History Persona5 / TropesSToZ

[[VideoGame/Persona5 Main Page]] | [[Persona5/TropesAToB A-B]] | [[Persona5/TropesCToF C-F]] | [[Persona5/TropesGToR G-R]] | '''S-Z'''

* TimedMission: Each Palace has to be completed before a set date, or else something bad will happen. They are s followed:

** [[spoiler: Maruki sees the team failing to meet the deadline as Joker indecisiveness causing him pain, putting Joker in a permanent sleep.]]

** Kamoshida: Joker, Ryuji and Mishima will be expelled from school by Kamonshida, while its implied Ann surrenders herself to him just so he'll stop abusing Shiho.
** Madarame: Madarame takes legal action against the team and possibly ruining Yusuke's life as well.
** Kaneshiro leaks the photos of Makoto and the Theives at the club, later having her sold into prostitution.

** Kamoshida: Ann will be expelled from school by Kamonshida.
** Madarame: Madarame will perform legal action against the team.
** Kaneshiro: Kaneshiro will leak the photos of Makoto at the club and have her sold into prostitution.
** Futaba: [[spoiler: Futaba will commit suicide due to her lingering guilt.]]
** Okumura: Okumura will have his daughter be sold off.
** [[spoiler: Sae: Sae will launch an investigation against the Thieves.]]
** [[spoiler: Shido: Shido will be voted into office.]]
** [[spoiler: Maruki: Maruki will take drastic measures to ensure his world stays.]]

* YourMindMakesItReal: The Metaverse is built upon the Cognition, the perception of the surrounding world, of every sentient being in the world, and the Palaces are formed from the Cognition of its rulers distorted by their own twisted desires. This means that a toy gun is treated as a real gun in the Metaverse, so long as it can be ''perceived'' as a real weapon; however, more than this, the Metaverse as a whole can be ''altered'' if one can change someone's Cognition. In almost every Palace, the Phantom Thieves are required to alter someone's perception in the real world in order to advance their goals in the other world.
** Just finding a Palace's treasure (the embodiment of the ruler's twisted desires) isn't enough for the Thieves; in order to make it manifest itself in a physical form, they send a calling card declaring their intent to steal it. Once the Palace ruler is made aware that A) their desires are twisted, B) their desires can be ''stolen'', and C) someone is coming to steal their desires, the treasure appears.
** Since Palaces are based on a distorted view of a real place, doors that the palace ruler ''considers'' totally secure will be entirely unopenable in the Metaverse until the ruler's cognition is forcibly changed by opening the door's real-world counterpart and making sure the ruler knows it. The first time this happens, in Madarame's palace, the door to an art storage room is locked in the real world [[spoiler:because it's where he's hiding ''Sayuri'' and its copies as part of a scam]] and no one but him has ever entered, so the Thieves have to trick Yusuke to get into Madarame's atelier and have Morgana pick the lock, then have Madarame discover them inside, so he no longer thinks of the room as secure.[[spoiler: Futaba, being a shut-in, sees the door to her room as an impenetrable barrier until the thieves convince her to willingly open it for them. Sae sees her courtroom as apart from the general public, so the Thieves need to attend one of her trials so she knows they can enter the court.]]
** Kaneshiro considers himself far above everyone in Shibuya, and unconcerned by anyone he isn't currently exploiting, and so his Palace is seen flying through the air, well out of reach of the Thieves. Only after Makoto incurs a 3-million-yen debt with Kaneshiro in the real world, thus making her an exploitation target, does the palace lower a ramp for them to enter as "customers" of his bank.
** Mementos is the representation of the collective unconscious. The Thieves are stopped at multiple times in their descent into the depths of Mementos by massive doors, and only when they begin to make a name for themselves in the real world, becoming more enshrined in the collective unconscious, do these doors open themselves.

[[VideoGame/Persona5 Main Page]] | [[Persona5/TropesAToF A-F]] | [[Persona5/TropesGToR G-R]] | '''S-Z'''

** At one point, when Akechi is musing on the identity of the Phantom Thieves in front of your group, you have the option to tell him Ryuji is one. Joker clearly says it as a joke and Akechi treats it the same way.

* WeCannotGoOnWithoutYou: If the protagonist is defeated during battle, the game ends, even if your party members are at full health. The reason is that if you die before 11/20 it means the drugs Joker was injected with knocked him out in the current time; [[spoiler:[[DisasterDominoes which means that Sae leaves him and then you get shot in the head by the Akechi]]]]. In the current timeframe, you just [[spoiler:lose Yaldabaoth's game. By the third term, you end up accepting Maruki's reality.]]

** Usually averted. Unlike the previous two games, it is impossible to break or reverse any Confidants, possibly because the Confidants are a business relationship between the protagonist and the NPC in question. Data mining suggests that both reversing ("doubt") and breaking were intended to be possible, with [[DummiedOut leftover dialog and images left in the released game]]. The implications of these remnants indicate that starting Confidant deals and ignoring them for extended periods before you build up enough trust would eventually cause the Confidant to first doubt you (removing Confidant-specific bonuses), then break the deal (removing both Confidant-specific bonuses and fusion EXP bonuses). The largest remaining artifact visible to players of this is Morgana's warnings when receiving phone requests to accept offers to meet from certain confidants[[note]]Wheel of Fortune, Hanged Man, Death, Temperance, Devil, Tower, Star, and Sun[[/note]] until you build enough trust with them, though there is no active in-game penalty from failing to do so.

** Since Palaces are based on a distorted view of a real place, doors that the palace ruler ''considers'' totally secure will be entirely unopenable in the Metaverse until the ruler's cognition is forcibly changed by opening the door's real-world counterpart and making sure the ruler knows it. The first time this happens, in Madarame's palace, the door to an art storage room is locked in the real world [[spoiler:because it's where he's hiding ''Sayuri'' and its copies as part of a scam]] and no one but him has ever entered, so the Thieves have to trick Yusuke to get into Madarame's atelier and have Morgana pick the lock, then have Madarame discover them inside, so he no longer thinks of the room as secure.[[spoiler: Futaba, being a shut-in, sees the door to her room as an impenetrable barrier until the thieves convince her to willingly open it for them.]]
** Kaneshiro considers himself far above everyone in Shibuya, and unconcerned by anyone he isn't currently exploiting, and so his Palace is seen flying through the air, well out of reach of the Thieves. Only after Makoto incurs a 3-million-yen debt with Kaneshiro in the real world, thus making her an exploitation target, does the palace lower a ramp for them to enter.

** In Madarame, [[spoiler:Futaba]], and [[spoiler:Nijima]]'s Palaces, the party encounters a door or room that cannot be passed by traditional means, as the Palace ruler's perception of the door/room in the real world that the cognitive version is based on is that it cannot or must not be passed by anybody. The Thieves are thus forced to find a way to pass that barrier in the real world, in such a way that the Palace ruler sees them doing so, so that they are forced to accept in their subconcious that it's not so impassable after all, at which point it can be passed in the Metaverse.
** Kaneshiro considers himself far above everyone in Shibuya, and unconcerned by anybody with whom he doesn't have personal business, and so his Palace is seen flying through the air, well out of reach of the Thieves. Only after Makoto incurs a 3 million yen debt with Kaneshiro in the real world, thus giving her "personal business" with the man, does the Palace lower itself to allow the Thieves inside.

** The Thieves' gamble to out the traitor relies heavily on manipulating Cognition to their advantage. [[spoiler:The plan for Joker to get caught relies on Sae Nijima interrogating Joker personally, during which Joker must convince her to show his phone to Akechi. When she does so, she will inadvertantly bring Akechi into Sae's Palace. Specifically, an area of her Palace where her own desires haven't twisted the Metaverse, thus remaining almost identical to the real world's version. Because the Palace is a representation of Sae's Cognition, and she was just in the interrogation room of the police station with Joker, there is a cognitive version of Joker still inside the cognitive version of the interrogation room for Akechi to murder, while in the real world, Sae is convinced to save the real Joker.]] An optional conversation with Futaba afterwards has her mention a small detail that the team didn't consider until the very last minute: [[spoiler:Because Sae had also just seen Akechi entering the police station on his way to murder Joker, Sae's palace would also have a cognitive version of Akechi arriving at the same time, which would tip the real Akechi that there was a plot against him. The other Thieves make a second venture into the Palace to lie in wait for the cognitive Akechi and dispose of him before Sae drags the real Akechi into the Palace.]]

* SecurityBlindspot: The Palace of Junya Kaneshiro, head of a local yakuza, is modeled after an immense bank, with security cameras abound. Some are fixed on one location, whilst others switch on and off based on a rotation. While cutting the power to a number of the cameras is required to advance, at times the player will need to use Thief's Eye to see where the camera is looking, and then avoid its line of sight.

* ThreeAmigos:
** [[TheHero The Protagonist]], [[TheLancer Ryuji]], and [[TheHeart Ann]] start as a three man team that are constantly hanging out together, before recruiting the rest of the party.
** During the third term semester in ''Royal'', Joker, Akechi, and Kasumi become this during the initial investigation of [[spoiler:Maruki's Palace]]. Word of God jokingly compares their character dynamics to a LoveTriangle.

** Memes aside, [[INeverSaidItWasPoison these lines]] indirectly reveal who the true culprit is [[spoiler: and for context, you hear Morgana you already entered the Metaverse plus this is the first time you directly meet this character]]:

** If you enter the women's bathroom in the first half of Madarame's museum Palace, Ann will comment on it and ask you to leave.

*** [[spoiler: In the Royal-only Maruki's Palace this is swapped out for the track 'I Believe'. The lyrics of the song reflect the Thieves' intentions to stop Maruki's rewritten reality, as well as the Wishing Star, which plays a huge role in this part of the game.

* WritersCannotDoMath: Kaneshiro's deadline is July 9th, even though he issued the three-week demand on June 20th, which would actually place it at July 11th.

* TooLongDidntDub: Due to the game being explicitly set in UsefulNotes/{{Tokyo}}, Japan, various cultural references are untranslated. This includes things like SenpaiKohai, food names, most UsefulNotes/JapaneseHonorifics with some exceptions[[note]]Morgana calls Ann "Lady" rather than "-dono", and teachers tend to be called "Mr." and "Ms." rather than "sensei".[[/note]] and so on.

* TempleOfDoom: Futaba's Palace takes the form of an ancient Egyptian pyramid in the middle of the desert, with some [[HailFirePeaks additional]] [[{{Cyberspace}} computer motifs]].

** Only a few minutes into the game, a police investigator is reading the crimes Joker has been charged with [[spoiler:(Joker [[TheReveal isn't really guilty]], [[UnwittingPawn the police]] are following the CorruptPolitician that [[HereWeGoAgain originally]] [[MiscarriageOfJustice ruined Joker's life]])]], the last one possibly leaving a doubt as to how heroic our protagonist really is:

--->'''Standing Male Student:''' Hey... What's that...!?
--->'''Gawking Female Student:''' Wait... Shiho's going to jump!

--->'''Morgana:''' I wanna go to that huge pancake-looking place we passed on the way here!
--->'' A minute later...''
--->'''[[spoiler:Akechi:]]''' Oh, am I mistaken? I thought I heard something about [[spoiler: delicious pancakes]]...

* WeCannotGoOnWithoutYou: If the protagonist is defeated during battle, the game ends, even if your party members are at full health. The reason is because if you die before 11/20 it means the drugs Joker was injected with knocked him out in the current time; [[spoiler:[[DisasterDominoes which means that Sae leaves him and then you get shot in the head by the Akechi]]]]. In the current timeframe, you just [[spoiler:lose Yaldabaoth's game.]]
* WeHaveBecomeComplacent: A major theme throughout the game, wherein the Japanese population has grown complacent and uncaring of the world around them. People who are seen as "deviants" are ostracized, while the general public is only concerned with keeping order. [[spoiler:This is illustrated by the Prison of Regression in the depths of Mementos, where the public's collective subconscius has locked itself into a massive prison, preferring to stay safe under tyranny than to make choices for themselves. Conversations with the prisoners show their disillusionment with life, and their belief that nothing they do can cause things to change.]]

** Only a few minutes into the game, a police investigator is reading the crimes Joker has been charged with [[spoiler:(Joker [[TheReveal isn't really guilty]], [[UnwittingPawn the police]] are following a CorruptPolitician that originally [[MiscarrigeOfJustice ruined Joker's life]])]], the last one possibly leaving a doubt as to how heroic our protagonist really is:

** Memes aside, [[INeverSaidItWasPoison these lines]] indirectly reveal who the true culprit is [[spoiler:you hear Morgana you already entered the Metaverse]]:

--->'''[[spoiler:Akechi:]]''' Oh, am I mistaken? I thought I heard something about [[spoiler:delicious pancakes]]...