This is an expansion upon Part 5 of my previous Kris Knight theory. For all the uninitiated, I seriously recommend reading it! I put a lot of time into that... My wonderful little baby...
I wanted to expand on that section specifically because I think it's honestly a really important thing that most people aren't considering. That being: How would Kris Knight being deconfirmed impact a casual audience?
To help answer this question, I skimmed through many Deltarune Chapter 2 playthroughs and looked for 3 notable moments: Queen's explanation of the Dark Fountain's creation, the closet dialogue, and the ending of the chapter. I’ll go through the data I’ve observed from 45 playthroughs (I wanted to get to 50 but I got too exhausted) and write my own conclusions about what this means for Kris Knight’s validity at the end.
Let’s start with the closet dialogue. Out of 45 playthroughs, 7 were weirded out by the closet dialogue. However, nobody in all the playthroughs I’ve watched started specifically speculating about it being where the Knight was hiding, and basically just comment about it being “weird” or “ominous” offhandedly and then forget about it the moment they leave. Mairusu and Quasimofo in particular both conclude that the closet was likely related to Queen in some way.
Now, let’s go into Queen’s explanation of the Dark Fountain’s creation. My personal favorite example is Phisnom, because his reactions to the ending are extremely satisfying. He made the connection early when Queen gives her explanation and is particularly hyped to see his suspicions confirmed by the end of the chapter. Lets players such as Mairusu (again), Sakaki619, and Griffle Biff, among others, also make the connection literally instantly upon seeing the hand and blade.
Out of 45 lets players I’ve watched, 11 guessed the twist around the time of Queen’s explanation/before the true reveal.
When it comes to the ending, out of all the playthroughs I’ve watched, 30/45 players had a visible reaction of “Kris is the Knight??” Sometimes it’s immediate, sometimes it takes until the credits for it to sink in. This doesn’t count people who guessed the twist earlier and then just stayed perfectly silent like a stoic during the ending.
Actually, a good amount of people are just completely silent or just immediately move on and start yapping about something completely unrelated to Deltarune to conclude their stream or lets play or whatever and I have literally no idea what they’re thinking. I didn’t exclude them because I couldn’t really tell their thoughts one way or the other. Maybe I could’ve counted them and made it its own section, but I’m already 20 lets plays in by the time of writing this sentence and I don’t want to go back and comb through all of the previous ones to check…
When Kris is revealed as the Knight at the ending, Players such as BornLosersGaming and So Whack! immediately connect this to Chapter 1’s ending and realize it wasn’t a red herring in the first place, while several other players such as LaurentheFlute talk it through in their afterthoughts or during the credits.
So, out of 45 lets players I’ve observed, 12 of them directly connect Kris’s actions at the end of Chapter 1 to their newly revealed role as the Knight.
This doesn’t include people who already guessed Kris was the Knight from Queen’s explanation unless they specifically say “yeah, that’s probably what Kris was doing last night instead of eating the pie” at some point. Maybe people made the connection internally, but I can’t read minds through the screen. I’m being very literal about this stuff for no reason.
As for the skeptics, ShortOneGaming and k0na_ seem skeptical because “it’s too obvious”, but they do also connect it to the ending of the first chapter. ShortOneGaming seem to be operating off of the assumption that the Knight and the mysterious benefactor are the same individual, though? Which they’re not, because the mysterious benefactor is clearly Gaster. Jacksepticeye also seems skeptical in general. Doig & Swift Play seem skeptical at first, but they also do connect Kris’s actions at the end of Chapter 1 to the end of Chapter 2, so it looks like they feel it can go either way.
So far, I’ve seen 4 out of 45 lets players seem actively skeptical, though they do still seem to leave Kris being the Knight as a possibility.
(On a sidenote, I think it’s really funny just how many people are caught off guard by the Don’t Forget remix and think the game is lagging. That’s irrelevant to anything I’m talking about here, but it is funny.)
So, what does this mean for casual players?
While this is data from lets players and can’t technically speak for like every person who has played Deltarune ever, I feel like I’ve gotten a good sense of direction for how people feel about this twist. There’s a lot of neutral people who are just like “oh, that happened, cool”, 4 active skeptics and approximately 30 believers. 11 people guessed the twist ahead of time, and 7 people had a reaction to the closet dialogue that wasn’t just reading off the text and walking away.
From this, we can get a general gist of how people who go through the game on their blind, first time playthrough would react. Most people will probably not notice the closet, or take note of Queen’s dialogue, but they will typically reach the ending and come to the conclusion of “Kris is the Knight?” in some form. Then if they’re the skeptical type they might think, “no, wait, it’s too obvious, that can’t be it, this is too easy”, but can’t fully rule it out.
If you’re paying extra attention, you have the full information you need to come to the conclusion that Kris is the Knight on your own before you even reach that ending. The Knight is a Lightner who made a Dark Fountain using a knife → Kris is a Lightner who uses a knife → Kris was out of our sight overnight and had a knife at the time → Kris made the Cyber World fountain and is the Knight. There’s even more evidence to support this (TV being plugged in, Kris’s unusual exhaustion at the start of the chapter) but for most casuals, this is all they need to come to the conclusion on their own - all the other evidence like the TV flavor text is supplementary. It also makes for an extremely satisfying “Ha! I called it!” moment at the ending.
Compare this to how people treat the closet. Sometimes there’s an offhand “huh, that’s weird,” but nobody really thinks twice afterwards - especially when they get to the ending and see Kris make a dark fountain, and suddenly that closet has literally zero relevance. The game is guiding you in a certain direction - it gives you direct, unskippable evidence that supports the idea that Kris could be the Knight in either route, but doesn’t draw much attention to things like the closet or the books.
When casuals walk into the fandom and go “hey, what’s with all these Knight theories? I thought Kris was the Knight?” and get ridiculed for it, it’s honestly absurd to me, since that question is because it is quite literally the conclusion that the game is actively guiding them towards. Of course they’re confused when they step into the theorybrained side of the fandom and see Kris Knight being treated as literally impossible! They’re a casual player, why would they need to think about a closet they might not have even checked? I saw multiple lets players simply walk out of the library without interacting with anything, how are they going to get their evidence? How are they meant to “call it”? Out of 45 people, including people who are genuinely extremely invested in the game, nobody notices the books on the desk or treats the closet as something important to chew on.
Let’s think then, for a moment, about what the experience of a casual player in a few years playing Deltarune for the first time will be like if Kris is not the Knight.
Imagine you are the average joe booting up Deltarune in 2047 and playing the full game in its entirety, no waiting for any new chapters. You get through Chapter 1, reach the ending, and you’re definitely curious about what malicious things Kris is going to do next with their evil knife…!!
Then, you start Chapter 2. Oh, just a silly prank then? Well, it’s just the first chapter ending, of course Kris wasn’t going on a massacre - how silly! You then play through the chapter as usual. When it comes to Queen’s explanation of the Dark Fountains being made, you may or may not have your suspicions - perhaps you just pass over it without paying it too much mind in regards to the Knight’s identity, or the visual of the human hand with the knife reminds you of that cliffhanger, somewhere in the back of your mind. Doesn’t Kris use a knife? Hmm, how very interesting…
Putting that thought to the side for the now, you decide to focus on beating Giga Queen and sealing the Dark Fountain. Once you’re out, you decide to leave the library straight away - you’re not the type to interact with every little nook and cranny of the games you play, so you don’t mind missing some flavor text for some objects. It couldn’t be that important, right?
Then, once you get to the end of the chapter, you’re hit with a big plot twist! Kris made a Dark Fountain? Kris is the Knight?! Either you’re shocked by the revelation, or you’re excited at the fact that you actually managed to guess it! See, it lined up, didn’t it? When you really think about it, was Kris really just eating a pie last night? What a great twist!
And then you go straight into Chapter 3. And then suddenly, the twist is untwisted. Kris wasn’t the Knight. The whole thing with the knife? Yeah, that was a red herring. What was Kris doing that night? No, yeah, they were really just eating a pie for laughs. Sorry, I guess?
At this point, you’re not primed to take any endings seriously. Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 were both red herrings, so what’s stopping Chapter 3’s ending from being a red herring too? What about Chapter 4? Chapter 5? You can’t take any reveal seriously now - the game gave you all the evidence necessary laid out in such a way that would perfectly lead you to believe that Kris created the Cyber World Fountain, and then it pulled the rug out from under you just for the sake of a plot twist. Was it your fault for being late to the party and just believing the game when it essentially just straight up told you “Yeah, Kris is the Knight” instead of combing through the game multiple times for years to notice the tiny little throwaway details that might point to a separate conclusion?
How are you even supposed to figure out that the Knight was hiding in the closet, anyway? You never interacted with it! Does the Knight have to tell you themself, or is it something you just have to infer from knowledge that you may not even have or just straight up forgot? You’re confused. If you’re not explicitly told, you’ll probably just assume that the Knight made the Dark Fountain at night - but if that’s the case, why not just make Kris the Knight in the first place…?
Do you see how this storytelling can get really messy this way? Think to all the above people I’ve talked about. Think about how they treated the conclusion that Kris is the Knight. To the fandom, Kris being the Knight is seen as something impossible, but even the skeptics above seem to think the reason it’s odd is because it’s too obvious - that isn’t instantly condemning the idea, yet people act like it’s already been ruled out entirely for years.
If anyone other than Kris is the Knight, it’s going to be such a clunky reveal for casuals. Again, how is the game supposed to explain the evidence to you? When you assume Kris is the Knight, the storytelling is extremely clean - it sets up unskippable breadcrumbs along the way, and when the ending hits, it makes sense! The trail had been there the whole time, right in front of your very eyes. If you assume that Kris isn’t the Knight, then you actively have to go out of your way to find the miniscule amounts of evidence left in Chapter 2 to support the idea that the Knight made it during the day, because the evidence people usually cite is a closet that you might’ve skipped over or books on a table you hadn’t even noticed. Wouldn’t it feel like such an asspull?
In conclusion, I think we should really just think about how the wider fanbase who isn’t as invested in Deltarune lore would experience this game. There’s going to be a lot of casuals in this fanbase, a lot of lets players who might even be playing it for the first time, lots of people who just won’t have the time to comb through this game for all the little details. It’s a Switch 2 launch title that had a spot in the Switch 2 Direct, Toby is actively advertising to a much wider audience than the fandom itself!!
There’s a whole world outside of us certified Deltaheads who are obsessed with the game. Think about how they perceive the story, and think about how a story meant to appeal to both hardcore fans and casuals alike would be written.
also kris being the knight would be like sick as hell dude like damn that would be a BANGER story Free yourselves from the shackles of fnaf lore storytelling
I’ve been a Knight Kris truther standing firm for the past couple of years. I’ve often seen the sentiment in the Deltarune fandom that Knight Kris is a “simple” take, and that Kris being the Knight is downright impossible, which is something I heavily disagree with. I feel as though this idea revolves around a lot of assumptions the fandom has made about the Knight and the creation of the fountains, and a misunderstanding of the timeframe involved.
With Chapter 3 and 4 on the horizon and our hiatus nearly over with, it’s safe to assume that our answer to the question of “who is the Knight?” will finally be upon us soon. However, before that point, I really want to challenge the idea that that question was the one we were supposed to be asking in the first place - was the Knight ever meant to be a “who-dunnit” mystery that was meant for a grand reveal at the end of the game?
This post will be a breakdown of the theory and why I firmly believe Kris is the most solid candidate for the Knight, and is the only one I believe in.
(note: This post had to be split into two posts due to its length. The other post will be in the reblogs and will be linked at the end!)
PART 1: The Timeframe
A lot of theories regarding the Knight rely on a very specific timeframe for the creation of Chapter 2’s fountain. Namely, the assumption is that the Knight was hiding in the computer lab’s closet and had made the fountain when Berdly and Noelle were in the room. This is built on the fact that Berdly and Noelle were at the desk with their books on the table when they woke up, which wouldn’t make sense if they hadn’t been studying at the time.
However, while there are various other contradictions to the closet timeline that I’ll bring up soon, we actually have a more likely timeframe for the library fountain’s creation judging from various bits of dialogue from NPCs.
From Sweet Cap'n Cakes' shop dialogue, we know that Queen started going into overdrive when the Dark Fountain showed up. However, a plugboy in Cyber Field attributes Queen’s extreme behavior to the internet going down. Both of these dialogues suggest that both events happened at around the same time, since they are both connected to Queen’s corruption.
Then, we have Alphys’s dialogue from the start of the chapter, before Berdly and Noelle even go to the library. It’s from her that we learn that the internet has been down since last night, since she notes Kris couldn’t have been talking to Asriel overnight because of it.
Then, finally, we have Queen’s battle dialogue talking about both events. From all of this combined, we can form a pretty clear timeline of events. The internet goes down, which causes Queen to start worrying. Then, the Dark Fountain appears shortly after and twists Queen’s personality - giving her the “know-how” and influencing her actions.
If the Dark Fountain had appeared during the day when the internet went down during the night, then citing the internet alone as giving Queen the “know-how” and making her extreme doesn’t make much sense. Queen didn’t know what to do when the internet went down, it was the Dark Fountain that gave her purpose and influenced her next actions. The fact that both things are cited as her turning point by separate characters implies that they happened at a very similar time.
Dark Worlds also don’t seem to run on a drastically different timeframe to the real world. Kris and Susie enter the Chapter 1 Dark World in the middle of class, and exit after school has ended. They enter the Chapter 2 Dark World right after school, and exit at the end of the day. By the time Kris and Susie enter the Dark World, Queen has already long since gone into overdrive, and a rebel group has formed against her. This seems like a little too quick if this happens in the short timeframe where Kris and Susie are visiting Castle Town, but makes perfect sense if the Dark World had been there for a while.
On a sidenote, a lot of people like to cite Ralsei’s dialogue about sensing a dark presence as a reason to why the Dark Fountain had to be made while Noelle and Berdly were in the computer lab. However, in the case of Knight Kris, we cannot take this dialogue at face value. Ralsei has a significant level of awareness on things he shouldn’t know and purposefully diverts the player’s attention to talk to Kris alone on multiple occasions, and the two seem to be colluding on something. If Kris is the Knight and made the Dark Fountain, then Ralsei is playing along here.
Besides…
…Isn’t it a bit odd that Ralsei waits for Susie to leave to say this?
PART 2: The Closet Timeframe Is Really Strange Actually?
I wanted to focus more on how I feel the actual timeframe went in the above section, but I really feel like I need to go into depth onto the alternate timeframe that other Knight theories rely on, because there’s so many strange things about it that are baffling from a storytelling standpoint.
The entire timeframe relies on two details: Noelle and Berdly’s positions on the desk, and the closet dialogue. In my personal opinion, these two things are incredibly nitpicky and fall apart when you think about it for a bit.
Things change position in the Dark World, as proven by Chapter 1 where Kris and Susie end up in an entirely different room once the fountain is sealed. People cite Berdly and Noelle being at the desk as to why they had to already have been studying, but Kris and Susie have also changed positions. They should be in front of the door by this logic, but instead they’re standing right in front of the desk.
The idea that Noelle and Berdly are dreaming is a very important aspect to their Dark World experience, and especially Noelle’s. In the Weird Route in particular, she clings to the idea that the Dark World is a dream, and assumes that Berdly’s simply asleep by the end - she’s desperate to believe it. If they were in any other positions, this assumption would not work. If they woke up on the floor, then it would be far harder for them to suspend their disbelief. It would be harder for Noelle to escape reality and believe Berdly is simply dreaming in the Weird Route.
Berdly and Noelle had to be placed in these positions because it was convenient from a storytelling standpoint. The books were placed there so that Berdly could fail to pick them up in the neutral route, thus letting the player know that his arm being injured in the Dark World had real consequences in the Light World. Using the books being on the table as proof that they were undeniably studying beforehand and thus no other timeframe makes sense is a Cinema Sins level of nitpick - these decisions are conveniences to serve the narrative.
Now, let’s actually go over the sequence of events if the Knight truly was hiding in the closet. Alright, how do they make the fountain?
No, really. How on earth would they be able to make it while Berdly and Noelle are in the room?
Queen is the laptop, and the laptop is facing Berdly and Noelle on the desk. Since Queen would’ve only been able to actually witness the fountain’s creation and obtain the video if she was facing the Knight, then this would have to mean that the Knight made the fountain on the opposite side of the desk.
Not only does the recording of the fountain being made have zero indication that anyone else is part of it, only mentioning a single “someone”, this would mean that if Berdly and Noelle were in the library, then the Knight would’ve had to have made the Dark Fountain directly behind them. Why? How would Berdly and Noelle not notice?
Either the Knight put them to sleep with some type of magic, which we have no evidence for and would go against the idea of the Light World distinctly lacking that kind of magic, or these two studious people simply decided to lay there and take a nap for no reason, thus giving the Knight an opportunity to make the fountain. But in that case, why could the Knight not point the laptop in any other direction?
It’s likely that the Knight left the laptop on to make sure Queen could witness the fountain’s creation. In the closet timeframe, this just keeps adding more steps and contrived assumptions. How did they put Berdly and Noelle to sleep? If they didn’t put Berdly and Noelle to sleep, then how did Berdly and Noelle not notice someone fiddling with the laptop in front of them and then making a Dark Fountain directly behind them? Why did the Knight have to make the fountain at that very moment, instead of waiting for them to leave so they didn’t have any witnesses?
But if you use the night timeframe, then it makes things much simpler. The Knight could move as they please and do all the setup they want without being interrupted. They’d be alone, so there’d be no need to worry about anyone else showing up on the recording of the fountain being made.
As a sidenote, this also matches Kris’s actions at the end of the chapter perfectly, which just further strengthens the idea that they’re the Knight. Kris turns the TV on right before making the Dark Fountain in front of it, just as the Knight presumably turned the laptop on right before making the Dark Fountain in front of it. The TV, aka Tenna, is likely going to be the main villain of Chapter 3, just as Queen was the main villain in Chapter 2.
Now, is there a problem with adding foreshadowing in some missable dialogue? Well, technically not. However, we have no proof as of now that the closet dialogue is foreshadowing anything. We have the above timeframe to contradict it, and plenty of other things that make the concept less reasonable that I’ve already explained all working against it. The odds are pretty stacked right now.
However, if you want an example of missable flavor text providing proper, provable foreshadowing, then…
brother gone . parents divorced . in weird friendlimbo state with basically everyone in their town . heart thing inside them making them do shit . in high school . kris deltarune dreemurr if anyone deserves to go apeshit its you
if i were kris id start eating my own organs i honestly think theyre doing great considering their circumstances
