The Deltarune Chapter 5 Weird Route is the darkest and most unsettling path in the entire chapter. It skips the festival, bypasses the Flower Kingdom Dark World entirely, and ends with Kris and Noelle walking into a lake together until the screen tears apart and the game displays a message reading “Insert Chapter 7 Side B.” It is short, heavy, and raises more questions than it answers. This guide covers every requirement, every step, and every outcome — including the Aborted Weird Route and what changes if the lake scene is failed.
- The Weird Route in Chapter 5 requires a completed Weird Route save from Chapter 4. It cannot be started fresh.
- At the start of the chapter, Kris refuses to get out of bed. Mash the directional inputs to force them up.
- Before going to the lake, visit Sans at his ice cream stand to get the Bread. Going without it blocks access to the lake.
- At the lake, Noelle delivers a monologue and leads Kris into the water. Select either Stop or Proceed for the first eight prompts — both work.
- Once Kris and Noelle are submerged, mash Proceed as fast as possible. A hidden timer aborts the route if you are too slow.
- Complete all roughly 70 submerged prompts to reach the Chapter 7 Side B ending.
- If the route is aborted or failed, the chapter continues in an altered state called the Aborted Weird Route, with Kris titled “Shattered Rose.”
What Is the Weird Route?
The Weird Route — also called Side B in the game’s files — is an alternate narrative path that runs across multiple Deltarune chapters. It begins in Chapter 2, where you can use Noelle’s IceShock ability to freeze enemies and push the story down a darker direction. The route continues in Chapter 4 and reaches a major turning point in Chapter 5.
In Chapter 5, the Weird Route completely replaces the normal chapter structure. Instead of attending the festival, exploring the Flower Kingdom Dark World, and fighting Flowery, Kris sleeps through most of the day and eventually goes to the lake with Noelle. The Dark World section of Chapter 5 — the Garden, the Cliffs, the Flower Castle, the boss fights — is entirely skipped. The route ends at the lake with a cryptic message pointing toward Chapter 7, skipping Chapter 6 entirely in the process.
This is not a slight variation on the normal route. It is a completely different chapter experience that deals with Noelle’s grief, her missing sister Dess, and the increasingly fractured relationship between Kris and the player.
How to Unlock the Weird Route in Chapter 5
There is one strict requirement: you must have completed the Weird Route in Chapter 4 and loaded Chapter 5 from that completion file. The Weird Route cannot be started from a fresh Chapter 5 save or a normal Chapter 4 completion file. The state carries forward through the game’s Completion FILE system.
If you have never done the Weird Route before, it begins in Chapter 2 by using Noelle’s IceShock on enemies after she joins the party in Cyber City, including freezing Berdly in their second encounter. Chapter 4 continues it with a private conversation between Kris and Noelle in her room where specific dialogue choices lock in the route. Only after completing Chapter 4’s Weird Route and loading Chapter 5 from that save will the Chapter 5 Weird Route begin automatically.
You will know it is active the moment Chapter 5 starts. Kris is in their room, not sleeping — they are actively resisting getting out of bed. The normal opening where Toriel asks for honey toast does not happen. The entire vibe of the chapter is different from the first second.
Step-by-Step Weird Route Walkthrough
Step 1: Force Kris Out of Bed
The chapter opens with Kris lying in bed while Toriel stands outside the door asking them to come downstairs. Kris does not want to move. Mash your directional inputs repeatedly to force Kris to stand up. Their movement is sluggish and resistant. This is intentional — the game is showing Kris actively fighting against the player’s direction from the very first moment.
Once Kris finally stands, leave the room. Their walking speed is noticeably slower than normal throughout this route. Everything they do takes more effort.
Step 2: Leave the House and Walk With Susie
Exit the Dreemurr residence. Susie is outside waiting. She will walk with Kris. The town has festival stalls set up — Kris slept through most of the day — but the interactive activities from the normal route are absent or different. Susie will describe how the day went and what she and Noelle were up to while Kris was asleep if you interact with any of the stalls.
Step 3: Get the Bread From Sans
Before going to the lake, visit Sans at his ice cream stand outside his grocery store and talk to him to receive the Bread. This step is mandatory. If you walk to the lake without the Bread, Susie will stop Kris and mention that Noelle wanted ice cream, forcing you to find Sans first. You cannot access the lake scene without the Bread in your inventory.
Step 4: Walk to the Lake
After getting the Bread, walk with Susie to the lake. A brief confirmation prompt appears. Susie then leaves Kris alone. Once you enter the lake room, you cannot leave. The route locks you in from this point forward. Noelle is there waiting.
Step 5: Noelle’s Monologue
Noelle delivers a long, important monologue. She expresses gratitude to Kris for helping her break free from the routine she has been trapped in since her sister Dess disappeared. She reminisces about how she and Kris used to wonder what was on the other side of the lake when they were younger. She says she wants to do “something crazy” together before it is too late. Then she takes Kris’s hand and walks toward the water.
Step 6: The First Eight Prompts — Stop or Proceed
As Kris and Noelle walk into the lake together, eight choice prompts appear one by one offering Stop or Proceed. For these first eight prompts, it does not matter which you choose. If you select Stop, Noelle forces Kris to Proceed anyway. The events continue regardless. Both options are tracked internally by the game — it records how many times you chose Stop — but the scene plays the same either way.
The screen shakes increasingly as the two wade deeper. The textbox border turns progressively redder. Noelle’s sprite darkens from the bottom up as the water rises.
Step 7: Submerged — Mash Proceed Without Stopping
Once Kris and Noelle’s faces are fully submerged, the sequence changes completely. Roughly 70 additional Proceed prompts appear in rapid succession. At this point, a hidden timer activates. Every time you select Proceed the timer resets, but each reset makes the timer shorter. It starts at around 8 seconds and shrinks progressively down to 1 second near the end.
If the timer expires without a selection, the route aborts. You get the Aborted Weird Route instead of the Chapter 7 Side B ending. To avoid this, mash Proceed as fast as possible without stopping. Do not hesitate. Do not pause. The screen whites out completely during the final prompts — you will not be able to see the choices — but keep pressing confirm anyway. The SOUL remains barely visible until the very last few prompts.
The screen fades to white. A static noise builds. Then everything cuts to black.
Step 8: Chapter 7 Side B
After completing all the submerged prompts, an old CRT television screen appears displaying the message: “Insert Chapter 7 Side B.” Wait ten seconds or press any non-directional input to confirm. The game then exits to the file select screen. A unique completion file is created with “_b” appended to the file name.
There are no SAVE points during the entire Weird Route. The Chapter 5 normal completion star is not awarded for this path. The Side B file is its own separate record of what happened.
The Aborted Weird Route — What Happens If You Fail
If the hidden timer expires during the submerged section and the route aborts, you do not simply return to the normal chapter. Instead the game enters an alternate state that is significantly different from both the completed Weird Route and the normal route.
The lake scene cuts away with Noelle saying she was wrong — that Kris had not changed after all, and she was getting carried away. The game returns to a version of the normal Chapter 5 route, but with lasting consequences:
- Noelle repeats “Nothing changed” multiple times across different scenes, each time shown in a different context with Susie and the lake, while clearly not believing it herself.
- Kris physically collapses multiple times. Susie has to help them get up after the lake. Kris is visibly worse off than normal.
- Noelle is absent from parts of the resumed route where she would normally appear.
- When Kris enters the Dark World, Ralsei reacts with visible relief when they show up — suggesting he sensed something was very wrong.
- Kris’s Dark World title changes to “Shattered Rose” with the description “Only one knows the rose’s meaning.”
- The rest of the chapter continues as normal, but the emotional weight of what almost happened at the lake hangs over every scene.
The usual sound that plays when the Weird Route is aborted in earlier chapters does not play here. Many players and community members believe the Aborted Weird Route may be its own distinct alternate branch rather than a simple failure state.
What Does “Insert Chapter 7 Side B” Mean?
This message is one of the most discussed mysteries in all of Deltarune. The Weird Route has been referred to internally as “Side B” — like the B-side of a record or cassette — for some time. The message suggests the Weird Route is not continuing into Chapter 6 the way the normal route will. Instead it appears to skip Chapter 6 entirely and resume in Chapter 7, specifically a different version of Chapter 7 that has to be unlocked separately from the normal path.
Many players interpret “Insert Chapter 7 Side B” not as “continued in Chapter 7” but as “insert disc two” — implying that the Side B file created by this ending is literally a different version of the game that only activates at a specific point in Chapter 7. The normal route presumably plays through Chapter 6 and Chapter 7’s Side A before the Side B version becomes accessible.
The lake itself has been theorized to connect to a hidden Dark World beneath the water — a place the main story has circled around for multiple chapters — and to the disappearance of Noelle’s sister Dess. Walking into the lake on the Weird Route, with the screen tearing apart and the presentation breaking down, reads as a descent into whatever is down there. What exactly Kris and Noelle find, and what the lasting consequences are, will only be answered when Chapters 6 and 7 release.
Should You Do the Weird Route?
Only after finishing the normal route first. The Weird Route skips the entire Flower Kingdom Dark World — the Garden, the Cliffs, the Flower Castle, every boss fight, the Flowery ending, all the Cafe Break interactions, the fox hunt, the Pink Coin collecting. If you go straight to the Weird Route, you miss the full Chapter 5 experience. Complete the normal run first, then use a separate save file to explore the Weird Route.
Also worth noting: the Weird Route skips the Dark World entirely, meaning the Chapter 5 Shadow Crystal, Pink’s secret boss fight, and all Dark World collectibles cannot be obtained on this path. Those require the normal route.
For more on the other endings and secrets available in Chapter 5, see our guides on how to get the secret Balloon Ending in Deltarune Chapter 5, how to skip the festival, what happens if you let Yellow die from the Hyper Punishment Gun, and how to get the secret Egg in Deltarune Chapter 5.
Where to Play Deltarune
Deltarune Chapters 1 through 5 are available now on all major platforms.
