I’ve basically spent the last month talking about this on my personal accounts, but I guess here is as good a place as any to really outline the reasons I find it hard to see Spamton G. Spamton as any kind of victim or tragic figure…

To begin with, the most basic fact is that Spamton isn’t real. None of the Dark World is real. And even if we choose to ignore the obvious and focus just on what we’re told in the game, Spamton has only existed for less than a day. Prior to the creation of the dark fountain in the computer lab, Spamton was just a computer program like any other. It is not possible for a computer program to have a tragic backstory. If Spamton is just a puppet with no control over his life, this is not a trait that is unique to him. As outlined from the very beginning of Chapter 1, all Darkners live out their lives as NPCs, their sole purpose being to assists Lightners in their quests. Spamton is just a rare case of a Darkner with ambitions to rise above this design.

More importantly, I don’t think Spamton’s past “traumas” are even his own. As a Darkner, he essentially exists as a tulpa or thoughtform, and thus serves as a mirror of the “real people” around him - primarily Kris and Noelle. This is first made clear when the pair backtrack through the junkyard to the locked room with Spamton’s store inside; though unable to enter, the area seems to fill Noelle with nostalgia for the adventures she once had with Kris and their siblings, Dess and Asriel. Obviously, Spamton represents something that happened in the pair’s pasts.

His presence in Chapter 2’s evil route emphasises this even further. After spending Noelle’s part of the game informing the player how many Darkners are left to freeze, playing an active part in manipulating Noelle to become “stronger”, he finally offers his “Commemorative Ring”…

…given his (and the Virovirokun’s) repeated references to the year 1997, this ring is obviously meant to “commemorate” something that happened in that year. And given the evil route’s content, plus Chapter 2’s focus on Dess’ disappearance and how it affected Noelle… it seems pretty clear what exactly this event is.

I’ve seen it frequently suggested that Kris’ obvious trauma response after the NEO fight is just due to how “weird” the event was, or perhaps because Spamton’s puppet-on-a-string plight reminds Kris of their own situation, being controlled by the player. But the fact is that Kris shows some kind of problem with the NEO suit before the fight even begins; trying to interact with it and make it do something after initially inserting the loaded disk elicits this text:

It’s not Spamton, or even Spamton’s attempt to kill Kris for their soul, that triggers Kris, at least initially. It is NEO itself.

(It seems widely agreed upon that the Lightner who initially created the files for NEO is Mettaton, who was responsible for NEO’s design in Undertale: but given the prominence of angels and angelic symbolism in Noelle’s family and personal life, could that all be just a red herring, and the Lightner who poured her hopes and dreams into that drawing was in fact Noelle herself? Per the romantic ferris wheel scene, we know that Noelle’s dream is in fact to become an angel and fly away from all her problems… I wonder if NEO isn’t indeed something Noelle created to commemorate the very same event commemorated by the Thorn Ring? (Spamton again spews out the year 1997 in association with NEO’s creation)

Given the close relationship between the Dreemurr and Holiday families, Asriel’s own wish to become an angel, and the way Undertale’s Mettaton (itself the name of an angel) wished to essentially usurp Asriel’s role as the angel who saves monsterkind, I certainly think the situation surrounding NEO is more complex than people seem to think.)

Even setting aside any question as to what Spamton “represents”, his intentions to manipulate the player into violence aren’t restricted just to the game’s evil route:

…and when the player does use his commemorative ring, he’s not shy about what its intended use is:

And above any of this - above Spamton’s selling of weapons to children, or his urging of children to use weapons - the very core of Spamton’s character is that of the car salesman, that of dangerously misleading advertisement. His very nature is deception and the art of the deal. His job is to sell people a lie, and none of his appearances in Deltarune make any attempt to hide this. The player’s first contact with Spamton is an attempted scam. The items he sells are priced incorrectly and do not work. He makes the attainment of the NEO suit out to be a good deal for Kris, and then immediately tries to stab them in the back. Any reading of Spamton as a purely sympathetic character is a face-value interpretation of the words of a character whose very essence is manipulation. If his dialogue contains a hidden tragedy about losing everything and needing help, that is on purpose. Everything he says is part of the grift.