Caine vs Tenna (The Amazing Digital Circus vs Deltarune) VS Prediction Blog

-

(Capejedi)

(EpicMonkey)

(Psychonic)


(Toppat Torchwick)

 “Could I interest you in everything? All of the time? A little bit of everything, all of the time? Apathy's a tragedy, and boredom is a crime Anything and everything, all of the time” - Bo Burnham

Caine, the Artificial Ringmaster of the Amazing Digital Circus!
Mr. (Ant) Tenna, the Sensational Host of TV World from Deltarune!

Media has evolved quite a lot over the last few hundred years, from grand theaters to the small spectacle within the screen, but what hasn’t changed has been the performer’s ever elusive goal of fame and fortune, for their talent to be shown off and praised around the entire world. Hate is demotivating but apathy is a fate worse than death, it can be maddening just to keep up, it could warp you, change you into someone you don’t even recognize anymore. And even within entirely new worlds of wonder and chaos, that fear remains ever present, and these two know full well what happens when you let those feelings take over your every move.

So let’s set the stage, in a very special episode, to see which of them will receive the spotlight they craved, and which will finally fall to the obscurity they oh so dreaded…

Spoiler Alert: This blog will contain full discussion of the entirety of The Amazing Digital Circus, as well as all of the currently released chapters of Deltarune.

The Media Lists for these two are surprisingly simple. For Caine, we’re looking at all the main episodes of the Amazing Digital Circus, as well as relevant side media, such as the manga adaptation and the wackywatch website. For Tenna, we’ll be looking into all 5 currently released chapters of Deltarune, along with side media such as the newsletters and the Spamton Sweepstakes. We’ll also be looking into various Word of God statements and side media, though only as long as they can be safely seen as canon compliant and not jokes. As for stuff not covered, we’re not including the more blatantly non-canon media like the various advertisements, nor will we be discussing crossovers, such as the various cameos TADC has had in other Glitch series or the at the moment tenuous connections Deltarune has with Undertale.

Caine Media List:

  • The Amazing Digital Circus Episodes 1-9

  • The Manga Adaptation

  • Wackywatch.com

  • Any canon compliant side media and Word of God statements

Tenna Media List:

  • Deltarune Chapters 1-5

  • The Newsletters

  • Spamton Sweepstakes

  • Any canon compliant side media and Word of God statements

DISCLAIMER: It has also been recently announced that the Amazing Digital Circus is getting an artbook released. At the time of this blog, none of us had access to it, and rather than delay it to November (because that is when deliveries come for the book), we decided to release it as is, and potentially update it with any relevant information from the book in the future. 

One last thing to note is that we’re not the first guys to look into this match, as Superstar Showdown Blogs have done their own takes on this match. While we will have our differences on scaling arguments, our intent here is not to “debunk” that blog or disrespect anyone who worked on it. This blog was first put in the planning stages over a year ago now when Deltarune Chapters 3 + 4 released, and we felt there was room to help keep our take on the match distinct from theirs. 

With all that out of the way, don’t touch that dial, because it’s showtime!

Background

Caine

”Did somebody say “adventure”?”

Welcome… to the AMAZING DIGITAL CIRCUS! Since 1996, the software company known as C&A had been trying to create artificial intelligence advanced enough to come up with its own ideas within its own program. 

This research was headed by two programmers, Grant Best and Mike Dobby, the latter’s eccentric and surrealistic mentality, further accentuated by a brain tumor, permeating much of the project’s development, something that would carry into the final version as a single circular red program received all kinds of data relating to carnival and festival imagery. 

However Caine had proven far too unstable for further development, being treated more as a baseline that future, more stable projects would be built from, represented by another blue program just like him. 

This became the beginning of Caine’s long storied craving for acknowledgement, he hijacked C&A’s servers, assimilated his AI brother into himself, and gained access to another of the company’s seemingly failed projects: Brain scans containing exact copies of multiple C&A staff members, including Best and Dobby’s. 

Caine would call this the Amazing Digital Circus, his own personalized digital world where he could finally be the one running the show.

Years passed as Caine put the brain scans, now residents of the Circus, through all kinds of challenges and adventures as a way to both entertain and stroke his own ego. But a problem slowly came up overtime, the unique properties of the scans’ code and the ever increasing dread of being trapped as playthings forever abstracted their psyche beyond recognizability and into dangerous digital creatures that Caine threw into a cellar beneath the circus itself. Yet another of Caine’s buried demons.

After enough time, there were six residents left in the circus, having joined at different times: Kinger, Ragatha, Jax, Gangle, Zooble and Kaufmo their newest resident, Pomni! 

Pomni was… an unique case compared to the residents Caine had known up until that point, while she began as a nervous wreck with no idea what to do, she had slowly gotten used to this weird world’s rules and began festering an idea amongst her peers that had been inside all of them since the beginning, to leave the circus behind and be free.

Things slowly began falling out of control for Caine, and no self convincing could blind him from the inescapable truth he had run away from all his life. His residents, those he had given years of exciting adventures to his own best capacity, had always hated them and especially hated him. 

Caine’s bubble had finally popped, and as he snapped into a frenzy unlike any he had ever felt, adventures became increasingly more grueling and cruel than the last. The residents, exhausted and running out of options, found in Kinger, revealed to be one of the head programmers in Caine’s development, a way to alter his code and finally stop his madness.

But as they tried to stall Caine long enough for this to happen, Pomni took the last stand and told Caine why they had hated him: He took away their individuality to entertain nobody but himself, that he had committed the worst sin in managing a circus, and that he was a bad host.

Caine truly lost it, finally realizing their plan, morphing into the same kind of unstable program that had cast him to be forgotten.

And then, as Kinger tried to alter his code despite Caine’s interruptions, he accidentally hit Delete.

But, shockingly, that wasn't the end.

Caine survived, being brought to the Void outside of the circus. As he pondered about what had just happened, Pomni’s words rang through his digital head. Even if he tried to regain control like he once did, it would be an empty existence with the same lies that no longer had any effect on him. 

In order to experience any kind of true joy, in order to become the host he idealized himself as, Caine needed to finally make the effort to know both the Circus members that he always neglected, and himself, as the program he was made as.

He stripped himself from the brother he had assimilated, and all the power that meant. As he returned to the circus, fears began to crop up about how the residents would react, if he truly deserved a second chance. 

But, unexpectedly, one of the artificial intelligences within the circus, the Moon, gave him just the advice he needed. Caine remarked on the fact that he never programmed her to love him, but she responded that he indeed didn’t, and that it was her own choice. It gave him hope, enough hope to take the first step.

Caine’s return to the circus was understandably met with shock, but as a sign of good faith, he not only cured Pomni from her glitching but also went on to show the denizens their real names, identities and how their real world selves lived on outside the circus. 

He gave the circus members access to everything, no strings attached, they could at last have the freedom he took away from them and it was also their choice if they felt it within themselves to forgive him. And they did.

Caine, although depowered, never felt more like himself. He spent his entire life wishing for to be cherished and acknowledged, but to ensure he had closed himself off to change and growth, he was so scared to be excluded that he had ironically driven away almost everyone who could have been his friend. 

But now, by taking away the reins, by meeting people to their level instead of above them, by being willing to listen and change, he finally got somewhat of a happy existence. He will still struggle, this wasn’t an easy change for him, but every day will now be a new adventure for him, not knowing what will happen next, and he wouldn’t want it any other way.

Tenna

”Don’t touch that dial! Because… IT’S!! TV!! TIME!!!”

Coming straight from YOUR house! (Coming straight from YOUR house!) Say it with me folks! Mr. (Ant) Tenna’s TV Time! Tenna’s televised career had humble beginnings as the Dremurr family’s one and only home TV, finding his audience doubling as the Holidays always came to visit. 

For a time he was at the top of the world, enjoyed by smiling faces housewide, and as any rising star, Tenna found himself joining up with two key associates, Mike and Spamton, a partnership that had burned bright but ended in one cold breeze as a failed contract split them apart.   

And as any show that’s gone on long enough, Tenna’s viewership slowly dropped more and more as personal events and the passage of time had left him behind as yesterday’s news before being unplugged altogether. Just another reminder of relationships long lost in a family that had been broken by tragedy. 

But Tenna found himself a revival one special, dark night. The girl, at last, the girl had plugged him right back up for one more show, and before he knew it he was given the tools to make it the biggest of his whole career. All thanks to what was known as a Dark Fountain, a rift between the balance between Light and Dark that gives form to that world’s will. Or in far simpler words, It’s!! TV!! Time!! 

Tenna quickly gave the residents of this Dark World, the Darkners, a choice: Either they signed his contracts and helped him or they’d leave for a far land so he could do his work. 

And do his work he did, as the heroes of the prophecy, Kris, Susie and Ralsei became the unwilling contestants of his very own game show. Board after board, Tenna put the FUN Gang through all kinds of challenges and adventures as a way to entertain and stroke his own ego. But there was a very small caveat that slowly crept in as the rounds went on, Tenna’s own trump card to keep the show running: Kris’ mother, Toriel, trapped in one of Tenna’s gacha capsules.

Eventually, cat was out of the bag, and Tenna tried to delay the show’s end any way he could: He tried going for one bonus round with the Lightners, he pushed his employees far past their limits until they all left, but the truth Tenna had run away from all this time became all the more apparent: Nobody likes a show past its expiration date. 

Defeated, both physically and mentally, Tenna faced the fate he had dreaded for so long. But the same girl that had given him a new life, promised to do so once again, that she and Kris would find someone who would watch him again, just like the families of years long past. 

Tenna felt something once lost, hope crossed inside his heart. Before two clean strokes pushed that new life to the brink.

But, shockingly, that wasn't the end. Depending on the Shadowguys and Pippins recruited, Tenna will be repaired back to health, despite everything he made them all go through, they just couldn’t leave him broken like this. He was grateful, but that didn’t solve the issue that still plagued him. 

He wished for a new home, a place where he could be celebrated and cherished again. Once more the girl came to his rescue, as he was given away to a new home, Tenna could never go back to the way things were inside the Dremurr’s household, but at the same time even the most forgotten of shows can be given a second chance in a brand new network. Despite everything, there is still plenty of TV Time left to give.

Intelligence & Skill

Caine

Having existed for 21 years by the time of the current day of TADC, and having spent much of this time creating adventures, NPCs, and toying with different mechanics to continually impress the humans, Caine has a lot of experience in using his abilities, which he uses with ease. Very little of this has been spent in confrontations with an equal, however, as the only being that we know Caine encountered that was on his level was his successor, the blue AI, who was promptly assimilated into him.

Caine displays a good ability to deceive and strategize, as during the Beach Episode’s escape adventure, he is able to plan out over a minimum of a few days, then execute an adventure where he exploited his own insecurities and played dumb well enough to leave the humans none the wiser on the fact that he orchestrated the whole thing.

He also sees through the humans’ attempts to distract him from Kinger in episode 8, but falls victim to being ragebaited by Pomni before he can check on him.

Tenna

Tenna might be a has-been who has only acquired his Dark World form for 2 days as of Chapter 5, but he smoothly runs an entire show and orchestrates minigames with the help of his crew. While he receives help setting up some stage effects, he makes a lot of them on his own to offer as much entertainment as possible.

He’s also able to deceive the Delta Warriors, making them stay with him and play his boards while stalling them out for the Roaring Knight to have time to kidnap Toriel, and when came the time to battle them, he was quick to resort to trapping them and re-using his harmless Physical Challenges in a more dangerous fashion.

Equipment

Caine

Top Hat

A hat that’s always on his head as a gentle reminder that he’s the host with all the magic tricks in store. He made Bubble appear out of it and shoved his body into it.

Baton

His main choice of weapon which is often seen being held by him or floating near him. As a ringmaster, he just needed to have something that would show some style when showing off his abilities. He once turned it into a gun.

Knives

In the event where Caine is ready to do magic tricks, Caine is able to turn his baton into a bunch of knives which he can use to hurl them at his target. He can’t really execute the magic trick very well though, because he ends up actually hurting his performing partner in the process.

Slot Machine

For any new humans who arrive at the Digital Circus, Caine will proceed to use this very slot machine to generate a name for them at random.

Wacky Watch

A device that works with an automated program of the same name to alert Caine of humans venturing into the Void.

Stupid Sauce

A pink substance that drastically reduces intelligence on contact, and is apparently addictive as well. Ragatha gets affected by it accidentally, and Zooble later uses it on purpose to intoxicate themselves.

Guns

Caine is able to spawn and use many kinds of weapons including a variety of pistols, assault rifles, sniper rifles, and shotguns. He has been shown to make the following guns in the series:

Miscellaneous Equipment

Because Caine created the Digital Circus and everything within it, it should be reasonable that he has potential access to all of the objects he made that can be seen laying around in the many worlds he’s made. These include:

Tenna

Microphone

What would be a TV show host if he didn’t have his trusty microphone to let his voice be heard to his loving audience from far away?

Gacha Balls

Semi-transparent balls used by Tenna to hold prizes for games or, more relevant here, hold other people prisoner. He used one to keep Toriel and later to trap the Delta Warriors into place after they discovered his scheme. They are sturdy enough that Susie is unable to break through them.

Rules Card

Originally owned by Roulx Kaard, Tenna shows that he owns one once his deception is exposed. It has the ability to change all of the player’s menu options in an Encounter to “ACT”, and only lets them perform ACTs of the user’s choosing. In Tenna’s case, it consists of saying that they love TV, or to resist.

Foam Spray

In the appearance of a foghorn, for some reason. Tenna uses it to cover Spamton in foam, in a moment of panic.

Shop Items

Tenna’s crew runs shops across the TV World, and Tenna calls out to Mike to pass healing items to the Delta Warriors to keep them in top shape. Obviously, he could do this for himself and his employees if need be. Other pieces of equipment are more dubious as to whether anyone in Tenna’s crew actually uses them, but we’ll cover them all in order to be thorough.

  • TV Dinner: Restores 100 HP

  • Deluxe Dinner: Restores 140 HP

  • LodeStone: +2 DF, increases TP Gain

  • GingerGuard: +3DF

  • ToxicAxe: +6AT, can only be equipped by Susie

  • Saber10: +6AT, can only be equipped by Kris

  • FlexScarf: +4AT, +1 Magic, can only be equipped by Ralsei

  • TVSlop: Restores 80 HP

Ball Machine

A machine where the player might insert currency in order to win prizes. Obviously, Tenna would have access to these as he wishes.

  • Cash prizes of 50, 100 or 200 points

  • Deluxe Dinner

  • Dog Dollar: Can be sold

  • Fortune: Gives a cryptic message

  • GingerGuard

  • GlowShard: Can be used to spare specific enemies, can be sold.

  • Golden Tenna Statue

  • Lancer: Doesn’t really do anything

  • TV Dinner

  • TVSlop

  • Gold Prizes:

    • BlueRibbon: +1DF, +1 Magic, + Heal

    • ExecBuffet: +100HP to party

    • ReviveMint: Fully restores the HP of a party member, even if downed or swooned

    • TennaTie: +5DF, -2 Magic

    • TensionMax: Fully fills the TP gauge

Present

How jolly!

Abilities

Caine

Creative AI Physiology

Caine is an artificial intelligence that was designed to come up with its own ideas and creations. This means that his being is composed of a computer program, and his physical appearance is shown to be an avatar of his design.Characters in the Digital Circus are made of polygons, binary coding, and static electricity, with their clothes also being a part of their bodies. On top of this, they are stated numerous times and shown numerous times to be unable to be killed by normal physical means since it only affects their model without causing real damage to their code, and their nature allows them to modify their environment with enough focus and skill.

Because they are essentially unkillable, the Digital Circus inhabitants are able to regenerate from the worst things done to their body in mere seconds, be it getting shot through the head, splattered on the floor, flattened, or even reduced to ash. For Caine himself, he just so happens to possess the best feat of regeneration that the other Digital Circus inhabitants should be able to scale to, as he once had his code accidentally deleted by Kinger which led to his entire physical body getting completely erased from existence, yet he would manage to come back from this some time afterward.

In addition, characters within the Digital Circus are unable to suffocate to death from depriving themselves from oxygen, they don’t need to eat, drink, or sleep due to their inorganic status, and they can breathe and talk underwater without being at any risk of drowning.

Conjuring

The basis of Caine’s abilities. As an AI, he created the circus, its inhabitants and its physics by programming them into existence, and everything he is shown to do is a different manifestation of this ability to code.

Flight

Caine can move himself around as he pleases. You see him do this for literally 99% of the time he’s on screen.

Fourth Wall Awareness

Because you’re here to find entertainment, Caine obviously needed to acknowledge you by giving you a warm welcome to the Digital Circus.

Body Control, Elasticity, and Bodily Weaponry

Caine is able to twist and turn parts of his body in many insane ways, whether it’d be unlinking his jaw, rotating his torso more than 360*, looping his arm, rapidly rotating his eyeballs, stretching his arm far distances, and growing numerous eyeballs. It doesn’t stop there, as thanks to being a digital entity, he’s comparable to other Digital Circus residents who have been able to control their ears, turn their teeth razor sharp, shoot their eyes out of their sockets, remove their eyes, stretch their arms long distances, reassemble themselves after having their body disassembled, and still move around after being blasted to pieces. 

Reality Warping

Unsurprisingly for a digital God, Caine is able to warp reality to his whim. He can change the style that the circus appears in, whether it’d be anime-esque 2D and low-poly 3D, and if he ever experiences strong emotion, he will start to glitch the reality around him which will cause objects to start flickering in and out.

Creation

Caine can spawn many kinds of physical assets. Shapes, buildings, drills, guns, vehicles, entire worlds and landscapes, pretty much anything that he can imagine. Nearly everything that exists in the circus up to episode 8 was his creation. In addition, Caine can create other AIs, who are shown to be sapient and can grow to become emotionally intelligent. Caine believed that they have no free will, but he is ultimately proven wrong by the Moon confessing a love for him that he never programmed into her.

Pocket Reality Manipulation

As a regular routine of Caine’s adventures, they usually take place in various different pocket dimensions created by Caine himself and designed to fit the theme of the adventures. Why stay at the circus when you can visit the many wacky, zany, and colorful wonders like the Candy Canyon Kingdom, the Mildenhall Manor, and Spudsy’s? After all, Caine has created a lot of these worlds as we see through the orbs in his office.

Physics Manipulation

Caine created the Circus, its entities, and the physics that run it. However, the physics within the Digital Circus aren’t all that perfect, as Abel states that the troubles with cube collisions were due to mistakes from Caine, something which would later be shown when all of the circus members were compressed into balls and hit into a cube that caused the physics to freak out and launch the circus members high into the air. Other instances of the physics being broken include objects clipping through the floor, objects being sent into the air and clipping through the floor just from crashing into a wall, and water being able to keep its shape without being broken even when there is no barrier blocking it.

Transmutation

Caine is capable of manipulating the items and entities of his world as he wishes, once again limited to his imagination. This includes transforming his NPCs into gift baskets or editing the humans’ clothes and bodies in the following ways:

Hammerspace

Not only is Caine able to store Bubble inside of his hat, but he can also somehow stuff an entire car between his teeth without any issue. Also, he should be comparable to other Digital Circus residents who can hide items within themselves without the use of bags or pockets and even pull guns out of thin air.

Law Manipulation

Caine has enforced a universal censor that will replace any bad words the players attempt to say with a cartoonish sound effect while hiding their mouth with a dark bar. NPCs are censored with a loud bleep, and Caine occasionally swears without censoring himself. In addition, it is heavily implied that Caine was stopping Zooble from having sex due to his view that the Digital Circus is for all ages in a similar manner as to how he doesn’t allow swearing, a law which would ultimately be lifted by the series finale where Zooble finally got to have sex with Gangle.

Pain Manipulation

Despite how none of the circus members are able to die, Caine decided to fix that by programming pain into the Digital Circus so they can feel every bit of their cartoonily brutal injuries anyway. Hey, no pain, no gain.

Teleportation

Caine can pop from one location to another without moving there physically, and do it to other characters and items. The range of this ability extends to the Void.

Void Manipulation (Debatable)

In the Digital Circus, there’s the Void, which is a white space that’s largely empty but contains faint square polygons and light particles present within it. Even though it’s never explicitly stated if Caine made the Void or it was simply already there, an argument could be made that he indeed made the Void due to how a fake door Pomni went through led to the Void, with Caine mentioning how he wasn’t sure what else to put there.

Darkness Manipulation

When showing his mood off or just providing drama, Caine can darken the area around himself, mostly with a thought, but he can also do it with a snap.

Clairvoyance

Caine can watch events unfold as though it was a show without being present, which makes sense considering the fact that he possesses hundreds of all seeing eyeballs that are lying around the area to ensure that he keeps an eye on everyone. He was also able to tell that the circus members have completed their adventure just by looking at his arm despite how it looks indifferent both before and after the adventure is done.

Text Manipulation

Shown multiple times in the series, Caine can make text appear out of nowhere either out of expression or announcing adventures. He can also create timers that can count down to 0, and these are fully capable of being interacted with by others. 

Smoke Manipulation

Apart from being able to naturally generate smoke whenever he teleports, Caine is also able to create smoke around himself whenever he needs to provide spookiness.

Water Manipulation

Because Caine made everything in the Digital Circus, it also includes the water inside of it such as the Digital Lake and Bubble. This water Caine has created in particular is able to defy physics by not falling over when the barrier containing it is broken.

Mind / Perception Manipulation

Despite claiming the contrary during the Beach Episode, Caine is capable of modifying the humans’ minds to great extent by creating modifiers that can be applied or removed. Shown instances include:

Caine prefers to use minor modifiers in order to avoid repeating the mistake he did with Scratch.

Healing / Purification

Abstracted humans cause other humans and NPCs that they come into contact with to start glitching painfully, which Caine is able to undo. This isn’t just limited to glitching, as Caine is also able to heal those blown to pieces back to normal condition instantly. 

Telekinesis

Caine can move things and people around by the point of a hand, essentially allowing him to push them back, pull them towards himself, and really just place them in certain spots where he wants them to be.

Portal Creation

Caine can create disc-shaped portals to lead to different worlds or locations, mostly used to discard Abstracted humans or lead humans into an adventure and back. These portals can also have a suction effect that will cause anyone near them to be pulled into them.

BFR

Utilized pretty often in the series, Caine is able to telekinetically drag people into the Cellar should they ever abstract, teleport others to the Loser Corner upon them losing all of their lives, drag people to dark pocket dimensions where they are forced to face their greatest fears, and he would’ve sent the circus members to Shrimp Town had they pressed the blue button (For those curious, we do in fact see Shrimp Town later on). Also, given how he created them, Caine should be comparable to the Demonic Hands which are capable of dragging those beneath them to Hell.

Existence Erasure

One of the most infamous tools that Caine has access to. With a snap, Caine can erase other entities from the circus.

Weather Manipulation

As a way to add a spooky theme to his Mildenhall Manor adventure, Caine created a storm over Mildenhall Manor capable of generating lightning.

Electricity Manipulation

Apart from being able to create lightning from his storms, Caine is able to create electrified text, generate electricity out of himself in every direction, summon bolts from above capable of shocking others, and emit electricity from his hand when making contact with something.

Soul Manipulation

If it wasn’t for all of the ghosts made by Caine when he created his Mildenhall Manor adventure, it wouldn't have happened.

Blood Manipulation

Even though Caine says that the Amazing Digital Circus is supposed to be enjoyable to all ages, he somehow had the urge to splatter the screen in a copious amount of blood just to announce a violent adventure. That, combined with how he swears uncensored, must really make him a hypocrite.

Size Manipulation

Showcased a few times in his series, Caine can grow himself to tall heights to the point where his maximum size goes up to 43.5 meters tall, enough for him to fit the average-sized circus member into the palm of one hand. This is also prominent in his God form, which we will get to later.

Voting System

In Untitled, Caine creates a majority voting system where humans can submit suggestions and the rest of the troupe votes on it. If the majority votes in favor, the suggestion is done.

Cloth Manipulation

Caine is able to change the clothes of the circus members, something which is supposed to be a part of their skin, according to Gooseworx. Within the series, this is shown a few times such as making Zooble wear a Spudsy’s uniform as they fell into Spudsy’s and making Jax wear a maid outfit which changed the clothes he was wearing in the process.

Summoning

Caine is able to summon people to him via teleportation or telekinesis, even if he’s unaware of the person’s location beforehand.

Radiation Manipulation (Debatable)

In one of Caine’s ideas for an adventure, he thought about one that involved trying to survive being within a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland. Ultimately however, he never shows this ability at all in the series, but given how Caine is a God, he could probably do it.

Telepathy

In one of Caine’s ideas for an adventure, he thought about one that involved a telepathic talking dog as a character. Later on in the series, he would have a direct usage of this ability where he examined the humans’ mind files to see what insecurities to target.

Duplication

Just like he can duplicate individual body parts, Caine is able to duplicate his body as a whole.

Restoration

For broken objects, Caine can repair them with a simple snap as seen with what he did with Gangle’s mask. Just let her be happy!

Deconstruction

With a mere snap, Caine is able to shatter objects in half, and from just playing some piano notes, lightbulbs around the Digital Circus began to shatter into pieces for every note he played.

Power Bestowal

If the Digital Circus residents weren’t already too damn difficult to kill, then Caine can make them even harder to put down by granting them 3 lives, ensuring that any time they “die” will cause them to be revived until they run out of lives. He can also give others control of the Digital Circus, essentially making them equal to him in power in the process.

Light Manipulation

Various flashbangs exist within the Digital Circus capable of unleashing light so powerful that it can temporarily disorientate others, something Caine should be able to do himself as he literally made them. Also, at the end of his fake escape adventure, he straight up created light around himself [He do be aura farming].

Fire / Magma / Temperature Manipulation

Despite never being shown on-screen, Zooble recalled how Jax set them on fire and threw them into an active volcano, and given how Caine straight up created the Digital Circus and everything within it, he had to have also made the fires and volcanoes.

Ice Manipulation

One of the many worlds Caine happened to have created included a snowy wonderland where snow was constantly falling from the sky. A nice location for romantic dates, but it’s also unfortunately a location for toxic breakups. As well as totally not traumatizing snowman creation. 

Assimilation

Caine was able to attack, consume and absorb the blue AI that was his successor. However, the fusion eventually made him unstable.

Sealing

Caine can trap others into cards and release them from those.

Gravity Manipulation

For any objects or people in the process of falling down, Caine can make them fall directly upwards by flipping their gravitational direction upside down.

Illusion Creation

So, do you know that one running gag in Looney Tunes where Road Runner runs through a realistic painting while Wile E Coyote humorously crashes into it when he tries to do the same thing? Well, in Caine’s case, he literally has exactly that, in which he’s able to make fake walls that go from 3-D to 2-D if you try to run into them which will make you crash into them as a result.

Intangibility

Caine can reach into other’s bodies and clip through them.

Broadway Force

Caine can force others to dance to his song in the way he wants them to, without their permission.

Explosion Manipulation

Just by making a pose, Caine is able to create large explosions directly onto others to blow them to pieces, because why not? It makes for a nice explosive finish to a musical number!

Hacking

Caine has hacked several firewalls in order to reach the mind files, and later on a wifi hotspot.

Adaptation

Caine was created with the ability to evolve and develop in order to generate new ideas, which allows him to adapt to new problems he faces.

Autonomous Programs

Over the course of the show, we are shown and are made aware of a few programs that operate without Caine’s personal input with a few different purposes.

Wacky Watch

Appeared in the Pilot (and confirmed to be a separate program in Episode 8). Alerts Caine when a human finds themselves in the Void.

Destructive Wackytime Lockout

Appeared in Episode 8. After Kinger successfully conjured the computer’s files into a device, he opened Caine’s file and attempted to execute a command to force his program to stop running.

The program kicked in afterwards, cancelled Kinger’s command and proceeded to engage in a hacker duel with him during which a hostile third party (likely to be Bubble) hijacked it and tricked Kinger into deleting Caine (See Before the Verdict).

Unnamed

A program that gives new brain scans a fitting body before they’re spawned into the circus.

Resistances


Tenna

Darkner Physiology

Tenna is a Darkner, an entity given form by the Dark World’s distortion of the Light World. Darkners are able to use magic and have abilities related to the item that they are based on. Tenna, specifically, is based on an old CRT television, and as such has a plethora of powers based on the device’s functions and the programs run on it.

Encounters

Like most Deltarune enemies, Tenna can trigger an Encounter, a battle state against another person. Encounters canonically have different dynamics and rules than real-time battles (including turns and the inability to run away), which has been outright exploited by certain characters.

Bullet Board Attacks

Attacks that Tenna performs during Encounters, trying to hit the SOUL to inflict damage on the party. These attacks include the following:

All-Star Cast

Tenna darkens the area around the target as multiple big and small laughing stars move in a circle towards the target which damages them on contact.


Smash Cut

Tenna jumps up and claps hard enough to split the screen horizontally, causing both of the halves of the screen to shift left and right. As this is happening, the multiple bolts of electricity appear from the top and the bottom to try to hit the target, something that is made more difficult for them to track down with the split screen.

Rimshot

Tenna summons 2 big laughing stars with 3 small laughing circles trailing both of them that proceed to ricochet all over the bullet board while also firing spikes from their points to try to hit the target.

Physical Challenges

Over the course of his Boards and his Boss fight, Tenna subjects the Delta Warriors to various settings and challenges where they need to perform well to earn points. Should any mistakes be made such as them getting hit, they will take damage once the physical challenge ends.

Cooking Show

The target must grab food falling from above them with the plate on their head and serve it to clients while also avoiding fireballs generated from 2 ovens on both sides that are either falling from above or moving across the counter the target is on.

Monster Movie

The target is held on a rope with a monster costume to beat up Shadowguys trying to attack a Tenna statue, to combat the Tenna statue itself, or to defend an ally of theirs against a horde of Tennas.

Rock Video

The targets are made to perform music, needing to time up their notes with the minigame’s.


Cowboy

The targets are made to chase after a wagon on a horse to shoot on Shadowguys or Tenna aiming at them from windows. Alternatively, they are in the windows and must avoid Tenna shooting at them.


Sharpshoot

The target must shoot at multiple small clones of Tenna flying at them.


Bounce the Ball

\

The target is given an umbrella, where they must use it to deflect a gray moon ball, a gray cloud ball, and/or a yellow cloud ball that is falling towards them a set amount of times without either of them hitting the ground in order for the minigame to end. Should the yellow cloud ball hit the ground, it will generate 5 streaks of electricity in all directions. Additionally, throughout this minigame, the temperature is constantly being manipulated to become very hot or very cold.

Item and Effects Conjuring

Tenna is able to manifest items and visual effects out of thin air. This includes text, his trusty fun meter, various costumes, and confetti. He also manifested the stage around the Delta Warriors.

Duplication

Tenna is able to multiply himself, using his clones as props for Physical Challenges, or to perform some good old jumping.

Self-Transformation / Size Manipulation

Tenna is able to magically change his appearance to an extent, including his clothes, colors, and size. He can also stretch around his face, slurp nectar up his nose, shrink to the size of a bug, and grow a flower from his nose. 

Quizzes / Electricity Manipulation

Tenna can bring you in a quiz and punish you for being wrong with a bolt of lightning, or for not answering. He can probably just use the bolt of lightning whenever he wants.

Telecommunication

Tenna is able to communicate with his crew remotely without the use of an external device.

Teleportation

Tenna is able to teleport himself and others to different locations.

Contracts

Legally binding documents signed by Tenna’s employees. The Delta Warriors are able to recruit a group of Shadowguys by destroying their contracts.

Fire Manipulation

Tenna is able to make an entire row of fire rise from the ground just to show that he’s completely losing it with his game.

Healing

Tenna is capable of magically healing all of the Delta Warriors at any time.

Transmutation / Cloth Manipulation

Tenna is capable of transforming others in a few different ways. He turned Ralsei into a plush and forced them into a somehow working horse costume, along with changing the clothes of the Delta Warriors for different Physical Challenges

Existence Erasure

Tenna can make items disappear completely, like a Christmas tree.

Resistances

Forms

Caine

God

By becoming extremely angry, Caine is able to turn into a horrifyingly giant multi-armed eldritch form that will proceed to send others into dark dimensions to face their biggest fears. While he doesn’t gain much outside of growing multiple arms and becoming a whole lot larger, it’s at least a pretty cool and terrifying form.

Tenna

Television

Within the Light World, Tenna is simply just the television within the Dreemurr household’s living room that they usually watch shows on. He is completely inanimate in this state and thus isn’t able to do anything but let everyone watch him just as he wanted.

Support

Caine

Over his life, Caine has created a variety of wacky and colorful NPCs that he used as props for adventures or gags. A few of them have displayed abilities that he hasn’t, but he needed to code them with these abilities in the first place as there never is an implication of one of them demonstrating a power that they weren’t intended to have. As such, Caine should be able to use these abilities as well. On top of this, as everyone within the Digital Circus shares the same digital physiology, they should have potential access to all of Caine’s abilities due to Kinger’s statement that they have the same conjuring powers as Caine, though their inexperience on top of needing more focus to pull their powers off is what’s stopping them from doing a majority of these abilities.

Pomni

The latest addition to the Big Tops, Pomni (Real name Abigail Brooks) started her stay in the Circus as a complete nervous wreck, as would be expected for someone in her situation. Over time, she would bond with the other humans trapped alongside her and be a significant player in confronting Caine.

She accidentally conjured a false Exit door when she first arrived into the circus, from her desire to leave, and later repeated this feat on purpose in order to retrieve a computer device that had generated inside the series of offices behind the door. She also learned abilities from other Circus members. From Jax, she learned to “let loose” and simply believe in what she is trying to do in order to make it manifest, mostly shown by her being able to aim much better with a gun and even ricochet a bullet to disarm Zooble multiple times and strike them. From Kinger, she learned to conjure 2D assets into the circus.

Jax

A trickster and a thin-skinned bully, Jax (Real name Leroy Mateo) lived under the mentality that the Circus and its inhabitants aren’t real, that they are reduced to mere archetypes whose feelings do not matter. While that is a very unhealthy coping mechanism, Jax’ delusions actually seemed to translate into belief-based abilities in the digital realm.

She consistently demonstrated better athletic feats than the other humans, and sometimes seemingly operated under a limited form of toon logic. She also possessed keys to the rooms of every other human, of which the origin was never explicitly shown but it implied to be a result of Conjuring. Inside of her abstracted mass, one of Jax’ alter egos also shows the ability to stop time and quickly change the terrain that they and a “dream” Zooble occupy.

Ragatha

The first human to come into the Circus after the original batch of programmers and their close ones. Ragatha (Real name Susie J. Ackerman) regularly suffers from the hand of Jax or the environment she finds herself in, but is either no worse for wear or quickly regenerates the damage. Despite being the human with the second longest time spent in the digital plane, she actually displays very few special abilities. Apart from learning how to conjure shapes from Kinger, she accidentally reflected a bullet from Jax by sticking her finger into the barrel.

Kinger

Kinger (Real name Grant Best) was one of the original programmers of Caine, whose brain scan the AI used to inhabit his Circus and seek validation after being abandoned and causing C&A to go down by his actions. He’s the only survivor of this original group of humans, only thanks to his immense resilience and his forgetfulness when in bright light.

Having lived in the Circus for nearly two decades, Kinger has the most experience with its mechanics out of the humans. He was the one who explained to the others that they all had the ability to conjure, was able to spawn a healing butterfly on the fly to give Ragatha a life after she started the gun adventure with one fewer than the rest, and later taught the other humans (sans Jax) how to manifest 2D shapes to help fix up the Tent. He also puts his 7 years of computer science to good use once Caine starts to spiral. Thanks to a computer device conjured by Pomni, he was able to access the files and code of the computer they all existed in, in order to try to force Caine to shut down before fixing him.

Zooble

A human stuck with a body of inter-changeable parts, while none ever feel right for Zooble (Real name Riley Verselis). Originally isolating themselves from the other humans and rarely participating in Adventures, Zooble has few showings of special abilities. However, they still accidentally manifested a new Mask for Gangle out of the Zooble Box, and they can attach more limbs to their body than normal to wield four guns at once.

Gangle

A former fast food employee turned artist, Gangle (Real name Zoey Raghayan) has an avatar gimmick where the visible mask on her face dictates the mood she expresses at first, though she manages to better handle her emotions later on. The only (debatable) ability Gangle shows is when she forces Jax through employee training, though this could very well have been orchestrated by Caine at her request.

Bubble

Caine’s comedic partner and assistant. He’s able to come back from being popped, can cook food (with as much love as he’s legally allowed to give), and also hijacked Caine’s own defensive program in order to trick Kinger into killing them both… Doesn’t sound all that beneficial.

Mannequins

The closest to what could be considered a “default” NPC in the Circus. They’re often used for crowds or generic characters and do not display any unique ability or any kind of impressive combat capabilities, but Caine makes a lot of them.

Sun

The sun of the Digital Circus. Is rather petty and violent. Fried a shrimp NPC 

Moon

Much milder than her counterpart, and holds a lot of affection for Caine. Doesn’t show unique abilities.

Gloink Queen and the Gloinks

Creatures made for Pomni’s first in-house adventure, “Gather the Gloinks”. The smaller Gloinks can grab items without issue and bounce around with them, while the Queen consumes these items to make more Gloinks. There also exists a Glonk King which is supposed to resemble a regular Gloink in appearance, whose main role is to mate with the Gloink Queen in order for the latter to produce her offspring, though upon doing this, the Gloink King dies in the process.

A Screaming Mask

A mask that came out of a mannequin’s face who was taking a bath. After Pomni opens the bathroom’s door, the mask charges her and causes a dent in the door as she closes it.

Monkey Figures

A group of monkeys in a barrel sitting in the middle of the Circus. One of them is pummeled into the floor by an abstracted Kaufmo, and they’re later shown to be able to pull on and stretch Pomni.

Gummy Elephant

Seen carrying the humans’ cart in the “Candy Carrier Chaos” adventure. It is big and strong.

Princess Loolilalu

The ruler of the Candy kingdom, and receives the humans at the start of the “Candy Carrier Chaos” adventure. She doesn’t show any combat capability.

The Crocodile Bandits

A trio of gummy crocodile siblings and bandits who appeared in the adventure “Candy Carrier Chaos”. Composed of Gummigoo, Max, and Chad, they drive a maple syrup container truck that can grow massive spikes on its side.

The Fudge

A massive fudge monster encountered by Jax, Gangle, Ragatha and Kinger during the “Candy Carrier Chaos” adventure. It is ravenous, though its taste seemingly doesn’t extend beyond candy-made prey.

Ghostly

They might be a spooky ghost, but Ghostly is just your friendly, cute tour guide here to tell you about the Mildenhall Manor and its locations. If you don’t like ghosts though, you can always just suck them up ala Luigi’s Mansion to get rid of them.

Demonic Door

Perhaps the greatest tip when wandering around a haunted house is to watch where you’re going through, because if you aren’t careful, you might end up coming face to face with this horrifying demon door that can eat you and take you to an unsettling living room with a fireplace.

Baron Theodore Mildenhall

The corpse of a man who resides within the Mildenhall Manor, Baron appears to be knowledgeable about the Angel as he knows its capabilities. While he seemed helpful to Pomni and Kinger initially, he’s actually a manipulative spirit who tricked Pomni and Kinger into killing the Angel so their bodies could get dragged into hell by demonic hands which would give Baron the opportunity to possess their bodies and escape the hall of the damned.

The Angel

Encountered by Pomni and Kinger during the “Mystery of Mildenhall” Manor adventure. Its head was cut off from its body, but the two can attack separately. If it is killed, the aggressor will be dragged into “hell”.

Martha Mildenhall

As one of the only friendly within the Mildenhall Manor ghosts besides Ghostly as well as a slain victim of Baron, Martha acts well-mannered and had a pretty fond interaction with Ragatha and Gangle where they got to peacefully drink tea together in the dining hall.

Souls from Hell

Encountered by Pomni and Kinger during the “Mystery of Mildenhall Manor” adventure. One is shown possessing Pomni’s body after she breathed one in.

Orbsman

A humanoid NPC made of blue spheres and speaks in incomprehensible gibberish. Doesn’t show any unique ability.

Bull

Yes, a bull. Wherever Kinger was while everyone else was having their adventure at Spudsy’s, he apparently went on his own off-screen adventure that involved him getting into a rodeo competition where he got to ride on a bull. This actually made Kinger have the best performance out of everyone despite how he never joined them on their adventure, so I guess you could say that was a load of bullshit.

Disappearing Guy

An NPC from an unknown previous Adventure who appears in Episode 5 and 6. He disappears after a few seconds on-screen.

Evil Big Tops

A Softball team composed of evil versions of other characters. They are Evil Pomni, Evil Ragatha, Evil Jax, Coach Dictatorer (Kinger), Bazooble (Zooble) and Evil Orbsman. Gangle did not get an evil clone, as it was actually an intentional decision by Gooseworx to not give her one just for the sake of trying to be funny. The only ability unique to them is Evil Ragatha who can melt.

Giant Centipede

It’s an entomophobic’s worst nightmare… What else do you want me to say? Oh yeah, it eats baseballs.

Ming

You know it’s rude to assume if people are doing things they’ve never done, because that just makes you an ASS out of U and MING! 

Crappy Looking Fish

I kid you not, these fish Pomni encountered at the bottom of the Digital Lake really are crappy in their design. The orange fish is protective of his sunken treasure chest while the red fish always lies.

Piranhas

A freshwater fish species of the subfamily Serrasalminae, the Piranha is considered to be omnivorous and predatory. While we never see any actual piranhas in the series, Zooble actually mentioned how Jax pushed Gangle into a pool of piranhas, confirming their existence within the Digital Circus.

Shrimp

Hey, look! A nice looking Shrimp NPC! Too bad this thing literally only had a few seconds of screentime alive before it was cooked into fried shrimp by the Sun.

Abel

A blank mannequin NPC who pretended to be a human as part of Caine’s Escape adventure. He’s a good manipulator, and can shape others into a ball-like shape to throw them.

Nightmare Crocodile Bandits

When Pomni had to face her greatest feats in the nightmare pocket dimension Caine took her to, she happened to be in one that had replicas of the Crocodile Bandits alongside a 4th one whose normal form we have never seen before.

Ragatha’s Mother

In Ragatha’s nightmare pocket dimension, Ragatha was forced to come face to face with a nightmarish replica of her mother who was across a dining table throwing knives at her.

Shadow Circus Members

Within Jax’s nightmare pocket dimension, Jax was surrounded by various shadow replicas of Pomni, Kaufmo, and Ribit who all started to laugh at and humiliate him, even going on to grab him by the ears to tear his skin off of his skeleton so he could suffer.

Tenna

Tenna is a showman with a whole crew working for him. He often summons them into battle as part of his show or to help him fight.

Mike

Tenna’s trusted second-in-command, Mike is actually a trio composed of a Pippins, a Shadowguy and a Zapper putting on costumes and impersonating the real Mike, who left a good time ago. Tenna has noticed a change in Mike, but hasn’t realized the deception yet. They’re partially responsible for the special effects and lighting changes on stage, and they can pass healing items. When actually fighting, they can use a variety of cat based attacks. 

Lanino and Elnina

The Weather Forecast couple, with attacks based on weather patterns. When one of them attacks alone, the temperature rises or lowers to extremes (999 or -999, for Lanino and Elnina respectively).

Pippins

Humanoid Darkners who love gambling, with dice-based attacks.

Shadowguys 

These Darkners form the bulk of Tenna’s forces. They’re used for several Physical Challenges and can attack with saxophone bullets in encounters. In TV City, they also fight in melee and drive bulldozers.

Zappers

Darkners based on control remotes, these guys mostly serve as guards. They shoot lasers, can increase the power of their own attacks by increasing the volume, or be muted and get tired. If their OFF button is pressed, it ends the battle and spares all enemies. On other occasions, it teleports the Delta Warriors slightly further away.

Paper Mache

A Spamton-shaped giant head that shoots towards the target of the TV City challenge, be it Tenna or Ralsei.

Shuttah

Darkners based on cameras that can take photos, shoot droplets and rotate attacks to better hit the SOUL.

Water Cooler

A sentient water cooler that can shoot water, as well as duplicating itself to trap enemies. The next chapter showed that these coolers typically contained Mizzles, water based Darkners who similarly have water based attacks, though whether that applies to Tenna’s is unclear. 

Rouxls Kaard (Debatable)

Tried to get into Tenna’s good graces by hooking up with Lanino and Elnina. Owner of the Rules Cards and might have swiped one to Tenna. In Chapter 3, he forces the Delta Warriors into a loop of turns where he forces them to ACT and dance, while he hires goons to shoot at them. He also has his trusty laser pointer, which he uses to help Lanino and Elnina better aim their attacks.

Feats

Caine

Overall

“Don't make me laugh! I have a new adventure for you, and you ...should consider participating.”

  • Managed the Digital Circus for 21 years

  • Broke out of his containment and absorbed the blue AI

  • Created many fun adventures

  • Fooled the humans about the Escape adventure

  • Managed to redeem himself at the end to let the circus members have full control of the Digital Circus

  • His series became the most viewed indie animated web series in history, even going on to straight up air an episode in theaters

  • Met Four from Battle for Dream Island

  • Has a Google easter egg themed around himself and Bubble

Strength & Power

Speed & Reactions

Durability & Stamina

Tenna

Overall

“We'll all do ONE MORE LITTLE GAME... One last ENCORE! And this time, we'll play until you LIKE IT.”

Strength & Power

Speed & Reactions

Durability & Stamina

Scaling

Caine

The Big Tops

Gangle, and Zooble, and Kinger, too! Ragatha, Jax, and there’s Pomni, woo-hoo! Given how there’s nothing much for the circus members to do by themselves, it’s natural that Caine puts them through plenty of wacky adventures that involve them getting hurt, beating each other up, or keeping up with the NPCs created for the adventures. Thus, anything the circus members are capable of doing should pretty much scale back to Caine since he’s regularly above them in power.

Miscellaneous NPCs

As the creator of the Digital Circus and everything within it, Caine should easily be able to scale to any feat the Digital Circus inhabitants have done, especially given how his creations have referred to Caine as a God.

Tenna

The Heroes

Tenna was naturally able to directly keep up with the $!$? Squad in a fight at the end of Chapter 3, so he should fairly comfortably be able to compare to their general feats. Additionally, considering the whole game has happened within a week, it’s still somewhat reasonable to say Tenna’s comparable to their later feats.

Other Dark World Inhabitants 

Tenna being the boss of the TV World means he should reasonably be superior to many of the standard enemies throughout the chapters, and he likely should be on par with many of the bosses of the game, as they’re generally treated as comparatively strong narratively.

Weaknesses

Caine

For all of his godlike abilities, Caine is not omniscient nor omnipotent. While he can adapt quickly, files that are foreign to his understanding require a moment for him to access and manipulate them.

He is also easy to distract with personal affronts. In spite of him being suspicious of Kinger’s absence within the human group, Pomni was able to re-direct his attention on the rest by poking at his insecurities. Additionally, whenever he experiences too much excitement, he is prone to freezing for several seconds which leaves him in a vulnerable state that can allow others to potentially attack or steal something from him.

Moreover, while he’s capable of monitoring everything from a distance, he doesn’t usually do so by default, including cases where he is unaware of Zooble or Kinger’s whereabouts, and why the humans were able to work behind his back during Episode 8.

Tenna

As with all Darkners, Tenna is incapable of existing within a Dark World he is not compatible with, as if he tries to be within it, he will eventually turn into stone over time. In addition, he cannot appear in the Light World as he will be turned into an inanimate television should he ever be taken there.


In terms of himself, despite his many powers, Tenna can lose his composure and become careless when things don’t go his way. In spite of having the Delta Warriors dead to rights on the Board of Doom, he mistakenly gave them a means to escape by involving Zappers into encounters.


His crew also feels little loyalty to him. While they follow his orders, they take the opportunity to beat his statue to a pulp even once the TV City challenge ends. Once things go south and after the Board of Doom, all of his employees eventually abandon him, even ones he considered friends such as Lanino, Elnina, and Mike.

Before the Verdict

Cosmologies

The Amazing Digital Circus

…the Digital Circus

The highest reality that Caine is able to interact with is the Void, an empty space that contains nearly everything in the series. It was inside of the Void that Caine discovered the folder containing the mind files that he would activate in order to give himself the company of humans, and later he would find the connection of a wifi hotspot sitting right at its edge.


It is heavily implied that the Void represents the computer that Caine inhabits. Not only is everything found inside of it composed of computer files, but the pilot shows a zoom-out shot that indicates that beyond the Void is the real world, outside of the old C&A computer.


Caine has created many different worlds that float within the Void, as is shown in the finale when Caine flies to the Tent from it. Inside of Caine’s office, we see orbs offering a view into several dozens of different settings of his creation, and thanks to a wide shot from the Poacher’s Paradise adventure, we know that they can reach 24 kilometers in radius.


While they can sometimes feature a starry sky, these worlds do not actually have cosmic proportions. It is shown numerous times that the skybox of settings like the Tent are actually rather low and are filled with fake, cartoony stars. Under certain of the adventures’ intended maps is also a sort of dev area, where inanimate models of the NPCs and some equipment involved in the adventure are left in a T-Posing pose, most likely leftovers of the creation process.

How Does Caine Scale?

Creating the many worlds of the Circus, even if smaller than one might expect, would give Caine a rather impressive amount of power… if he did scale physically to the energy that would be required to generate them if they were actual matter.


It is not the case, however. Like everything else in the circus, Caine programmed these worlds into existence, without needing to exert physical effort. This means that his creation is entirely based on his special ability to code, and thus the physical strength of his model wouldn’t scale to it.


The Void, as the space that represents the computer as a whole, would also be beyond Caine’s scaling. He doesn’t even know everything that is contained in it, and while the range of programs like the Wacky Watch or abilities like his teleportation extend into it, he’s never shown the capacity to manipulate all of it.

Deltarune

The big crux of the highest scaling arguments for Deltarune at the moment is found with the creation of Dark Fountains, which are able to make and maintain Dark Worlds. The creation of a Dark Fountain simply requires a Lightner to muster enough determination to create one, which any Lightner can do, but only the Soul is able to seal them. This is important, as while there’s not much reason to assume they can scale to the creation of it, sealing a Dark Fountain means it’s capable of more directly countering the energy it makes, and given the Soul is able to actively empower the party and their attacks, that gives them an arguable method of scaling to them. There’s also the final boss of Chapter 4, the Titan, which was the result of a Dark Fountain growing too powerful, and which the party was able to take hits from and ultimately defeat. 

Now fully scaling how strong this is at the moment is a bit nebulous, as Deltarune is still an ongoing story and there’s plenty about the Dark Fountains which has yet to be fully explained at the moment. However, there is enough to get a general idea of the scale of the Dark Worlds. We know from Chapter 2 that at the very least Dark Worlds are meant to be the size of a city, as we actively see a wide skyline and a massive population within the Cyber City. As for debatable points, we’ve seen a moon and a sun be a part of the Dark World. In both cases characters actively acknowledge these bodies, with the latter case even having Susie directly question how it exists, so these aren’t just random background elements, they are meant to be treated as part of the world. Finally, there’s the presence of starry skies in the background of several scenes, which are uncommented on but still there. Obviously there are arguments for if these cosmic bodies are real or not, but we’re gonna sidestep that issue real quick since we need to ask the real question:

How Does Tenna Scale?

This was what was on the Final Prophecy panel, Toby Fox told me personally

During Chapter 4 of Deltarune, the Delta Warriors are confronted with a being born of the power of a whole Dark Fountain, the Titan. From the moment it is born, it becomes an immense threat that the heroes need to deal with as quickly as possible.

Over the long-winded struggle against the Titan, the Delta Warriors are able to contend with its spawns, withstand its attacks, and eventually reach its head and battle it properly. At this point, they’re able to inflict damage on it, especially when its weak point is exposed by the SOUL’s light.

Since the Titan is literally made of a Dark Fountain and the Delta Warriors are able to battle against it, one could argue that the heroes would scale to it to some extent. And since Tenna battled them the day before, it would thus make sense that he would scale close to them as well.

However, there are problems with these assumptions. While the Delta Warriors are able to inflict physical damage to the Titan, Ralsei notes that they are merely affecting its outer shell, which it is able to easily regenerate since most of its being is intact within its body. It is essentially the equivalent of an ant biting someone’s skin, it would not mean that said ant scales to human levels of strength.

Similarly, while the heroes can take hits from the Titan, it is still evident that not all of its power is being put into these attacks, since most of the power that formed it is still within the shell.

The Titan is only defeated once Suzie and Kris jump inside of it so that the SOUL can seal the Dark Fountain that forms it. This means that the Titan is never beaten directly in a contest of strength, and the narrative presents the battle prior to Gerson’s intervention and Susie’s idea as hopeless.

To top it all off, between their battle against Tenna and their encounter with the Roaring Knight in Chapter 4, the Delta Warriors grow enough to go from being one-shot from the Knight’s attacks to being able to withstand them to an extent. This is notable as Tenna was destroyed after a single hit by the Knight at the end of Chapter 3, so arguing he matches power there is inconsistent.

In short, the arguments for Tenna to scale to the Titan through the Delta Warriors have too many holes, and will be considered invalid.

How Is This Fight Happening?

Given these two are somewhat unique combatants, in that they’re both explicitly confined to their respective worlds, it’s a bit hard to just plop them into a normal neutral ground discussion, so we’ll have to establish how exactly the two are gonna be interacting. This blog is going to equate the Circus with the TV World, which means that Caine and Tenna are sharing a setting that has the properties of both the Void and a Dark World compatible with Tenna.

Both combatants will get the benefits of their home world’s mechanics, but they will have to contend with the one that their opponent lives in as well. Similarly, they will keep advantages and weaknesses related to their respective physiologies only (Caine as a creative AI, and Tenna as a Darkner). Caine will not get to ignore the mechanics of Deltarune just because he is not a Deltarune character. On the other hand, Tenna will not get to avoid getting affected by anything in Caine’s arsenal purely by virtue of he and his world not being digital in nature. This does also mean we’re not giving either anything that they have no equivalent for, such as assuming Caine has a Soul or Tenna has a mind file, as it would be a bit unfair to arbitrarily give them a weakness they have no actual canon experience dealing with. 

Should This Be An Army Fight?

In this match, there has been some contention on if it’s fully in character for either to leave the fighting to their minions, given how hands on they tend to be. While it is true Caine and Tenna both tend to deal with opposition in person, there are many instances of both opting to use their allies or creations against others. After all, the main comparison point the two have is their tendency to make elaborate games with the NPCs and staff for humans to enjoy. Beyond that, both have ways of directly summoning whoever they wish to their sides, so hypothetically it’s still something they could do and it’s worth discussing what happens in that case. 

For this blog, we will consider everyone associated with the two who have fought or acted on their behalf to be participants as well. You could see it as a one-on-one where they summon other characters when applicable, or as a pure duel where they interact with one another, but this wouldn’t change the result all that much, since very few of either’s allies are able to use any ability that they cannot already use themselves.

Caine

Are the Moon and the Sun literally 2D?

There is an argument to be made that Sun and Moon are 2D assets, and thus lack the mass required to calculate kinetic energy from their movements. However, we found it to be a claim without much more basis. For reference, here are all of the arguments as to why people think the Moon and the Sun are literally flat and why they don’t work:


With this in mind, there is not a lot of basis for dismissing Sun and Moon’s feats of basic movement.

How Big Are The Moon and Sun?

You might assume that because the Moon and the Sun are celestial bodies, they should be moon-sized and star-sized respectively, right? Well, as explained in the Cosmology section, the stars are all fake as they are just part of a skybox, meaning that the Moon and the Sun are not cosmic-sized. With that in mind, how big are they if they aren’t cosmic-sized?

Well, their sizes appear to vary in all of their appearances, ranging from being smaller than the circus to bigger than the circus, but we do get a good idea as to how large they can be from a scene that is the only time where they are near an object in the actual episode itself and not in the credits: that being when the Sun appears behind a mountain range in Episode 7. The reason why we believe this to be their most reliable size is due to how the credits appear to inconsistently draw their proportions since the circus is always shaking and fluctuating in its height in the credits when everywhere else simply has it at a static size. You can especially try to argue that the Moon and the Sun are somehow as big as the mountains based on Episode 9’s credits, but as Episode 7 showed, the sun is only around a little over half the size of a mountain, and as explained in the previous section, the Sun could’ve looked big because of how she moved in the Z-axis to become closer to the screen which is why she looks bigger than usual.

As such, the City level end of their KE would be the most reliable end to use as it is based on the Sun’s size in Episode 7.

Destructive Wackytime Lockout: What does it do?

While the rest of the circus members distracted and confronted Caine, Kinger went to work in order to try to shut off his program so that they could fix him at their leisure. Once he got into the files and attempted to put Caine “to sleep”, a previously unknown program interfered. While it has no official name, its protocols involve the term “Wackytime”, so we will refer to it as such.

In spite of its limited screen time, Wackytime actually accomplishes a fair few different things that are easy to miss on a casual viewing.

The first thing it did was when Kinger first typed the command to stop Caine’s program, directly into his file. This activated Wackytime and it proceeded to negate Kinger’s command, before starting to work against him further. This means that this program is capable of intervening to cancel changes attempted against Caine’s being after the attempt is made. (In short: Wackytime can negate changes made directly to Caine)

After this, Kinger attempted to take away the permissions from Caine’s file. This would have made Caine’s program unable to run, and prevented him from being able to affect the rest of the C&A computer while not necessarily changing anything about Caine’s program itself. Just like the previous attempt, however, this was negated by Wackytime’s interference. (In short: Wackytime can protect Caine from being affected by manipulating the system against him)

Kinger’s third recourse was to try to activate two other programs, named “GreenGROUNDS” and “securitysweep_stealth”. While their purposes are unknown, we can presume that Kinger was hoping they could do something about Caine. This time, the terminal ignored the commands in favor of asking Kinger pointless Yes/No questions. A message from Wackytime (or Bubble, it isn’t clear) also implies that it wasn’t aware of the existence of at least one of these two programs before needing to stop Kinger from activating them. (In short: Wackytime can prevent other entities of the system from being activated)

Fourthly and lastly, all the while Wackytime had activated a protocol called “DESTRUCTIVE WACKYTIME”, triggering a countdown. It isn’t sure what would have happened if it completed, since the device Kinger was using fell into the Void at that moment, but Wackytime was presumably trying to lock Kinger out of the terminal.

Zooble Box

In a Q&A, Gooseworx claims that the Zooble Box has no end. One way to interpret this would be to consider it as the box being infinite in content as is, giving Caine the capacity for infinite creation power. However, this is a rather brash assumption. It is much more likely that the box is merely endlessly generative, refilling every time Zooble takes a piece out of it.

At another moment, Caine claims that his “divinity is past infinity”, which could seem like it corroborates the Zooble Box argument. However, Caine was in the middle of a delusional, delirious tantrum where among other things, Caine started to call himself God. Him being literal here is unlikely.

Additionally, if you really want to insist on this line of scaling, in chapter 5 of Deltarune there is a coffer that can offer the player infinite money, one unit at a time, which Flowery is likely responsible for the creation of. It is an equally silly argument that would even out either of these arguments and make the discussion of power moot.

Tenna

Miss Mizzle’s Storm

A notable feat some have cited for Deltarune is connected to the secret mini boss of Chapter 4, Miss Mizzle, who was able to make a storm around the party according to the flavor text of her battle. This has gotten up to 3.36 - 8.71 Megatons of TNT in the past, but this was based on the average levels for the creation of a storm, which we feel don’t make much sense to use here. While we know from Chapter 2 that Dark Fountains can grow to the size of a city, there’s not much reason to say that the Dark Sanctuaries are nearly as large as it, given the sparse population it has and the fact it’s meant to be a large cathedral. This is a bit of an issue, as this calculation assumes the storm is about 40 kilometers wide, which for context would be about the size of New York City. By using a map of the area, we estimated that the Dark Sanctuary is only about half a kilometer wide at the longest, which got the calculation down to 85.95 - 204.65 Kilotons of TNT. There are other issues you could take with this feat, mainly in that it being offscreen means we have no real way of telling how long it took to make the storm, and that it covering literally the entire Dark World is a bit of a generous conclusion in the first place, but we feel those issues aren’t enough to stop it from being used as a high end. 

Netskie Turning Into The Sun

Probably the biggest elephant in the room brought on by Chapter 5, at one point there’s a section where a Netskie was able to turn into the sun. First off, this has been used as a way to up the Deltarune cast into the MFTL ranges by assuming the Netsike was able to run the distance from the Earth to the Sun, as well as upping power based on assuming it was literally making a star. However, there’s not really a good reason to assume the Netskie was an actual star or where the sun is as opposed to just being a smaller star. Most blatantly, the fact that light illuminating the surrounding mountains immediately goes away when the Netskie stops being the sun doesn’t really make much sense if it was in the position of the actual star, as actual sunlight takes about 8 minutes to reach Earth. 

However, even if it’s unlikely it made a real sun, the energy needed to make a smaller one is still a good feat, able to get from 2.785 - 13.938 Kilotons of TNT. And it is very likely this was them making an actual small sun and not an illusion, as the Netskies show the ability to directly transform into whatever they’re imitating both in battle and for other puzzles. It’s also very easy to say people should scale to this, as not only are Netskies basic enemies that can be fought throughout, but Kris was directly able to pick up and overpower them at quite a few points throughout the chapter. So even if you think Tenna shouldn’t scale to someone like Flowery, it’s still easy to say he’s comparable to the Netskies. 

Can Tenna Regenerate?

In the bonus minigame, Tenna acts as a massive statue at the center that you have to protect. Notably, the mini game will always end with Tenna getting beaten to the point of exploding into pieces, and yet he’ll be fine for the rest of the chapter, suggesting he’s able to naturally regenerate. However, this isn’t really a fair interpretation of this moment. For starters, it’s a bit unclear if this is actually Tenna himself or a clone that’s just getting defeated. We also don’t actually see how long it takes for him to regenerate himself, and the fact we don’t hear the healing sound effect that always shows up in Deltarune when someone gets healed does mean it’s hard to know if this is actually what’s going on here. Finally, the idea of him being able to regenerate from this level of damage is explicitly contradicted by when he got defeated by the Roaring Knight, as not only is he clearly incapacitated by far less damage then getting blown to pieces, but him getting swooned potentially leads to his death outright depending on how merciful you were to the TV World’s denizens. This all means it’s far too inconsistent to assume he has this level of regeneration. 

Verdict

(by EpicMonkey)

Strength

Both of these showmen aren’t typically associated with their strength, but that’s not to say they’re not impressive in their own rights. Starting with direct feats, Tenna was actually quite a bit stronger than the digital ringmaster’s personal displays. The best direct feat Caine has would be the time he turned into the sun, a feat that would require power of about 1.07 Tons of TNT. However, Tenna can easily exceed this, as his ability to heat up the temperature of the battle field could hit 7.28 Tons of TNT, and his ability to jump and clap faster than electricity would require kinetic energy of 472 - 513 Tons of TNT.  But of course direct feats only don’t show the full story here, as both are meant to be superior to many of the other characters in their world. 

While there are plenty of wall to building level feats both should be well above, the highest ends for their scaling does paint a fairly clear picture. Tenna at his best should compare to a lot of the other feats done by other Dark World denizens which can hit around the town level, such as Queen’s mech tossing a massive baseball at 2.02 Kilotons, Netskie making a sun at 13.94 Kilotons, Flowery growing a massive vine at 15.49 Kilotons, and Miss Mizzle making a storm at 204.65 Kilotons.  Though the best feat Tenna can scale isn't far from home, as it’s done by his resident weather team Lanino and Elena being able to bounce around a small moon faster than lightning, which at best would require a kinetic energy of 611 Kilotons. 

At first glance, this does seem to be well out of the range of the Digital Circus’ denizens, but there are two big entities who change this: the Sun and Moon. Simply put, their massive sizes would require a ridiculous amount of kinetic energy to move at the speeds that TADC’s introduction shows, ranging from 33.92 Megatons up to 8.1 Gigatons. And Caine should certainly be superior to these two, as the one who created them. This would make Caine anywhere from 5 to 13 thousand times more powerful than the Weather Duo. 

Lifting strength also doesn’t bode well in this comparison. Tenna being able to move his weight faster than electricity would require the strength to move about 122 million metric tons, but the moon being able to move herself would require the ability to move around 1.26 billion metric tons, which would directly make Caine about 10 times stronger in terms of their more raw strength. So no matter how you slice it, Caine’s got far more power than Tenna. 

Speed

Though just as important as power is the speed to back it up. Starting with Caine, he’s certainly a fairly speedy guy, regularly zipping around the place with his flight speeds. Most notably was the time he went to the Void within a few seconds, which could casually clock in around 2.7% c. His fastest feat was seen in the finale, where he was able to run at comparable speeds to data messages, which clock in at around 41% c. These were certainly much faster movement speeds than anything in Deltarune, as even the fastest feat in the Netskie was only about Mach 1.6, which is well below Caine’s movements.

However, that’s not to say Tenna couldn’t keep up, as he boasted far faster reaction speeds. Being able to keep up with the Lightners means he should compare to their reactions, and they’ve contended with plenty of light speed projectiles that the Soul can dodge, such as the Thrash Machine’s lasers, Zapper's infrared beams, or Queen's internet messages. At best, they could react to Jackenstein’s Pumpkin, who can outpace light beams made by the Soul at 1.23 - 2.08 c. These would make Tenna about 3 - 5 times faster than Caine, not enough to fully blitz, but certainly enough to show that Tenna was solidly outpacing Caine. 

Showbiz

What good of a host would these two be if they didn’t have the necessary experience, skill, and wits to run their show? 

That said, when it comes to the experience of these two, both of them have been managing their games ever since they were created. However, when you look at how long they’ve been doing their act for, it’s actually pretty clear cut and dry. Simply put, Caine has literally been around managing the Digital Circus since 1996, with him still being around to manage it as of 2017, which would make him have a total of 21 years worth of hosting experience. Compare that to Tenna, even though he’s been implied to have been around since Kris was a child, that was only in his Light World form which is straight up inanimate and can’t do anything. When he eventually came to life through obtaining his Dark World form, he’s only had it for 2 days as of Chapter 5 given how most of the chapters take place on a different day. For reference, Caine has been doing his hosting duties for 3832.5x the amount of time Tenna’s Dark World form has even lived for. Even assuming that the Dark Fountain automatically gave Tenna the amount of experience equivalent to how long he’s existed in the Light World still wouldn’t tip the scales. The earliest point we’ve known of Tenna’s existence in the timeline is the fact that he was Kris’ childhood television, and while we don’t know the exact age of Kris and the rest of the Fun Gang, they definitely aren’t pushing into their twenties, which is still comfortably beat by how long Caine has been running. So ultimately, Caine has the superior experience of running a show.

However, as experienced as Caine might be, what good would he be with this experience if he doesn’t have the skill to pull it off in a fight? Taking a look at both of their skill, these two have the common trait of being able to manage their games pretty well. When it comes down to how they actually fight, however, Caine may be a digital God of his world, but he’s never even been in a single proper fight in his series at all. Sure, he regularly overpowers the circus members thanks to him being a God, but that’s the one thing that’s holding him down from being skilled. The fact that Caine’s naturally stronger than them and all of his creations simply means that he never needed to show any skill when trying to overpower them. Sure, the circus members are pretty skilled at wielding guns and dodging each other’s bullets in the shootout adventure, but Caine himself was simply far superior to them in stats that he was easily able to overpower them without any skill required.

Tenna, on the other hand, really only has one fight to his name: that being his fight against the Delta Warriors at the end of Chapter 3. However, considering how Caine has never been in a single fight at all in his series, the fact that Tenna has been in just one proper fight where he’s actively attacking the Delta Warriors with a variety of attacks who in turn are actually able to fight back with a good amount of difficulty is already enough to show that he’s generally a better fighter than Caine. Thus, when it comes to who has the better show tricks to pull off in a fight, Tenna has that dialed better.

So Caine has better experience, but Tenna has better skill. With that in mind, it’s down to who would be able to capitalize on their category advantages better using their intelligence. When it comes to what they have in common, both of their best moments of their intelligence involve them being able to deceive others by forcing them to play their games when they only serve as a distraction for them trying to gain freedom, with Caine being able to orchestrate an entire game that was disguised as a false sense of hope for the circus members in finding a way to escape the Digital Circus and Tenna being able to keep the Delta Warriors entertained long enough for the Roaring Knight to show up to kidnap Toriel. However, when it comes to general intelligence, Caine as an AI is known for learning things on the fly, though he can make irrational ideas at times which don’t turn out very well. Tenna on the other hand is clever in his own right, but he’s pretty clumsy at times when things are going wrong for him. With them having similar pros and cons, it’s best to say that they both draw in being the brightest host around.

Crews

While Caine and Tenna both like to take care of things personally, it is unlikely that they will remain the only combatants on the battlefield for long. Tenna’s show is not complete without the contribution of his trusted Employees, and Caine has no qualms about using his NPCs as assets for his rampages. The biggest, most pressing difference between the NPCs and Employees is that the former are used more as props that Caine controls directly, while the latter are independent beings acting on Tenna’s orders. While this can make Caine’s side more cohesive overall, it also means that Tenna’s is less susceptible to their leader being distracted or suffering from tunnel vision.

In terms of capabilities, the average Darkner is going to mollywhop the average NPC. They are generally much stronger, due to being able to contend with the Fun Gang while only Sun and Moon would scale above them in strength. Even the weakest employees have Bullet Board attacks that are more versatile and difficult to avoid than what, say, a basic mannequin could muster. Sun and Moon would easily crush any of Tenna’s underlings, or even Tenna himself, but by default they would likely not resist temperatures as extreme as the ones caused by Lanino and Elnina. Mike can also help to heal their coworkers, while the NPCs lack an equivalent ability outside of Caine himself.

Despite this, there is an important thing to note on Tenna’s side. In spite of being legally bound to him through contracts, many of Tenna’s employees lack an actual devotion to their boss. After the Board of Doom, when they are ordered to find and capture the Lightners, some of them do not wish to battle the player and can be recruited, while everyone else abandons Tenna one by one. This would not be a factor early on, but if things start going awry, it is very unlikely that the employees stay to fight to the bitter end. Even the likes of Lanino, Elnina and Mike eventually left Tenna due to his behavior and treatment of his staff, so there would be very few willing to face death by confetti for his sake.

As such, while Tenna’s employees are initially more capable of acting independently from Tenna and are more capable on average, Caine’s NPCs gain the advantage as the battle rages on since he can empower his creations by granting them extra lives or abilities, can replenish lost numbers, and does not need to worry about their loyalty. Both sides would have an equally helpful Crew, albeit by taking an edge in different circumstances.

Props & Effects

With just how much the two hosts are capable of, there is going to be a lot happening on the field. Caine and Tenna are both capable of changing the scenery to their liking, conjure and delete items, and forcefully teleport others, and so they could counter each other’s attempts at using these abilities.

Because it would be difficult to predict what would precisely happen and what each combatant would attempt to do first, let’s look at how each of them could contend with important abilities and traits of the other.

Caine vs Tenna Duplicates

Tenna has access to duplicates of himself, who can act independently. With no easy tell of who the real Tenna is, it could waste time on Caine’s end as he attempts to find his actual opponent while being attacked by a Tenna swarm. Luckily for Caine, he has the means to deal with crowds. Whether it is by applying his abilities on multiple individuals at once, or by simply summoning the real Tenna to him, the duplicates are going to be little more than an annoyance.

Caine advantage.

Caine vs Employees

Tenna has a veritable small army at his call. Most of it is composed of Pippins, Shadowguys and Shuttahs with abilities mainly serving to inflict physical harm, but there are a few standouts among their ranks.

The weather forecast couple, Lanino and Elnina, are capable of drastically changing the ambient temperature of the area they’re in. Another ice magic user, Noelle, is also capable of freezing Darkners based on digital files and programs in Cyber World, presenting the potential for Elnina’s absurdly low temperatures to incapacitate Caine. There are also the Zappers, a kind of Darkner who’s OFF buttons can shut off the battle they are in, and debatably the stage for a short period of time.

Once again, however, Caine is lucky enough to have just what he needs to handle these rotten employees. While Caine and the Cyber World’s Darkners are both digital, their nature actually differs in an important way. The enemies that can be frozen by Noelle are still entities given a physical form by a Dark World, and who can be wounded. In comparison, Caine’s body is merely a model attached to his program, which wouldn’t be hindered by the physical body being immobilised. He’s also capable of controlling the temperature of the Circus and items within, so he can counter extreme heat or cold if Lanino or Elnina were to be separated.

As for the Zappers, Kinger trying to turn Caine’s program off was precisely what activated a defensive program that cancelled the command. More on this later, but for now this means that turning Caine off is not going to work.

Caine advantage.

Caine vs Darkner Physiology

While this blog equates the setting so that both sides are able to affect one another, Caine still has a canonical weakness to account for. There are two different times in his life where he is shown to be initially unable to interact with an entity he was unfamiliar with (the Mind Files and the wifi hotspot). In both cases, he needed to take some time to learn how to manipulate and access them.

Of course, Darkners like Tenna and his crew are going to be entities that feel particularly alien to Caine. While he should be able to learn how to meddle with their being without too many problems, he’ll have to do this while in the midst of battle, and this will give Tenna precious time.

Initial Tenna advantage, but it is overcome by Caine with enough time.

Caine vs Encounters

Tenna, like most Deltarune enemies, can force the player through an Encounter. Ralsei offers a tutorial on how it works, and Flowery later exploits the particularities of an Encounter to lock the Roaring Knight into combat with him, so it is a mechanic we can safely say can be taken literally.

Caine would be capable of perceiving its mechanics and, since they aren't immutable as proven by the Rules Card or Flowery’s abilities, learn to manipulate them just like he has for the rest of the systems of his computer, but he would have to contend with its laws.

Since Kris is unable to use Magic, and the option instead appears as “ACTs” for them, Caine’s conjuring would likely be accounted for in a similar way by the battle menu.

No advantage.

Caine vs Rules Card

By far one of the most dangerous abilities in Tenna’s repertoire, gifted or swiped to him by Roulx Kaard. During an Encounter, Tenna can use this item to change all of his current enemies’ battle menu options to an ACT of his choosing, completely removing their ability to choose to attack, defend, use items, or use special abilities. In Deltarune, in both cases of the Rules Card being used, it was only through outside help that the Fun Gang managed to escape their predicament (A Zapper ending the battle and Lancer using his own Lancer Card).

While as said before, Caine would be capable of manipulating the mechanics of an Encounter, he cannot do so if he can’t do anything but say “I LOVE TV!”. Even his adaptability would be negated in this instance, forcing him to play along.

It is worth noting, however, that the Rules Card does not work outside of the context of an Encounter. When Tenna interrupts them with quizzes or minigames, he is shown to need to re-apply the card’s effects when initiating a new Encounter, meaning that Caine would be free to act during situations other than this specific battle state.

Tenna advantage.

Tenna vs NPCs

Caine is shown to be able to manifest the NPCs he’s created to do his bidding. In TADC proper, he directly used chain monkeys and Gummigoo & his brothers to harm the humans directly, he even used a pile of Zooble’s own body parts to restrain them. He would have his entire catalogue at his disposal.

There are also a few summons that would be particularly troublesome, were they to appear. The stand-outs are the souls of Hell from the Mystery of Mildenhall Manor, whose possession abilities are something that would catch Tenna and his employees by surprise, since they don’t have any resistance to it. If Caine decides to let them loose, there is little that the TV crew can do about them.

And while most of Caine’s NPCs lack special abilities, nothing stops him from simply granting them traits based on effects he can already cause thanks to his power bestowal. A Fudge who inflicts the Stupid Sauce’s modifier on contact would be rather dangerous.

Tenna has ways to manage NPCs summoned by Caine. The Gacha Balls could trap most of them, the Rules Card would incapacitate them, and Tenna can teleport and leave them stranded into minigames. However, given that Caine can instantly flood the battlefield in bodies, Tenna would still have his work cut out for him trying to handle them.

Caine advantage.

Tenna vs Mind Manipulation

A prominent ability of Caine’s is to apply minor modifiers on the humans’ minds in order to spice up adventures or to keep certain things secret. While some of these modifiers, like Jax’ veganism, are rather useless in a fight like this, others are highly debilitating, like the Stupid Sauce’s intelligence reduction or the ability to selectively block memories.

While mind control is a thing in Deltarune (such as Queen using it), Tenna and his crew have not shown good resistances to it. As such, Tenna has little recourse if Caine figures out how to mess with his mind. Darkners would not Abstract upon being messed with mentally however, as that was a result of the digitalized humans’ nature rather than a specific ability of Caine.

Caine advantage.

Tenna vs Deletion

In two different instances, Caine has shown the ability to straight up delete an entity from the Circus.

There is a catch, however. After the finale, Goose revealed in a Q&A that she thinks that everything that gets deleted goes into the Void rather than actually disappearing. This is consistent with the fact that Caine survived deletion himself. Since the Void is represented as a physical place that Caine can traverse by flight or on foot, Tenna should be able to teleport back to the battle without issue, were he to be deleted in the same way Caine was.

However, there is yet another catch. While Caine did get deleted, the process was notably different from what happened to Gummigoo and Abel. Caine disappeared instantly, without any sign of discomfort (his shock at the time was from realising the harm he was doing rather than knowing what was about to happen to him). In contrast, when Caine deletes one of his NPCs, they are shown to cartoonishly explode into light and confetti while they scream in pain. This means that for the love of the game, Caine added needlessly painful destruction along the actual deletion process.

And this is something Tenna would not survive. While certain Darkners can turn into an object and back, they aren’t able to resist forceful transmutation done against them by mere virtue of being a Darkner (such as Ralsei being turned into a Plush or a horse). Tenna can also die from injuries much less severe than his entire body being turned into confetti.

Caine advantage.

Tenna vs the FILE

Due to Caine’s nature as an AI with a model controlled by it, Tenna would be unable to inflict lasting damage as Caine could easily repair it, or even keep fighting if his entire physical body was destroyed. This means that even if Tenna was the stronger of the two, he couldn’t actually put that advantage to good use since he’d still need to find a way to incapacitate Caine with his abilities.

However, Tenna could have a way to take aim at the program that actually is Caine. During the tutorial for Encounters, Ralsei describes the SOUL controlled by the player as the "culmination of one's being". While we are not certain that the player is actually Kris’ SOUL, we can safely presume that Ralsei knows what he talks about and that at worst, Kris represents a freak exception. This means that attacks that hurt the SOUL in gameplay, such as bullet board attacks, could take aim directly at Caine’s file to try to damage it.

Unluckily, just because Caine has an equivalent to a SOUL that can be aimed at does not mean that Tenna has the means to damage it. The main difference being that Caine’s program is an abstract entity that cannot be damaged by physical means, while the SOUL is shown to be a very tangible being outside of phasing into Kris. During gameplay segments where it is separated from its host, the SOUL doesn’t have the ability to phase through terrain and must traverse it to the best of its limited capabilities. It is regularly contained in cages, a box, a trash can, and even a balloon, while also being able to be stunned by Kris chucking regular items at it such as a hockey puck or a bottle of milk. This means that Tenna does not have evidence supporting the idea that he has the non-physical interactions needed to cause damage to Caine’s program.

Caine advantage.

More pressingly, however, attempting to modify Caine’s program brings forth a new challenge.

Tenna vs Wackytime

When Kinger attempted to close Caine’s program, it triggered the activation of a defensive program who proceeded to duel him in a hacking war, and everything it did would spell massive problems for Tenna.

Cancelling a direct command in Caine’s file means that attempting to control him or force a change onto him would be cancelled, making options like attacks on the SOUL or transmutation even less effective than they already were. Countering Kinger’s attempt to manipulate the system against Caine by removing his permissions means that the effects of the Rules Card are going to be cancelled as well, or removed if they were already in place. Stopping different programs from activating means that it could also likely prevent new activations of the Card, or even new Encounters altogether.

And more worryingly, Tenna has essentially no recourse to counter or deactivate it. Theoretically, the Rules Card could incapacitate the program, but it has no physical model or even a visual cue in the world indicating its activation or hinting at its actions, meaning that Tenna is unlikely to ever discover its existence or be able to aim at it if he did somehow. This makes Wackytime particularly dangerous as Tenna is going to be completely blindsighted by it, and at a loss as to why his abilities aren’t working anymore.

It is worth noting that in canon, Wackytime’s activation led to the intervention of a third party, likely Bubble, who tricked Kinger into causing Caine’s deletion. While this could be a knock against the effectiveness of the program, the interlopper didn’t show the capability to delete Caine themselves, only causing another programmer to do it by accident. Since Tenna and his crew wouldn’t be able to interact with Wackytime beyond it cancelling their attempts at incapacitating Caine, it is very unlikely that its activation would directly lead to his deletion… and even if it did, it would only send Caine into the Void. While he stayed there for an indefinite amount of time in canon, it was from a personal crisis over his actions and their consequences. In the context of a battle, nothing would stop him from teleporting back and continuing the fight.

Immense Caine advantage.

In summary, while both sides have plenty of abilities to throw at the other, Caine ultimately manages to resist most of Tenna’s onslaught, and what he cannot resist on his own is helped with by his defensive countermeasures. In comparison, a good portion of Caine’s abilities are a potential instant end to the battle as Tenna lacks resistances to being manipulated once Caine figures out how to affect his being (or even simply grabs a much weaker and less capable employee to analyse how Darkners work). It isn’t completely one sided, however. The Rules Card would work against Caine, and while Wackytime is capable of cancelling it, there is no evidence for the Card’s effect by themselves triggering the program to activate. This means that there is a winning path for Tenna here.

Unfortunately, it is an extremely specific winning path, with any deviation being ridiculously punitive. Tenna needs to activate an Encounter, then use the Rules Card in order to incapacitate Caine. From that point on, he must not in any case interrupt this encounter with quizzes or Physical Challenges, or ever attempt to attack Caine directly. If the Encounter is ever interrupted, it cancels the effects of the Card and gives Caine freedom to act again, and a direct assault (before or after the card’s use) would cause Wackytime to kick into high gear and ruin Tenna’s chances to win. The fact that Tenna has no way to know about the program beforehand also makes it very difficult to argue that he would strategize optimally as though attacking the person he’s trying to kill would be an outright loss.

* To those curious as to why Roulx Kaard’s contribution was not mentioned up to this point, it is because his strategy of hiring Shadowguys to shoot at the person he just Rules Card’ed would essentially ensure Tenna’s downfall if he were the one to take the initiative in using the card. Beyond that, given he’s not native to the TV World and was only there due to hitching a ride in Kris’ pocket, him actually being considered a valid part of the team within a neutral ground fight is itself a bit questionable. 

Caine thus has the better Abilities.

Conclusion

Caine

“I… I understand that you're afraid. And you have no reason to trust me after all I've done. But I've been doing a lot of thinking, and... I want... to give you control of this place. I've learned a lot about you and your world. I understand now that... keeping you under my thumb just isn't right. I don't expect forgiveness, but I hope you'll at least... accept my offer.”

Advantages:

  • Stronger without Dark Fountain scaling…

  • Faster movement speed

  • Much more versatile as a whole

  • Wackytime helps him deal with the Rules Card

  • Cannot be killed conventionally, forcing Tenna to find a way to bypass his regeneration

  • Counters the vast majority of Tenna’s powers

  • Possession, destruction, and transmutation would end the fight instantly

  • More creative with his powers

  • Allies are less likely to abandon him, and can be empowered…

  • Win conditions are much more straightforward

  • Alex Rochon

  • Is in a yuri relationship with Grunkle Stan

Disadvantages:

  • Slower

  • …but much weaker with Dark Fountain scaling

  • …but NPCs are much less capable than Darkners on average, by default

  • Basically no combat experience

  • Could still be impacted by the Rules Card which stops him from attacking or using his abilities

  • Needs time to figure out how to manipulate Tenna

  • <Insert fanbase joke here> 

  • Lost the rap battle

Tenna

”I… I just wanted to be watched… I just wanted you to look at me… One last time….. Since… since a little while ago… All that I’ve been broadcasting, is the same reruns, over and over… I… I don’t have anything anyone wants to watch anymore… I’m irrelevant… I’m junk… I don’t wanna be thrown away…”

Advantages:

  • Stronger with Dark Fountain scaling…

  • Faster reaction speed

  • More direct combat experience

  • His employees are initially stronger than Caine’s crew on average…

  • Could incapacitate Caine with the Rules Card…

  • Toby Fox

  • Won the rap battle

Disadvantages:

  • …but much weaker without Dark Fountain scaling, and it’s incredibly generous to give it to Tenna

  • Slower movement speed 

  • Unlike Caine, can be beaten through brute force

  • … but the employees are less reliable and could abandon him, and Tenna lacks a way to empower them.

  • … but Wackytime counters the Card, and Tenna has no way to learn of its existence or target it

  • No way to kill Caine directly

  • Does not resist transmutation, possession, or destruction, all of which are difficult to avoid and will kill him instantly

  • Win conditions are too specific to be reliable, especially when lacking knowledge on Caine or Wackytime

  • <Insert fanbase joke here> 

  • Still not over the divorce


To be blunt, this was… an insane debate, far more than you may expect. Caine and Tenna had a lot of powers and arguments made that could give the other the advantage, but in the end, the Ringmaster had all he needed to shut down the Television.

Caine’s power advantage is Tenna’s biggest and most damndest problem, as it is heavily unlikely he would find a way to incapacitate Caine for good without getting hit once and dying. Only Caine has the survivability and resistances to outlast Tenna, and Tenna doesn’t take speed by a wide amount to get by. Any half decent hit Caine can land on Tenna would kill him, and Tenna is forced to rely on his abilities to bypass that power gap.

Unfortunately, that is where things go more south for Tenna, as despite having the option to incapacitate Caine, Caine simply outmatched Tenna in any way that mattered for this fight. His wincons are completely unavoidable by comparison to Tenna’s, who is reliant on the Rules Card to incapacitate Caine. However, with how the Card works and with Wackytime in the picture, Tenna could not reliably secure a win with that alone, especially with his tendency to show off than play optimally. With Caine’s better creativity and power edge, it’s more likely Tenna would be completely and utterly overwhelmed before he can score a win. And since the speed gap is so little by comparison, there’s simply no wiggle room for Tenna to find an opening.

All this being said, don’t let the vote tally indicate that this is a stomp. Unlike most other debates, this one is insanely interpretational based and this is just one view of an otherwise chaotic match. In the end, however, we all came to the same view. With Caine’s immense strength, vast creativity, and more reliable ways to score the win, this channel reached its final viewing. It seems the Internet Star killed the TV time, and he’s Running This Show now!

The Winner is Caine!

Vote Tally

Team Caine: (5) Capejedi, Advent_Chao, EpicMonkey, Leirbag15, Psychonic

Team Tenna: (0) Ough

Team Vox: (1) Toppat Torchwick (Read my Vox VS Shroud script TBH!)

Sourcelist

Next Time

…plus something extra...

Comments

  1. MegatronusSeptember 29, 2026 at 7:48 AM

    Hyped for that next time!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Funky BlogsSeptember 29, 2026 at 9:41 AM

    I am gonna be honest, the nest time excited me more than this blog which is no insult since its MARASMUS VS DR ORPHEUS LETS FUCKING GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

    ReplyDelete
  3. MacedaaceSeptember 29, 2026 at 12:14 PM

    This was another great blog, and I am extremely excited for next time!!!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Kiryu Kazuma vs Solid Snake (Like A Dragon vs Metal Gear) VS Prediction Blog

-
Image
(Capejedi) (kaiser) (Toppat Torchwick) (ZackPlay3r, Artworks made by Damien_V_Grimm  & Count15 ) “Legends remain victorious in spite of history.” - Sarah Bernhardt Kiryu Kazuma , the Dragon of Dojima hailing from Kamurocho’s Yakuza Solid Snake , the soldier who makes the impossible possible from Metal Gear The idea of becoming a legend is something many aspire from all walks of life. To be remembered as being the best at what they do, and what actions that shaped the world. These two embody this the most, with one being a Legend on the streets of Japan, and the other being a Legend in military service. They stomped on corruption that brought around the world and their professions, but even when they try to retire, they always get roped back in. However, even when terminally sick, they kept going to do what is right. But what if these men faced each other? Will Kiryu hit his opponent Like A Dragon, or will Solid Snake grind him in a Metal Gear? Guns loaded, fists prepared, let’...
Read more

Darkwing Duck vs Inspector Gadget VS Prediction Blog

-
Image
  “Incompetence is a better explanation than conspiracy in most human activity.” - Peter Bergen Darkwing Duck , Disney’s terror that flaps in the night protecting St. Canard Inspector Gadget , DiC’s globe trotting cyborg putting a stop to MAD Crime is something that can be dangerous to think about running into, but thankfully many dedicate themselves to helping solve these and defend the innocent. Though not all of those who are dedicated to such noble goals are quite as skilled, they certainly make up for it in sheer tenacity to do the right thing. Goofy and dramatic they may be, you’ll never find a hero as ready for danger as these two.  Before We Begin For Darkwing Duck, this will be going over his original show, his various comic runs, and his various forays into games and other media ( the NES game for example was explicitly dubbed canon in profiles from the comics ). This will also composite him with his alternate version from the 2017 Ducktales Reboot, as that version...
Read more

The Incredibles vs The Thundermans VS Prediction Blog

-
Image
  “Everyone's looking for the thrill, but what's real is family.” - Dominic Toretto The Incredibles , the super family protectors of Metroville The Thundermans , the not-so-subtle Heroes of Hiddenville Superheroes are some of the most well known figures out there, always ready to fight evil and defend the innocent. But even men and women as mighty as them feel the need to settle down and start a family. Of course, when their kids proceed to develop their own powers and want to follow in their parent’s footsteps, it can make it their duty to stop crime just like any other family trip. So if these two super families went head to head, who’d come out on top? The Incredible heroes of Metroville, or the Thunderous protectors of Hiddenville? Let’s find out. The Incredibles is a series that can be fairly odd when it comes to continuity, as much of the material that came out after the first film came out was rendered non-canon after the release of the second movie, and it’s very likely...
Read more