Alternative Character Interpretation / Persona 5

• There is a division on how people feel about Joker's parents. We know nothing about them except for the fact that they passed him off on a friend of a friend after he was put on probation. Did they, as Sojiro says at the start of the game, dump him on someone else because they see him as a pain (we don't see or hear any contact from them for the entire story) or do they really care for him and think this is the best choice for him? It's possible they contact him off camera, but as far as we know they never bother reaching out to him for his entire stay in Tokyo.
  • For the "neglectful parents" side, there's the aforementioned lack of on-screen contact, but also the fact that Joker blossoms into a far more confident and successful person as soon as he's away from his parents' house. Most damning of all, however, is the fact that in Maruki's alternate reality, Sojiro offers to let Joker stay at Leblanc until he finishes high school. This seems to suggest that Joker's innermost desire is to not return to his hometown if Maruki didn't use his actualization to bring Akechi back to life.
  • For the other side, we don't see every moment of Joker's life in the game — only the handful of most important moments of each day. It's entirely possible that his parents are contacting him, and we don't see it because it's not relevant to the plot. As for the point about Joker's development away from home, the fact that he was willing to intervene in the situation that got him arrested in the first place indicates he had some level of confidence and a sense of justice already, which had to have come from somewhere. His stats starting at one could simply be Gameplay and Story Segregation. As for Maruki, his whole problem is giving everyone what they want without thought to the consequences. While in the moment, Joker might want to stay in Tokyo, he always returns in the good endings, suggesting that he does believe it's the right thing for him to do, and given the character he develops into and his bond with Sojiro by that point, it's doubtful he would so readily return to people he knew were going to make him miserable.
  • In the further defense of the parents, there's the fact that Sojiro knows the full story of Joker's arrest as soon as he arrives. Joker wouldn't have had time to tell him, so the only place he could have heard it is from Joker's parents. That means they A) listened to their son's side of the story, B) believed it, and C) bothered to inform his guardian about it, in spite of the social stigma against criminal charges. Those may be the bare minimum, but they're hardly the actions of abusive or neglectful parents.
  • There's also the fact that Yaldabaoth changed the public's Cognition to perceive Joker as a dangerous criminal as soon as he went to save that woman from being harassed by Shido, and of course that would include his parents as well.
• Speaking of parents, the fanbase is divided on just what kind of person Akechi's mother was simply because the game tells the player so little about her actual personality, and what kind of parent she actually was to him. While most of the fanbase is dead-set on her being a kindhearted woman who naively got caught up in an unfortunate situation, and was a good, if depressed, and overworked parent given the circumstances, another part believes she was at the very least a troubled person who knew exactly who she'd been dealing with, but just lost in the end, and also happened to suffer from a severe self-destructive, and violent streak like her son which is partially where he got his issues from. While the game itself says nothing about this directly, and if anything, points towards the opposite given just how fond of her Akechi was, and still is, the line Shido gives about him looking, and acting just like her has made players wonder.
• While most agree that Madarame is an utterly terrible person, did he see Yusuke as nothing more than just another artist to exploit, or did he actually care for him to a certain extent? A few characters raise the latter possibility (granted, none of them had the same eye-opening look at Madarame's Palace that Yusuke did), and Yusuke, for all he hates Madarame for what he's done can't help but occasionally look back fondly on his time with his old teacher and see good along with the bad. Even then, Yusuke also admits during Okumura's palace that the emotional/mental abuse Madarame subjected him to made Yusuke desperate to please him and (almost) completely blind to his faults — it's also entirely possible that Yusuke is just too used to trying to see the good in Madarame to really stop. A lot of the genuinely good times that Yusuke (and other people who knew Madarame) can recall, however, happened when Yusuke was still a child — so was it the case that he started out as being a much better person and got a lot worse as Yusuke grew?
• As detailed within the Values Dissonance page of this game (which plays a significant part in the conclusions one draws) does Kunikazu Okumura really care about Haru in spite of arranging her to marry a terrible person for his personal gain, or was his apology insincere at best?
• Some theorize that Futaba is autistic due to her personality quirks, poor social skills, and tendency to get wrapped up in something she's obsessed with. Her English voice actor, Erica Lindbeck, also stated in an interview that she interpreted Futaba as possibly being on the spectrum. This is also a common theory for Yusuke, for much the same reasons.
• Yusuke's sexuality. Is he gay? Bi? Asexual? Art-sexual? A straight or bi Covert Pervert who pretends to be art-sexual so he can see nude women consequence-free? Fans simply can't agree. This is complicated by the times that he stresses that he's not interested in women, but there are a couple of scenes in-game that imply he's attracted to Ann.
• Why did Yusuke threaten to call the police over Ryuji and the protagonist accusing Madarame of plagiarism if Ann didn't pose nude for him? Was this proof that he, like Madarame, was willing to exploit people for his art, and could have turned out just as badly as his teacher? Did he not realize that there was anything inappropriate about making the request of Ann? Or was he simply trying to drive the Phantom Thieves away for good (a possibility that Ann, who has the most sympathy for Yusuke, considers)? Or was he just too freaked out of the consequences for opposing Madarame? Compare the anime, in which he merely tells the Phantom Thieves to Get Out! and later apologizes for losing his temper.
• Kamoshida's Freudian Excuse. Based on what kind of Jerkass, power-hungry maniac and sexual predator Kamoshida is, did his Freudian Excuse really meant it, or he's just doing it for the sake of begging the Phantom Thieves to spare him from certain death?
• Kawakami as a potential romantic interest, given how a Teacher/Student Romance seems to conflict with her Confidant storyline about how she needs to find a healthy balance of her personal responsibilities with what she feels is needed of her professionally for the betterment of her students. Opinions range from remaining the total Woobie she seemed to be before the issue comes up who really could use anyone as a supportive significant other, which is why she's willing to take Joker up on his offer despite her own in-game objections, to yet another high school teacher in this game worryingly (and disgustingly) blasé about the issue of having sexual relations with a young teenager when Joker confesses his interest in her as she only brings up the teacher/student issue when trying to justify turning him down, with the swerve also calling into question how "innocent" all of the maid service calls made up to this point have really been on her side of this.
• Much has been discussed about Akechi's request to Shido that he not have to kill the Phantom Thieves all at once, his given justification being that the entire group of friends dying mysteriously within days of each other would look way too suspicious. Fans are split as to whether he meant what he said or whether he was trying to protect them from Shido in his own way.
• Adding to this is the question of how much Yaldabaoth was manipulating him. Was Akechi filled with nothing but hate towards the world and wanted to see it burn, no matter the cost, or a weak-hearted victim of societal stigma whose loneliness and anger was fostered into hatred by the malevolent entity? Akechi was 15 and in a child institution at the time and would have done anything to break free from such a situation (which in theory mirrors the Thieves' situation, except more hopeless). There's also how easily he ended up actually caring for the Thieves despite having learned his membership was a deception and not being in their company for a great amount of time, nor possessing knowledge that stealing hearts was even possible until it was too late. A valid argument can be made that Akechi didn't have much of an option to be the hero.
• On the other note, seeing that the victims with on-screen deaths are not entirely innocent, that draws the question of Futaba's mom: Was she really a victim of the Conspiracy, or is it that she is complicit in Shido's plan? Keep in mind that the only things we heard about her is from Futaba and Sojiro, who are on good terms with her, and Maruki was also a Cognitive Psience researcher, yet Shido did basically nothing other than to seize his research and keep him in the dark. It is likely that Akechi sees her as another member of The Conspiracy and possibly a mastermind who Akechi believes to be responsible for the abuse of cognition. On the other hand, it's also possible that like Sae, she's unwittingly doing The Conspiracy's dirty work without being aware of their existence.
• Kaneshiro appears to be a dreaded crime lord that the police refuse to even investigate because they can't track him down and it takes the Phantom Thieves a good while to even know that the Yakuza-tied scammer was Kaneshiro. However, the only thing he's been shown doing on-screen are jarringly obvious extortionist pitfalls which neither justifies his reputation nor do they appear to happen on an extreme scope as suggested, having only two or three victims as opposed to Kamoshida and Shido, who have even more victims, both visible and off-screen, with the consequences laid bare for everyone to see. Later on, we got to know that Kaneshiro's drug-trafficking scams are used to finance Shido's campaign, meaning that anyone trying to make an investigation on him will be invariably assassinated by Akechi. So was Kaneshiro really that dreaded because of his elusiveness and vast reserves of wealth preventing the police from investigating him, or he's only getting away with everything he did only because he was financing Shido's campaign and that somehow got blown up into him being a dreaded crime lord?
• Morgana running away. Who was at fault for the situation? Some blame Morgana because he tended to insult Ryuji for every minor mistake he made and coming off as Wangsty, but some blame Ryuji because he would keep egging Morgana on even if he didn't provoke him.
• Whether Futaba works best as a Love Interest or a surrogate sibling to Joker is a subject of surprising virulence. The argument for the latter, in addition to being quite Squick-worthy due to Values Dissonance is that it's also a valid way to keep their dynamics close in fanworks even if Joker is paired with someone else romantically. Supporters of the former argue that since Sojiro's only been Joker's guardian for less than a year (and even he sees nothing wrong with them being together if you pursue her beyond the fact that you want to date his daughter) claiming the two are siblings through not-actually-adoption is pushing it so it shouldn't be a cause of Squick in the first place. What doesn't help matters is that Futaba does develop an obvious crush on Joker as her Confidant link progresses regardless of how you feel about her, and is one of the most explicit girls about it too, which results in arguments ranging from the former using it as "proof" when accusing the latter of Fanon Discontinuity to the latter claiming it can be a variant of the Flirty Step Siblings trope so it doesn't necessarily disprove their stance. Values Dissonance also comes into play — in Japan, this pairing is more popular because it's way easier to see Joker as a caregiver in their dynamic.
• While Joker is less of a blank slate than the previous two player characters, and often makes decisions without the player's inputs, said decisions can still be subject to interpretation: to what extent is Joker a true believer in the ideals of the Phantom Thieves and to what extent might he be furthering his own ends by leading the group? Points for the former come from the proactively altruistic targets the group takes on, such as Madarame or the Mementos cases, which don't necessarily guarantee a reward and inherently involve some risk of injury or exposure. Points for the latter come from the impetus to continue the Phantom Thieves group after Kamoshida; to whit, the party is willing to consider the brain-washing of complete strangers for the sake of personal views and aspirations rather than out of necessity from an imminent threat, with only the exposure of Yaldabaoth's deceit making them even considering the latter. It is worth noting that, as opposed to the Accomplice Ending from Persona 4, which is implied to have come from the MC's naivete rather than deliberate malice, Joker can opt to side with Yaldabaoth and the ending gives no sense of regret on Joker's part whatsoever, instead having him grin snidely at the camera.
  • During the buffet at the Wilton Hotel, Joker thinks to himself that he hadn't considered continuing as a Phantom Thief after dealing with Kamoshida, and later notes that seeing Masayoshi Shido at the hotel helped convince him to continue. Was he initially reluctant because he was unsure whether it was morally right to change people's hearts because he was afraid of getting into further trouble, or because being betrayed by the woman he helped left him cynical about helping others? And when he did ultimately decide to continue, was it for the sake of changing the world, helping other people, or eventually getting revenge on the one who wronged him?
  • While Joker obviously doesn't regret cutting a deal with Yaldabaoth, when he cuts a deal with the new Arc Villain of Royal and sacrificing every last bit of thought from them in place of their well being, he clearly regrets it. Is he truly rejecting the deal for everyone's real well being, or is he rejecting it so he can continue to express his suppressed anger and regret on Shadows or other enemies?
• Kasumi's scholarship revoked by her head teacher. Is the head teacher really acting out of completely Jerkass level elitism, or does he really know that this is an impostor and not the real Kasumi, as the real one doesn't get third runner ups or below on local gymnast competitions, so he's revoking it for the sake of "Kasumi"-Sumire violating competition rules for impersonating another contestant, and in particular, a dead one?
• Related to the point above, the students in Shujin were apparently jealous of Kasumi getting a scholarship and didn't look at her in an easy way. When she's being exposed as Sumire by Maruki, he explicitly says that only Sumire herself thinks that she's Kasumi. So are the students actually jealous of Kasumi's talent, or they simply don't view her as worthy of scholarship based on how she was actually inferior to Kasumi and they were actually mad that the school giving a scholarship to a completely and utterly delusional impersonator and not the real talented gymnast, at least in their viewpoint?
• A rather subtle one occurs right after Maruki confiscates Yoshizawa as a bargain chip for Joker and Akechi on January 2. Once you go back home from his Palace and meet Morgana, Akechi will phone you telling that he warned Yoshizawa's parents that their daughter might be in danger only for Maruki to had been manipulated them into thinking that she was in a training camp already. Could this be done by Maruki to lower their alert for their daughter missing for a week, or was it actually something that is done to make sure his bargain with Joker and Akechi is held private on both ends?
• In Royal, the new Arc Villain makes two "We Can Rule Together" offers, similar to a previous enemy.
  • Once you reject the first, he drives Sumire berserk indirectly, then uses a tentacle-like device to make her Persona berserk and attack you. Right before he attacks with berserk Cendrillon, one of his entry lines is "be her guide, and help her escape from the nightmare!" So is Maruki legitimately trying to kill you, or is he simply using her to try to convince you that the pain she bears is too much?
  • The second offer happens after Maruki claims that Akechi is a fake made by him, and that the real Akechi is dead. Judging from Akechi warning of a setup once the party reaches Eden, there is absolutely no way that Maruki can know about the party's encounter with Akechi in Shido's Palace. Nor does Maruki know Akechi, having never met him before Akechi's supposed death. Furthermore, if Akechi was really affected, he wouldn't even remember killing Wakaba in the first place, since some deep thinking reveals that did indirectly lead to him confronting the Phantom Thieves in the cruiser, resulting in his ambiguous fate. Could this mean that the Arc Villain of Royal's expanded scenario is just straight-up lying to you to mess with your head and make you more likely to accept the offer? It should be noted however that Doctor Maruki didn't have an idea about Morgana's desires to become human (more or less to look like a human actor that Morgana saw on TV). Given how Doctor Maruki did turn Morgana into that human actor, could there be some truth to what he said?
• When Maruki was "saving humanity" with the dream world, it's heavily implied that was because he's been driven insane by his Persona who was influencing him to do such a thing, and there are also implications that his persona was a separate being altogether from him.^{note - spoilers!} A Persona is a manifested version of its user psyche, or a tamed Shadow Self according to Persona 4: Arena. Therefore, the Persona and the user is usually one and the same, and the Persona can't act independently from its user. However, Maruki's Persona seems to be able of acting on its own and even offers to fuse with Maruki at the final battle — something that is (mostly) unprecedented. ^{further note - contains spoilers for Persona 1 and 2} The exception to this being Takahisa Kandori's Persona in Persona, Nyarlathotep, which forcibly merges with him into God Kandori— Nyarlathotep is even retconned into an independent, malevolent entity capable of masquerading as a persona come Persona 2, suggesting that the independence of Maruki's persona is entirely possible. Maruki seems to be one of the few targets to not mind having you change his heart and even asks you to do it sometimes (although he will still put up a fight, no matter what), and is more concerned about Joker's well being than anything instead of being flat out aloof and hostile like other defectors such as Akechi once they ever defect. So is Maruki's willpower strong enough to awaken such a monstrosity of a Persona or something else was behind its manifestation via artificial or external means?
• One common topic of debate is why Maruki didn't bring Kasumi Back from the Dead during the Third Semester, despite being clearly capable of doing so by that point as shown with Futaba's mom, Haru's dad, and (possibly) Akechi, and that likely being a much happier solution^note considering Kasumi's friends and relatives would probably prefer the real Kasumi be brought back alongside Sumire instead of having Sumire turned into her, Kasumi herself would be alive, Sumire would likely recover from her suicidal depression without the guilt of her sister's death, and Sumire flat-out tells Maruki she wants to live as herself and not Kasumi later on than trying to turn Sumire into a copy of her. Does he genuinely believe that Sumire would be happier as Kasumi than herself, or is he more concerned with being seen as right to the point where he continues to insist on his original stopgap plan for her because to change it would be admitting he was wrong?
• Some have taken umbrage with the Phantom Thieves themselves come certain revelations at the end of the game. Every single one of the hearts they changed throughout the story is discovered to have been put under Yaldabaoth's thrall, indicating that the Thieves' actions were largely responsible for why Yaldabaoth ended up as powerful as he did. None of the Thieves react much to it or let it get to them at all, and when they're nearly wiped from existence and end up in the Velvet Room, they lament more on how dependent they were on society's views of them rather than how they'd indirectly aided the Big Bad through Brainwashing for the Greater Good. All this, compounded with the fact that they then suddenly advocate for putting faith in society's capacity for change without the need of the supernatural, despite using supernatural means anyway to defeat the Final Boss, puts into question their sincerity as to whether or not they genuinely cared about helping the helpless. On the other hand, they set out to Mementos Core knowing that if they succeeded, they'd give up their ability to change people's hearts, and thus entrusted the ability to change the future to the people as a whole.
• Also the people of Tokyo as a whole. Did they side with the Phantom Thieves in the endgame out of a genuine desire for change, or did they side with them on pain of death from Yaldabaoth?
• Why did the woman who'd betrayed the protagonist before the start of the game change her heart and testify against Shido? Is it out of guilt over what she did? Or is it because she believes that it will ensure Shido's conviction? If it's the latter, it's possible that she didn't testify against Shido earlier because she was afraid, and/or that she's only doing so now because she has less at risk. The fact that it takes the Phantom Thieves (and Ohya, if her Confidant was completed), weeks to find her indicates that she is trying quite hard not to be found. It's possible, however, that it's likely that she's hiding from Shido out of fear for her life if she tried to go against him to retract her testimony so soon due to Shido's threat on her and since Shido is The Paranoiac, he could potentially try to have her Killed Offscreen to clean up loose ends as he did to Kobayakawa and Okumura. Additionally, Joker's flashback in June 11 while retelling his story to the thieves reveals that the woman threatened to "report about the money" but it ended up being a Blackmail Backfire due to Shido having more standing than she does at the time, hinting that She Knows Too Much about one of Shido's illegal dealings.
• Going by how Shadows operated in Persona 4, in that while they did represent what someone was like deep down they also tended to be greatly exaggerate their behavior^note  like how Shadow Kanji, born largely from Kanji's insecurities in his feminine hobbies and confusion over his sexual orientation, manifested as a exaggerated Camp Gay , which matches with how the Targets go from a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing to a Card-Carrying Villain in the Metaverse much like the P4 shadows. This brings into question how much of the Target's Shadow's behavior is genuine and how much is them exaggerating their real version's vile behavior:
  • Did Madarame really leave Yusuke's mother to die when she had a seizure in front of him? Or did he simply panic and find himself unable to do anything, which wouldn't be surprising considering his age. For that matter, was he even there when she had a seizure in the first place or was that itself just an exaggeration of how bad him altering the work of Yusuke's mother and posting it under his name is? Or maybe even Survivor's Guilt in regards to her death?^note What really calls it into question is how often pre-awakening Futaba or even non-palace owner Sumire say and seemingly believe that they, too, are responsible for "killing" their loved ones.
  • In Royal during the revamped fight with Okumura, He will summon a Cognitive Haru to attack the Phantom Thieves and, if she takes too long, will simply have her self-destruct as a last resort. Does Okumura really not care if Haru dies if it means he can achieve his ambitions, or is this simply an exaggeration of how much he sees Haru as a bargaining chip brought forth by his Shadow manifesting his darker traits and would the real Okumura actually be horrified if Haru got killed?
    • Speaking of Okumura, there's also the robots and various other clues in his palace (such as the five second breaks and the 30-second lunch hours) that symbolize how his fast food joints have incredibly poor working conditions, but we don't see the consequences of this on screen despite we could visit Big Bang Burger regularly. This brings to another question if the robots and the other features of the Spaceport Palace exaggerations of his Bad Boss tendencies and how much of an extent the abuses are happening. One potential explanation is that the overwork and abuses are happening mainly to the white-collar office workers at Okumura Foods HQ and the various Big Bang Burger locations are largely immune to the oppressive corporate culture.
  • How obsessed with winning is Sae Niijima? While her Palace manifests as a casino and her Shadow frequently goes on about how winning is everything, how far is she really willing to go to win a court case? The worst she's seen to do, at least on-screen, is use aggressive investigations methods such as blackmailing Sojiro with threats to rescind his parental authority over Futaba. The comically obvious ways she goes about cheating in her Palace, such as the glass panel on the roulette wheel in her boss fight, also brings into question how willing she is to actually do it; Is it a sign that she's shameless about her morally ambiguous methods and feels justified in using them, or is it a sign of how risky or against her morals she views it as. There's also the fact that she's the only Palace Ruler whose heart wasn't changed by stealing her treasure, but by Makoto and Joker appealing to her morality, which implies that while it's strong enough to create a Palace, her distortion isn't as severe as most other Palace rulers. It's also worth considering her reaction to a Calling Card being found in Kobayakawa's office; was her excited "Yes...!" her being glad to finally get a lead, or her being relieved that she won't have to forge anything linking them to more murders now that she's got (at least to her) legitimate evidence.
• Is Ryuji's primary motivation for being in the Phantom Thieves a desire to give courage to the downtrodden and end injustice, or to be part of an exciting club that lets him act out in ways he's always wanted to, but couldn't? Ryuji is the most obsessed with the Thieves' reputation, is the most outspoken member when it comes to the desire for their targets and the dispatching thereof to be flashy and exciting, and constantly bemoans the need to stay anonymous and not capitalize on their fame. He has several rants about "rotten adults", especially early on, and his insistence on using the word "adult" makes one wonder if the "rotten" part is really what he's got a problem with. During his Confidant, he is totally disinterested in rejoining the track team and considers the Phantom Thieves his real place to belong. Finally, the biggest contributor to his status as a Base-Breaking Character is his inability to keep his voice down when talking about the Thieves - a fairly cavalier attitude to take when he knows full-well just how bad it would be for the other members (especially Joker) if they ever got found out. And when this carelessness gets the team into serious trouble at one point, Ryuji's response to being called out for his blunder seems to be less genuine apology (he even tries shifting the blame) and more annoyance over the group's activities being disrupted. When put together, this gives rise to the interpretation that Ryuji was only too happy to have "traded up" from the boring old track team to the thrilling Phantom Thieves - a group which lets him feel like a badass superhero when he lashes out against authority figures so long as he pays lip service to the idea of "helping people". Granted, there are plenty of instances where Ryuji's words and actions point to a less cynical motivation, but one has to wonder if Ryuji's heart is really in the right place all or even most of the time. In fact, his behavior and outlook are eerily similar to that of Mishima, who had a Shadow in Mementos that had to be dealt with.