Characters / Danganronpa — Kokichi Oma

Danganronpa | Main Character Index
Monokuma
Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc | Male Students (Makoto Naegi | Byakuya Togami) | Female Students (Kyoko Kirigiri | Toko Fukawa | Celestia Ludenberg | Junko Enoshima)
Danganronpa Zero
Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair | Male Students (Hajime Hinata | Nagito Komaeda) | Female Students (Peko Pekoyama)
Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls
Killer Killer
Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School | Future Arc | Despair Arc
Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony | Male Students (Kokichi Oma) | Female Students (Miu Iruma)

Warning! All spoilers below are unmarked.

It's virtually impossible to list tropes for these characters without spoiling everything or creating Self Fulfilling Spoilers because of the large amount of surprising reveals and murderer/victim exclusive Tropes this game contains just like its predecessor.

Kokichi Oma

Ultimate Supreme Leader

"How are you going to find the culprit when you're all worried about each other's feelings? If you want to expose a liar, you have to corner them psychologically...only then will they reveal their true selves, hidden beneath a layer of deceit!"

Voiced By: Hiro Shimono (Japanese), Derek Stephen Prince (English)

A boy who claims to lead a secret society of over 10,000 agents. He's also an admitted liar, and Ultimate Detective Shuichi Saihara seems to have never heard rumours of this supposed evil cabal, so no one is sure what to think. True to his stature as an evil mastermind, Kokichi says exactly what will most rile up the other students, smiling the whole time.

He is the mastermind of Chapter 4's murder, using Gonta as a means to kill Miu, before becoming the victim of Chapter 5 as part of a plan of his to defeat the mastermind. With Kaito Momota following Kokichi's orders, he has himself crushed under a hydraulic press, leaving his body inaccessible. Kaito then proceeds to pilot an Exisal mecha and impersonate Kokichi and himself, making it ambiguous as to which one of them died.

---

A-F

• All for Nothing: His manipulation of Gonta in chapter 4 and his Thanatos Gambit in chapter 5 ultimately have no effect on the outcome of the story. Neither the company behind Danganronpa nor the viewing audience is terribly invested in the rules, and none of the past or motivations that drove his actions authentically belongs to him in the first place.
• Always Someone Better:
  • Towards Shuichi. Kokichi's nature as a liar helps him massively in identifying culprits since of course, they'd lie to save themselves, with their lies being so weak to a master liar like him. It's just that he just loves messing around in trials that he withholds all crucial information unless things get so boring that he has to give out clues to keep things going.
  • In a downplayed way, towards Angie, as he's far more competent at manipulating the other students to do what he wants, whereas Angie's attempts to take charge results in the students either joining her cult or rejecting her entirely, and he doesn't even have to put up an affable persona, claim to speak for a higher power or even have them particularly like him to make them do it.
  • On the flip side, Tsumugi may very well be this to him. For all his skill at lying, he never figures out that Tsumugi was acting the entire time.
• Ambiguously Bi:
  • There's significant evidence that he falls in love with Shuichi as things go on: talking to himself about being in love with him after lamenting Shuichi rejecting him as a "partner" in Chapter Four, being satisfied that he "stole Shuichi's heart" in his free time events, and has a love hotel scene where he keeps Shuichi as a "detective" as if to blur the lines between if Dating Catwoman is his "kink" (as he's a "thief" here) or if he's trying to still see Shuichi as himself.
  • He genuinely seems bothered by Kaede's death despite how short a time he knew her and in his Free Time Events with her, he has her chasing around after him trying to catch him and also tries to persuade her into "joining forces" with him once they graduate for reasons unclear.
  • He also put Rantaro's life-size statue over his bed as some of the "evidence" from the third case.
  • To further mess with everyone, he had Kaito (acting as if he were Kokichi) say that he loved Himiko in Chapter Five - though it's unclear whether this was part of Ouma's script, and if that's honest or not, or one of Kaito's admitted ad-libs. Plus he seems to be legitimately concerned for her in the third trial by forcing her to confront her repressed emotions, which helps kickstart Himiko's Character Development.
  • In the board game bonus mode, he calls Junko his "beloved Enoshima-chan" and says he "loves Hagakure-chan and Ishimaru-chan" too.
  • He repeatedly insults and slut shames Miu from the first trial onwards (even though Miu makes it clear she actually enjoys it quite a lot), and in their relationship chart, he demands she get on her knees for him like he actually has her do in Chapter Four. When she has him cornered on the roof, he first asks if she called him up there for a booty call. He also mentions (to himself) just before leaving the Virtual World that "he'd do anything for the person he loves...even strangle them", which is what he just finished doing to Miu, if indirectly.
• Ambiguously Evil: Downplayed; he is clearly an evil person who takes an openly antagonistic position in trials and becomes an Indirect Serial Killer during the killing game, but while he's alive it's unclear if he really heads an evil organization or is just lying about it. As it turns out, he was actually the leader of a group of clowns that commit laughable crimes. In addition, due to him being a Consummate Liar, it is really unknown if his claims for why he was doing "evil things" was really true or not. Right before he died and talked with Kaito about his actions, Kaito himself isn't sure if what Kokichi stated was 100% true or not.
• Ambiguous Situation: It's left in the air whether he would actually have accepted being executed alongside Gonta. On one hand, proposing to join the execution is a move with no pragmatical explanation for. It is easiest to interpret as a suicidal outburst from someone who violated his personal policy and got his most loyal companion killed. His Tears of Remorse also allow Gonta to have a slightly more peaceful death. On the other hand, his claim is that he's doing it a precaution against Gonta taking revenge, which while feels excessively paranoid even for Kokichi's standards, has no evidence disproving it.
• Animal Motifs: He seems to have one with horses. His last name means "king horse" and his unique laugh is based on the onomatopoeia for a horse's whinny. He also has a horse mask with a crown on it in his bedroom to match his name.
• Anti-Hero: Of the highly unscrupulous territory. Oma despises killing and opposes the mastermind, but is still ruthless and extremely manipulative to a fault. Ultimately his lie about being the mastermind is what the true mastermind exploits via a flashback light, this action becoming the opportunity for Shuichi to expose them.
• Anti-Villain: If his last words are to be believed, he never agreed to the killing game and was pretending for the mastermind. However, he's still responsible for the events leading up to Chapter 4 that cause the deaths of Miu and Gonta, not making him much better than the mastermind.
• Anthropomorphic Personification: After learning the full story of Oma's death from Kaito, Shuichi thinks to himself that Kokichi might be the human embodiment of deception.
• Asshole Victim: In Chapter Five, but it's downplayed near the end. For the majority of the chapter, no one even knows if he's the one who died and his death is arguably what redeems him after his atrocious actions in Chapter Four.
• Attention Whore: Kokichi really can't resist showing off, particularly in the trials where he gets to toy with both his classmates and the Blackened to his heart's content and gets particularly disgruntled in the second trial when Tenko keeps interrupting him, whining that it won't be a good trial if she keeps talking over him.
• Badass Adorable: Looks like a cute high-school boy. Is also a dangerous Manipulative Bastard who would have successfully outwitted the mastermind had Shuichi not figured out his scheme.
• Badass Cape: Is showcased wearing a tattered black cape in his official art, though he doesn't have it in the actual game.
• Batman Gambit: His scheme in chapter 5 is to create a murder that is impossible for Monokuma to observe and thus fairly judge, believing that if he can fundamentally break the game, then it will have to end. To his credit, despite some obstacles, the plan itself worked. The only problems are assuming that the audience actually cares about Monokuma's rules, and Shuichi exposing his plot.
• Beneath the Mask: While it's hard to tell how much anything he does is genuine there are times when he breaks "character" that shows how he really feels.
  • After hearing the first body discovery announcement, Kokichi was caught on camera running into the library looking visibly concerned.
  • Right before his death, he ended up swearing a lot about his dislike towards the killing game and shows more "genuine tears" instead of the obvious Crocodile Tears.
  • It's hinted that Kokichi's tears right before Gonta dies are genuine, and his rant afterwards is him suffering from Sanity Slippage and overcorrecting to hide how he really felt.
• Berserk Button: He seems to dislike it when people state that lying is wrong but continue to lie to themselves, thus making them look like Hypocrites in his eyes. He tends to give harsh What the Hell, Hero? speeches when people do so (For example, after Himiko and Kaito state they hate lying, he calls them out when the former lies about hiding her emotions and the latter lies to himself and refuses to believe that Gonta was the fourth culprit). When Shuichi lies about seeing Kokichi leaving the parlour in the Virtual World and Tsumugi fails to back him up, Kokichi gets so angry that he "takes the fun out of solving the mystery for Shuichi", and reveals the culprit was Gonta right then and there and pulls a creepy as hell Nightmare Face.
• Big Guy, Little Guy:
  • He serves as the little guy to Gonta's big guy.
  • In Chapter 5, he is the little guy to Kaito's big guy.
• Blatant Lies:
  • In his bonus mode interaction with Celeste, he ended up lying about Hifumi inflating himself only to end up popping like a balloon.
  • Horrifically Subverted in the fourth trial. It's hard for the others to tell when Ouma is lying or telling the truth, and is generally disliked by the other characters; he plays on this trope so much that when he abruptly reveals that Gentle Giant Gokuhara is the one who killed Iruma, no one can believe him.
• Boring Insult: Inverted. Kokichi hates boredom, so the best compliment he can give someone is "you're not boring." He notably tells Kaede this when she's about to be executed.
• Brains and Brawn: He has tricked Gonta to be the "Brawn" to his "Brain" on more than one occasion, such as lying to him about his classmates not liking bugs in order to get Gonta to gather them at his lab or using him as a tool to kill Miu.
  • In Chapter 5, he blackmailed Kaito to be the "Brawn" to his "Brains" under the threat of Maki being executed.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: The mastermind made him one for the sake of "good television." It kinda backfired on them.
• Breaking Old Trends: He's the rival character of the game, yet has notable differences from Byakuya and Nagito.
  • All previous rivals are wealthy, live dramatic lives and have few loved ones, while Kokichi is never stated to be wealthy and supposedly spent his time pulling pranks with his friends as the leader of DICE. On a more basic level, both Nagito and Byakuya are tall with light hair, while Kokichi is very short with dark hair.
  • Kokichi's goal is to end the Killing Game at any cost, unlike Byakuya, who was largely driven by self interest; and Nagito, who only sought to cultivate 'hope'.
  • Kokichi genuinely dies as Chapter Five's victim, and therefore never learns the full context of the Killing Game. Byakuya lives through an entire game and while Nagito is killed, it's only in virtual reality and he ultimately survives.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: He knows or suspects way ahead of everyone who the culprits in the trials are, but he'd rather let them all tear at each other because it amuses him.
• Brutal Honesty: Ironically, this is one of Kokichi's key traits. He, surprisingly, does say what he thinks most of the time, including his various insults and callouts of the main cast's fundamental logical flaws. Of course, the rest of the students can't take it, so he only receives contempt for it... as he had planned to from the start, of course.
• The Bully: Love to mess around and pick on the other students, with Shuichi, Keebo, and Miu being some of his favorite targets. That said he doesn't seem to actually dislike any of them.
• Bullying a Dragon: After outing her as the Ultimate Assassin, Kokichi cannot resist taking verbal potshots at Maki, even though Maki makes it perfectly clear she can and will kick his ass and she comes very close to killing him in Chapter Five. Deconstructed later when Maki interrogates Kokichi about Junko Enoshima and Ultimate Despair; he correctly states that he doesn't know anything, but by this point Maki has absolutely no reason to believe him and thus doesn't, in large part because of how he's been acting.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Seems to revel in being the leader of an evil organization and openly proclaims himself to be a liar.
• Cassandra Truth: He didn't know who Junko Enoshima was nor did he have any ties to her Ultimate Despair organization, but no one is inclined to believe him due to his penchant for Blatant Lies.
• Character Catchphrase: Him pretty much stating that something was a lie can be one for him.
  Kokichi: Who knows? I'm a liar after all.
• Character Filibuster: He occasionally can go into somewhat long tangents about truth and lies, especially in Chapter 4, where he does so repeatedly during the class trial.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Although he may be introduced to the player as comic relief with a puckish behavior, every class trial but the first has at least one Kokichi-related Truth Bullet, illustrating just how prominent he is throughout the course of the game. Fittingly enough to his character, two of these are used as Lie Bullets in order to progress trials 4 and 5.
• The Chessmaster: While at the first glance his actions are chaotic, there's a calculated madness in them. He never wants to play the Killing Game the way the mastermind wants, so he becomes the biggest naysayer in trials and clashes with Kaede and Shuichi because they dance right into the mastermind's game. His decision to manipulate Gonta into collecting everyone in one place in the second chapter is so everyone can watch each other's motive videos and know just who they need to watch out for. He trolls Maki into revealing her true talent after seeing her motive video and recognizing its danger. He even arranges his death so the mastermind is as blind and powerless as everyone else in the Killing Game.
• Clothing Reflects Personality: He wears a checkered patterned scarf and his uniform looks vaguely like a straitjacket. Quite fitting given his skills as The Chessmaster and general unpredictability, though the only way he's actually "crazy" is being Crazy-Prepared.
• Color Motif: Often associated with dark purple.
• Combat Pragmatist: His method of countering Miu's attempt to murder him in the Neo World Program is using Gonta's avatar to eliminate her before she has the chance to attack him or even explain her motives, then making Gonta think he was participating in a Mercy Kill and trying to get him to argue against the rest of the cast under the impression he remembered the murder he committed, when he didn't, because his avatar's memories didn't carry over to the real world, with most of the real reason behind this being to give the students an enemy to oppose and to throw a wrench in the true mastermind's killing game scheme. Needless to say, the cast ends up not forgiving him for pulling a dirty trick of that capacity.
• Consummate Liar: Self-proclaimed. It was gotten to the point where him stating that something was a lie could be a Character Catchphrase for him.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: He acts as an antagonistic figure during investigations and trials and generally disrupts the group's peace, much like Nagito. However, unlike Nagito, he is openly antagonistic from the beginning, and instead of dying in a gambit made to kill everyone else, he makes someone else kill him in order to smoke out the mastermind.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: He knew Miu was targeting him and he couldn't do anything to fight back against her, but instead of sticking with others to deny her a chance to do it or finding non-lethal ways to subdue her, he decides to get Gonta to kill her.
• Covert Pervert: Upon K1-B0's introduction, Oma asks him point-blank if robots have dicks. This flusters K1-B0 quite a bit, then tells Oma not to ask such questions.
• Cowardice Callout: He calls out his classmates for being so afraid to break their sense of trust and The Power of Friendship by pointing fingers that it equates to doing nothing while there's a murderer on the loose, and with how he words it, no-one is able to counter his criticism.
• Crazy-Prepared:
  • He managed to have an entire script for Kaito to use while he was in disguise as an Exisal in the fifth trial. In addition, after Maki shot him, he came up with a plan to save Maki from execution and defeat the mastermind right on the spot. Not only that, but he was dying of poison when he put the plan together, meaning that he has to have written most of the script in advance, just in case.
  • His room, when you finally get into it, is stuffed to the brim with evidence from old trials, sketches for possible tools to ask Miu to make, and other bits and pieces of various plans, making it clear that the plans we saw from him were only a small part of the things he'd prepared for.
• Crocodile Tears: He is prone to using a crying face to manipulate others, with the sprite he uses while doing this making it pretty hard to actually believe him.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Shot with two crossbow bolts, one in the arm and one in the back, the latter coated with a slow-acting poison that clearly causes him to suffer greatly, then crushed under a hydraulic press just before the poison can do him in. And the second part was his idea.
• Cruel to Be Kind: Forces Himiko to acknowledge her repressed grief after the end of Chapter 3's class trial by scolding her for lying to herself. Later, the plot of Chapter 5 gets rolling when Kokichi attempts to end the killing game by tricking everyone into thinking of him as the mastermind, followed by Kokichi crushing everyone's hopes of ever leaving the killing game by revealing the outside world's total destruction. When Maki shoots him with a poisoned crossbow and tries to interrogate him, he says this:
  Kokichi Oma: "But a-anyway... why are you... starting up the k-killing game... when it should've ended? Y-You already... know it's all meaningless... and th-that I'm the mastermind... Do you... love killing that much?"
• Crying Wolf: Exploited during the Chapter Four class trial.
  • And is on the receiving end of this when Maki confronts him in Chapter Five. She thinks he's the Mastermind and working for Ultimate Despair. He isn't, but she doesn't believe him and tries to kill him when he denies his involvement.
• Curtains Match the Windows: He has purple hair and purple eyes.
• Dead All Along: For the majority of Chapter 5, while everyone else believes that it was Kaito who was crushed by the hydraulic press, it was actually Kokichi all along, dressed in Kaito's coat.
• The Dead Guy Did It: Played with. Kokichi's decision to be crushed underneath the hydraulic press in the Exisal hangar was solely his idea, and he chose it over being killed with poison by Maki, but it wasn't a suicide, as he had Kaito do the work for him instead so he could later pose as him in one of the vacant Exisals.
• Deadpan Snarker: Not usually deadpan, but it’s rare for him to not have a snide remark. Such as when Angie claims that her god Atua has different forms for different people.
  Kokichi: Well that’s not suspiciously convenient at all!
• Despair Gambit: In Chapter 5, after building up suspicion surrounding him and indirectly killing Miu and Gonta, he uses Miu's inventions to pretend to be the mastermind to convince the students to stop playing the killing game, which involves nullifying their desire to escape. This works as intended, as it prevents the other students from wanting to do anything as a result of Kokichi breaking their Heroic Spirit and momentarily driving them beyond the Despair Event Horizon. Unfortunately, the real mastermind, Tsumugi, counters this with a Flashback Light telling the students they're Hope's Peak Academy students, reigniting their hope and causing them to target Kokichi due to thinking he's the mastermind. This leads to his death and his plan to manipulate the killing game against Monokuma in order to save Maki from being executed after she attempts to kill him.
• Death Equals Redemption: With the "redemption" part extremely downplayed. As he was dying from being poisoned, he gave Kaito (who was also hit by a poisonous arrow) the only antidote and blackmailed Kaito (who wanted to save Maki from being executed for their deaths) to participate in his plan to defeat the mastermind, which included killing Kokichi. If taking the Consummate Liar at face value, he chose to die not because he cared for the others in any way, but because at this point the only choice he had was either to live by sacrificing others without any way to put his plan to work or to die for the sake of his plan.
• Didn't See That Coming: For all his planning and scheming, he never thought that Maki would shoot him in Chapter 5, if it weren't for Kaito's similarly impulsive actions, he wouldn't have gotten any final gambits done.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • Kokichi expects himself to die and constantly puts a target on his back. Despite this, he intended to survive and expose the true mastermind of the Killing School Semester. While he does everything else in his scheme correctly, constantly pushing Maki's buttons and targeting Kaito directly is what results in his death.
  • He forgets to give Kaito the remaining inventions he stole from Miu when he gets crushed under the hydraulic press, notably the Electrobombs and Exisal remote. As a result, they get crushed along with him, and the protagonists can no longer defend themselves when Monokuma imposes his power on the main cast once his and Kaito's plan in Chapter 5 fails and the survivors defend Kaito from his execution. Well, that's supposedly what happened to those inventions, considering he took off his straitjacket before getting crushed and therefore had nothing to pocket them into, but that's a contradiction that is never quite explained.
• Died in Ignorance: He dies not knowing that Tsumugi Shirogane is the real mastermind of the Killing School Semester and that he's just a fictional character for a TV show In-Universe.
• The Dissenter Is Always Right: He is highly intelligent and integral to exposing the Blackened, yet his status as a chronic liar and The Gadfly causes everyone to distrust anything he says. This results in him often making good points that no one believes or wants to hear, with some even actively fighting him over it, usually Kaito. In Chapter 2, he tries forcing the class to watch their motive videos together, but everyone rejects the plan. After the next murder, it becomes clear that had the students followed Kokichi's plan, their classmates wouldn't have died as the murder was enabled by the fact that no one knew Kirumi's secret.
• Dying Alone: His ultimate fate. Working together with Kaito, he sets out to create a case that even Monokuma can't solve and lets Kaito crush him in the hydraulic press, knowing that his surviving classmates despise him, he's the reason Gonta and Miu are dead and he never does discover the true identity of the mastermind.
• Elaborate Underground Base: Underneath the floor of the academy's entrance, Kokichi has a stereotypical underground base, fitting for a supreme leader of evil like himself.
• Endearingly Dorky: Deconstructed, he knows he is adorable and how to further play it up by acting silly. As a result, he manipulates others with Crocodile Tears, although it tends not to work. Other characters can easily see through his act.
• Establishing Character Moment: His very first scene has him relentlessly teasing and harassing his favorite bullying target, Ki-bo, before introducing himself as the Ultimate Supreme Leader and teasing Kaede and Shuichi about whether it's really his talent or if he's just lying.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: In Chapter Six, we finally see Kokichi's motive video where we learn about DICE, his organization that performed "laughable crimes" and treated one another like family. Whether or not they actually exist in the real world, as far as brainwashed Kokichi was concerned, they were the most important people in his life.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • While he is a ruthless Manipulative Bastard, he actually attempts to put the killing game into the end, although the plot ends with Shuichi still undecided on how charitably to interpret his motives, contrasting his unpleasant words with his actions that frequently benefitted the surviving group.
  • And, like everyone else, even Kokichi was disgusted by Korekiyo's relationship and obsession with his sister.
  • By his own admission, he hates interrogating Gonta in Chapter 4's trial since Gonta's "acting" like he doesn't know what's going on. Even though he sadistically mocks Gonta's suffering all the way through the trial and later laughs at his execution.
  • In his Love Hotel event, when Shuichi shows discomfort at the prospect of them having sex, Kokichi respects the detective's wishes and leaves without a fuss.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: At the end of trial four, when Kaito is proven wrong about Gonta's innocence and Gonta is executed, Kokichi seems baffled about why everyone still flocks to Kaito's side when he collapses from his illness, to which Shuichi responds with an armor piercing Kirk Summation.
• Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: Looks very cute and short but says he's evil, a liar, and a dictator. His rudeness and manipulation during a class trial don't make him one of the nicest characters.
• Fair-Weather Friend: While it's hard to call what Gonta had with Kokichi a genuine friendship due to Kokichi's frequent use of him as a tool rather than properly giving him a notion of friendship, but Kokichi could be called this. After all, he roped Gonta into his apparent plan for a Mercy Kill after seeing the "truth" of the outside world and even planned a defense for Gonta. However, about halfway in when Kokichi is proven innocent and Gonta doesn't come up with proper defenses, Kokichi doubles down on pursuing the idea Gonta committed the crime until the end of the Trial, even though it would actively hinder his supposed Mercy Kill plan.
• Fan Disservice: We see him shirtless in the closing argument for chapter 5. Right before he gets crushed under a hydraulic press into an unrecognizable splatter.
• Fatal Flaw:
  • Hubris, in parallel to Kaede. Despite working to end the Killing Game, Kokichi trusts no one with the truth of his actions until his impending death. This ensures that his goal required he use his life, as his last decision was between surviving by sacrificing others with no way to put his plan to work or sacrificing himself for the sake of his plan. His path could have only led him to the hydraulic press.
  • Kokichi's lying nature tends to bite him in the ass as often as it benefits him:
    • In Chapter Two, he suggests they watch the motive videos, which the other students are reluctant to do. Instead of explaining that he wants to see everyone's motive videos so they can try to prevent a murder, Kokichi instead says he wants to see the videos For the Lulz, goes into everyone's rooms while they're away and steals the videos and coerces Gonta into making everyone gather in his Research Lab, thus giving Kirumi plenty of time to kill Ryoma without being seen, as the only students who had not been caught were Kaito, Miu and Maki.
    • In a more lighthearted example, when he lies to Gonta that he loves bugs, before affirming to his fellow classmates that he doesn't when Gonta isn't there, Kiibo is able to catch him in a trap by playing his confession back to him. This results in Gonta forcing Kokichi to stay behind at the Insect Meet and Greet to truly learn to love bugs.
    • Pretending I Meant to Do That when he hits his head on the floorboard in Chapter Three mean that he's practically concussed for half the trial and nobody realized he needed actual medical attention because Kokichi played it all off as a prank.
    • In the aftermath of Chapter Four, Gonta and Miu are dead and it's almost entirely his fault, so he fakes being the Mastermind when the other students turn on him. Therefore he misses out on a crucial Flashback light that made it look like Kokichi is a member of Ultimate Despair, and when he (truthfully) denies this when Maki interrogates him, she doesn't believe him and shoots him with a poisoned arrow, thus forcing Kokichi to become the final victim of the Killing Game, in hopes of creating an unsolvable murder.
• Faux Affably Evil: An initially invoked trope on his part. Kokichi likes to act fairly silly and childish, even providing quite a lot of comedy relief throughout the game, but often goes out of his way to play this up while he's being a Jerkass or trying to stress his "Token Evil Teammate" status. However, this is likely subverted, since he is actually against the killing game and is trying to trick the others into thinking otherwise, likely because he suspects the Mastermind is among them.
• Foe Romance Subtext: His Love Hotel fantasy involves being a legendary thief who's been captured by his archenemy, the detective Shuichi Saihara. Kokichi milks the sexual tension for all it's worth.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Shuichi and Keebo both agree to try the hydraulic press on the latter, testing whether or not the press should sense Keebo's presence despite not being human. The hydraulic press eventually crushes Kokichi, the only other male character smaller than him (besides Ryoma who was already dead) who also co-operated with Kaito to create an unsolvable murder mystery.
  • During the third Trial, Kokichi lies about murdering Angie to act as bait for the real killer, hoping they would push for his execution and out themselves as the true blackened. However, Shuichi's single-minded drive to uncover the truth causes him to disprove Kokichi's lies before realizing the purpose behind them, quickly ruining the plan. In the fifth Trial, Shuichi fails to recognize the broader picture of the unknown victim scheme and outs the killer, only to learn that by discovering the truth, he's wrecked Kokichi's plot to end the Killing Game.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Kokichi's trolling and deceiving nature already doesn't win him many points with the others, but what sells this trope is how much he enjoys being a manipulative asshole. He even lampshades this trope in Chapter Four by stating that he is the least well-liked student.
• Fragile Speedster: He's a fast runner, but rather small and not much of a fighter, having to rely on Gonta or the Exisals if he needs to deal with physical resistance from the other students. Kaito is able to deal with him rather easily by decking him and later uses the excuse that Kokichi wouldn't be able to fend off Maki to attend the fifth Trial inside an Exisal while impersonating him. However, this may be subverted in that he was able to defeat Kaito in the aftermath of Trial 4 and didn't lose his footing when Kaito punched him (while Shuichi fell to the floor), hinting that he is far more physically capable than he appears and just pretends to be weaker in order to make others underestimate him. Then again, Kaito is already pretty weakened by his disease at that point, so it may just be a case of Worf Had the Flu.

G-R

• The Gadfly: Purposely presses Ki-bo's Berserk Button in hopes of receiving a robot punch.
• The Generalissimo: He calls himself a supreme leader and a lot of his official artwork shows him Putting on the Reich.
• Gone Horribly Right: Kokichi wanted everybody to think he was the Mastermind in Chapter Five and oh boy, does this backfire on him when Maki decides to hunt him down herself.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: The Mercy Kill he convinced Gonta was, by all accounts, never a genuine plan. But from the Ultimate Entomologist's thinking, things had certainly gone this way. Gonta separated his avatar's memories from the memories of his real self, and his avatar's memories were in the Virtual World where they planned out the nuances to get Gonta to argue back and trick the others into thinking Kokichi was the culprit, causing him to be a total amnesiac to the intended plot, leading to him getting executed as the case's verdict and leading to the conclusion of sacrificing Miu in order to create the mercy kill situation to be All for Nothing. Along with this, Gonta was supposed to return the toilet paper to the mansion's bathroom without being seen after committing the murder as to make the murder weapon and the route to leave the roof unknown, but Shuichi and Tsumugi intervening at the wrong moment forced him to throw it aside and leave it as incriminating evidence.
• Good All Along: Heavily downplayed. In Chapter 5 he is revealed to be planning to stop the killing game, but his stated reason for that is him hating being controlled by the mastermind. Of course, this doesn't in any way excuse his actions or redeem him. He is still directly responsible for the deaths of Miu and Gonta, which could have possibly been prevented even with Miu after him.
• Good Eyes, Evil Eyes: He seems to enjoy invoking this. Usually, he has wide, tareme-ish eyes that make him look adorable and innocent. When wants to be intimidating, his eyes can become tsurime-like, or head straight into Humanoid Abomination territory.
  • A lot of fan art portrays him with Tsurime Eyes, rather than Tareme Eyes, befitting his cunning, manipulative personality.
• Green-Eyed Monster: It's strongly implied that Kokichi is jealous of how Kaito inspires the others into following his leadership despite Kokichi being the one who tends to lead everyone to the correct conclusion in the trials.
• The Heavy: He's responsible for quite a lot of the game's headaches in how he goes about his various plans.
• He Who Fights Monsters: His solution to countering Miu Iruma's attempt to murder him in Chapter 4? Murdering her through someone else (Gonta) in return... as opposed to telling other people, or simply neutralizing her. Oh wait, he wouldn't have been able to tell anyone because no one would believe him.
• Hidden Depths: He's a proud liar, a chronic prankster, and a master manipulator, but not a coward. Several times his shenanigans are directly putting him in the line of danger or embarrassment, even just for sake of putting up the front of an infallible schemer, because he's several steps beyond everyone else and believes that (with a few exceptions) his peers are too busy turning on each other rather than trying to survive the killing game.
• His Own Worst Enemy: Truth be told, Kokichi's intuition and ideas are rather spot on, but his habit of constantly lying instead of attempting to be clear about his intentions has hindered him a few times when it would have truly helped the situation. This is most apparent in Chapter 2, as if he simply told others that he wanted everyone to watch the motive videos so that no one would have a proper motive, he might have changed the outcome of the chapter entirely. Downplayed, as Kokichi doesn't seem to be particularly bothered by the fact that his lies hamper him, he just keeps doing it without regard.
• Hypocrite:
  • He endlessly mocks Kaito for letting his emotions cloud his judgement, but he himself is needlessly antagonistic towards Maki, and it comes back to bite him in the ass more than once.
  • He makes fun of Keebo for being an unfeeling robot, but Kokichi himself is incredibly callous when it comes to other people's feelings at times, while Kiibo is almost always a Nice Guy.
  • He calls Kaede out on her plan to kill the mastermind, stating she played right into Monokuma's hands by doing so, but in Chapter 4, he actively conspires with Monokuma to help him execute his plan to kill Miu after he realized she was going to kill him in the Virtual World and uses Gonta as his scapegoat. Even he realizes how low he's sunk by the end of the chapter.
  • Also in Chapter 4, he gets mad at Shuichi for telling a lie to him to expose his own lie, despite the fact that he lies near constantly.
• Hypocritical Heartwarming: He picks on the other students as much as he pleases, but apparently he doesn't appreciate it if other people do the same. In Ultimate Talent Mode, when Junko starts bullying Gonta, Kokichi appears out of nowhere and starts insulting her on Gonta's behalf.
• I Cannot Self-Terminate: He's forced to work with Kaito in a bid to end the Killing Game as the plan requires Kokichi to die in the hydraulic press and be impersonated during the ensuing Trial, which he can't do alone. Unfortunately, due to Shuichi realizing their plan too late, Kokichi's death ends up being All for Nothing.
• I Did What I Had to Do: His rationale for why he chose to have Miu killed instead of neutralizing her non-lethally or talking her out of it and why he got Gonta to do it.
• I Meant to Do That: The reason why he doesn't seek immediate medical attention and does his fake death prank in Chapter 3 is that he doesn't want to lose face getting injured from a trap that caught him off guard. He wants to continue his ruse, but his concussion starts getting the better of him and he gives up pretending.
• Indirect Serial Killer: He becomes one during the killing game, starting in Chapter 2 by telling Ryoma Hoshi which student has his motive video, seeing which becomes the final nail in the coffin that drives Ryoma to commit Suicide by Cop. Then in Chapter 4 he drives Gonta Gokuhara over the Despair Event Horizon using a Flashback Light that shows the outside world being completely dead in order to suggest him to Mercy Kill everyone to save them from this Awful Truth via killing Miu Iruma and winning a class trial, only to betray Gonta during the trial and reveal him as the killer, taking sadistic glee in his grief and subsequent execution. Finally, in Chapter 5 he blackmails Kaito Momota into killing him in order to create an unsolvable murder, which would inevitably lead to Kaito's death by execution.
• Institutional Apparel: His "uniform" is a straitjacket, or at least intended to resemble one heavily.
• Insufferable Genius: He frequently talks down to the other participants because of their inability to think about their situation critically, like he does. Everyone else turns it back on him by calling him out for it.
• Irony: Out of all the students, Kokichi bullied Ki-bo the most and even claimed he didn't see Ki-bo as human. Kokichi is later killed by a machine that only recognizes humans.
  • Despite his "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Kaede for kickstarting the killing game, Kokichi ends up participating in it himself, which also leads to his death.
  • He manipulated Gonta into killing Miu with a Flashback Light planted in the Virtual World. In Chapter Five, the group witnesses a Flashback Light that makes Kokichi look like a member of Ultimate Despair, leading to Maki's attempt to kill him personally.
  • His organisation had a rule against killing, yet he ends up saving Maki, a professional assassin (even though that was mostly collateral and a means of getting Kaito to cooperate with him).
• It Amused Me: His main reason for doing anything, including abusing and harassing his classmates, intentionally prolonging the trials despite knowing the culprit from the start or causing multiple deaths through the course of the story, is his own entertainment.
• It's All About Me: While not without moments of genuine emotion, a lot of Kokichi's behavior boils down to doing things because he thinks he knows best how to do it. Granted, while he is more perceptive than a vast majority of his cast, his actions show undeniable selfish intent. Most prominently would be in Chapter 4, as he purposely takes time to drive a rift between Kaito and Shuichi (even repeatedly cutting him off when the latter tries to clarify himself) just because Shuichi pissed him off and earlier formulated a plan to get Miu and Gonta killed because he felt that was the best course of action.
• Jerkass: Kokichi spends the whole game gleefully antagonizing and manipulating the other killing game survivors, interfering with the trials, and even comes up with a gambit that causes the deaths of two other participants, then spends his last moments getting Kaito involved in a plot that leads to his execution after blackmailing him into killing him, resulting in him being The Friend Nobody Likes that also ends up hated even posthumously. While he does have some admirable moments, most of them are really only pragmatic and he still continues the same mischievous behavior in the process.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • As The Rival character of this game, he has made many accurate points towards the killer within the class trials. In addition, he calls out students on their major flaws that could lead to trouble for the other students, such as Kaede and Kaito's naive trust, Maki's lack of cooperation, and Shuichi's indecisiveness, which all of are tragically exploited by Tsumugi.
  • During the fourth trial, Kokichi mocks the rest of the class, Kaito in particular, for wanting to vote based on their feelings rather than the actual truth.
  • He has a point in Chapter 4 in that before everyone was calling him out on lying and wanting him to tell the truth, and now that he is telling the truth, they run away and avoid it, but the way he's
• Jerkass to One: While Kokichi isn't exactly pleasant to any of the others students and largely acts as a Jerkass all around but he seems to especially loathe Maki, and reserves most of his genuinely cruel barbs and insults for her, mainly due to fact that Kokichi hates murderers and Maki is the Ultimate Assassin, as well as the fact that she hates him equally in return.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: He occasionally helps the students and puts on an unconvincingly friendly tone during the trials, despite taunting them mere moments before, or at worst, plotting an indirect serial murder. Also, when Kaito explains his reason for his assisted suicide plan at the end of Chapter 5 (in his alleged attempt to stop the killing game), Kokichi ends up being so completely untrustworthy according to him that he doesn't trust his words on why, and he also intentionally phrases said motives in a rather vague way.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: In Chapter 4, he gets away with murdering Miu and by extension Gonta, as the rules of the game mean only Gonta can be declared the Blackened and executed. Fate catches up to him however in the following chapter, as the Mastermind, finding that he's become far too big an issue to keep alive, uses a Flashback Light to instigate Maki into killing him in the belief that it will end the Killing Game, leading to Kokichi's death.
• Karmic Butt-Monkey: Ends up being subjected to a lot of abuse during the course of the game, but it's almost always meant to be seen as karma, given how often he bullies and harasses the others. Gonta traps him in a room full of bugs after he tricked Gonta into forcing everyone else he could through it and got exactly as much sympathy as he gave Gonta's previous "victims". He gets nearly strangled by Maki in Chapter Two only after he keeps pushing her even after learning how dangerous she was to prove his own point. In chapter 4 his "joking" murder threats result in Kaito punching him and Miu is later revealed to have been trying to kill him which resulted in him turning the tables and getting her killed instead. And naturally, his attempt in chapter 5 to paint himself as the mastermind (including kidnapping Kaito and threatening the others with the Exisals) led to Maki shooting him twice with poisoned crossbow bolts and ultimately led to his death. The biggest exception of this was when he tripped on one of Korekiyo's tampered floorboards and smacked himself in the head hard enough to ''bleed' in Chapter 3, as he was just helping with the investigation, but since he immediately downplayed how serious his injury was Shuichi assumed it was just another prank he was paying for.
• Kick the Dog:
  • He is prone to do such as a means of manipulating others, such as making a disparaging comment about Tenko's death to Himiko's face (though it's implied he did that to make Himiko confront her own repressed emotions regarding Tenko), and happily laughing when he gets Gonta killed, though he waits until after Gonta dies. In a more lighthearted example, the first thing he does in the Virtual World when Miu is explaining the avatars can still feel pain is punching Ki-bo's one repeatedly. Viciously insulting Miu while her corpse is in the room also counts, even if it was just a part of his plan he hatched with Gonta and serves as Laser-Guided Karma for Miu considering her habit of making comments about her dead friends.
  • In the first chapter, he calls Kaede out on making the other students go through the escape route over and over again and says she's just getting their hopes up for nothing. Kaede concedes she got a bit carried away, But most of the students don't blame Kaede for what she did, except Kokichi, Maki, and Miu.
  • He calls out Himiko when she yells at him for saying Tenko's death was "meaningless", pointing out she didn't even seem to like Tenko before now and her grief looks inauthentic,
  • He kicks the dog especially hard with Gonta, taking advantage of his courageous, self-sacrificial and gullible nature to manipulate him into despair, then convincing him that killing Miu was the best option and the group should be given a Mercy Kill... only to then royally screw over Gonta in a plan that otherwise might have worked.
• Killing in Self-Defense: Defied. Once he finds out the truth of the world and realizes that Miu's plan had him as her target inside the simulation game, he manipulates Gonta's desire to help his classmates in an attempt to have her be killed before she could do anything else. However, it's pointed out that Kokichi never attempted to think of a non-lethal plan to take care of Miu, especially since he knew of the danger before Miu could even act, that, and the fact he manipulated someone into doing it to get everyone else killed to allegedly spare the others, all point towards the situation as "killing someone preemptively" rather than a true notion of self-defense.
• Large Ham: As an Evil Counterpart of Miu of sorts, Kokichi likes to speak with great enthusiasm and has incredibly open mannerisms, which includes all of his honest remarks about how the other participants are idiots for falling for the mastermind, among other things.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In Chapter 4, just after Miu's death and before he leaves the Virtual World, he comments that he'd "do anything to make the person he likes notice him...even strangling them", which only the player is around to hear.
• Living Lie Detector: Being a master liar himself he can see when others are lying with a fair amount of accuracy, so other game players' lies tend not to fool him. He can see through almost everyone's lies, but due to him being a Jerkass, sometimes he just rolls with them and even defends them during class trials for the lulz. However, he went along with Tsumugi's lie of Kaede being Rantaro's killer.
• Loving Bully: Despite his endless trolling, Kokichi occasionally claims that he does care about the other students, even those he tends to pick on most often. Kokichi seems to respect Shuichi and tries to help him during the trials, in his own way particularly when he notices Shuichi trying to lie. During the Ultimate Talent Development Plan bonus mode, Keebo admits he sees Kokichi, despite all his "robophobic" remarks, as a friend which is something that Kokichi seems both surprised and touched by. Also, it's implied he started Slut-Shaming Miu because he noticed she enjoys being talked down to in that manner and he does respect her talent as an inventor enough to go to her more than once for equipment and his room has various blueprints he'd drawn up for her. He also teases Himiko frequently and calls her ugly in the first chapter, but then claims he "loves" her in the fifth trial via written instructions to Kaito. Himiko even lampshades this by commenting a boy will often act mean towards a girl he likes.
• Manipulative Bastard: Even though people find him suspicious, he is still somehow able to manipulate class trials, many times because he is seen as suspicious.
• Master of Unlocking: He knows how to lockpick. This skill becomes useful in the second and third chapters.
• Meaningful Name: Related to his talent, Oma means "King Horse". It is also a reference to his unique laugh in both dubs, as "nishishi" is the Japanese onomatopoeia for a horse's whinny while "Nee-heehee" is the English one. "King" and "Horse" (Knight) are both chess pieces, hinting at his role as The Chessmaster. When you get to explore his room in chapter 6, you can find a horse mask with a crown on it.
• Mirth to Power: It's clear that his trolling wisened up everyone else. He even holds up this persona even when he's put in danger; he provokes Maki to the point of her strangling him in front of everyone to show that she's dangerous if left alone and he goes through with his fake death prank despite almost passing out of a very real head injury so he can recount on a death trap rigged into the floor he stepped on.
• My God, What Have I Done?: At the end of Chapter Four, it's implied that he felt some sort of remorse for Miu and Gonta's deaths, though he tries to hide it by pretending to be the Mastermind.
• Nebulous Evil Organization: Supposedly heads one. It is cited by Chapter 5's Flashback Light that he leads the Remnant of Despair, but it contradicts his Chapter 2 motive video. His organization, DICE, is actually a group consisting of ten clowns including himself who go around causing mild pranks, vandalism, and petty theft For the Lulz but would never kill.
• Necessarily Evil:
  • Kokichi explains that he wanted to Mercy Kill everyone, but after learning Miu wanted to murder him he realized she probably took precautions to keep him from fighting back in the Virtual World, forcing Kokichi to have Gonta perform the dirty work. However, he later claims it was a lie and that he actually did it For the Evulz.
  • He pretends to be the Mastermind, reveals the secret of the outside world and later kidnaps Kaito, causing pain for everyone involved. It turns out to be a Genghis Gambit to end the Killing Game and thwart the true Mastermind.
• Never the Obvious Suspect: He's suspected as the mastermind in Chapter 5 as part of his gambit to make the other students not want to play the killing game, leading Maki to kill him. The mastermind is actually Tsumugi, and Kokichi turns out to be her pawn.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
  • Assuming it wasn't his goal all along, but him outing Maki as the Ultimate Assassin actually kickstarts her Character Development and she begins working more actively with the group, becoming an important ally to Shuichi and Maki even leaves the killing game alive.
  • Rounding everyone up to watch the Motive Videos in Chapter Two means that he leaves the school almost empty, thus giving Kirumi the perfect opportunity to set up and carry out Ryoma's murder without anybody seeing her.
• Nightmare Face: He sometimes pulls these, defying common sense in the process, as one of them involves somehow inverting his color palette.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • He has a sprite used once in a blue moon of him looking serious. It's heavily implied that, whenever this sprite is used, is a way to sign that he is telling the truth, such as when he compliments Kaede after she is considered guilty and shows genuine surprise that Gonta can't remember what he did or what they planned during Chapter 4.
  • Pretty much the entirety of Chapter 4. First, it's just Kokichi being far more pushy than usual, almost schmoozing up to Shuichi, insulting the others (beforehand he usually kept the bullying to Miu), and being more aggressively contrary to the others, culminating in his reveal of Gonta as the culprit, which he did purely to remove the fun from solving the mystery. From that point on, he only gets more vindictive and aggressive, Playing the Victim Card when others don't believe him, purposely making the rift between Kaito and Shuichi grow larger, and ultimately being eerily calm when explaining his and Gonta's "plan" and finally crying when Gonta is about to be executed. All of this is to be from crossing his own Moral Event Horizon, which has obviously taken a toll on him that he refuses to reflect on.
• Older Than He Looks: He looks fairly young for his age, and is the second shortest male in the game.
• Only a Flesh Wound: Is able to move around well enough to steal a bottle from Kaito and drink it, with a crossbow bolt lodged into the arm he uses to drink the bottle with, and another one in the center of his back, presumably through his spinal cord.
• Out-Gambitted: His Genghis Gambit fails when the mastermind uses a flashback light to get Maki to nearly kill him (she wanted to interrogate him and was fairly sure it would take the threat of death to get some straight answers out of him), resulting in the killing game continuing and Kokichi having to get Kaito to murder him before Maki's poison could.
• Painting the Medium: While confessing that Gonta Gokuhara is the one who murdered Miu Iruma, he initiates a Rebuttal Showdown unprovoked just to make use of the split camera to do a Juxtaposed Halves Shot with the scared and confused Gonta.
• Parental Abandonment: There have been implications that Kokichi does not have any parents in Free Time Events and extra materials, with him frequently making claims that he has none for various reasons and refusing to answer questions about them. Furthermore, D.I.C.E, the group he belongs to, references a series about an organization run by orphans.
• Pay Evil unto Evil:
  • Considering Miu was trying to beat him to death with a hammer, him turning the tables on her can be considered this.
  • On a lighter note his insults of Miu can fall under this as Miu, at least at her worst, is willing to dish out particularly bitter insults but cannot take them herself (though that might just be Kokichi indulging Miu's degradation kink).
• Pet the Dog:
  • In his own way, he does encourage Himiko to stop lying to herself by bottling up her emotions after Chapter 3's trial. This leads to her finally expressing her grief over Angie and Tenko's deaths.
  • Before then, he congratulated Himiko for picking the middle room as the seance room due to it being the same room that Angie was killed thus they are able to find evidence for both murder cases thanks to that decision.
  • He compliments Kaede just before she dies, saying that she "wasn't boring", which is actually significant praise coming from him, seeing as how he says the same thing about himself just before his own death.
  • For all his taunting of Miu, in the Fourth Chapter, he seems to legitimately feel bad for her when she admits she's too scared to put her trust in the other students.
  • Despite mocking her for it, he provides Miu's alibi in the second trial when everyone is trying to confirm where she, Kaito and Maki were when Gonta was capturing everyone, thus clearing her of suspicion.
  • In the Ultimate Talent Development Plan, he tries faking sick to get out of the sports festival. When this doesn't fool Mikan, he only lightly teases her before cheerfully acquiescing to go back to work and compliments her for seeing through his lies.
  • When Junko starts messing with Gonta in the Ultimate Talent Development Plan, Kokichi shows up and refers to her as a "rude blonde bitch".
  • During his FTE with Kaede, Kokichi tries to warn Kaede that her version of "common sense" is not necessarily going to be the right choice and it could end up getting her hurt. He turns out to be right about this, but unfortunately, because of his previous messing with her, Kaede doesn't take his advice to heart.
  • In the third trial, Kokichi calls Himiko out on how she treated Tenko, implying that he felt at least sorry for Tenko getting killed in Himiko's place.
• Phantom Thief: His Love Hotel fantasy involves him being one of these, with Shuichi as his detective arch-enemy who has finally managed to catch him.
• Playing the Victim Card: He does this in Chapter 4's trial, accusing the rest of the cast of ganging up on him and not believing him (regardless of the fact he antagonizes them and often bullies them in the way he accuses them, and he's an unrepentant liar). He also claims that since he's being treated like a villain, he'll act like a villain, despite the opposite being true: he needlessly antagonized and manipulated others before they had negative opinions of them. Of course, this is just pointing to the fact that something is seriously wrong.
• Plot Armor: Subverted, for once. In the previous games, the rival characters are practically untouchable (nobody except Aoi ever raises a hand against Byakuya despite wanting to and having reason to, while Nagito's Ultimate Luck and bizarre worldview make him nigh impossible to deal with). Kokichi, meanwhile, is constantly hanging on by the skin of his teeth and is frequently targeted by the people he's pissed off. Miu even tried to murder him in the Neo World Program, but Ouma figured out and had her killed before she could.
• Pride: He's a very, very prideful person, he fully believes that his way is right and everyone else's way is wrong. A good portion of his manipulation and lying stems from the fact he doesn't want to rely on other people, but wants to use them instead.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Considering he's still a teenager, this is slightly crossed with Kiddie Kid, but Kokichi is noted to be childish and immature by the other students- in fact, it's one of the first things Kaede notices about him.
• Putting on the Reich: Enforced — He is the Ultimate Supreme Leader, and as such he has several references to Nazi Germany:
  • His Ultimate title in Japanese is 総統 (Sōtō), a term for some heads of state, such as the President of Taiwan. The term has a certain nationalistic bent, though—in Japanese, Hitler and Mussolini are both called Sōtō.
  • His favorite soda brand is "Panta", named after Fanta, which was created in Nazi Germany after embargoes starved the country of Coca-Cola.
  • His already military-style cap is adorned with a symbol resembling the Nazi Aquila.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • After the Chapter 1 class trial. He explains to Kaede that no matter what her intentions were, the moment she decided to commit murder, she had already lost against Monokuma and the killing game. Kaede agrees with him.
  • He gives an even harsher one to Himiko in the third trial:
    Kokichi: Himiko, stop it with your crappy lies.
    Himiko: Lies...?
    Kokichi: Everything you said is total BS. You didn't give two shits about Tenko when she was alive, but you're like, "Oh no, poor Tenko!" after she's dead. C'mon, really?
  • And he's not immune to being on the receiving end, either. Shuichi gives one to him in the aftermath of the fourth trial:
    Kokichi: Hey... why are you all so worried about this pathetic guy-
    Shuichi: Pathetic? Look at yourself, Kokichi.
    Kokichi: ...What?
    Shuichi: Kaito always has us by his side, see? But no-one wants to be around you. You're alone, Kokichi. And you always will be.
• Red Herring: In-Universe example. The students believe that he is the Mastermind when in actuality he isn't one. This comes back to really bite him in the ass when Maki decides to get some answers from him... by any means necessary.
• Recurring Element:
  • Like Byakuya and Nagito, Kokichi is the antagonistic character who sticks around for a while.
  • Similar to Fuyuhiko, Ryota, Chihiro, and Makoto before him, he's a cute Tiny Schoolboy.
  • He also shares Mukuro, Nagito and Ruruka's title as the final (and most gruesome) murder case in their respective Killing Games.
  • Like Mondo and Fuyuhiko, he has a talent not positively seen by society at large.
  • He also shares a few similarities to Junko and Izuru, which helps his otherwise obviously false claim that he was the mastermind like they both were: he complains about being bored and is scarily intelligent.
• The Rival: He fills the usual role of this to Shuichi in trials, similarly to Byakuya towards Makoto in Trigger Happy Havoc and Nagito towards Hajime in Goodbye Despair, but he serves as a more direct one to Kaito, with their ideals and guises as a blindly optimistic and ambitious hero type and a distrustful and deceptive evil leader clashing repeatedly throughout the game, which comes to a head during Chapter 4 especially.
• Rivals Team Up: In the fifth chapter, he and Kaito team up to create an unsolvable crime where even Monokuma cannot identify the victim.
• Room Full of Crazy: His room is stuffed full of evidence from earlier cases (like Angie's life-sized wax statue of Rantaro), a rubber horse mask with a tiny crown on its head somehow, boxes full of random invention drafts for Iruma, and various bits and pieces of discarded plots.
• Running Gag: He claims to have killed the victim in every trial he's in, even posthumously in Chapter 5 through the script Kaito reads. He's lying every time.

S-Z

• Sanity Slippage: After Gonta is killed, Kokichi plays up his "evil" personality, complete with a Nightmare Face and mad laughter. It's strongly implied that the stress and guilt of his actions are behind it, even as he claims he was only pretending to cry at Gonta's death.
• Sarcastic Confession: Because of his nature, it's difficult to tell when Kokichi *isn't* lying. His plan in Chapter 4's trial exploits this - he tells everyone who the real killer is, banking on the fact that no one will believe him since it's Kokichi talking.
• Schmuck Bait: Invoked in two of his Love Across the Universe date events using Tenko. If Shuichi decides to strip in the gym, Kokichi suggests that he gets Tenko as a stripper. If Shuichi decides to get horny after a meal, Kokichi will suggest doing the same with Tenko around, claiming that her misandry is part of her being a tsundere.
• Secret Circle of Secrets: Claims to be the leader of one.
• Secret Test of Character: He provided one in Chapter Five. He threatens to kill everybody with a bomb except for one person. If somebody wants to live with him, they can just say so. In actuality, the bomb was actually just an EMP. He wanted to see if everybody was determined enough to end the killing game.
• Self-Made Orphan: A possible one in which he claims that he ended up killing his parents in order to become the supreme leader. However, he passed it off as a lie, stating his brother killed his parents instead... which he also said is a lie.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: Subverted. He seems to be wearing a plain white suit, but closer examination reveals it to be seemingly a tattered and undone straitjacket. His magazine scan also showed him in a ragged cape and a military-style cap.
• Shirtless Scene: Surprisingly, he gets an extremely brief one during the closing argument of chapter 5. Though, this might count as Fan Disservice because he takes his shirt off just before being murdered to help obfuscate who the victim is, so it's less 'sexy' and more 'upsetting'.
• Shoot the Dog: Kokichi's using Gonta as his patsy to kill Miu in chapter 4 and later throwing him under the bus during the trial rather than continue with their "plan" to Mercy Kill the entire cast. Probably his most atrocious action in the game, but since he decided Miu had to die for planning to kill him (and everyone else) for her own escape there weren't a lot of other ways for him to do it. He was physically incapable of defending himself against Miu in the virtual world, he wasn't going to stay with the group to deny Miu an opportunity to kill him, and had her plan worked, the rest of the class would have likely died during the trial.
• Shorter Means Smarter: Aside from Ryoma, he is the shortest male character in the game, and his role as The Chessmaster in this game means he is very intelligent.
• Shout-Out: His Nightmare Face sprite with inverted colors makes him look an awful lot like Dimentio.
• Signature Laugh: In Japanese, it's "Nishishi~" while in the Dub it's "Neeheehee", which occurs often when he's making trouble.
• Significant Birth Date: He shares his birthday, June 21, with Kaitou KID, another white-suited liar. KID's rival happens to be Shinichi Kudo, whom Kokichi's rival, Shuichi, is an Expy of.
• Slut-Shaming: Does this to Miu constantly in the trials. Which she enjoys immensely. Which is probably why he keeps doing it.
• Smug Smiler: He is constantly smiling as if he is one step ahead unless he's using his rare "serious" sprite which is one of the few indicators he's being truthful.
• Spanner in the Works: In Chapter Two. His plan to gather everybody at Gonta's lab caused most of the students to have alibis for that murder.
• Speak Ill of the Dead: Kokichi is fine with trash-talking the recently deceased, particularly Kaede out of spite.
• Squashed Flat: His body is crushed completely by the hydraulic press in the Exisal hangar.
• Stepford Smiler: He pretends to enjoy the killing game but in actuality, he hates it and wants it to end.
• Story-Breaker Power: On paper, the title "Ultimate Supreme Leader" may not seem like much of a talent but Kokichi's talents are a sight to behold. For starters, since Kokichi is a master liar himself, he is, in turn, able to easily pick up on other people's lies. Because of this, Kokichi often knows who the culprit is from the start and what keeps him from telling everyone the culprit is that he is hell-bent on making the Class Trials more "fun" for him (not that anyone would've believed him anyway). Another is his ability to lockpick into almost any room in the building. This even includes rooms that Monokuma specifically keeps locked (barring the hidden room in the library as that can only be accessed via card key). He probably could've accessed Rantaro's Ultimate Lab if he had the chance. These facts make Kokichi one of the most intelligent characters in Danganronpa history as he knew that "horse a" was a clue and intentionally spelt out "The world is mine. Kokichi Oma" to throw off the mastermind thinking he was the one that wrote that and later left a hint to "twins b" that was used to access the safe in Rantaro's lab. If Kokichi was still alive during the ending moments of the game, there was no doubt he would've been able to crack the case wide open.
• Surrounded by Idiots: He believes his classmates are more focused on turning on each other than actually trying to survive the killing game.
• Sympathetic Murderer: Played with heavily. He manipulates Gonta into helping him murder Miu, leading to Gonta's death also by execution in the subsequent trial. While the circumstances do make it somewhat understandable, given that Miu was planning to kill him, and his current position in the group meant he had few real options, but it's heavily implied the moral implications of what he's done weighed deeply on him, and directly influenced his choice to use his own life in his final plan to sabotage the killing game.
• Tiny Schoolboy: He's the second shortest male character in the class and the third shortest student in the V3 cast overall. Apart from Ryouma and Himiko, Kokichi is shorter than every other student, male or female.
• Token Evil Teammate: Invoked, he bullies the others just because he can, encourages everyone to distrust him ("Because I'm a liar") and the others as much as possible, gives false confessions during trials that could get him and the others killed, claims to enjoy the killing game and expresses an intent to "win" it clearly and often, and even goes as far as to claim he's the mastermind. Ultimately subverted though, as Korekiyo's the truly "Evil" male student here.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: While Kokichi was never anything nice, he was someone with defined limits of trolling and was frequently attempting to do things he thought was the best way to get the use out of those around him. Come Chapter 4's Trial, however, Kokichi is even more condescending than usual, relentlessly persecutes and insults Gonta, and frequently taunts Gonta, Kaito and Shuichi throughout the trial for little reason beyond feeling the need to be more of an ass.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Carbonated drinks.
• Tritagonist: He has one of the most important roles in the game due to his status as The Rival and his role in the investigations.
• Troll: Oh boy.....
  • He likes to tease Keebo a bit and then tells Kaede that he's an evil secret society leader, only to state he's a liar afterwards.
  • He faked his own death in Chapter 3 - not for any tactical reason (he immediately reveals it's a joke), just for fun. The game even pretends he died by making a cutscene out of it.
  • Prior to his breakdown in Chapter 5, he sometimes lets out his "horror sprites" once or twice just to scare the shit out of people.
  • This even extends to Space Mode. If you do an excellent event with him, he will state that he had a bad time... until he stated that he was lying as he actually had a great time. He also tells Shuichi that they made a promise when in actuality, they never made one.
  • He endlessly teases Himiko because she frequently doesn't understand what he's saying and is slow to react, then does so with delayed anger.
  • In the second trial, he gleefully recounts the piranhas eating Ryoma's body, even when Tenko gets increasingly grossed out and begs him to shut up.
• Unmoving Plaid: Surprisingly averted. The checkerboard pattern on his scarf does change depending on what angle it's viewed from.
• Unreliable Expositor: As a self-proclaimed pathologic liar, it can be difficult to tell when Kokichi's actually telling the truth.
• Villain's Dying Grace: He gives Momota the antidote to a poison they had both been shot with by Harukawa, then allows Momota to kill him via hydraulic press so that he would be the killer instead, saving Harukawa from execution.
• Waxing Lyrical: In the official localization, when Kokichi, who is actually Kaito pretending to be him, starts talking in the Exisal in the fifth class trial, he belts out a Frank Sinatra lyric.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Revealed to be this. His true goal is to make sure that the killing game would end for good, but to this end he gets Miu and Gonta killed.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: He stated that he doesn't consider Ki-bo to be human.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Oftentimes, he will call people out on their bullshit.
  • In Chapter Three, Himiko had made promises and talked at length during the trial about how she wasn’t going to call things tiresome and she was going to embrace her emotions to the fullest and be honest with herself, but she wasn't actually doing it. Because of that, Kokichi called her out for running away from her own emotions and being a hypocrite.
  • He also gives Kaito one of these in Chapter 4 for his inability to accept Gonta is the killer. It all accumulates to an image that shows disturbing similarities to the one Kaito gives to Saihara. He also points out that Kaito himself has been lying to everyone - Maki and Shuichi in particular - about his illness.
  • A minor one in his Harmonious Heart; when Shuichi agrees that he should stop lying, he deconstructs Relationship Values by saying that just because the main character waltzes in a person's life and talks with them several times, it won't change the person's fundamental character. Then he proceeds to call Shuichi arrogant for thinking that he's worth it to be an honest man for.
  • He calls Kirumi out for trying to manipulate one of the other students into taking her place during the execution, notable because this is one of the few times he and Kaito agree on something.
• What You Are in the Dark: After being shot, Kokichi could have just let himself die from the poison as Maki intended, leaving him effectively an innocent victim and causing Maki -someone he hates- suffering as the Blackened. Instead, Kokichi concocts a scheme to end the Killing Game while simultaneously protecting Maki from execution, all at the cost of his own life.
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…: His scheme to end the Killing Game before his death can be interpreted as such. As the Ultimate Supreme Leader, much of Kokichi's skillset revolves around making people do what he wants one way or another, thus his attempt to shut down the game boils down to a hostile takeover. Unfortunately, he doesn’t realize that, with his new role isolating him from the other students, the real Mastermind is free to take countermeasures Kokichi can’t plan for.
• White Shirt of Death: He typically wears a white straitjacket and is brutally crushed to death underneath a hydraulic press. However, he removes that straitjacket prior to his death to make the case's victim ambiguous, meaning he doesn't die wearing it.
• You Wouldn't Shoot Me: Implied and subverted. The Closing Argument for Chapter 5 shows Kaito preparing to shoot Kokichi with a crossbow as the Ultimate Supreme Leader calmly stands at near point-blank range while smirking. However, if Kokichi really didn't expect Kaito to fire, he was very wrong.
• Zero-Approval Gambit: He planned to make the others believe he was the mastermind in order to outsmart the real one and end the killing game. The real mastermind responded by...giving him exactly what he wanted, and implanting the rest of the class with memories of them being students at Hope's Peak, with Kokichi as a Junko-worshipping Remnant of Despair who masterminded the killing game, which causes Maki to try and kill him.