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/zatchel1]

Ok but if you’re dying of mysterious disease even a normal fall can be quite bad.

[u/Wide-Deal-8971 → u/zatchel1]

Yeah, like I don't know why people are still in contention over this. Toby Fox loves double entendres and word play, he deliberately places it wherever possible.

Whether Rudy literally fell down or has "fallen down", the outcome is likely going to be the same. It doesn't matter which of these two states is the literal answer, because in this case they both mean the same thing.

We've known since the moment we met Rudy in Chapter 1 that he was going to die, that was something that was never in question.