

There are some general thematic ties to draw.
• Water is a life-sustaining force — the first life on Earth, in fact, started in water
• It can get dark and deep
• As has come up, it can reflect, and it can be contaminated

You could also argue that its fluid nature supports the contrast between the Dark Worlds as fun fantasy realms with magic and looser rules, and the Light World, Hometown in particular, which is more… set in its ways. Solid.

And maybe that’s enough. But I have this feeling, deep inside, that there’s gotta be something I’m missing. One big thing that inspired this idea in Toby in the first place. The thought that will make this all click.

I’m still waiting for it.

When I next get the chance to look for it, I plan on starting here and here.

In the meantime, if there are any substantial further connections you think of that aren’t accounted for here, please share them with me (my tumblr asks are always open)! If they make it into the video (assuming the video version of this ever gets made), I’ll be sure to credit you if you leave your username :)

For more on the potential importance of Onionsan and the old song from the sea, as they connect to the mysterious Suzy and the theme “don’t forget”, see this tumblr post by @dogcasino