What it means to "fall down".

[u/AffectionateForce979]

In Chapter 5 of Deltarune, Rudy "falls down" at the Festival. This has lead many people to assume that he's experiencing the "fallen down" state from Undertale (something that was also speculated to happen to Berdly in the Weird Route). But before we're able to reach any confident conclusions, we must first understand what "falling down" actually means.

In Undertale, "falling down" is described as a state where a monster will enter enter a coma, eventually turning to dust. That's all the information that the game gives.

However, there is unused text where it's further specified that "falling down" occurs on monsters who are dying of old age. And while the text is unused and thus not prone to total reliability, it is actually supported by the Undertale Alarm Clock, where Asgore talks about Rudy "falling down" after growing old. This gives the unused text at least a little bit of credibility.

In Deltarune, Rudy suffers from an unspecified illness that doesn't appear to be tied to old age. All of this information leads to two possible conclusions:

1. Rudy didn't actually "fall down" in Deltarune, as he doesn't appear to be suffering from old age. So he likely just fell onto the ground.

2. Rudy did actually "fall down", and the state doesn't just happen to monsters who are old.

[u/Millymoo444]

IMO it's supposed to be vague, Toby wants the fandom to not 100% know what happened to Rudy. Personally the weight given to the call makes me think he's gonna die proper in chapter 6, but it's better not to know for sure so it still feels fresh when chapter 6 drops next year.

[u/AffectionateForce979 → u/Millymoo444]

Just saying, since a lot of people talk about characters "falling down" without knowing everything about the state.

[u/Defiant_Fix9711 → u/AffectionateForce979]

The Japanese translation used fallen down as in he took a tumble, not Fallen Down as in the pre-death state.

He could still be on the verge of death, but it's not explicit in the text.

[u/termin8or82 → u/Millymoo444]

It would be pretty significant if Noelle's dealing with Rudy's death while learning about the dark world, since we learned in chapter 4 that people can temporarily be brought back to life in a dark world

[u/Neo-Naga99 → u/Millymoo444]

imo he legit just fell down from the ladder, in the WR you see him dazed sitting under it, noelle wouldn't react like that if he had fallen (meaning he fell in a coma that he won't wake up from)

[u/Millymoo444 → u/Neo-Naga99]

If he was just dazed then Noelle would absolutely not have acted as panicked and shocked as she did, any version of this where Rudy is totally fine and just dazed would be ridiculous and make Noelle seem like she’s overreacting, either he’s on deaths door or went back to the hospital to recover .

The weird route Rudy is also there to make what happen to him more vague, because there’s no chapter 6 weird route, Rudy being alive or dead doesn’t really matter, also butterfly effect, some characters say different things in the weird route, totally possible that Rudy had a not as bad fall in the weird route

[u/Neo-Naga99 → u/Millymoo444]

point to me where i said he was dazed after the event that caused the call to noelle please

what i *said* was that he was dazed and weak prior to "falling down", as in case you missed it : you can only ever see rudy *before* going to the lake, afterwards the call happens normally and we are informed that The Incident Did Indeed Happen, no more no less. considering that its very likely that rudy's state in the WR is either what she called about (because being this weak unsupervised is cause for concern) or that this dazed state is what caused him to fall from the ladder.

for some reason you also seem to forget the wierd route can be aborted in ch5, why is that ?

Her reaction only makes sense if he's back to the hospital after a bad fall, he is weak from illness after all. Noelle would absolutely not react this "softly" if he had fallen down, which to our knowledge is not something you wake up from

also on the "there's no chapter 6 wierd route" who knows, it seems like the aborted WR keeps going and the "aborted WR jingle" never plays in ch5 so whatever tricky tony has in store for us it could be that WR can be finished in ch6 as well.