u/Ultraverse1

i know a lot of people have already said this, but the weird route seems like more of breaking the game world confines by abusing the mechanic of forcing Noelle to PROCEED to break past the intended barrier of the lake, rather than a drowning/death scene. This is also backed up by the fact that the last dialogue sprite before the game cuts to black isn't gray/doesn't have an underwater effect as all the other ones do, implying that they broke past the lake as they don't seem to be underwater anymore, and if you don't mash proceed fast enough you blackout and get washed up on the shore, further implying that proceeding is able to break the natural laws of the world, thus allowing them to not drown and allowing them to escape the confines the game has placed, allowing them to skip way further into the game before they are supposed to (as backed but by the "insert chapter 7 side b" text after the screen fades to black).

Boundary/sequence breaking is also a common glitch in rpg games to skip sections in a game but can also cause serious consequences due to you not being meant to be there yet/at all (which seems likely with how the weird route not only seems to be breaking the prophecy but the game itself in the process).

Source for the dialogue sprite stuff: https://www.reddit.com/r/Deltarune/s/RpHF3mnXiD

Portal Bump video that also helps this theory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6tK8MdEH7Y

(there is more possible evidence to this, such as the theory that the depths shown in the beginning of the game is actually under the lake of hometown, but I'm too lazy to make a whole deep dive analysis in to my theory, and i feel like what i have said in this post gets my point across)

(i will also be posting this to r/Deltarune once the karma limits are removed)