All spoilers will be unmarked ahead. You Have Been Warned!
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Main installments:
Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
- The Dying Clue "11037" in the English localization, which is "LEON" upside down and backwards. It was a bit more obscured in the original, since the intended audience didn't have English as a first language. For icing, while most classmates call each other by their last names in the original (to the point at which Leon has to ask who Aoi's referring to when she calls Sakura by her first name), in the localization everyone's on a first-name basis, so it's that much easier to make the connection. In-game, it's this for Kyoko, who figures it out before everyone else and eventually has to outright tell them to turn it 180 degrees when they're stumped.
- Chihiro being a boy (and the fact that he'd either be the victim or the culprit of Chapter 2) is unfortunately rather telegraphed by the fact that Chihiro shows extreme reluctance to hang out with the girls in the locker room to exercise... immediately after Monokuma made a huge, this-will-be-relevant-to-the-case deal out of the gender-based restrictions on locker room access. It's even more predictable in the Japanese version, where his voice files are obviously being done by a man.
- The reveal in Chapter 2's trial that the serial killer "Genocide Jack" is actually Toko's Split Personality. The game all but says it outright during the chapter's investigation: the first time Toko sees the victim's body, she momentarily faints and then wakes up with a new, manic, insane personality; later on, after coming back to normal, she locks herself in her room and says that she "won't let Genocide Jack take control".
- Celestia being the culprit of Chapter 3. With a bit of thinking, it's easy to pinpoint the whole crime on Celeste the very moment the investigation properly begins:
- She says she begged for her life when the "madman" attacked her—something extremely out of character for Celeste.
- She's always present during the investigation, and the others tend to act on her suggestions.
- She and Hifumi are the only ones who actually see the supposed killer in action; by the time anyone else gets there, he's always gone with no trace except the hammers and some injuries.
- There are no plausible other options: Makoto is the POV character, Toko can't stand blood and Genocide Jack already explained why she won't kill anyone in the previous trial (and confirmed that she wouldn't use hammers even if she did kill someone; she's got scissors for that), Sakura is strong enough that she wouldn't need to use the hammers (and is too straightforward for such a convoluted plot; if Sakura were to kill someone, they'd be found at the bottom of some stairs with a broken neck), Aoi isn't the type for cold-blooded murder, Yasuhiro is too dumb to pull such a plan off, Byakuya and Kyoko wouldn't go on a cosplay murder rampage or fake a cosplay murder rampage (they're too smart to try something so clearly Awesome, but Impractical), and Ishimaru and Hifumi both show up dead so there has to be another killer. The process of elimination leaves only Celestia as the potential mastermind.
- Hifumi is also clearly the one behind the Justice Robo costume; he's the only one who mentions the 'Justic Robo' show beforehand, and who other than the card-carrying fanboy would make a cosplay disguise?
- After it becomes clear Hifumi was an accomplice, Celeste is highly suspicious, as she's the one he interacted with the most.
- She consistently pushes the "Hagakure is the culprit" story long after holes have been poked in it. She immediately starts up a Bullet Time Battle after Makoto states that Yasuhiro might be innocent—which before this was reserved for final battles against the culprit (well, Kiyotaka stands in for Mondo, but he's clearly emotionally compromised by the idea that his Only Friend might be a killer) after you've driven them to panic by presenting clear evidence against them. Why would she be so stubborn about it unless she had something to gain from Yasuhiro being convicted?
- Similarly, the fact that Hifumi initially faked his death in Chapter 3 is transparently obvious if you try to examine his "corpse" the second you find it. For some reason, the game really doesn't want you to examine it.
- The fact that Sakura was Driven to Suicide in Chapter 4. The poison powder on her shoes, the locked room murder aspect, and the fact that someone of her body mass had her corpse positioned to be sitting normally were dead giveaways.
- The reveal that Kyoko's ultimate talent is Detective. No shit? She spends every single case ruthlessly investigating, everyone is amazed by how professional she is when inspecting bodies, she's constantly talking about proper investigative procedure, and the first thing she does during the Chapter 1 investigation is to search the crime scene, Makoto's bedroom, for stray strands of hair.
- The twist of Kyoko being the headmaster's daughter was not very surprising to some, considering how she immediately lost her composure when Alter Ego revealed it was the headmaster's idea to lock them in the school.
- The reveal that everyone had already gone to the academy is so heavily hinted at in the latter portion of the game that the only thing preventing it from being a non-event is the internal logic behind how it happened, which the game doesn't actually give you.
Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair
- Nekomaru Nidai being the victim in Chapter 4 as there are several obvious clues to it. From the chapter's title, him being the protagonist's assistant during investigations of this chapter (which might remind you of Sayaka), to him explaining his functions of his new robotic body, including his sleep mode, which clearly will come in handy as clues for an upcoming murder. On a meta level, him getting to skip a Class Trial in the previous chapter (although he'd still be executed for the wrong answer) means it's rather unfair to those who participated in all of them, meaning he likely wouldn't get to be a survivor.
Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School
- The series had been so conspicuously vague about their love triangle that it came as a surprise to very few that Juzo was in love with Munakata, not Chisa.
Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony
- Ryoma dying. It should come off as no surprise that a Death Seeker would let themselves be killed in a killing game. If anything, some fans were just surprised he wasn't the first victim.
- Maki lying about her own talent can be this, since she's a self-admitted Child Hater, and forbids anybody from entering her own lab. This isn't the first time we have a student who's talented at something they don't enjoy (Leon comes to mind), but Maki's unusually secretive behavior makes her come across as suspicious.
- Some people had this towards Korekiyo being the culprit of Chapter 3, since he set up the séance that got Tenko killed. It also became obvious he also killed Angie once the theory of Tenko killing the former and herself fell through, and the Recurring Element meant that if he killed one, then he must have killed the other. Word of God even admits that the reveal was meant to be incredibly obvious.
- The fact the virtual world from Chapter 4 loops, as almost anybody who ever played an old school video game can quickly figure that out.
- Kokichi lying about being the mastermind in Chapter 5. With there being six chapters in the game as usual, this indirectly led fans to get Spoiled by the Format.
- Kokichi being the victim of Chapter 5. Why else would Kaito's coat sleeve be sticking very obviously out of the hydraulic press while Kokichi's clothes are found flushed down the toilet if not to mislead the characters?
- Tsumugi being the "mastermind", due to how Out of Focus she is throughout the story, giving evidence that something would happen to her character around the climax.
Spin-offs:
Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls
- Monaca being the actual leader of the Warriors of Hope, pulling their strings behind the scenes, is obvious from the group's first appearance.
- Quite a lot of fans managed to immediately figure out that Monaca is merely pretending to be handicapped the moment it was revealed her room can only be accessed via a ladder.
Danganronpa Kirigiri
- Shinsen being the Big Bad would be a big twist... if it wasn't for the fact that A) He's initially the character you learn the least about; B) He's labeled as mysterious by other characters; and, most tellingly, C) He disappears instead of dying. Anyone can easily deduce from there.
