Somehow, you remembered the characters that populated the beautiful world of Deltarune, and realized some of their lives have been just pitiful... the power of despair shines down within you.
WARNING: Due to the nature of the game, all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.
Straight Woobie
- Noelle Holiday is undoubtedly the biggest example. She already has many problems from the get go: her father, Rudy, is hospitalized for unknown reasons that are implied to be terminal and Noelle visits his room everyday; her mother is the mayor of Hometown but is always too busy to spend time with Noelle and is strict to boot (whether or not to abusive levels being left up to interpretation); and she is smothered by her co-dependent study classmate, Berdly. Not to mention, Noelle is described by her father to be afraid of lots of things, and due to his seemingly terminal condition, he is afraid he won't be able to be there for her.
- If you thought Chapter 1 was tearjerking, Chapter 2, aside from making Noelle a major character, kicks up the ante to Trauma Conga Line levels. She reveals she had an older sister, Dess, who is no longer with their family and is implied to have either died or disappeared prior to the events of Deltarune. A flashback narrated by Berdly also reveals Noelle froze up in despair in a Spelling Bee contest when she had to spell the word "December". Her room in the Dark World is filled with calendars set to December 25th, as a result of Noelle repeatedly searching the internet for "December Holiday", which has very strong implications about her sister Dess. Additionally, while she's in the Dark World, she also has to deal with both Queen, who wants to roboticize her head (or at least brainwash her), and Berdly, who is working with Queen. Thank the heavens she is finally thrown a bone and (sort of) grows a spine at the end of the chapter despite everything she goes through.
- However, the Weird Route takes the trauma from 10 to 100: after making a "truce" with Kris so they can get out of the Dark World, she is gaslit into becoming a killing machine under Kris' (read: your) command under the pretense "she is becoming stronger" and, despite attempting to warn him to run away, is coerced into using her ice powers to kill Berdly. She becomes traumatized by the experience, afraid of Kris' very presence, and if not for the fact Susie quickly intervenes, could be pushed even further over the edge at the hospital in the Light World if you either reveal to her that it wasn't a dream or move during the same scene (while in the dark, no less) while she's composing herself... poor, poor Noelle.
- Despite being a pampered Royal Brat, Lancer's life has been spectacularly crappy up to this point. His father hates that he sympathizes with the Lightners and isn't above threatening to throw the poor kid off the roof to force his friends into retreating. Besides that, he had no friends before he met Susie, and since Susie wrongly suspects him to have betrayed her and the others, he ends up in a fight, taking a great deal of damage. After he imprisons his own father for his hate crimes, one has to wonder how he manages to stay relatively mentally stable, even if his newfound friends and subjects now respect him.
- Ralsei, regardless of his Ambiguous Innocence, gets a free ticket to Woobieland in Chapter 2 as well. As soon as Kris and Susie return to the Dark World at the start of the chapter, he is ecstatic to see his friends again. The reasons to it come afloat at the swan ride in Queen's castle: prior to meeting Kris and Susie, Ralsei never had any real friends, and he always wanted to know the feeling of having them. The arrival of Kris and Susie teach Ralsei a lot — he futilely tries to convince Susie to change her ways and is a firm believer of sparing everyone through Mercy, until the battle with King teaches him otherwise. Susie pulling Ralsei to the Cyber City's back path fortunately brings both much closer, as both learn from each other, with Ralsei learning it's okay to just Be Yourself. Finally, he really loves Kris (the extent to which is unknown), seems to know about them very much, and holds them in high regard due their apparent willingness to help, which says a lot about him.
- If you buy the implications that Kris is actually not fond of Ralsei at all, it takes a different, tearjerking turn. Several of the responses Kris can take towards Ralsei include throwing the Manual to the floor "hard" in Chapter 1 (which prompts Ralsei to remark he could always "make a better one next time"), or Flipping the Bird at the camera during the aforementioned swan ride in Chapter 2. Likewise, if Kris drinks from the Tea items, they will recover 120 HP from Susie's tea, 70 HP from the Noelle Tea... and a mere 60 HP from Ralsei's tea. With this in mind, one could argue the only reason why Kris is ever nice towards Ralsei is because of the SOUL's (read: your) actions, and that Kris probably sees Ralsei as little more than a stranger, or worse, a grim reminder of someone they miss horribly (Asriel) to the point that, if Kris really wanted to, they could lash out at Ralsei through no fault of his own. Poor fluffy boy.
Jerkass Woobie
- Susie is the class delinquent who scares everyone, steals chalk to eat, and threatens Kris when Alphys makes the terrible mistake of sending both to get her some chalk. However, Susie is obviously very lonely, has a rather realistic response to being Trapped in Another World, and points out that it's hard for her to be nice because she hasn't had much practice (on Layman's terms, she was never taught how to be such). Chapter 2 also implies her relationship with her parents might be strained (to ambiguous levels), further driving her to be the way she is (she spares Kris at the start of the game only out of respect for Toriel, giving a lot of dark implications). When Lancer says he wants to be like her, she seems surprised, and her constant fixation on food suggests she might not be eating right (at one point in Chapter 1, she says she's only eaten chalk for breakfast). Her friendship with Lancer finally brings out her soft side, though, and she learns to warm up to Ralsei and especially Kris just in time, if in her own way.
- Berdly, after Chapter 2. Having antagonized the party for so long, his motives to why he behaves like an Academic Alpha Bitch and hates Kris' guts finally surface after receiving a severe "The Reason You Suck" Speech by Susie: turns out Berdly was never actually "the smart guy" of the class, and he was always ignored by everyone and developing low self-esteem in the process, until he entered a Spelling Bee contest which he accidentally won against Noelle in the final round. However, while he finally earned some recognition, this soon evolved into an Inferiority Superiority Complex where Berdly "had" to keep up as a top student to fill what he thought was everyone else's expectations, thus causing him to take Noelle for himself in order to study. It doesn't help that Berdly's self-esteem remains low since then, and while he genuinely cares for Noelle, her being Kris' Childhood Friend made him jealous as hell, further fueling his complex. After breaking his haughty mask, Susie talks Berdly into finally coming to terms with everything, and while his insufferable demeanor is still there, his opinion of the party finally mellows. People with low self-esteem or other issues could relate to Berdly's situation.
- Spamton is an example of this in the Neutral route — after experiencing success thanks to an Anonymous Benefactor, all his friends gave up on him, then his mysterious helper gave up on him too, but not without driving him mad in the process. Ever since everyone he claims were important in his life disappeared, Spamton was reduced to living in the trash, with a corruption in his programming which makes him talk in complete nonsense. The Jerkass part comes in when Spamton manipulates Kris into his "deal" to "make him a [[Big Shot]]", guiding them to Queen's basement so he can hijack the "NEO body". After going NEO, he betrays Kris out of disappointed desperation at his subpar upgrade and tries to steal Kris' soul to gain freedom (not unlike a certain animate flower from the original game), with whether or not it being out of self-serving desires or in a genuine attempt to help Kris being left to interpretation. If defeated non-violently, however, he realizes his chance to gain freedom was only artificial after the last wire holding him is cut and he falls down on the ground like a giant doll. While he's quite possibly the most depraved villain in both chapters so far thanks to his huge cunning and manipulative demeanor, he remains tragic enough due to him wanting freedom and recognition all along, being genuinely affable towards Kris during the quest, and being grateful to the party when they attempt to help him and free him.Spamton: It seems after all I couldn't be anything more than a simple puppet. But you three... You're strong. With a power like that... Maybe you three can break your own strings. Let me become your strength.
- That said, he loses a lot of sympathy in the Weird Route, due to him not only taking over Queen's mansion, but also becoming Faux Affably Evil and actively encouraging and assisting in what the player did to Noelle and the Darkners in said route, and even Slut-Shaming them for that.
Stoic Woobie
- Perhaps surprisingly, Seam the shopkeeper. They run a shop selling items that they admit they have no personal connection to, is the retired court magician, and had to lock up their only friend, Jevil, for the safety of everyone else. Some of what Jevil told them certainly stuck with them about being a fictional video game character, and despite their composure it's quite clear Seam is beyond the Despair Event Horizon. But the worst part? They don't seem to care anymore whatsoever, and hide it all beneath a cynical facade. All of this and their mangled, worn toy appearance gives them a pretty sympathetic side.
- Also quite surprisingly, Kris falls in this category too. Though their situation seems benign compared to the others (having a loving family, a nice home, and trusty friends), they've had troubles interacting with others in the past because they were the only human in a town full of monsters — they are able to do it only because they became the puppet of an indifferent player through a SOUL (a hard truth they discover while fighting Spamton NEO) and this also prevents them from playing the piano, a true nightmare for any instrument players. If you decide to follow the Weird route, Kris also loses one of their only friends and they become shocked (as described by Susie and Ralsei) after doing everything that happens afterward, all because of you. This is all, however, without mentioning how much it's implied Kris misses Asriel, who apparently was an amazing brother towards Kris. Several of Kris' responses towards events that involve Asriel are tearjerking, with the biggest offender being the "hot chocolate" at the family diner; upon drinking the cocoa cup, Kris' throat tightens... Yikes.
