Characters / Persona 5: Endgame Antagonists

Persona 5 Main Character Index
The Phantom Thieves of Hearts (Starting Members [Joker] | Later Members [Goro Akechi | Kasumi Yoshizawa])
Confidants (Sae Niijima) | Targets - Palace Rulers / Endgame Antagonists (The Dreamer) / Minor | Other Characters
Spin-Offs: Strikers (Jail Monarchs) | Tactica | The Phantom X

The final set of antagonists faced in of Persona 5.

Due to the nature of these characters, all spoilers for Persona 5 and Royal, as well as Persona 4, Persona Q2, and Strikers will be unmarked. Read at your own risk.

Leviathan

Shadow Sae

^{Leviathan Transformation}

Unjust Dealer of Envy

"Let's do this fair and square, shall we?"

Sin: Invidia (Envy)
Shadow: Leviathan
Voiced by: Yuko Kaida (JP), Elizabeth Maxwell (EN)

During the latter half of Joker's interrogation, we learn that Sae Niijima herself is the Phantom Thieves' sixth major target. Leviathan, the demon of Envy, is Sae Niijima's Shadow, and she is in control of the casino Palace infiltrated at the start of the game. The palace and Leviathan are manifestations of both the extreme pressure put on her from her job and her feelings of inadequacy in comparison to her co-workers and younger sister.

The casino Palace is imposed on a Tokyo municipal courthouse, with the police station not far away. Sae's Treasure is the only one that is never explicitly shown, either in the Palace or out of it. Prior to its materialization, however, Makoto theorizes that Sae's real world Treasure is their father's notebook on investigations he's done, as his death in the line of duty is the major catalyst of her cynicism. Because leaving her Treasure alone is a major component of the thieves' plan to trick the conspiracy, Sae's Palace is the only one that is not destroyed in the game.

---

• Amoral Attorney: Since Sae's Shadow is born from her growing cynicism about the prosecutor's office and desperate desire to prove herself, Leviathan views court cases as nothing more than games to be won, not caring what happens to the defendant. Makoto's horrified to hear that a part of her sister feels this way, and hopes to change Sae's heart.
• Animal Motifs: Dogs. She has a tattoo of a dog's head on her back, and wears a spiked collar around her neck. Dogs in Japanese culture are often associated with envy, but at the same time also represent guardianship and loyalty. This reflects her status as an Anti-Villain and shows that she can still be redeemed without needing to change her heart.
• Anti-Villain: She isn't as much a bad person as she is a good one who's lost sight of her values, and can be convinced to remember them.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!:
  • Her most powerful attack, Berserker Dance, has her violently firing and slashing wildly at her enemies and ends with an explosion. When combined with Desperation, it packs a very nasty punch.
  • Her whole gimmick in Royal, after her cheating was exposed sums up as this. The Roulette merely defines her attack behavior, and her whole roster of skills consists of close to nothing but attacking moves.
• Barrier Change Boss: Her new strategy for her Leviathan form in Royal has her initiate a roulette that randomly changes her elemental resistances and attacks.
• Big "WHAT?!": She lets one off when defeated in the roulette.
• Black Knight: Her monstrous form is one, representing her loss of faith in the law she upholds.
• Blatant Lies: "Let's do this fair and square".
• Casino Park: Her Palace is a giant over the top casino filled with amusement park-esque attractions.
• Character Catchphrase: Proclaiming that she will do things "fair and square". The one time she actually means it is after she goes One-Winged Angel and fights the party head-on. The other one, "I will win," a reference to her Second Place Is for Losers mentality.
• Chekhov's Gun: Her Palace, or rather, the area it was based on. In an attempt to dupe everyone and especially Akechi that Joker was dead, the Phantom Thieves used the Metaverse version of the Police Station which was located next to the Palace/Courthouse and looked identical to its real-life counterpart since Sae didn't associate it with herself due to not being there a lot. She also didn't distort those around her like Kaneshiro's ATM people, which meant that all the cognitions behaved exactly like normal people. Akechi unknowingly went to the Metaverse Police Station and killed Sae's Cognition Joker.
• The Cynic: Shadow Sae is her real self's pessimism and bitterness devoid of any of her Knight in Sour Armor traits, leading to her repeatedly proclaiming the uselessness of anything except winning and selfish goals.
• Damage-Sponge Boss: Played With. Shadow Sae's first form has a whopping 65,535 HP. For perspective, the Final Boss has 15,000 HP. However, you're not actually expected to defeat her first form. After performing a special action, she transforms into her second form, which has a far more reasonable 8,000 HP. Even if you do somehow manage to deplete the HP of her first form, she'll simply transform into her second form anyway, without a Developer's Foresight quote from her if you do it this way.
• Decapitated Army: Averted. After she's defeated, the Shadows in her Palace start massing and preparing to capture the Thieves.
• Disc-One Final Boss: She's the last boss that is faced before the game catches up with the present timeline, though is far from the final opponent of the game... unless you sell out your teammates.
• Evil Makes You Monstrous: Shadow Sae's appearance is the most monstrous of the shadows without any traces of being comical and goofy. It's a sign of how distorted her values have become due to her envy. Makoto is shocked upon seeing it.
  Makoto: This... is my sister's true nature!? No...
• Excessive Evil Eyeshadow: As you can see in her picture, and fitting her status as a Goth. It pretty much resembles Joker's mask.
• Fair-Play Villain: She pretends to be this, but ultimately is not. She talks about facing the Phantom Thieves fair and square, both through her Palace and through the actual fight with her, but in reality she has rigged everything in her favor. To overcome this, the Phantom Thieves have to either expose her cheating or else cheat harder than she does. This is also the biggest sign of her corrupted mental state, going from an honest woman who believes in finding justice to a power-hungry woman who feels she must win at all costs, regardless of what lines she crosses.
• Faux Affably Evil:
  • In an expression of Japan's infamous justice system, her Shadow pretends to want nothing more than a fair game against the Phantom Thieves, when everyone knows she's cheating and rigging the odds in her favor.
  • Subverted in regards to her real self, who openly acts bitter and stressed out whenever things are getting to her, and only mellows out after making a genuine Heel–Face Turn.
• Female Misogynist: Implied to be becoming one but outside of the seven normal subtypes. Some shadows in her Palace take the form of ridiculously voluptuous playboy bunny waitresses, suggesting that Sae herself is starting to become influenced by her own male superior's misogynistic views.
• Final Boss: If the player sells out the other Phantom Thieves to the real Sae after her Palace is completed, then Shadow Sae becomes the last boss you fight.
• Fixing the Game: Her boss fight gimmick involves a roulette wheel that messes with the stats of whoever rolls the wrong number - with glass coverings over the numbers you picked. Un-fixing the game is required to clear the first phase of the fight by having a partner shoot out the glass.
• Flower Motifs: The yellow rose on her hat and in the tattoo on her back represents jealousy in Hanakotoba, the Japanese language of flowers.
• The Gambler: Attacks by forcing the Thieves to bet on a gambling roulette, but will skew the odds in her favor, like the Arcana Fortune from Persona 3.
• Glamour Failure: Before her battle begins she taunts the Thieves in her human form, but as she does so the screen flickers and for a split second her true monstrous form is revealed, seriously unsettling Makoto.
• Goth: She wears over-the-top goth punk makeup and clothing, with a massive amount of black shadow around her eyes, a spike-covered choker, and so on.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Envy is her sin and motif. Her feelings of jealousy towards her younger sister and inadequacy towards her male co-workers, combined with the increasing corruption by her superiors, has embittered Sae greatly, giving her a deeply rooted drive to get ahead in her career at the cost of her personal happiness. Even then she is nowhere near as corrupt as the other Palace-dwellers, and her Shadow reforms of her own accord in the end.
• Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: How her dungeon and boss fight is structured, with her changing the rules and outright cheating to assure she always wins. To beat her, you have to cheat back.
• Heel–Face Turn: Unlike the other Shadow Bosses, the Phantom Thieves actually don't steal Sae's heart; they instead retrieve a fake Treasure to deceive Akechi, leaving the real one alone to leave intact both Sae's Palace and her ability to influence it as part of the Thieves' plan to trick him. Instead, Joker and Makoto help her work through her issues on her own without needing brainwashing, causing Sae to realize how harsh she was and repairing her relationship with Makoto, which saves her from becoming corrupt and abusive like the other targets.
• Helpful Mook: The Shadows in her Palace that don't wear masks are otherwise normal employees.
• High-Heel–Face Turn: Sae is the only target who actively chooses to change herself, as well as the only female target besides Futaba, who's a special case in a few regards.
• HP to One: If anyone attacks her while her roulette is spinning, she will retaliate with this.
• Hypocrite: For all her talk about playing fair and square, her shadow doesn't. In a special dialogue exchange that plays if Joker goes into the fight alone, Futaba calls her out on this. It just goes to demonstrate how cynical the real Sae has become to uphold her career.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: As the embodiment of Sae's insecurities and growing lack of faith in herself, society, or even the concept of good, Leviathan's confident declaration of her being the eternal winner is quickly shown to be this, with her Shadows rigging the games and her constant changing of the rules in her favor. Eventually she starts having a full Villainous Breakdown where she starts screaming at the Phantom Thieves about how they won't take her one bit of real power away from her.
• It's Personal: Makoto is very personally invested in saving her big sister from her own dark side.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Ironically, despite her gambling motif, despite her constantly changing the rules and moving the goalposts on the Thieves throughout the dungeon, she finally gives up and accepts that it will come down to a boss battle when they kept thwarting her attempts to lock them out by keeping them from having enough coins to get to her.
• Lack of Empathy: Haru and Akechi lament how she sees people as nothing more than tools in her game. That said, since the cognitive versions of people are relatively free of distortion, it's implied that Sae isn't nearly as bad about this as most of the other targets.
• Last-Name Basis: Her Palace is referred to as "Niijima's Palace", although the real her is called by her first name in textboxes.
• Lord British Postulate: If playing on Easy Mode (with a lot of revives), it's entirely possible to defeat her human form in spite of her massive 65,535 HP.
• Meaningful Name: Contrasting with Makoto more or less living her given name (as detailed in her entry), Sae's given name (冴) translates variously as "clarity" or "skillfulness" - all things she's convinced she lacks in comparison to Makoto and her colleagues.
• Ms. Fanservice: Her revealing attire really shows off a lot of skin, and it's clear she isn't wearing anything underneath. The Animation in particular tries to squeeze out as many Male Gaze moments as it can get, including a close-up of her barely concealed rear.
• Navel-Deep Neckline: Her black dress has a plunging neckline that goes past her navel, although it does have a fishnet over the exposed skin.
• The Musketeer: A large, grey, bloodstained sword in her left hand, and some sort of tommy gun/minigun combination in her right hand. She uses the sword for Severing Slash and the gun for Gatling Gun. She uses both in tandem for her Desperation Attack, Berserker Dance.
• One-Winged Angel: After the party turns the tables on her in the first phase of her boss fight, she transforms into an armor-clad Shadow wielding a sword and a gun.
• Ornamental Weapon: She has some kind of Derringer holstered in her right stocking, although she never uses it.
• Screaming Warrior: After she goes One-Winged Angel, Leviathan spends the entire fight screaming in rage and, as she starts losing, despair.
• Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: She takes full advantage of her status as master of the Palace to ensure that even though the Thieves have a way to reach her, it's all but impossible for them to actually do so.
• Sexy Backless Outfit: Her dress is backless all the way down to her extreme lower back, showing a number of yellow rose tattoos.
• Sexy Slit Dress: Her black dress is slit to on the right side to leave one of her legs exposed, which also reveals she has a pistol attached to the said leg.
• Signature Headgear: Her human form is always wearing a wide-brimmed hat with playing cards stashed behind a yellow rose.
• Slowly Slipping Into Evil: She hasn't jumped off the slippery slope yet, but with the increasingly more extreme measures she's willing to take to win, her growing bitterness towards her sister, and the fact that her distorted desires have formed a Palace at all show Sae is getting dangerously close to it.
• Sole Survivor: Her Palace is the only one that wasn't destroyed due to her Treasure never leaving the Metaverse. Since she reformed herself without her treasure being stolen, it can be presumed that her Palace crumbled and if it didn't, it definitely did when Mementos was destroyed and took the Metaverse with it.
• Sore Loser: She never takes it well when she loses, and her loss at the roulette causes her to go One-Winged Angel.
  Leviathan: Cheating?! Unfair?! Silence! This is MY world!
• Spikes of Villainy: Her Leviathan form's shoulders are adorned with spikes that are vaguely reminiscent of her sister's Phantom Thief outfit.
• Sword and Gun: Her Shadow's second form wields these simultaneously.
• Tarot Motifs: Reversed Judgement - self-doubt and refusal to self-examine.
• Tattooed Crook: She has a large tattoo on her back of a growling Dobermann's head surrounded by yellow flowers due to Rule of Symbolism. Lean, hungry dogs were a common medieval pictorial representation of the Deadly Sin of Envy, and yellow roses translate as "Jealousy" in the Japanese language of flowers.
• Teleport Spam: Not in her battle, but she appears to talk to the Thieves multiple times before teleporting to the Casino's main elevator.
• Vapor Wear: Her outfit doesn't really leave much to the imagination. Worth noting that the outfit actually had to be Bowdlerised as the original version, shown in the art book, left almost nothing to the imagination.^note It was transparent and very clear she was Going Commando.
• Villainous Breakdown: She flies into a rage after her loss at the roulette, and, desperate to not lose her power, goes One-Winged Angel and attacks the party.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: It's known that her Palace was preserved by the Phantom Thieves since they needed the police station next to it in order to trick Akechi and Shido. What happened to it after their plan worked is never brought up again, though it's safe to assume it disappeared on its own afterwards since she evidently went through a change of heart without the Thieves performing... well, a "change of heart".
• Yellow Eyes of Sneakiness: Her human form has yellow eyes, to illustrate her corrupt and crafty nature.

The Traitor

Black Mask

Black Masked Assassin of Emptiness

"Now, let's see you drop dead one at a time, in front of your precious friends! DIIIIIIIIIE!!!!!"

Sin: Cavum (Emptiness)

A mysterious Metaverse user who is responsible for causing mental shutdowns and psychotic breakdowns, first mentioned by Shadow Madarame as "the one with the black mask". He made his first full appearance by killing Shadow Okumura after the Phantom Thieves succeeded in stealing his treasure.

It is later revealed that the masked man is none other than Goro Akechi, who sold out Joker at the end of the casino heist, and it is only due to some creative thinking on the Thieves' part that they discover his true colors. When he is encountered in Masayoshi Shido's palace, he reveals that he is Shido's bastard son, driven entirely by his desire to demolish Shido completely. He informed the police of the Phantom's location in an attempt to pin the accidents and deaths he caused on the Phantom Thieves as a part of his plan to set Shido up for unopposed inauguration, in which he would take the opportunity to discredit him and ferment social unrest.

The Endgame reveals that Akechi and Joker were chosen to partake in a thought experiment by Yaldabaoth to determine what course humanity's future would take. Akechi was chosen to represent "rebirth" - that is, wiping society's slate clean and building it up from scratch. While Akechi himself wants to teach society a lesson by causing his father's downfall in this fashion, Yaldabaoth's true plans are far more sinister.

Like Joker, Akechi possesses the power of the Wild Card, allowing him to wield multiple Personas. However, as the Wild Card is only effective when the wielder forms many bonds with others, his misanthropic nature leaves him with only Robin Hood and his true persona — Loki, the god of mischief and lies in Norse Mythology.

For tropes pertaining to him, see his Character page here.

Samael

Masayoshi Shido

"Where did you lowlives get that power? ...Not that it matters. If you have a complaint, I'm willing to listen."

^{Shadow Shido}

^{The Beast of Human Sacrifice}

^Samael

^{Samael's Final Form}

Godsent Minister of Pride

"A small leak will sink a great ship. Great nations have fallen to such lenience. I will not make such incautious mistakes."

Sin: Superbia (Pride)
Shadow: Samael
Voiced by: Shūichi Ikeda (JP), Keith Silverstein (EN)
Stage actors: Takeshi Sugawara (The Stage #1), Tyson Ohya (The Stage #4)

The seventh and final major target, Shido is the Representative of the Liberal Co-Prosperity Party (later forming United Future Party) and a candidate in the next elections for the Prime Minister of Japan. Unbeknownst to all but select few, he is also the head of the Antisocial Force conspiracy and Akechi's father. His belief that it is his god-given right to lead society and destroy any who dare cross him creates a Palace inside the Collective Unconscious, where he takes the form of Samael, the demon of Pride.

Shido's Palace is an enormous, multi-tiered cruise ship, which is imposed over the National Diet Building in the real world. His treasure in the Palace resembles a ship's steering wheel; in the real world it manifests as a legislator's lapel pin. Unlike most other itemized treasures, it has no monetary value, especially after he destroyed his own political career by confessing.

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• Abusive Parents: To Akechi, the boy he conceived by having impulsive sex and forgot about, which ensured Akechi would grow up despised and shamed as an illegitimate child. Akechi sincerely believed Shido was not aware of the connection and offered Shido the power of his Persona and even then, Shido never acknowledges him as a son, using Akechi as a pawn and planning to have him killed.
• Accidental Truth: Before you finally face off against him near the end of the game, Shadow Shido claims he was chosen by God to be Prime Minister of Japan. At the time, it comes across like a statement in jest to emphasize how delusional and prideful he is, but it turns out to be the truth; the "God" in question, of course, is actually Yaldabaoth.
• Adaptational Badass: Kinda, in The Stage. Due to the Mementos Depths arc being Adapted Out, Shido actually is the Big Bad and Final Boss, instead of the Unwitting Pawn and Disc-One Final Boss he is in the game. However, because of how much Denser and Wackier The Stage is, even compared to the game, it would not really be accurate to say he's more badass there.
• Adaptational Wimp: Shido's Shadow is a tenacious beast of a foe in the game, possessing a wide array of powerful abilities and absolutely refusing to give up until his body ultimately gives in against his will. In the anime, he is nowhere near as tenacious, cycling through his initial forms very quickly. He also doesn't demonstrate much fighting ability or creativity other than swinging his fists in his Samael form, which the team exploits to easily trick him. Finally, he is effortlessly defeated in his final form single-handedly by Joker without landing a scratch on him.
• Adaptational Ugliness: Shido in the anime more closely resembles a man nearing his late 50s than the remarkably fresh-faced man in the game, with more pronounced wrinkles and lines across his face.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Even though he absolutely deserves it, Shido's last appearances in the game are those of a man who is wracked with sorrow and regret for all the horrible things he's done (which he normally wouldn't have by himself). It's all but stated that whatever the courts sentence him to will be nothing compared to the guilt he'll carry for the rest of life.
• Admiring the Abomination: When the thieves meet his Shadow again in Mementos Depths after his defeat, unlike the rest of the Target's Shadows, who are all depressed, self-pitying, and complacent in the Prison of Regression, Shadow Shido instead tells the Phantom Thieves how thoroughly impressed he is by the Holy Grail's work. It was creating a greater dystopia than he ever could have hoped to create himself.
  Shadow Shido: Does this look like captivity to you? Why, it's the exact opposite. The utmost freedom is available to anyone who desires it here. This is the freedom to not make decisions. The release from having to think for yourself. It is far more marvelous than the country I wished to create.
• The Alcoholic: A conversation between two NPC's during the third semester reveals that the now reformed Shido repeatedly drinks in his jail cell, likely out of guilt towards his actions and possible boredom.
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • It's not clear what Wakaba's research did for his Palace and which are natural to his talents. Shido's Palace is abnormal in two big ways. First, it has a huge number of extremely human-like cognitions which Morgana attributes to his observation skills. Second, the Five Nobles are a strange cognition-Shadow fusion and the team speculates that this came from the research, but they also suggest it could be from his close bonds with the real people they are based on. The game is also rather explicit that Shido does not use Wakaba's research in any way other than helping him kill more people he doesn't like through Akechi and he himself lacks the skills required to manipulate the cognitive world beyond that level and the Phantom Thieves don't have a full grasp on how much he can actually do at that time, which makes it even more nebulous if he really manipulated his own palace to make it hard to intervene, or he's so full of himself that his Palace became abnormal to personify his ego and delusional beliefs.
  • What exactly happens to Shido in Maruki's dream world in line with his philosophy is vague, as Shido is not seen during the Third Semester. In Maruki's world, he even entirely rearranges the personalities and circumstances of villains like Madarame for them to find happiness. However, the player is told Shido is still incarcerated in a news broadcast, now for proven high treason rather than his lesser crimes. It's ultimately unclear if Shido is now in an idealistic reality where only he suffers, or if his change of heart actually carried over to the new world and Shido is still glad to face justice, making him "happy" in a twisted way.
• Ambition Is Evil: He seeks to become Prime Minister of Japan, and rule Japan with an iron fist. His Shadow only hammers this home further.
• Animal Motifs: Lions. He has the Kanji character for "lion" in his name, and in the first stage of his boss battle, he rides a huge, golden lion chariot. Lions are often seen as the guardians of heaven and hell, befitting Shido's self-delusion as Japan's savior. Additionally, lions are often associated with power, rulership, and pridefulness, all of which suit Shido very well. Last but not least, male lions are known to be Lazy Bums who have their lionesses hunt for them instead, also befitting of how he looks almighty on the outside, but is actually an undignified, self-overestimating, and power-hungry individual who heavily relies on others to do all the dirty work for him. Furthermore, in Gnosticism, the Demiurge is sometimes depicted as a serpent with the head of a lion, foreshadowing his connection to Yaldabaoth.
• Arch-Enemy: Shido is an unusual take on this trope. While he has plenty of people who hate them, due to his delusional Pride and self-aggrandizement, he rarely sees it the same way. He treats the people he wrongs as (in his own words) simply ants on the road that are not worth acknowledging. Shido himself does not recognize any of the Phantom Thieves on an individual level and it takes his Shadow some hints to actually recognize Joker as who he is — the real Shido could look at Joker's face for a while after he's supposedly been killed and still fail to recognize him. For Shido, the individual members of the Phantom Thieves might not be significant enough for him, but they take him very seriously and personally for good reasons.
  • Many of the Phantom Thieves consider him this on a personal level, though he is explicitly this to Joker for giving him a bogus criminal record and destroying his life, kickstarting the game's entire story. Morgana and Sae each lampshade it as well, the former after Joker finally recognizes Shido, and the latter at the end of the story, remarking how intertwined Shido's destiny was with Joker's. In Royal, Shadow Shido even pushes the other Thieves away so he can face Joker one-on-one, acknowledging it was a mistake on his part not to have dealt with him personally from the very beginning, being the only one of his archenemies that he comes to return the feeling for.
  • To his son Akechi, his own Dragon. Akechi's plan is an extremely complicated long-term commitment to prop up his father and then tear him down by revealing to the world how they are related and all the crimes he committed to get Shido there. After both their lives are destroyed, Akechi would kill him. The Phantom Thieves are just obstacles to Akechi's true goal, his vendetta against his father. Shido suspected Akechi was his son and had plans to dispose of him just like any other co-conspirator he no longer had any use for, rather than having any real emotional investment in Akechi's hatred for him.
  • Other characters with personal antagonism with Shido; Futaba, for mudering her mother and causing her to blame herself for it; Haru, for murdering her father; Sojiro, also for killing Futaba's mother as well as knowing first-hand just how awful he is; and Ohya, for Shido targeting her partner and causing her death. Shido barely acknowledges or remembers any of these incidents.
• Archnemesis Dad: Ultimately, to Akechi. Shido always had a feeling that Akechi was his son, but he didn't care. Akechi, meanwhile, wanted to get back at Shido for all of his abusive actions and abandonment.
• Artificial Brilliance: Shido's first phase on the Beast of Human Sacrifice is very strategic. He buffs his attack, debuffs your team's agility, will dispel debuffs on himself or buffs on the party if there are any. Since he almost entirely deals physical damage, the player may instinctively use Tetrakarn. If they do so, he will use Tetra Break to remove it. Since he repels all physical and gun damage, he will also use Makarakarn to protect himself from all damage except almighty, which forces a party member to waste SP and a turn to break it. The fact that he has a powerful telegraphed Almighty attack, Arm of Destruction, means the player can't completely neglect the buffing or debuffing game either, or risk getting one-shot (depending on the difficulty of the game) or heavily injured by Arm of Destruction. This forces the player to play his game, even if he will keep slowing them down by constantly dispelling and debuffing. He drops his methodical setup in favor of more aggressive strategies in most of his following phases and the fight quickly becomes much more straightforward and fast-paced.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: While his heinous crimes throughout the years had guaranteed the Phantom Thieves, all composed of his direct and indirect victims, would form eventually, the straw that broke the camel's back ends up being his condescension while stealing Joker and Ryuji's elevator at the Wilton Hotel. This convinces the initial team members to become an official group of vigilantes operating in the cognitive Metaverse, showing that people who do not live their lives with humility will always ensure their own destruction.
• Artistic License – Religion: Samael is not associated with any of the Seven Deadly Sins; the standard demon for Pride is Lucifer. Downplayed, however, in that Samael fills a similar role to Satan in Judaism. This actually makes him an even better fit, since in Samael's case it's the job he's supposed to have rather than being a Fallen Angel - and "I am supposed to fulfill this role" is exactly what Shido thinks of himself. Furthermore, in Gnosticism, Samael is often presented as being the right hand of the Demiurge, or even an aspect of him. Given the Greater-Scope Villain's true identity, it's quite fitting.
• Asshole Victim: In Maruki's dream world, where even vile people like Okumura and Madarame are good people living happily, Shido is exempt from any happiness tied to his goals in life. Instead, he is tried for the same crimes in the real world and left to rot in prison to give Joker peace of mind.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!:
  • The Chariot's Winged form only spams high tier single target elemental magic in a fixed order, ending with "Royal Wing Beam", a group hitting almighty attack that can inflict dizzy. Then he cycles through it again.
  • The Tomb form only has two powerful almighty attacks, one single target, and a telegraphed group attack. While charging his strongest attack in this form, his defense massively drops.
  • True Samael is not as bad as the last two forms of the Chariot of Human Sacrifice but mostly spams high tier magic in a fixed order, occasionally attacking physically, and casting buffs on himself or debuffs on your party members.
• Attempted Rape: He is the person in Joker's flashback who attempted to molest a woman while in a drunken state.
• Badass Cape: His Shadow starts with one (patterned with the naval ensign of Imperial Japan) before ditching it after losing the Beast of Human Sacrifice.
• Badass on Paper: Shido is the founder of a nationwide conspiracy and united a network of various power brokers, keeping them focused on a single goal and maintaining their secrecy. These skills in leadership and organization are undeniable, even with Akechi and the Holy Grail helping him. Despite this, Shido is a Psychopathic Manchild who vastly overestimates his own decision-making and makes one critical error after another when he actually needs to face off against the Phantom Thieves.
• Bad Boss:
  • He has no issue with having his fellow conspirators killed when they're no longer useful to him. Not even Akechi is exempt from his abusive tendencies and willingness to off his subordinates, even though he's both his son and the only reason Shido's plans could have progressed as far as they did.
  • Ironically, according to an SNS message by Yusuke in November 22, he won a poll for the person who people wants to be their boss. Judging from how the Public had been acting oddly for a good while, it just shows how distorted and insane people had became.
• The Bad Guy Wins: If the Joker sells out his friends to Sae, thanks to Akechi murdering Joker, and the police having the details on who the Phantom Thieves are, Shido will inevitably be elected Prime Minister of Japan and establish a dictatorship, although even then he'll at best remain Yaldabaoth's Unwitting Pawn.
• Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: Downplayed. After the Thieves defeat Akechi in Shido's Palace, Cognitive Akechi springs in and holds his real self at gunpoint and they have a confrontation that ends with Akechi most likely being killed. The Thieves had defeated the real Akechi, but they are morally unwilling to kill him but don't have any way to non-lethally neutralize him (they can't just steal his distorted desires). The trope is Downplayed because the Thieves were close to convincing Akechi to rejoin them (at least to help fight Shadow Shido) before Cognitive Akechi arrived. Shido was also planning to have Akechi killed in the real world after the election, so if it wasn't Cognitive Akechi then, it would have been by some assassin in a few weeks anyway.
• Bad People Abuse Animals: When talking to Akechi about killing off the remaining Phantom Thieves after the election, he also remembers to tell Akechi to "kill that strange cat".
• Bald Head of Toughness: Samael's design invokes this as it's essentially Shido, just ripped out of his mind, now a hulking mass of a man. Futaba lampshades this by saying that Shido's muscles aren't just for show. As the penultimate boss of the original game, he's one of the toughest, consisting of five different phases, the first of which is impervious to physical and gun attacks and the second is resistant to magic attacks. After this, he transforms and though this form is no longer impervious or resistant to specific attacks, it also lacks any weaknesses and his physical ability Tyrant's Fist can one shot most characters, in addition to him using the strongest magic attacks in the game.
• Bald of Authority: Shido is a dark take on this, combining it with Bald of Evil. He's a politician who's running to become the next prime minister of Japan so he can rule the country with an iron fist and shape it to fit his distorted vision. He believes he and he alone is the only one with the will capable of steering Japan in the right direction and is willing to cheat, lie, and kill his way to ensure power. He also will abuse his power to ruin the lives of anyone he doesn't like, something Joker (and the player) learns immediately as Shido is the one who fabricated a false assault charge against Joker when Joker tried to keep Shido from sexually assaulting a woman in the street. Put simply, he's a proto-authoritarian leader in need of the position to fully exercise the authority he believes is his right. Ironically, Shido is just an Unwitting Pawn for the Greater-Scope Villain who's really pulling the strings that put the game in motion.
• Bald of Evil: He rocks the classic bald villain look. Interestingly, the developers have noted they designed Shido bald to make him appear more handsome and distinguished than evil. His looks are the only good thing about him.
• Battle Strip: When you defeat its first form, his shadow strips down to its trousers and starts fighting you hand-to-hand. He does it again on his third form by smashing the large body braces he was wearing.
• Believing Their Own Lies: Shido's vocal criticisms against the current government and promises of social reform are nothing more than empty rhetoric for him to gain support for his grab for power. However, his conversation with Akechi implies that he does to some extent believe in his own rhetoric. Even when Samael is defeated and willingly acknowledges his crimes, he is still under the delusion that only he and he alone could "steer" Japan to greatness.
  Shadow Shido: I must... steer this country! If I don't, who will...!?
• Biblical Motifs: Shido's Palace is likely a reference to the biblical story of Noah's Ark, a tale where said ark was built on God's instructions to save a select few from The Great Flood and restart the world anew once the flood ends. Shido's Palace is a cruise ship where the rest of Tokyo is engulfed in a flood, and only those chosen by Shido could be on his ship. This fits into Shido's god complex, where he believes himself to be God's chosen one to "steer" Tokyo from ruin and towards greatness like Noah did with the world. Furthermore, his palace theme is appropriately titled "Ark".
• Big Bad: Shido is both a subversion and a deconstruction.
  • Shido appears to be The Man Behind the Man to all of the other villains in the story to that point, and is conveniently also an Arch-Enemy of the highest degree to Joker and Akechi, being responsible for the former's probation and the latter's horrible life in general. When he appears he is trying to be the vile Prime Minister of Japan and overall is just a horrible man. The Thieves assuming that the problems that Shido brought could be solved simply by defeating him is quickly proven wrong when it turns out the real Big Bad was what Shido represented, humanity's desire for a strong ruler. Additionally, someone like Shido would also never had gotten where he was without a lot of help, which Yaldabaoth was giving him all along.
  • Played straight in The Stage due to Yaldabaoth being Adapted Out.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Despite the fact that he's the head of the Antisocial Force and the last target the Phantom Thieves face related to it, in the grand scheme of things he's little more than an unknowing puppet to Yaldabaoth. The only reason he's as much of a threat as he is now was due to the efforts of Akechi, who did most of the legwork in propping up Shido's political career. And once he's out of the picture, his own fellow conspirators are quick to pursue their own agendas.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: He acts charismatic and sympathetic to the plight of the citizens on-camera or when he's on the campaign trail. Off-camera, he's incredibly irritable and condescending to random strangers, knowing full well that no one will believe any testimony about his true personality.
• Body of Bodies: The lion and its alternate forms are made up of numerous human bodies.
• Boring, but Practical: His final phase has the ability "Tyrant's Glare", which grants him 3 actions in a row. In vanilla he will debuff the team's speed, buff his speed or attack, then use Tyrant's Wave to hit all enemies for Almighty damage, forcing the player to contend with low health or dead party members and a debuff disadvantage. It becomes less boring in Royal where he will telegraph it with a line of dialogue, use Charge and Heat Riser, and on his next turn use Tyrant's Glare, then unleashes Tyrant's Fist, Tyrant's Purge, then Tyrant's Wave. Though in both cases, the barrage can easily turn the battle in his favor, more than the standard boss Desperation Attack, which tends to be a just telegraphed group almighty attack. With Tyrant's Glare, that type of attack is just the finisher, with no telegraphing at all.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday:
  • He has a very nasty tendency to do something utterly horrible and just refuse to acknowledge the consequences and impact his actions would bring. The most important day of your life might as well as be like crushing an ant for him.
  • Zig-zagged in the case of Joker. The real Shido never acknowledges Joker beyond vaguely recognizing his name on a death certificate, even when they encounter each other at the buffet and during the campaign. Despite this blasé attitude towards Joker and all of the other people he's killed and tormented, when Joker reveals himself to his Shadow, the Shadow clearly remembers him, even though the event was nearly a year ago, although the party has to give him a few hints first. This makes sense to those aware of Jungian psychology; forgotten memories fade away into the collective unconscious, from which all shadows in the Persona series are born. Shadow Shido retains the memories that his original self had long since forgotten. Not that this makes him any less heinous, as he so casually declares:
    Shadow Shido: How would you ever reach your destination if you stopped to count every ant you crushed on the road?
  • His Shadow also only ever refers to Akechi's mother as "that woman", but he still seems to remember enough about her to figure out who Akechi really is and what he probably plans to do to him.
• Call-Back:
  • His character and role in the story is one to Tatsuzou Sudou from Persona 2: Eternal Punishment. Both are corrupt politicians who head a massive conspiracy, have complete disregard for their sons and tend to callously get rid of any allies once they are no longer useful. They're also both confronted on a cruise ship right before taking down the supernatural mastermind. Shido's philosophy of having only those chosen by him thrive while the rest of society falls is similar to Tatsuzuo's desire for him and his New World Order to survive while the rest of the world is destroyed. Both of them were also instruments to the current master of the Collective Unconsciousness, who use them as an instrument to prove that humanity desires self-destruction and ruin, despite having thoroughly rigged the circumstances and made them resemble organic events.
  • Just as his son has a call back to Ideo Hazama with one of his DLC outfits, Shido gets one too with the design of his shadow which calls back to Zurvan, a.k.a. the Deity Emperor, the being behind Hazama.
• Can't Take Criticism: Comes with being so prideful. When he plans a paranoia-driven purge of his inner circle right before the election, Akechi fairly points out that this would be suspicious and to not be so anxious and wait. Shido immediately threatens Akechi in response.
• Card-Carrying Villain: A very odd example since he sees himself as a hero who will steer his country to a new golden age yet not only is he aware that he has a palace (and by extension that he’s a very warped individual), his shadow looks and acts the exact same as him (until he suits up for battle) meaning he doesn’t even try to hide his true nature. It’s a special type of hypocrisy to knowingly be an openly deplorable person yet also see yourself as being chosen by God to be the only one worthy of saving Japan.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: His Shadow's final form is just a version of Shido who's gotten so strong from constant physical training he can punch the air so hard it explodes.
• The Chessmaster: Subverted and completely deconstructed. Shido tries to use the mental shutdowns the Metaverse offers him to eliminate any competition to his conspiracy to become Prime Minister through illegal means as the Big Bad without having to get directly involved, or having to use a method that incriminates him, as the shutdowns appear as accidents to someone out of the know. However, his targets end up doing him in, since his opponents are able to make the connection that he's the cause behind them as the targets he chooses are blatant opposition to his primary goal of becoming Prime Minister or people he really doesn't like. He's also highly reliant on his cronies to carry his plans out, but they tend to be so incompetent that they cannot even do a proper cover-up even if he wants him to.
• Child Hater: Judging by his complains when he met the Phantom Thieves at the buffet, Shido apparently hates teenagers and that's not the extent of his actions towards children. He also had Joker arrested over a minor injury, sent Futaba into despair by making her believe that she was the cause of her mother's death, and plans to kill his own son.
• Conflict Killer: Shido is so evil and dangerous that the Phantom Thieves are willing to offer Akechi a chance to rejoin their team after learning he hates Shido too. This is despite Akechi murdering Futaba's mother, Haru's father, and attempting to murder Joker. Unfortunately, Akechi never gets to accept the offer because of the interference of Cognitive Akechi.
• Control Freak: One of Shido's defining characteristics is his need to assert his authority over others, taking offense to anyone that so much as slightly objects to him.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: To Persona 4's Big Bad Tohru Adachi.
  • The way both go about their plans though is much different. Adachi has to keep a low profile to ensure that he isn't arrested with the Irony of working for the police. Shido however, has no problem staying in the public eye in spite of committing several political crimes but unlike Adachi, has the police on his side because he is manipulating them.
  • Both also have the ultimate goal of using the shadow world to take control of the world, but while Adachi wants the shadow world and the real world to merge so that people no longer have to live in fear of their repressed feelings, Shido's plans require him to keep the Metaverse and real-world separate so that he can use the Metaverse to eliminate anyone who he sees as threats to his position.
  • Though they are both Hypocrites (Adachi constantly uses Never My Fault and Shido is a Straw Hypocrite), Adachi is willing to admit he is one while Shido is so self-deluded that he remains blind to his own hypocrisy.
  • While both are also Unwitting Pawns to the Greater-Scope Villain, only Adachi had some idea he was being used, and once defeated he can give the Investigation Team a push toward the real mastermind. Shido, despite all his power and control, has no clue he's just a piece in Yaldabaoth's board.
  • Adachi is a persona user who has the power to access the Midnight Channel to commit his crimes. Shido, while aware of the existence of the Metaverse, could not utilize its power on his own. Instead, he has to rely on his son Goro Akechi to do his dirty work.
  • Despite his It's All About Me mentality, Adachi still cares for the Dojimas (and possibly the protagonist considering his aforementioned push) and has a few Pet the Dog moments with them. Shido, on the other hand, truly cares for no one but himself.
  • Adachi may not look like it at first glance, but he is one of the most intelligent villains of the Persona series, and it takes some deductive reasoning to find him as the culprit. Shido may say he isn't, but he is one of the stupidest villains of the Persona series, with many of his own actions being self-destructive, including pulling a You Have Outlived Your Usefulness on Akechi.
  • Adachi is antisocial but he does see the value of others all throughout the events of Inaba and would love to have someone like Akechi as his partner in crime considering the Accomplice Ending. Shido on the other hand, loves to be in the public view yet due to his paranoia, insanity, and finding the most incompetent people as his henchmen (for example, Kobayakawa and Kaneshiro crossing paths and shooting themselves in the foot), that he doesn't see the value of others is an Understatement.
• To Tayama from Shin Megami Tensei IV.
  • Both are evil corrupt men in their fifties who have powerful influence in the games' respective Tokyos: Shido is a powerful and corrupt politician who uses illegal means to win the election to become Prime Minister with the citizens of Tokyo gradually supporting him to the point of worship over the course of the game. Tayama on the other hand, already has complete control over a demon-infested Tokyo after a worldwide nuclear war while leading a powerful yakuza gang that answers to him and the surviving people of Tokyo depends on his product of red pills that were made from the brains of his victims who are solely breed to fulfill that purpose to control the demons and willing to destroy districts such as Akihabara to prevent others from having the means to challenge him.
  • Their treatment of women: Shido had a previous fling with a prositute that gave birth to his bastard son Akechi who later want to deliver vengeance on him for ruining his life after meeting his demands to become Prime Minister and his mother committing suicide from Shido's attempts to slience her to cover up his loose ends and is implied to have previous flings. With Tayama, as revealed in the Reverse Hills, his horrific secret of maintaining control over Tokyo and the demons that involved women as breeding slaves to produce more people to be conditioned from birth to be mindless sacrifices to make the red pills that can tame the demons and is hinted to have done it to the women and even little girls.
  • Their eventual fates: Shido, after stealing his Treasure that led to him being brought to justice and ending the corrupt authority that has powerful influence in Tokyo, turning out to be a pawn to the real villain, Yaldabaoth, who used him and the other Palace owners to prove his point that humanity are unable to make the right choices and willing to turn a blind eye to corrupt authority. With Tayama, who proved to be such a twisted and depraved man that even powerful demons such as Lilith and the National Defense Divinities like Takeru Yamato under his control are disgusted by his methods, the surviving people of Tokyo such as Fujiwara who are aware of his depravity and dark secret but have to depend on him to maintain control over the demons, and the usually kind Law Hero Jonathan even wished to kill him and regardless of siding with Law or Chaos, has Tayama end up either being sucked into the Expanse where his chances of survival are minimal to none or being slained by the Chaos Hero Walter who also found him too evil to be let alive but either way, with him out of the picture, actually worsened conditions in a Tokyo that's barely hanging by a thread.
  • Their ways of "handling the issues" plaguing Tokyo and their morality: Shido is shown to be a corrupt and terrible man who, despite his promises of fixing Japan's issues to the public to raly support, truly cares nothing about the country and those below his social status and saw them as slaves who are willing to obey his rule as the future Prime Minister and using his bastard son as his assassin to eliminate loose ends and people who are in his way while Tayama, who may have a point that his production of red pills made from human farms that tames the demons is what prevents them from destroying Tokyo and killing every human and that humans are also part of the problem but it is clear that he cares more about ruling Tokyo with an iron fist regardless of the people's safety and had done much worse like mentioned above than Shido could ever do.
• Contrived Coincidence: Justified- The Phantom Thieves comment on how astronomical the odds are that the same man who ruined Joker's life by falsely accusing him of assault and getting him convicted by a Kangaroo Court is also the one running the conspiracy they've been fighting. It's because Yaldabaoth manipulated events to ensure it.
• Cool Mask: His Shadow wears a giant futuristic mask with a pointed Statue of Liberty-esque crown sticking out of it.
• Cool Shades: Square, orange-tinted ones. Given how much it makes Shido stand out coupled with how evil he is, doubles as Sinister Shades.
• Corrupt Politician: He's an evil politician who wishes to control the masses and regularly uses his position to avoid getting in trouble. Even way back then, he's been known to be extremely corrupt and full of himself to the point that nobody ever took him seriously.
• Create Your Own Hero: Aside from getting Joker on probation, thus getting him involved in the plot in the first place, his shoving Ryuji aside to get on the elevator is what inspires Ryuji to come up with the idea of becoming the Phantom Thieves of Hearts.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Shido has great leadership skills, has some degree of skill in manipulation (if his ability to keep Akechi on his side for a long period of time is any indication), is a capable organizer... and is a dipshit everywhere else. If it weren't for his few discernable talents and the fuckton of help he'd received from Yaldabaoth and others, he'd still be the same joke he was regarded as years ago, as the game makes very clear at multiple points.
• Dark Messiah: If a Wild Card's role in their Journey is to lead mankind to the righteous path, then Shido's role in it is the False Shepherd. Using his influence and power over the masses, Shido is able to convince the people of Tokyo he is their only hope and will lead them to a brighter future. This makes the people to practically worship him to the point that they refuse to believe that he is evil even after he has his heart stolen by the Phantom Thieves, meaning that they will rather be enslaved by Shido than have a hopeless future. His Palace takes the form of a cruise ship floating over a sunken Tokyo with only those chosen by Shido to be on board, making it a dark reference to Noah's Ark.
• Dark Reprise: Shido's palace theme, Ark, is one to "Tokyo Daylight". This reflects his and the Antisocial Force's corruptive hold over the city of Tokyo.
• Dead Man Switch: In the event he felt someone was feeling around in his subconscious, he prepared a "temporary suicide pill" that stopped his heart and brain to destroy his Palace and anyone in it. He uses it the moment the Phantom Thieves take his Treasure, but they escape by the skin of their teeth.
• Decapitated Army: Averted. While he's the head of the Antisocial Force, he is not the real head of the entire thing, so even after his heart is successfully stolen, the real conductor of the conspiracy can still manipulate his accomplices to undo the Phantom Thieves' efforts, thus leading to the final heist in Mementos in order to deal with them.
• Despotism Justifies the Means: For all of his speeches and rhetoric of leading Japan to a new age of prosperity, the only thing he cares about is power for the sake of power. The only people who would benefit are his immediate inner circle and any lackeys he doesn't plan on immediately disposing of.
• Determinator: As big of a bastard as Shido is, he's VERY stubborn due to his immense pride. No matter how much the Thieves beat on his Shadow, he refuses to stay down. Even after his final phase is plowed through, he still tries to continue the fight, only to collapse from his injuries. Soon after, his real self tries to pull a Taking You with Me to ensure that the Phantom Thieves would go down with him by destroying his Palace.
• Devil in Plain Sight: Played with to a degree. Shido is clearly shown to be a major-league scumbag from the beginning, and acts solely based on ulterior motives. He is shown to be the cause of Joker's probation, and his other minor appearances identify him as a powerful politician who makes speeches that air on TV. Ohya, late in her Confidant, mentions Shido by name as being behind her partner's framing for murder and mental shutdown, but depending on how early you hear this, Joker may not have put a name to a face. To the Thieves, since Joker can't remember him as the guy who put him on probation for most of the story, he's just some random unpleasant adult that Ryuji chose to be the catalyst to continue the Phantom Thieves. However, it's not until Akechi mentions him by name on the phone (that the Thieves bugged) that they actually look into him, and find out from both Sae and Sojiro that they already know that Shido had suspiciously benefitted from the mental shutdowns and was dangerously prone to violence respectively. Even Akechi knows about it and is secretly working against him.
• Diabolus ex Nihilo: Unlike most of the targets in-game, there is no explanation about how Shido became a political bigshot (beyond Akechi's actions), his motivations or even a Freudian Excuse while the other major ones have clear explanations to their motives.
• Dirty Old Man: The fact he previously had a fling with a prostitute and tried to rape a woman indicates Shido can't resist his libido despite the damage it can do to his political standing.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Despite being built up as the main threat of the story and having a very long boss battle late in the game, Shido is ultimately not the one responsible for everything. It turns out to be Yaldabaoth instead.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Exaggerated Trope with Shido, who takes to personally completely ruining or ending lives for even the smallest slights against him.
• The Dragon: Yaldabaoth uses him to emphasize the sheer ignorance and incompetence of humanity so he's the only one fit for rule over the ignorant masses. Unusually, Shido does not fill this role consciously, but he was still chosen and propped up to a massive threat level by a God-like being. Furthermore, Shido acknowledged (most likely in jest) that he was chosen by God for all his plans to succeed and for the public to surrender the title of Prime Minister to him. This turns out to be an Accidental Truth.
• Dramatic Irony: Shido runs into Joker personally twice in the game after pressing charges against him and ruining his life. Shido fails to recognize him despite standing only a few feet from him. It's especially jarring for the second time where he looks Joker in the eye, who to his knowledge should be dead by then, and still fails to recognize him.
• The Dreaded:
  • Sojiro avoided discussing him with the Thieves until they find out about his plans on their own. Sojiro says that Shido would have them killed if they tried to come after him. Sojiro suspected Shido of being Wakaba's killer, and that's why he had to take Futaba and run. His underlings, including Akechi, are all terrified of his propensity towards violence, for good reason.
    Sojiro: He would have just killed all of you, no doubt. That's what he usually does to people who get in his way.
  • Additionally, Akira Konoe in Strikers bought the EMMA App from Kuon Ichinose specifically to keep it out of Shido’s and his associate’s hands.
• Driven to Suicide: Downplayed. After his Shadow is defeated, he temporarily kills himself with some medicine in a last-ditch effort to kill the Phantom Thieves by collapsing his Palace with them in it. It doesn't work; the Thieves survive, and so does he, causing Shido to have a proper change of heart.
• Duel Boss: In Royal, when his HP goes less than a quarter, he isolates Joker and forces him to fight him one-on-one.
• Elemental Powers: Uses all of them, in various phases of the fight.
• Establishing Character Moment: One of his first scenes is him and his subordinates shoving Ryuji and the Protagonist out of the way to get onto the elevator while everyone else backs away apprehensively. When Ryuji objects, he condescendingly remarks that he's in a daycare. And this is coupled with flashbacks that confirm that he's the guy responsible for the Protagonist's probation. All this lets you know instantly that this guy is bad news.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: While he doesn't openly express this at any point in particular, it's clear from his overall behavior that he has no real understanding of things such as how seeing others as more than disposable pawns, or allowing them to live any longer, could have any other real value. This is ultimately why Akechi would never truly get the acknowledgement he wanted from him, because it may not have even occurred to Shido to actually give any. The only other reason that he was correct about Akechi's plan to backstab him is because it's what he would have also done.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • To Joker. Both have a desire to reform society, but Joker chooses to reform it out of a desire to help people who suffer under society's cruel expectations, whereas Shido simply wants to reform it to suit his own power-hungry needs. Joker doesn't sell out his team, leads from the front, inspires others and wins their loyalty through genuine kindness. Shido stabs everybody in the back who gives him the chance, doesn't lift a finger himself until he has no other choice, threatens even those who work for him and only cares about himself. Their intelligence is also the polar opposite; Joker is an intelligent Guile Hero who outsmarts actual criminals and villains, while Shido is a pathetic wannabe despot who believes himself to be a supreme overlord, but is actually so Lethally Stupid to the point that he's dangerous. To highlight Shido as Joker's Evil Counterpart, the second "Bad Ending" has Joker accept Yaldabaoth's offer, disillusioned by how people refuse to act for themselves, and becomes a borderline Knight Templar. This is eerily similar to how Shido had planned to enforce his own authority over the blind, indolent masses once he wins the election.
  • He is also one to Sojiro Sakura. While Sojiro has a gruff and cynical exterior, he acts supportive and understanding to those around him who manage to breach past his Hidden Heart of Gold-hiding facade. This is the opposite of Shido, who acts sympathetic and charismatic in the eyes of the public, but in reality is a smug and condescending elitist who sees himself better than others. While Shido treats his lover as disposable, Sojiro remained loyal to Wakaba to the point that he never considered having another relationship. As parental figures, Sojiro treats his adoptive daughter Futaba with loving care and devotion, while Shido refuses to have anything to do with Akechi beyond using him for his own ends, and even plans to have him killed.
  • Another is the Sun Confidant Toranosuke Yoshida. Yoshida admits he originally entered politics for his own self-benefit not unlike Shido and both were alternative politicians, but they deviate greatly from there. After having been framed for a scandal and dealing with that reputation for 20 years, Yoshida is a Nice Guy genuine about his desires to help society but no one is willing to believe his words or forgive his past. Shido meanwhile is beloved by the public to abnormal degrees but is a deplorable human being outside public eye that utterly lacks care for the future of the country or the people he's harmed with his actions. Also, Yoshida is able to be elected back into the Diet because of his own efforts and the moral support of Joker on the way with Shido only getting as far as he did because of having orchestrated the mental shutdowns and getting rid of his competitors with Akechi's help.
• Evil Is Hammy: Oscillates between a condescending Cold Ham in reality and a boisterous Large Ham when his Shadow begins fighting. Each stage of his boss fight sees him growing increasingly more dramatic as he fights to prevent his heart from being changed. By the time he Turns Red, he's a far cry from the dapper and dignified sociopath he'd been presented as leading up to that point.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: Most of his ascent comes from how a lot of important people in the Japanese establishment thought that a murderous, none-too-bright sociopath would be a useful tool for their own ambitions, only to find out that his Sword of Damocles and single-minded hunger for power were far less controllable than they had hoped when he plans to kill any of them he is even slightly suspicious of. Only Yaldabaoth was safe from this, for obvious reasons.
• Evil Is Petty: He would ruin the lives of others for no other reason than a single insult or minor injury.
  • Shido got the protagonist put on probation all because he got a minor scratch when the protagonist pulled him off the woman he was assaulting, that wasn't even the protagonist's fault in the first place, then forced the same woman to lie about what happened otherwise he would expose her secrets. To rub it in even further, he goes out of his way to have a falsified record forged for the kid by his connections that ensures he's stigmatized no matter where he goes.
  • The first time the protagonist encounters Shido again, alongside Ryuji, and Morgana, Shido doesn't recognize the protagonist, but sarcastically remarks about being in a daycare when they protest being shoved out of the way by him and his subordinates as they're waiting for an elevator at a hotel.
  • He made Futaba believe that her mother never loved her by having her mother's suicide note forged after having her murdered and then having it read out to her face. There was no known reason for him to also break Wakaba's daughter after killing her — he likely just did it For the Evulz.
  • He got Okumura killed by Akechi because he ran against him for premiership.
  • When the protagonist reveals to everyone that Shido was the one who got him put on probation, Sojiro notes that Shido was well-known for going after people for even the smallest of slights even back when Sojiro was working for the government. His reaction to the revelation borders on This Explains So Much, noting that he's not remotely surprised that Shido would ruin a teenager's life like that.
• Evil Mentor: To Akechi. Shadow Shido claims that it is only thanks to him that Akechi could properly use his power to begin with.
• Evil Sounds Deep: He usually speaks with a deep, dismissive-sounding voice, though he noticeably pitches it up when speaking in public.
• Failed a Spot Check: A pretty severe case of it happens as the Thieves are learning about his Palace. He does not recognize Joker despite looking him directly in the face and running into him twice in the last year. He does not recognize Ryuji from the buffet either. This is very much justified, of course, considering that he purposefully pays no mind to the large number of victims he accumulates during his campaign.
• False Flag Operation: He bases much of his campaign on the incumbent government's ineptitude at handling the mental shutdown crisis, when in fact he's the one causing it for just this purpose.
• Fascist, but Inefficient: Shido's conspiracy initially appears to be an all-powerful force with members across various sectors of Tokyo. But once the Phantom Thieves pull the wool over the Antisocial Force's eyes by faking Joker's death, they prove shockingly incompetent. They do a shoddy job in making sure Joker is actually dead, classifying him as dead without even bothering to check the body, resulting in the Thieves breaking into the Palace unopposed and making it to the Treasure Room as they would any other, the conspiracy losing their Only Sane Man Akechi (seemingly to Shido's cognition of him, no less), and Joker's survival coming to light through the Calling Card, by which time it's too late to stop Shido's downfall. Not only that, Shido has a bad habit of offing those who either failed him or don't show loyalty to him, and a close glance reveals that with the exception of Akechi, his followers are just a bunch of bootlickers and opportunists who are either too terrified to disagree with Shido or incompetent to do their jobs properly. His web of deception is so tangled that his agents sometimes step on each other's toes, like when Kaneshiro's thugs started targeting Shujin Academy students, putting Kobayakawa in a bind since he couldn't act. In hindsight, external manipulation of the public is the only way this rabble of idiots could have got even slightly close to taking over Japan.
• Fatal Flaw:
  • What else but Pride? Shido is arrogant, condescending and thoroughly overestimates himself as some sort of almighty, righteous figure when he's just a chess piece of Yaldabaoth.
    • According to Sojiro, back in the day, he was nothing short of a corrupt politician that nobody took seriously, yet considered himself more important than he actually is. Even once he had obtained control over Japan's society, it was only because Yaldabaoth wanted to use him as a figurehead to stoke humanity's desire for control by brainwashing them into worshiping him, and the only asset that he could actually use to remove his opposition is just as ready to remove him as he does. Even with "God-given powers", he still overestimates his own importance in the big picture.
    • He also ruins people's lives, sometimes for highly petty reasons, assuming that he's untouchable and they're of no consequence; but some of those very same people end up being instrumental in taking him down. His aforementioned tendency to ruin people's lives on a whim means that he has a tendency to forget whoever he had harmed, which is why he does not recognize Joker despite being the one who sued the latter under false charges.
  • Also, surprisingly, his libido. Shido's two most potent threats, Akechi and the Protagonist, were both set on the path against him as a result of Shido trying to satisfy his libido. Akechi was the son of a prostitute he had sex with and the Protagonist was framed for assault when he came across Shido trying to force a woman into his car.
• Fate Worse than Death: While most of the villains prior to having their hearts stolen would see their lives of atonement as this, a completely self-serving monster like Shido would doubtlessly have it worst due to the scale of his atrocities and deception. Shido's final act before his reformation is to even temporarily kill himself, indicating he would prefer death over losing his power and wealth.
• Faux Affably Evil: Occasionally dips into this territory, such as during his public speeches or when he's praising Akechi for his work. Most of the time however he doesn't even bother to keep up a polite facade and is blatantly unpleasant and cruel.
• Fictional Political Party: He's a part of the fictional Liberal Co-Prosperity Party (which is an Expy of the LDP or Liberal Democratic Party, Shido's views being reminiscent of its ultranationalist wing, which is referenced with his Shadow Self's Rising Sun motif) for most of the game, but when his plans advance, he breaks off to form the United Future Party, causing the Diet to dissolve until new elections can be held.
• Flat Character: Other than the fact that he is evil, delusional and a MASSIVE prick, there is little exploration to Shido as a character. No backstory or reasoning behind his ultimate goal is given other than accumulating power for the sake of power. Furthermore, Shido's Shadow acts and looks exactly the way he does rather than shed light on any Hidden Depths in his soul. Of course, this makes sense, when you consider that he was chosen by Yaldabaoth and deliberately propped up to be worshipped by the public despite being the most Obviously Evil politician possible to prove that Humans Are Morons and justify him taking control of humanity.
• Foreshadowing: There's quite a few hints throughout the game regarding the extent of Shido's wickedness, his personal goals and his true role in the narrative:
  • When you first arrive at Yongen-Jaya there are posters of his face on the district's walls, which is the earliest indicator of his political campaign.
  • Sojiro watches his speeches a few times throughout the middle of the game and gets visibly angry. However, when his customers ask him what he thinks about Shido's speech, he always deflects by saying he wasn't listening.
  • The flashback toward the beginning of the game regarding the incident which caused the protagonist arrested for assault has him angrily state he is the one that will steer the country. Joker remembers this comment, which is both a sign of how Shido is an influential individual as well as a clue for Joker to find the keyword needed to enter his Palace.
  • He constantly compares the state of Japan to a ship in his speeches, which is a hint of what he sees his Palace as.
  • Before the Phantom Thieves fight him, he falsely offers them a chance to join him. This is genuinely attempted by Yaldabaoth later on so Joker could become a force of corruption assisting him in terrorizing Tokyo.
  • Before the Protagonists can actually fight him they must first defeat The Beast of Human Sacrifice, a massive monster seemingly made of countless human figures holding aloft and worshiping Shido. This foreshadows how the ignorant and distorted masses who were willing to put Shido in power in the first place will continue to be a problem even after the man himself is gone.
  • The Beast of Human Sacrifice resembles a lion. Yaldabaoth is often depicted as a serpent with a lion's head. Furthermore, Samael in Shin Megami Tensei often takes the form of a serpent.
  • In the final phase of his boss fight, Shido proclaims that he shall "win this game". Igor similarly refers to the conflict between the Phantom Thieves and the Antisocial Force as a "game", foreshadowing Igor's, or rather his imposter's, connection with Akechi and the conspiracy.
  • Even way before the Day of Reckoning, Shido's "supporters" don't really support him for any reason other than something among the lines of "I felt like this guy was good" or "everyone says so", and ultimately it seems like the public who supports him cares more about their well-being than how Shido is as a person. His political entourage (with the obvious exception of Akechi) is also hilariously incompetent and it's very clear someone in a right state of mind won't support a political party that looks or acts like that. Of course, nobody is in their right state of mind and for a good reason.
  • In an SNS conversation before Election Day, the Phantom Thieves had a discussion about how everyone was talking about Shido non-stop and he must be brainwashing them. On another SNS discussion, Makoto mentions that Shido alone can't perform such large-scale brainwashing. It turns out that it wasn't Shido brainwashing the masses, Yaldabaoth really altered the public's cognition into believing that Shido was some sort of god.
• For the Evulz:
  • His framing of Futaba for the death of her mother could be seen as a case of this, as he seemed to have no reason to drive this young teen to near suicide... and he doesn't beyond for the fact he thought she'd make for an easy target. The reason given for making Wakaba's suicide appear to be caused by the pressures of raising her bastard daughter alone was just to create an obvious and believable reason for her death that couldn't be linked back to Wakaba's cognitive disruption research (as that would reveal what actually caused her sudden "suicide" fairly quickly), so there were many other ways he could have gotten Wakaba out of the way but he chose to pin the blame on her closest family who'd already been hit hardest by her death anyway just because he could.
  • Another instance happens when his associate Jyun Owada accidentally committed manslaughter on Zenkichi's wife and blamed the incident on a patsy, and then had him commit suicide. When Zenkichi tried to avenge her and give the justice back to his daughter Akane (a child even younger than Futaba!) for the accidental manslaughter, Shido could have just protected his associate by bribing Zenkichi or a superior's mouth shut, but instead, he (or at least one of his lackeys) sent a death threat against him and his daughter which most obviously wouldn't be empty. While Akane didn't go into a suicidal depression unlike Futaba, she ends up having a falling out with her father, considering the two didn't have a good father-daughter relationship to begin with.
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: Wears square glasses, and is easily the game's (hell, arguably the series') most heartless antagonist.
• Freudian Excuse: Averted HARD. There is no given backstory or reason as to why Shido acts the way he does; Sojiro offhandedly remarks even back in the day, he was always a suspicious and power-hungry individual. Even his Treasure only indicates he values himself and his political status, with no hints whatsoever to a tragic backstory or even explanation for how he is. Shido is just naturally that evil.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Discussed by Sojiro when the group were outing Akechi's manipulator. When the party outs Shido as the mastermind, Sojiro tells them that nobody took Shido seriously in the past, and he used to be a run-of-the-mill corrupt politician who kept saying that he will become prime minister while throwing lawsuits against anyone who irritated him for petty reasons. For such an influential politician, information about him is also surprisingly scarce, indicating that he wasn't supposed to be this influential. It was not until Yaldabaoth made the public think that he was somehow an almighty leader who can steer Japan out of financial and diplomatic distress (to make it look like as if humanity was abusing their freedom to guide themselves towards ruin, nonetheless) and having Akechi in his hands to muscle through his opposition that he snowballed to the threat he is in the game.
  Ann: You never would have been able to make it this far without Akechi's help!
• Funny Background Event: He confesses his crimes during his victory speech after winning the seat of Prime Minister, and while he's doing so, his two representatives are shown freaking out in the background as soon as he says he killed Okumura.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: In Royal. Shido is a Stupid Evil buffoon who does one smart thing and who responds to any threat with overwhelming force rather than taking a smarter, more pragmatic approach and ruins his smarter moves through sheer incompetence or ignorance, so while the first phase of his Chariot of Human Sacrifices form does attack in a somewhat intelligent pattern that's also fairly troublesome to deal with, once the player gets past that, he quickly degrades into a Tactical Suicide Boss with a very predictable pattern than can be countered quite easily despite being extremely powerful. When the fight is on the ropes, he forces Joker to fight him one-on-one yet doesn't take advantage of this and instead spams "Severe" tier spells in a predictable pattern that Joker can send back in his face with Personas that deflect each element.
• The Generalissimo: His Shadow dresses like this, complete with Bling of War.
• Glorious Leader: This is how he is portrayed when he addresses the public. He claims to sympathize with people who live a hard life, makes promises about a golden age that will come when he is elected Prime Minister and publicly blames the Phantom Thieves for all of society's woes, including the recent mental breakdowns. In reality, he does nothing other than to bring misery upon all of Japan's people and does nothing he claims to do. He seems to be very popular in Tokyo due to a combination of personal charisma and a case of Social Media Before Reason among the people, and his popularity even seems to inversely increase to absurd levels a week after his exposure even if that did unleash doubt among the public before. In reality, it appears as if Yaldabaoth draws the people of Tokyo into Shido subconsciously instead of him really being that popular and charismatic, and what actually happens here seems to be Yaldabaoth wants people to think that he is humanity's example of a glorious leader so he is the only one fit for rule.
• A God Am I: With the power he has, Shido views himself as God's chosen one and is the only one fit to rule over Japan and everyone should be bowing down to him like the lowly masses they are.
• Graceful Loser: His Shadow, surprisingly, concedes defeat and calmly acknowledges that what he did to the protagonist was wrong and unfair. Right at this point, the real Shido realizes the Phantom Thieves are about to win, and defies the trope by taking a suicide pill to eliminate them.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Unsurprisingly, it doesn't take much to piss off a man like Shido. One of his public tantrums kicks off the entire plot, and he spends so much of his time so close to spewing insults and threats at whoever he's talking to that it quickly becomes extremely obvious that keeping him as a Villain with Good Publicity requires massive stage-management by his flunkies.
• Hate Sink: His entire existence is based around an ungodly combination of arrogance, corruption, self-centered pursuits and the Greater-Scope Villain's main tool of mocking humanity. Getting the protagonist arrested for a crime he didn't commit is only the first thing we see Shido do. Any time he's on screen is spent on being a complete asshole or spewing hypocritical words; and he absolutely has no Freudian Excuse, he does all those things because he's just a power-hungry and overly prideful man from start to finish (until he got his heart stolen). He's seemingly designed on purpose to make you really wonder why people want someone like this to be their leader, foreshadowing that the people's desire for order and stability has taken a life of its own and eroded their critical thinking skills.
• The Heavy: In the latter half of the game, it's heavily implied that Yaldabaoth used Shido as the main instrument to his "salvation" on the world simply because of how hateful and atrocious he is (and in a way that Yaldabaoth can prove that humans are hopelessly ignorant for worshipping Shido as a god), starting from the Protagonist's probation, to the deaths and insanity caused by the Metaverse and the political conspiracy responsible for it, from the death of Futaba's mother and Futaba's subsequent trauma to the deaths of Haru's father and the principal of Shujin Academy in order to frame the Phantom Thieves, to Akechi's entire life, and finally to Ryuji's elevator getting stolen. Even after he's defeated, the Thieves' actions, and sometimes, even the authorities themselves are heavily motivated afterwards by making sure that Shido and his cronies trying to take his place can be properly punished by society.
• Hoist by Their Own Petard:
  • Shido's perpetual You Have Outlived Your Usefulness gambit to cover his tracks is what ultimately allows Joker to fake his death and slip under his and Akechi's nose. He's so quick to cut off any loose ends that there is no one in his circle to actually verify that Joker is actually dead. The coroner assigned to officiate Joker's death certificate never bothers to actually look at the body, they just sign off on it without a second thought.
  • His general paranoia over the Phantom Thieves eventually coming to change his own heart ends up doing him in as well, as there's a distinct possibility they'd never have caught wind of his schemes if he hadn't gone out of his way to try and destroy them. This is even without accounting for the Create Your Own Hero moments he'd instigated due to being such a colossal asshole, creating the team in the first place. And he stole Ryuji's elevator, dammit!
• Holy Halo: The handle treasure floats high above him during the battle. It shrinks once he's defeated.
• Human Sacrifice: Sacrifices people for his goals. The Beast/Wings/Tomb of Human Sacrifice is based upon the masses that willingly sacrifice themselves to him so that he might rule Japan.
• Hypocrite:
  • Of the highest degree. He talks like he's a selfless man concerned for the chaotic situation of Japan and willing to put his life on the line to ensure its bright future. However, he's completely dismissive and rude to anyone who even looks at him the wrong way, makes no pretense of being friendly outside of his political posturing, is actually the mastermind of the chaotic situation in Japan that enabled him to get good publicity and his Palace shows that deep down he actually doesn't care about how Japan is sinking, just as long as he and those he sees as useful survive. Ryuji’s also quick to deride his "children are the future" slogan since the entire plot kicks off because he pettily ruined a teenager's life just for standing up to him.
  • Of special note is that not only is he aware he has a palace (and thus that his desires are extremely distorted) but his Shadow looks and acts no different than him (meaning he doesn’t even try to hide his true nature to the point where he is exactly like his Shadow) until it suits up for battle. This is despite being a Knight Templar who believes he was chosen by God to lead Japan to (his vision of) a new golden age. Being a simultaneous Knight Templar and Card-Carrying Villain is a very rare feat.
• I Control My Minions Through...: Akechi, mostly.
  • Authority: Shido is mentioned to be an extremely influential politician, which he is quick to abuse. The police officers who arrested Joker were noticeably terrified once they recognized Shido and make no attempt to question his orders to arrest Joker on sight.
  • Loyalty: Shido managed to gain some followers through recruiting those who are subservient to him. Even after his defeat, his goons still try to carry out Shido's plans in his name.
  • The Black Mask provides both Fear and Material Benefits motives: pay Shido and you can hire Akechi to remove any obstacle without a trace of evidence (something Okumura mentions doing in his confession), refuse Shido and Akechi can kill you in a similar manner, get blackmail on you from your own subconscious (which is what he did to the SIU Director), or drive you crazy. He can also provide both incentives the mundane way through his network of contacts.
  • Obligation: It turns out that not even his personal Black Mask assassin Akechi, his sole (genuinely) valuable asset and the reason why people fear him is safe from his underhanded control tactics. Akechi didn't actually kill to put Shido into premiership, he wanted to kill him anyway and the hitman services he was doing are obligations. Shido manipulated both his desire for recognition and revenge against him to make him dance on his palms, and he's just as ready to kill Akechi as the boy would do to him if he ever goes into power.
  • Divine Right: Last but not least, Shido also claims that he is chosen by God to steer Japan to ruin... and it turns out to be true. Yaldabaoth really made the public think he's some sort of untouchable god as a part of the wicked "game" he's conducting, and as a result almost everyone amongst the public and the conspiracy itself will unconditionally support Shido, usually for no apparent reason. This occurs even well after he's confessed his crimes following the events of his Palace.
• Informed Attribute: Zigzagged. Morgana, shortly after talking to the guests in Shido's Palace, says that they are dealing with someone who is very observant and insightful in order for him to have created such human-like cognitions of so many people in his Palace. As seen just before the Thieves accessed his Palace, Shido looked at Joker, who is supposed to be dead and that he met twice already in the last year, in his uncovered face for a few seconds without recognizing him. On the other hand, his Smart Ball actions with Akechi include correctly deducting his identity and motives based on remembering his mother and figuring out enough about his father-insecurities to actually manipulate him does lend some credence to these observation skills, although since taking out Akechi amounts to trying to dispose his only way to actually take over Japan, it's still questionable if he's really that observant. Ultimately, it's made clear that he's only good at reading who is a drooling idiot who will unconditionally revere him and who isn't.
• Insufferable Imbecile: Fitting to his sin of Pride, he isn't as bright as he think he is. Sure, he did prepare a bunch of contingency plans in case of his heart getting stolen or Akechi backstabbing, but the former just doesn't work and the latter, even if he manages to pull it off, would leave his heinous legacy completely bare and open considering he relies almost entirely on Akechi to effectively destroy or threaten opposition.
• Ironic Name: "Masayoshi" as a given name most commonly means "govern righteously, shining goodness" or "justice". He does work in government, but he's anything but righteous or good. However, he does cultivate this kind of an image in order to ensnare the masses, and it works to his favor.
• Irony:
  • In his own words, "a small leak will sink a great ship". He doesn't seem to realize that with his pettiness, he is in fact creating these very same "leaks". Had he never pressed charges and just let the thing with the protagonist go, the protagonist never gets sent to Tokyo or goes to Shujin. Had he not helped Kobayakawa become principal of Shujin, chances are the principal would have actually given a flying fuck about Shujin's student body and protected their students from Kamoshida. Had he not killed Wakaba (petty) and then blamed it all on Futaba (even more petty), she would never have become a shut-in, let alone Alibaba, or been desperate for salvation the way she was. Those three events alone produced the keystone of the Phantom Thieves, the direct catalyst to their formation, and the agent of intelligence eventually pointing them to Shido himself.
  • Shido's habit of getting rid of people who he no longer considers useful is what ultimately allows Joker to fake his death. His constant need to keep everything under wraps to prevent anything from being traced back to him ultimately led to much of the police department being in the dark and not asking questions, because actual scrutiny would be punishable by death through destruction of the poor sod's Shadow. Joker even gets his death certificate certified without anyone ever checking if there was even a body.
  • Shido also screens his associates rigorously to ensure that he only hires obedient lapdogs who do as they are told. Anyone who displays the slightest signs of disloyalty are instantly disposed of like people he considers no longer useful. As a result, nearly every single one of his associates happen to be the most incompetent people possible save for one: Akechi, his primary enforcer and muscle who actually requires the Phantom Thieves some out of the box thinking to best. Unfortunately, even if Shido can't possibly get this far without Akechi as an asset, he ironically treats Akechi like a tool that he can dispose at any time he pleases, and Akechi's regard for him is that he's nothing sort of a "worthless, degenerate excuse of a man" — in front of one of the people he's supposed to dispose of, one that he has more respect than he could ever be with Shido, none the less.
  • Despite going all out to catch the Phantom Thieves, Shido never discovers the identities of any of them even at the very end of it all. Since Shido's Shadow doesn't share the same memories as the real deal, he would never find out who his greatest Arch-Enemy leading them is until his personality was killed off.
  • Technically, he's right about being chosen by god. However, this is because his conspiracy is actually meant for said god to use him as bait to get him removed and proceed to take over itself once he's done for. It was even using people he had wronged in order to determine how he would be defeated while keeping him in the dark as much as possible.
  • In Royal, he seized Maruki's research in an unnecessary dick move, and then cut off the fundraising for his research lab. For whatever reason however, unlike Wakaba, he just seemingly let Maruki go free as a canary while he usually just outright murders any of his opposition instantly, and anyone who he considers as a roadblock should die. Judging from Shido's nature of forgetting any atrocities he did after a very short time and how long it's been since the incident has passed, it's likely Maruki slipped his mind long before Akechi became his cognitive assassin.
• It's All About Me:
  • After entering his Palace for the first time, the party realizes that his Palace is a cruise ship standing afloat while the rest of society is sinking underwater. Morgana warns the party that he's never seen such a display of desire for it to distort the entire city, if not the entire country.
  • Even out of his Palace, his whole mindset is this and it's basically Played for Horror. For him, others only serve to act as his lapdogs and yes-men, and anyone who he dislikes or even show slight traces of disobedience are not even considered slaves or objects — they are simply human trash who don't even deserve to exist.
• It's Personal: He's the guy who the Protagonist picks a fight with in the prologue, in addition to being the one responsible for him going on probation in the first place. He's also the one responsible for ordering a hit on Futaba's mother and forging her suicide note, mentally breaking Futaba, as well as orchestrating the murder of Haru's father. Oh, and he's also Akechi's father, who abandoned him and his mother, the latter heavily implied to be a call girl he impulsively had sex with, causing the former to be born.
• Jerkass: Even discounting his megalomania and grand conspiracy, he's a huge asshole to virtually everyone around him. He ruins Joker's life just for keeping him from molesting a woman, and that's barely the tip of the iceberg. If he is present in a scene, condescension and insults are never far behind, and it's repeatedly shown just how much his team has to insulate and protect him from the general public in order to make him a credible Villain with Good Publicity.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: He's still done plenty of horrible things without using the Metaverse, so he can still be exposed for the man he really is through what he can be definitively found guilty of.
• Kick the Dog: Everything he does is cruel and spiteful on some level.
  • He coerced the woman he was pushing himself onto so that Joker would be framed for attacking him.
  • When Futaba's mother became a hindrance to him, not only did he have her killed, he also forged a suicide note to make it look like she wished Futaba was never born and then had it read out loud in front of her and her relatives, which completely destroyed Futaba mentally to the point she became a Hikikomori that was nearly Driven to Suicide herself.
    • He also waited till Maruki was nearly finished with his paper in order to stop funding it and steal it for his own uses.
  • He orders Akechi to kill Morgana while he’s dealing with the rest of the Phantom Thieves after Joker fakes his death. To his knowledge, Morgana is just a normal house cat, though he's likely perceptive enough to notice something “strange” about it (or Akechi told Shido about Morgana).
  • When the Phantom Thieves confront him in his dungeon about him being Akechi's father, he reveals that he's suspected it all along, due to Akechi's Uncanny Family Resemblance to his mother. He just didn't give two shits.
  • One of his most unnecessarily cruel acts consists of stealing Maruki's cognitive psience research, then cutting the funds for his lab, simply to crush his spirit.
  • Another example occurs during Strikers: One of his associates Jyun Owada ran over the wife of inspector Zenkichi Hasegawa when she was alongside her daughter Akane, then the incident's responsibility was pushed onto a patsy that quickly committed suicide. Zenkichi tried to dig in only to be sent a death threat by Shido, or at least one of his connections. Obviously, this led to Zenkichi and Akane having a fall-out. Remember Akane was just a mere kid younger than Futaba, even after that time.
• Knight of Cerebus: Shido is undoubtedly among the most dangerous and serious villains the Thieves confront in the game. When his arc finally begins, the overworld theme becomes the BGM that usually only plays when you are in a very troubling situation, the public slowly becomes more warped with each passing day, and the story only gets darker from there.
• Knight Templar: Utterly convinced of his righteousness and divine destiny to dictate the future of Japan. He smugly dismisses all the lives he's ruined and ended as necessary sacrifices, and firmly believes only he has the right to save "his" country.
• Lack of Empathy: In Shido's world, people are mere instruments for him to use and discard as he pleases. No one, not even his son, is exempt from being subjected to his selfish cruelty. Midway through the fight, his Shadow outright says that his (many) victims were just collateral damage in his plans.
• Laser-Guided Karma: For a monstrosity of a man who kills or ruins people just because he doesn't like them then puts his crimes under wraps to put people in the dark about his true nature then shrugging them off as nothing, there isn't a more appropriate end for him than getting his heart stolen by a bunch of teenagers consisting of his former victims that he ruined the lives of while being kept in the dark about it to the very end.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: No attempts are made to hide Shido's identity in Royal; where in vanilla, his name is not revealed until he becomes set to be the next target and goes by descriptors like "Distinguished Man" or "Ruling Party Member", in Royal his name in the IU is simply "Shido", except when relating to his framing incident with Joker.
• Lethally Stupid: What makes him so dangerous is not his manipulativeness or his immense resources. It's his sheer stupidity and unecessarily dickery. He has close to zero long-term planning or restraints whatsoever and is painfully unaware of it, and this allows him to horrifically ruin or kill people without even so batting an eye. He will even try to kill the only asset he can actually use to commit large-scale atrocities just because he looked like a prostitute he went to bed with.
• Let's Fight Like Gentlemen: His new strategy in Royal has him knock out all party members but Joker near the end of the battle, forcing a fair fight where both only attack once per turn compared to the number of moves they could make solo/as a team before it.
• Light Is Not Good: During his True Samael phase in Royal, he has a unique attack named "Tyrant's Judgement" which is a Bless attack.
• Lightning Bruiser: When fought as a Shadow, Shido hits ridiculously hard both physically and magically, is exactly as durable as you'd expect from an endgame boss and (especially once he Turns Red) can get multiple turns at once, essentially allowing him to outspeed the entire party with little effort.
• Locked Out of the Loop:
  • While Shido is aware of the Metaverse and Cognitive Existence and how they work, he lacks the means to enter the other world, hence needing Akechi to do his dirty work. He is also seemingly unaware of the details of Personas and Shadows unlike the other human antagonists of previous Persona games, where his knowledge is only limited to what Akechi tells him (e.g. Akechi told Shido he learned the SIU Director was falsifying evidence from the director's Shadow).
  • There's also the identity of the Phantom Thieves. He doesn't know who any of the Phantom Thieves are individually, unlike Sae or Akechi. Most of them were his former victims or his associates' victims, which means that when he's reduced to a weeping husk he doesn't even know there are people he personally ruined in that team.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: He's Akechi's father. Not that he knew this. He did suspect it, though. And explains that he didn't care, either way.
• Magic Knight: Adept at both physical and magical attacks. His on-foot form practically qualifies as a Kung-Fu Wizard: a huge muscular brawler who is just as adept with Ma-Dyne spells as he is with brutal physical skills.
• The Man Behind the Man:
  • He used every other major villain except for Kamoshida in his plans.^note Though even then, Kamoshida was being protected by a member of The Conspiracy. Even Madarame and Sae were being used by him unwittingly.
  • While Shido is indeed the mastermind of the Antisocial Force, the Phantom Thieves soon come to realize that changing his heart won't spell its end. It's because he actually isn't; he's just the mastermind on the foreground. There's still the true master of Mementos mind-controlling the public (including his remnants) into thinking that he is some sort of god that will steer Japan to a golden age, and only once he is removed, Shido and his conspiracy can be stopped and dismantled for good.
• Manipulative Bastard: Towards Akechi, who he was able to control by praising him and taking advantage of his "Well Done, Son" Guy insecurities while also threatening and putting him down. However, with other characters, this is Averted. Shido is far more prone to threatening people with his influence or with violence than to actually try to manipulate them.
• Marathon Boss: Has three forms (Beast of Human Sacrifice, Samael and True Samael), the first of which has three phases of its own. He also has a fairly large HP pool in each phase. After taking out his True Shadow form, he staggers to his feet with a cocky smile, takes a fighting stance... and immediately collapses, thankfully. The total health of Shido's boss forms is more than both Yaldabaoth and Azathoth who come after him. It is the longest required boss fight in the game (unless you are extremely overleveled).
• Meaningful Name: Zig-Zagged. While Masayoshi is an Ironic Name, The "Shi" in Shido means "lion", which is his Animal Motif.
• Minor Injury Overreaction: When the protagonist protects a woman from him, Shido gets a small cut on his forehead. This is enough to enrage him and place the protagonist under arrest for assault while forcing the woman (the only other witness) to give false testimony to ensure the arrest. Were it not for this overreaction, Shido would probably never have had to face the Phantom Thieves in the first place.
• Murder Is the Best Solution: Murder is usually his Plan A when he wants something, whether to steal research, to punish his subordinates, or tie up potential loose ends. He would much rather kill or threaten to kill someone before considering other options. He only avoids it if it would be too much work at the moment or if it is not a priority (like when he had the woman at the beginning frame Joker for assault).
• Muscles Are Meaningful: His Shadow and True Shadow form are highly muscular, and powerful combatants. Futaba points out that they're not for show.
• My God, What Have I Done?: He gets hit the hardest out of any of the Phantom Thieves' targets by his Change of Heart due to the vast number of atrocities he committed in the name of his ambition and is reduced to a sobbing wreck.
• Narcissist: As the embodiment of Pride, Shido has the traits of a textbook narcissist. He demands loyalty and unconditional worship from anyone (including his own son), while giving no loyalty or acceptance in return. He also has a god complex, believing only he and him alone to be Japan's saviour, yet at the same time avoids responsibility and accountability for his wrongdoings. Lastly, like any other narcissist, he has a overly paranoid tendency to attack those whom he perceives as a threat to his image, no matter how small. It's no surprise where Akechi gets his own narcissistic traits from.
• Nerves of Steel: Due to his delusional self confidence, Shido faces situations that others would find frightening with somewhat controlled anger instead.
  • When he receives his calling card, he starts asking his cognitive psience researchers if they can stop a change of heart, then demands Akechi be found and brought to him.
  • Shadow Shido is the only Shadow Self that is not afraid of the Phantom Thieves when they send their calling card, having a more genuine Bring It than the other Shadow Selves.
    Shadow Shido: I'll erase any who gets in my way... Just as I've always done!
  • Shadow Shido is also the only Shadow Self that does not beg for his life or show any fear of the Thieves after losing, being more shocked that he could lose in general.
  • After he feels his change of heart come through, he does not hesitate to temporarily kill himself to try to kill the Thieves in his Palace.
• Never My Fault:
  • He sues Joker for assaulting him when he tripped on his own feet while drunk. The way he probably sees it, his own actions don't matter as long as he still has the power, authority, and publicity in the palm of his hand.
  • During the final confrontation between the Phantom Thieves and Shido, Futaba and Haru confront him about Wakaba and Okumura's death. While these were effectively the most important people in the girls' lives that their death effectively puts them into suicidal depression and endless amounts of grief, Shido doesn't even bother to respond that it's his doing and they deserved it. Instead, he evades the question and only refers to them as "inevitable sacrifices" to the path of his reform, and after defeating his Beast, when Haru asks him if he thinks the people he killed deserved to die, he answers in a similar fashion but only uses an analogy comparing them to ants. This indicates that for him, everyone he killed is just human trash and their lives are simply irrelevant to the grand scheme.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: He does this repeatedly. First, getting Joker arrested is what kicks off the plot. Second, cutting in line at the elevator then threatening Ryuji and Joker during the celebrations for taking down Kamoshida is what gives them the idea to keep going as the Phantom Thieves and fight corrupt adults that the law can't or won't touch. And third, Medjed's attack on the Phantom Thieves was orchestrated by the conspiracy he was leading, inadvertently resulting in the Phantom Thieves saving and recruiting Futaba Sakura. The very same Futaba Sakura whose life he had almost succeeded in destroying and who was, after Joker, the second most necessary member of the team for the plan to take him down. Last but not least, he proceeded to have Akechi murder Haru's father, causing Haru to pile up on him for Joker as well.
• Non-Action Big Bad: He doesn't do much himself bar filing a few lawsuits, being an unpleasant jerk or making hypocritical speeches. Most of the threat he poses comes from his cronies, particularly Akechi, whom he orders to kill anyone he doesn't like.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: It's been noted by many commentators that Shido bears a distinct resemblance to contemporary Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, one of the most controversial leaders in the country's history. Like Shido, Abe ran for office on a right-wing populist and nationalist platform, and gained the support of the older generation but the disdain of the younger, but he is most infamous for his frequent defenses of Imperial Japan's actions during World War II. Given that Shido is a murderous, sociopathic fascist who deliberately creates disasters to make himself more popular on top of being an enormous Jerkass to everyone around him, it's likely that the writers do not have a high opinion of Abe.
• "Not So Different" Remark: His Shadow tries to state this on the Phantom Thieves, saying that their willingness to reform people's hearts makes them no different from him. The Thieves don't believe it for a moment, though, and say that there's no comparison between their methods and his using people for an ultimately selfish goal. The Metaphorically True point is that, he too is trying to reform the corrupt government and put an end to Japan's poverty and collapsing economy, although he does it by destroying all opposition, unleashing radical nationalistic policies and putting the entire nation into virtual slavery.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: He repeatedly claims that he wants to lead Japan into a new age of prosperity, but it's made clear that he just wants power for the sake of having power, and he goes out of his way to ruin other people's lives over minor insults and injuries. To drive it home, his Palace is a cruise ship sailing over a sinking country, showing how his deepest desire is to stay afloat even if the entire nation around him is collapsing.
  Shido: There is no need for thieves in my mighty county. Only myself and the ones who revere me are needed.
• Oh, Crap!: Shido in the real world undergoes this once he realizes the change of heart is about to take effect, which makes him desperate enough to ingest temporary death medicine in a last ditch attempt to either stop the change of heart or kill the Phantom Thieves by collapsing his Palace. Unfortunately for Shido, not only do the Phantom Thieves escape the collapsing Palace, but they successfully steal his Treasure and complete the change of heart.
• Obviously Evil: The propaganda posters in his Palace ^translationThe people will do everything for me, Masayoshi Shido, Future Coalition really hammer in what kind of person Shido is if his everyday Jerkass attitude isn't enough. In-universe, Shido comes off as this to anyone that isn't on his side or only familiar with him through the media.
• Offing the Offspring: Shido intended to do away with Akechi after achieving his goals, as Akechi knew too much about him. While a unique example in that Shido doesn't directly kill off Akechi, his intent to eventually kill him leads to Akechi's death: a Cognitive version of Akechi manifests in his palace, an embodiment of how he saw Akechi as nothing but an expendable pawn, and it is this Cognitive being which allegedly ends up killing the real Akechi.
• Oh, Crap!: Due to his knowledge of the Metaverse he's the only heist target to realize that his treasure has been stolen when it actually happens. He goes as far as taking a suicide pill to try and kill the Phantom Thieves in the process.
• Older Than He Looks: He could easily pass for a man in his thirties, but Shido is actually 53 years old.
• One-Hit Kill: Tyrant's Purge is a punch that has a high chance of causing instant death. He can't use this on Joker.
• One-Winged Angel: Averted. His Samael form just grows a lot more muscular than his human Shadow form, then outright Turns Red once he's beaten once as Samael. It is more akin to a Power-Up or Super Mode than any sort of true transformation.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: After the Phantom Thieves take down the IT Company President in his Palace, Shido contacts Akechi and tells him to kill anyone involved with them that he thinks might be suspicious. Akechi is caught off-guard by this as the election is right around the corner so they can't afford to create any incidents that might link back to Shido. This, plus his unease regarding Sae showing him Joker's phone, is what tips Akechi off that Joker is still alive and invading Shido's Palace.
• Orcus on His Throne:
  • For such a dangerous, merciless and manipulative person, he never directly acts on his own in the real world. Most, if not all of his atrocities are committed via the hands of his associates.
  • Unlike most other Palace rulers, Shadow Shido also never directly confronts the Thieves before his boss fight. Justified for his Shadow, since he is aware that Akechi may off him by coming after his Shadow and Palace. Shido would rely on Cognitive Akechi to hunt him down, and would need to stay someplace secure and hard for Akechi to get to him.
• Outliving One's Offspring: In the ending, Shido lives while his son is presumably dead. Downplayed in that he didn't seem to care at all whether his son was alive or dead, even after his change of heart.
• The Paranoiac: He's very paranoid. If he remotely thinks that he is going to be threatened (Kobayakawa trying to rat him out, Okumura trying to compete premiership with him), he will order Akechi to kill them sooner or later. Since he anticipated that Akechi was about to kill him, he's also ready to kill him as well regardless of the benefits he brings him (in this case, he's Properly Paranoid to a detriment). The only people in his inner circle that are spared from his wrath are people whom Shido knows are yes-men and opportunists.
• Patriotic Fervor: His Testosterone Poisoning fueled Shadow Self filled with rage towards the state of Japan, complete with a Rising Sun background behind him, makes him more or less a Japanese version of Senator Armstrong.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Shido is a Bad Boss with an absurd tendency to dispose of any ally who has served their purpose. Many of these allies of his aren't saints themselves, so it's hard to feel bad seeing them all get offed on Shido's orders.
• Personality Powers:
  • His Palace has golden statues of himself that turn everyone nearby into rats. The Thieves even discuss that this must happen because he sees everyone else as rats compared to him. It perfectly fits his sin of Pride.
  • As he believes that he is an all-seeing, all-knowing and nigh-on omnipotent Evil Overlord, he is capable of nearly every high to severe-tier attack skill in the entire game, in addition to multiple signature skills, most of them being Almighty. He also uses the Fear Status Effect in his final form to complement the real world fearmongering he does.
• Politically Incorrect Villain:
  • He's very misogynistic. The very first scene he's in involves him attempting to sexually assault a random woman while drunk, and Akechi was implied to be born because he randomly had impulsive sex with a call-girl.
  • More subtly, his and his party's political ideologies are left intentionally vague except some form of populism, but his Palace's totalitarian look and his Shadow's usage of Imperial Japan aesthetics, which in some Asian nations is the equivalent of using Nazi imagery in the West, brings to mind a Japanese Ultranationalist.
  • Keep in mind that one of the reasons why he even bothered trying to kill Okumura was because he was trying to compete with him in premiership, showing that he has absolutely no regard to democratic norms whatsoever.
• Power Limiter: Wears a movement-limiting bodybuilding harness in the first phase of his Shadow form. He only gets stronger after snapping it off.
• President Evil: His end goal is to rule Japan as Prime Minister, giving him ultimate power over the nation and its populace. After his Palace, he still wins the election for Prime Minister, but this is after his change of heart, so he is no longer evil when he becomes Prime Minister. He only becomes Prime Minister Evil if you miss the deadline to his palace.
• Pride: His sin and motif, fittingly for the Big Bad and a corrupt politician par excellence. He even compares himself to God when the party confronts him, and when they try to reform his heart, he actively resists by trying to put himself into suspended animation.
• Properly Paranoid: Deconstructed. One of the many reasons he never trusted Goro Akechi from the moment he met him was due to a strong suspicion that Akechi only came to him with plans to kill him, and he was completely right in his assessment. He however, didn't even bother to think about the consequences this action brings upon himself and the regime he envisioned — since he relies almost solely on Akechi to kill off anyone he doesn't like, it means he will have no way to outright threaten people into complacency afterwards.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Despite being a busy political player in his 50s, Shido is frighteningly petty and insecure in so many ways that he could be compared to the pettiest of schoolyard bullies. This is best illustrated in numerous scenes where he threatens others (often children) with his status for no real reason and expressively looks like a nervous child needing to be in control.
• Punched Across the Room: A variation in Royal; when he reaches a quarter life on his final phase, Shido punches the ground. The shockwaves from the punch knock away all the Phantom Thieves except for Joker.
• Puppet King: Once his heart has been changed, the rest of the Antisocial Force still plan to install him in the seat of prime minister since he won the elections with full-blown public support. In reality, it's actually something much more sinister rearing its ugly head for real, namely the true master of Mementos conducting his "salvation" upon humanity.
• The Purge: He mostly avoids killing a lot of people at once (besides the train incident at the beginning of the game), but he makes plans to purge various members of his inner circle that seem suspicious right before the election, mainly due to paranoia. Akechi responds that it would be conspicuous for them all to die suddenly and suggests waiting for after the election. In response he threatens Akechi. It is unknown if this purge happened, even partially.
• Putting on the Reich: Upon preparing for battle his Shadow wears a military uniform that looks disturbingly like something worn by the Nazi regime and Imperial Japan. If one looks closely, the underside of his cloak has a design that resembles the Imperial Japanese naval banner, a symbol that has very similar connotations to the Nazi swastika in East and Southeast Asia.
• Pyramid Power: The Tomb of Human Sacrifice, the last form of his lion and the one with the most powerful attack of all of his forms, aptly named "Pyramid Blast".
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: In Royal, it was revealed that he conceived Akechi by molesting a prostitute; small wonder why he doesn't care about him. Not to mention his attempt to molest his employee in a drunken stupor, and likely would have succeeded had Joker not stepped in.
• Satanic Archetype: Shido, as himself or as Samael, fulfills almost every negative aspect of this trope, to contrast Joker's Satan Is Good and Dark Is Not Evil themes. Samael is another name for the Devil in Judaism, or at the very least an angelic name associated with the Devil. As Samael, Shido serves a literal god, whether he knows it or not, with his treasure resembling a halo, and several of his forms have gold or light motifs. He's a Diabolical Mastermind who regularly screws over anyone and everyone who makes a deal with him. He represents pride in the Seven Deadly Sins motif the other Palace Rulers follow, just like Lucifer. In keeping with past MegaTen games, Shido fills largely the same role as Satan (not Lucifer) does in the mainline series such as Shin Megami Tensei II. He's a very Lawful Evil monster with a lot of light or heavenly imagery that is the last major roadblock before YHVH or Yaldabaoth reveals himself.
• Scary Shiny Glasses: His Shadow's security meter icon gives his glasses completely opaque lenses, combined with a Slasher Smile.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: His government and police connections allow him to do whatever he wants, namely getting away from attempted rape at the beginning of the game and having the Protagonist arrested over a minor injury.
• Seven Deadly Sins: In addition to the sin of Pride, he's also most certainly guilty of the other six;
  • Lust: He's prone to going into impulsive sexual sprees against women. Him having impulsive sex with a prostitute birthed Akechi, causing the boy to instigate revenge against him. And him suing Joker over preventing him from harassing a woman led to his downfall.
  • Gluttony: His campaign is financed using forgery and drug money from Madarame and Kaneshiro, and he often uses taxpayer money for luxurious ventures.
  • Wrath: He gets pissed off over the most fleeting of things, and simply annoying him is enough for him to send Akechi against your Shadow, like he did to Principal Kobayakawa.
  • Greed: Everything he does is for power's sake. It doesn't matter how many people he doesn't like had to be killed and their associates' lives ruined; he needs the power.
  • Envy: Towards cognitive psience and the potential power it could offer. His desire for that knowledge and power and his lack of respect that it belonged to other people led to him killing Wakaba and stealing Maruki's research.
  • Sloth: Shido commits so many atrocities through Akechi that he forgets most of the names of the people he killed or ruined. This would eventually come to bite his back, when he was kept ignorant that the Phantom Thieves consisted of people whose lives were once ruined by him. He also encourages this behavior himself; he only hires yes-men and opportunists because they won't speak against him, resulting in a wholly Fascist, but Inefficient antisocial force who can't stay in power without supernatural tampering.
• Sequential Boss: His boss fight has five phases. The first three are Shido riding on a Body of Bodies that changes shape and resistances, the fourth is just Shido after a Battle Strip, and the final phase is Shido after he Turns Red (literally and figuratively).
• Sharp-Dressed Man: Shido is an evil bastard, but he dresses well. One of his epithets is even "Distinguished Man".
• Sigil Spam: Shido's Palace is filled with a logo of an eye holding a globe, symbolizing The Conspiracy he runs.
• Signature Move: All his forms have one, but the most iconic is his final form's Tyrant’s Wave which looks like a Purple Megidolaon.
• Smart Ball: Played with in his relationship with Akechi. He quickly figured out that Akechi simultaneously hated him and wanted his approval, guessed he might have been an illegitimate son, and was easily able to manipulate Akechi into becoming his greatest supporter while he had a contingency plan in place to kill Akechi before the sudden yet inevitable betrayal. However, killing Akechi will likely shoot him in the foot hard as Akechi's ability to commit untraceable murders was the foundation of his power.
• Smug Snake: As fitting his being a representative of Pride, he's convinced that his rise to power is proof of his own superiority and divine providence. Ann rightfully points out that had his son Akechi not entered his life and presented him knowledge of the Metaverse, Shido's aspirations to become Prime Minister would have gone absolutely nowhere fast. Plus he was an Unwitting Pawn of Yaldabaoth the whole time.
• The Social Darwinist: Shido believes it's natural for the weak to be sacrificed for grand ideals. Even if the "weak" consists of innocents, scientists and their children, and even his own co-conspirators.
• The Sociopath: Going through his personality traits is like reading a sociopath's diagnostic checklist: Incredibly self-centered and arrogant, complete Lack of Empathy for everyone and everything around him, manipulating and casually murdering anyone suitable for his gain, and driven by a relentless lust for power and control as well as delusions of grandeur and godhood. While most of the game's antagonists are sociopathic jerkasses one way or another, Masayoshi Shido doubtlessly puts them all to shame by himself.
• Sore Loser: After his Shadow is defeated, he hastily takes a suicide pill against his cohort's warnings in a last-ditch effort to kill the Phantom Thieves. Shido seems less concerned with the fact he is very likely going to die than he is overjoyed in taking the Phantom Thieves with him.
• Status Effects: Shadow Shido's latter forms favor Fear, with Tyrant's Fist having a random chance to cause it and his only Ailment ability being Evil Touch. Appropriate for a saboteur who sows chaos so he can use the promise of stability to get what he wants.
• Stupid Evil: To an almost ridiculous degree. If it wasn't for his charisma, Yaldabaoth's possible influence over the people, and Akechi eliminating anybody that got close to the truth, then his political campaign would have started to fall apart very quickly. In order:
  • First, all of the Mental Shutdowns benefit him or his co-conspirators directly, the identities of these co-conspirators were not secret, and Sae, who was at the time more focused on the Phantom Thieves, was able to quickly identify a pattern that all led to Shido.
  • Second, the sheer level of unnecessary dickery that Shido is involved in would quickly be discovered if it wasn't for his powerful contacts. Even then, it ultimately leads to the fall of his plans when his Bad Boss tendencies inevitably cause several of his goons to conspire against him, forcing Shido to murder them and giving the Thieves more of a lead to follow.
  • Shido, through his callousness, couldn't even be bothered to remember any of his victims' names to have any lead to follow on in profiling the Phantom Thieves. If it weren't for Akechi, he would have gotten nowhere near as far as he did. Best seen in much of the early game, where he can be seen pathetically chewing out Kobayakawa for his utter incompetence in finding any leads. Speaking of this, there is one time where the protagonist stands right in front of him after he escapes his interrogation... and Shido doesn't seem to recognize him at all. You might think that he would even keep track of the appearance of a Tokyo-wide criminal targeting him like that, but he doesn't.
  • For all reasons, despite his sheer vileness fit for an evil overlord, he seems to just find the most stupid and incompetent Unwitting Pawns that have absolutely no idea what he is trying to do or can't even do the job right in order to perform vital operations like checking a dead body. One might think that he might find someone competent enough to do important tasks that were integral to his survival, but all he cares about is someone who would display complete and unerring loyalty to him no matter how incompetent they are, and he's happy to turn on anyone who doesn't by the slightest bit. The only person in his ranks who was genuinely competent was Akechi, but quite ironically he doesn't treat him as anything other than a disposable tool. Sure enough, while he absolutely went for Wakaba, he just outright left Maruki free and alive, and the only thing that really puts Joker at risk of death after he's caught and interrogated is the fact he spent much of Sae's interrogation high on truth serum.
• Surrounded by Idiots: His Palace shows that he sees himself as this, which is helpful to the Phantom Thieves because all his cognitive guests make dumb mistakes (one guy drops his membership card, allowing the Phantom Thieves to get it) and can't recognize the Thieves for what they are despite sticking out like a sore thumb. In reality, Shido's just as much of an idiot and the only one who has a claim to true competence is Akechi.
• Tactical Suicide Boss: Becomes this on Royal, also considered Gameplay and Story Integration.
  • While his skill set as True Samael fully consists of the most terrifying severe or heavy tier magic or physical attacks in addition to one of the very few bosses in the game who has access to Debilitate and Heat Riser at the same time, his attacks all come in a VERY predictable, uniformly fixed pattern. It starts with Tyrant's Judgement (a bless move) and Heat Riser, followed by Heat Wave or Deathbound and a -dyne tier move that follows a specific elemental order. When his HP goes to half he uses Charge and Heat Riser before doing his Tyrant's Glare combo and squandering his next turn, without any pretenses trying to become random, if at all.
  • If True Samael's HP goes under a quarter, he starts challenging Joker one on one. There is a crippling flaw in his behavior in this mode, however; he only uses severe tier Magic attacks or Buffs/Debuffs and doesn't even use Physical attacks, the Almighty Tyrant's Wave, or any other backdoor. He also uses his magic skills in a very predictable pattern. This allows Joker to actually outmaneuver him by swapping to a persona with the appropriate immunities as soon as he sees fit, or even worse if one has been stockpiling Magic Ointments before, spamming them on Joker will force him to kill himself (although in newer versions the latter might trigger him to use Megidolaon instead).
• Take Over the World: Royal reveals through his Will Seeds that Shido plans on attempting world domination after taking over Japan.
• Taking You with Me: After his Shadow is defeated, Shido temporarily kills himself to collapse his Palace in one final attempt at killing the Phantom Thieves.
• Third Act Stupidity: Shido spent most of the game evading the Phantom Thieves' attention and had them dancing on his string by the Medjed incident and the Okumura and Kobayakawa murders and framings (although it's implied that the Holy Grail did most of the dirty work, not him). Right after his supposed victory over the Phantom Thieves' leader, Shido and his conspiracy allow the Thieves and Joker to completely slip past him under the radar for the entire period between Joker's failed assassination and the Thieves sending the calling card. They don't monitor and follow up with any of the Thieves or where Joker was living, and Joker's life does not change significantly other than not going to school for a month. When Shido himself runs into Joker a few days after his supposed death, he doesn't recognize him. When the Thieves infiltrate his Palace, some scenes after defeating the Five Nobles show that he is not even thinking about the possibility of the surviving Phantom Thieves coming after him for revenge and is instead focused on threatening his subordinates and having Akechi plan a purge of the disloyal ones. It could be considered Justified by his ever-increasing Pride blinding him as he gets close to victory, or the Grail setting him to fail on purpose as a part of his plans to toy with mankind.
• This Cannot Be!: Shadow Shido utters this trope upon True Samael's defeat at Joker's hand.
  Shadow Shido: This can't be... Beaten... by a brat like him?!
• Too Clever by Half: Well, assuming it was his plan and not Akechi's, anyway. The group concludes he had probably started actively targeting them for the frame job after Kaneshiro's Palace. He sets them up well in an attempt to have them take the blame for all the mental shutdowns, but this inevitably backfires when they catch on and paints a target on his back. Had he simply killed the Phantom Thieves as soon as he knew who they were, there would have been no one to stop him, but he got greedy and tried to cover up too many loose ends at once.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • He can kill someone or ruin someone's life, usually by ordering Akechi or his fellow associates to do the dirty work for him out of seemingly minor issues, such as a fellow politician competes for the premiership with him or a teenager accidentally pushes him to the ground. Sometimes, as shown in the case of Futaba, the level of cruelty he reaches can be rather unnecessary. Jarringly, however, after he's killed or ruined someone's life this way, he usually just outright shrugs them off after a short while. From his Shadow's words when Futaba and Haru confronted him in his Palace, he clearly doesn't even care about the people he killed or ruined either, basically deeming them as nothing short of human trash. Of course, everything is going to bite back at him and his real self doesn't even know all the teenagers he ruined over the years caused his demise.
  • Despite knowing full well of what Akechi is capable of, he brazenly tries to strong-arm and threaten him over some objection to his outlandish orders. It's Zigzagged in this case, as Shido had a contingency plan in the form of a cognitive Akechi to defend his Shadow if he ever turned on him, but trying to get rid of Akechi will ultimately a detriment to him. He would actually subvert this trope if he had another person or group that is actually loyal to him to actively strongarm and threaten his opposition, but it's clear that he doesn't. Once Akechi is done for he would have nothing left to back up his threats since everyone else around him are merely corrupt yes-men and opportunists. This is especially shown when they check for the body in the morgue and don’t find it leaving them panicking because there’s no way they can do anything to stop the Phantom Thieves from entering the Metaverse and changing Shido’s heart. Ultimately, he's smart enough to try getting rid of the traitorous Akechi...and that's still a dumb mistake because of all the disastrous consequences it would entail for him.
• Top-Heavy Guy: In his Samael forms, his top half is extremely muscular, while his legs are only a little bit thicker than they are as a normal human.
• Turns Red: His Shadow does this both literally and figuratively. When under half health, he'll sometimes get four turns in a row, which he'll use to buff himself, debuff the party, then unleash a massive attack. When under a quarter, he'll start using Heat Riser on himself.
• The Unfettered: Downplayed. Shido obviously doesn't kill everyone in his way and keeps the higher authorities that can cover for him alive (for his own convenience that is), but in any other situation, he has no restraint at all and is willing to kill those who serve as a hindrance to him, or at best, tarnish their reputation like he does with Joker at the beginning. He's also willing to dispose of his own pawns, loyal or not, once they are no longer useful to his personal goals. This makes countering him incredibly difficult for the Phantom Thieves and they have to form a whole scheme using the Metaverse to trick him and Akechi. As he states, he will "erase any who gets in his way."
• Universally Beloved Leader: He is worshipped to near cult-like levels by the public of Tokyo. Him not only continuing to be revered this way, but becoming even more popular after his treasure is stolen and confessing his crimes on live TV tips the Phantom Thieves off that there is something seriously wrong with the Japanese public, prompting them to infiltrate Mementos Depths in order to bring the public back to their senses.
• Unwitting Pawn: Little does he know that everything he and his own little Antisocial Force were doing was part of Yaldabaoth's game.
• Vile Villain, Laughable Lackey: Despite potentially being one of the vilest human villains of Persona, his lackeys (with the exception of Akechi) are anything but competent and just do stuff as he tells them to in exchange for material benefits. The Shadow-cognitions of his Five Nobles are also victims to pretty goofy tricks and traps from the Thieves. It's justified, considering that he only recruits loyalists and he plans on killing them if they were of no more use or they wanted to turn on him.
• Villain Has a Point: Despite his extremely repulsive manners, Shido raises a good point in his sincere belief that the current society of Japan is really corrupt, and that he has the power to drive it towards a better future. However, he's more or less planning to use that point and power for his own selfish desires first and foremost, putting the nation's state in second place, as seen in the background of his Palace being a cruise ship within a drowning Japan.
• Villain with Good Publicity:
  • Invoked to a downright insane degree: because of Yaldabaoth manipulating the cognition of the masses to prove his point that Humans Are Flawed, almost no one other than the Phantom Thieves and their close associates ever express any negative opinion about him. In fact, most of the public supporting Shido don't care about what kind of person he actually is but nevertheless voted him anyway for no apparent or valid reason other than something among the lines of "he was the only viable candidate". It gets to the point where even after the Phantom Thieves call Shido out in public, and Shido himself confesses to his crimes after his heart is stolen, his popularity inversely reaches outright cultish levels. It's only after the Phantom Thieves destroy Yaldabaoth that they begin talking about how corrupt Shido is, since his popularity is nothing short of Yaldabaoth exerting extreme degrees of mind control upon the public.
  • Although less subtle than Madarame, Shido is extremely calm and reserved in a public situation, and in the few times he actually bumps into the Thieves, he just ignores them or briefly and verbally insults them. Even when he receives his calling card, he still appears talking to the public formally instead of in a brazen fashion.
• Villainous Legacy: Shido's past actions (that were not part of the Holy Grail's plan) end up causing major problems for the Phantom Thieves long after his defeat.
  • In Royal it's revealed that Shido secretly stole and defunded Maruki's research on cognitive psience. This goes a long way towards radicalizing Maruki into how he acts in the Third Semester. Maruki confronting Shido's crony about this secret is the last thing he does before he fully awakens his Persona, Azathoth.
  • Shido protected Jyun Owada after he killed Zenkichi's wife by threatening his daughter Akane. This one action causes a large portion of the conflict in Strikers. Owada is still at large and is the acting leader of The Remnant of the Antisocial Force for the game. Additionally, Akane still blames Zenkichi for failing to act against her mother's killer, a source of tension that takes about half of the game to get resolved.
  • Also in Strikers, Akira Konoe bought the EMMA App to keep it out of Shido's hands so he wouldn't use it for any Evil Plan he has in mind. Konoe would later use EMMA to enact his own Evil Plan, Operation Oraculi.
• Villainous Valour: Despite being a horrible man by all accounts, Shadow Shido's Determinator status is shown as a positive and admirable trait, shocking the Thieves with how tenacious he is compared to all their previous foes. Additionally, unlike all of the other villainous Shadow Selves, Shido's Shadow really is fearless when it comes to facing the Phantom Thieves, and does not grovel or beg for his life when they defeat him, only apologizing to Joker for what he did. It might have something to do with the Metaverse's Your Mind Makes It Real effects since Shido really does view himself as a glorious, god-like figure.
• The Voice: Shadow Shido in his Palace. He is not seen until his boss fight, but he is heard discussing legislation that passes without dissent. Shido’s Palace also has multiple rooms that have speakers blasting his campaign speeches.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: His Shadow's battle form is shirtless.
• Walking Spoiler: Not so much as him or his evil, but knowing how nearly everything that happened to the Phantom Thieves can be traced directly back to him and his real role as the penultimate threat is a huge spoiler.
• We Can Rule Together: He tells the Thieves that if they help him, he'll give them anything they want. The Thieves refuse, though, and if you decide to ask him whether he's being sincere instead of outright refusing, Shido admits he wasn't.
• Would Hit a Girl: Aside from the fact that he's directly responsible for killing Wakaba, and ordering his underlings to emotionally abuse her daughter Futaba until she became a suicidal shut-in, he also is a domestic abuser to women, and it's all but explicit that he'd happily murder more women, including the female Thieves and Confidants for getting in his way.
• Would Hurt a Child: Part and parcel for the type of disgusting individual Shido really is, he won't even spare a kid who stands in his way. Not even teens, actual children.
  • When he tells Akechi to kill the other Phantom Thieves after he thinks that their leader has been dealt with, it's also all but explicit that the Confidants are also on his radar, including the preteen Shinya. There's also how he made sure to make Futaba (a 13-year old at that time) think that she was responsible for Wakaba's death. It's also a very hypocritical thing to do, especially since he campaigns on being a voice for the youth of Japan.
  • This aspect of him comes up again in Strikers long after he's defeated. Shido is heavily implied to be the one that threatened Zenkichi's daughter, Akane (who was even younger than Futaba) if he did not drop the investigation into his associate, Jyun Owada.
• The Worm That Walks: The Beast/Wings/Tomb of Human Sacrifice that he rides upon in his first form are actually hundreds of naked, golden humans clinging to each other to form a lion, a winged lion, and a pyramid, respectively. It represents Shido's views of the masses, ignorant plebs who exist solely to be used and sacrificed.
  Shido: Useless, ignorant masses!
• Xanatos Gambit: The Okumura incident could be considered one. If the Phantom Thieves do take on Okumura then he is able to have Akechi kill Okumura and frame them for it. If they don't, he'll just have Akechi kill Okumura anyway and plant a calling card similar to what happened with Kobayakawa. Regardless of what the Phantom Thieves do, they still get blamed for Okumura's death, their popularity plummets and Shido can use all the publicity from his attempts at taking down the Phantom Thieves to get himself elected. There are also implications that Yaldabaoth was actually tampering with the public's cognition behind the scenes to make sure they go along the plan. The only reason this ever failed is because the Phantom Thieves did some out-of-the-box thinking to trick Akechi into killing a cognitive Joker, and the rest of his henchmen couldn't even care to check the interrogation room for bodies.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: A common tactic of Shido and why he is such a Bad Boss.
  • Shido ordered the murders of his fellow conspirators Principal Kobayakawa and the SIU Director once he felt they were no longer useful to his plans.
  • From his calls with his co-conspirators, it's also implied that he plans on killing them as soon as they are of no use or simply because he doesn't like them. A lot of them like the Former Noble are aware of this risk and act as submissive to Shido as possible.
  • His plan to dispose of Okumura was for him stepping out of line from the business world into the political world. Effectively Shido was punishing him for seeking a promotion from financier and customer to a shot-caller.
  • He plans on disposing of his own son after becoming Prime Minister, due to being Properly Paranoid about Akechi's plan to betray him and because he partially ran on a platform of preventing the mental shutdowns, so having them still happen after Shido assumed power would undermine his campaign.
  • After doing it to so many people, Shido himself lands on the receiving end of this trope, non-fatally. After being instrumental to the near total success of Yaldabaoth's plans, Shido's Shadow is left to rot in the Prison of Regression. Though it seems he really doesn't mind at that point, having already lost.
• You Killed My Father: Though Akechi was the one who killed Wakaba Isshiki and Kunikazu Okumura, Shido was the one who gave the order. Futaba and Haru direct most of their enmity toward him. Akechi himself also seems to have this as part of his true motives, as his mother committed suicide within a few years when he discarded her.
• Your Size May Vary: His Shadow is the same or close to the same size as his real self, though he grows a bit larger in his Samael forms. When his Shadow is riding the Human Sacrifice Lion, he appears to be about twice the size as he is normally and significantly larger than his Samael forms. This is very visible if you place Shadow Shido’s Ruler form in the Thieves Den.
• Your Son All Along: When you confront him in his Palace, he reveals that he's suspected that Akechi is his son all along because he looks like "that woman".

The Treasure of Mementos

Yaldabaoth

The God of Control

^{The Holy Grail}

Treasure of Mementos

^{His True Form}

The Demiurge

"The game isn't over yet. Whether the human world is left as is, or destroyed and rebuilt, it is all sport to me."

Sin: All^note He uses the seven sins embodied by the Palace Rulers faced before him: Lust, Vanity, Gluttony, Wrath, Greed, Envy, and Pride. He does not use Sorrow, which is exclusive to his successor in Royal
Arcana: 0. Le Mat (The Fool)
Voiced by: Masane Tsukayama (JP), David Lodge (EN), Keith Silverstein (EN, Persona 5 The Animation)

The Eldritch Abomination behind the creation of the Palaces, representing the collective desire for order regardless of cost. Prior to the game's start, he invaded the Velvet Room and imprisoned Igor before splitting the current ruler of power, Lavenza, in half to erase her memories. He then deliberately sets up the most despicable of men possible into power, rigs the public into worshiping them and manipulates Joker and Goro Akechi throughout the game, pitting them against each other to help him discern the desires of humanity. The one remaining would dismantle the conspiracy he set up and "win" his game. In reality, it does not matter if Joker or Akechi "won" his game, he will simply remove the winner out of existence and use it to justify his totalitarian rule because humans are too stupid to think for themselves.

In Gnosticism, Yaldabaoth, a variant of the Demiurge, is an entity unable to perceive other expressions of the divine, leading him to believe he is the supreme deity of the universe. In an attempt to create order from the perceived chaos of the cosmos, Yaldabaoth chained the soul and heart in mortal forms, and punishes those who refuse to adhere to his rule. In some traditions, Yaldabaoth is eventually cast into the Gnostic equivalent of Hell, where he becomes the judge and torturer of wicked souls. This is different from the Platonic Demiurge seen in Devil Summoner, Strange Journey Redux, Shin Megami Tensei IV, Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse and Persona 5 Strikers, as the Gnostic Demiurge/Yaldabaoth is exclusively considered as malevolent, much like the Yaldabaoth from Shin Megami Tensei: NINE or the classic YHVH which are also based on the same Gnostic Yaldabaoth as this one. It should also be noted that the aforementioned games with the Platonic Demiurge explicitly name the entity as the "Demiurge".

---

• Adapted Out: His entire arc is not adapted in The Stage, making Shido the Final Boss of that version of the story instead.
• All Your Base Are Belong to Us: He took over the Velvet Room, usually your base of power in the collective unconscious, before the game even started.
• Angelic Abomination: A towering angelic robot with multiple limbs, four of which are equipped with a sword, a book, a bell, and a gun instead of hands. His halo is a ring of smaller golden angelic wings which covers his head when disguised as the Holy Grail.
• Anthropomorphic Personification: He represents humanity's collective desire to maintain social order regardless of cost as well as their ability to believe in any sort of lie regardless of how blatant they are.
• Artifact of Doom: As the Treasure of Mementos, Yaldabaoth represents humanity's desire for a savior who would guide them to utopia. After he is defeated, all that remains of him is a gleaming golden goblet, which is what most people imagine when they think of the Holy Grail.
• Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: In his true form, Yaldabaoth is a giant angelic robot. Fitting for a pretender trying to play God.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: If his Holy Grail form is around 1050 centimeters tall (going from Joker's 175 centimeter height), then that means his true form is around 105 meters tall. That's taller than the size of the Statue of Liberty.
• Bad Boss: He's outwardly helpful to the player character, but Caroline and Justine are quietly terrified of him and in the end he orders first Joker, then the twins, to be executed when they refuse his orders.
• The Bad Guy Wins:
  • If Joker accepts his deal, Yaldabaoth achieves his goals and enacts his new social order unopposed.
  • Also indirectly when Joker accepts Sae's offer to reduce his penalty during the interrogation. Lavenza mentions that if the Velvet Room loses Joker the door to the Holy Grail will be closed, implying that Yaldabaoth will end up implementing his new social order after Akechi's role in his "game" is done.
• Balance Buff: In Royal he's the overall least changed major boss, and fights virtually the same way, but he does pick up a couple buffs: the Sword of Conviction gets an additional Gun repel to go with its existing Physical and Electric repels, and the Deadly Sins debuffs last two turns instead of one.
• Bastardly Speech: After Shido is defeated, he stops playing the supportive mentor. When the general public deny the Phantom Thieves instead of punishing Shido for his crimes, "Igor" just shrugs his shoulders and says that there's no way to change the will of such a rotten people, therefore ruin is inevitable. After the Phantom Thieves are eradicated by the Holy Grail in Mementos, "Igor" brings Joker back to the Velvet Room, repeats his declaration, and orders Caroline and Justine to execute him as punishment for failing the game. This attempt to dispose of loose ends tips off Caroline and Justine to the truth.
• Big Bad: He is the true mastermind behind the events of the game. Akechi and the Antisocial Force are mere pawns on his chessboard.
• Big Bad Friend: He's the Confidant representing the Fool Arcana, providing Joker assistance at critical points under the guise of Igor. However, he only values Joker to the extent of being a useful test subject, and he completely turns against you unless you accept his deal.
• Bishōnen Line: His One-Winged Angel form is much more humanoid than his Holy Grail form.
• Bling of War: His true form is covered in crystal and gold armor. His shadow Mooks are gold angels.
• Boom, Headshot!: Joker's ultimate persona, Satanael, defeats him by shooting a hole straight through Yaldabaoth's head with its giant ornate lever-action rifle.
• Calling Your Attacks:
  Yaldabaoth: I release upon you the deadly sin of [name]^note Lust, Vanity, Gluttony, Wrath, Greed, Envy, Pride. You have no means of escape, humans. The [vice]^note insanity, fraudulence, selfishness, passion, fixation, resentment, ingratitude of mankind shall bring forth the demise...
  Yaldabaoth: The abyss of the unconscious yearns for ultimate ruin... You have no means of escape, humans. Punishment shall strike you all... as you pass through the gates of destruction...
• Chaos Is Evil: As the embodiment of absolute order, Yaldabaoth is a firm believer in this trope. In his eyes, no amount of evil he commits compares to the destructive potential of chaos. And as a result he deliberately sets up Shido, the very epitome of a stupid and corrupt oaf into power, and sets it up so either the Thieves or Akechi will 'execute' him to prove his point.
• Cognizant Limbs:
  • The Holy Grail is actually Yaldabaoth's head. After it's been defeated, the whole body of the entity emerges itself from the shrine, in its full glory.
  • In his second form, he summons over four extra arms over the course of the fight, each with different special attacks, status effects and elemental resistances. They gain additional attacks over time, and downed arms can be revived at half HP. You can simply ignore the arms and just focus on the main body, but that means having to deal with five attacks per round. And near the end of the fight, he revives all his arms to full HP and charges a super powerful attack that can only be weakened by destroying all the arms again.
• Consummate Liar: While he doesn't actually lie verbally most of the time, he has cognition warping powers that are so powerful that he can deceive basically anyone in extremely blatant ways, with one of the few examples being Shido's massive popularity, Mementos Reality Bled into reality with absolutely nobody noticing and Joker unwittingly serving him because he has never met the real Igor before.
• Composite Character: He combines the personality of YHVH from the main series with the actions and methodology of Nyarlathotep from Persona 2.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: He is this to the Greater-Scope Villain of Persona 4, Izanami. While both bestowed power to different individuals as part of their experiments to decide mankind's fate, their motivations and methods differ:
  • Both of these characters exploit the weaknesses of the public in their plans using a misanthrope-sociopath, but Izanami takes advantage of the public's interest in popular media topics to make her "game" more interesting, whereas Yaldabaoth takes advantage of the public's disinterest in doing anything to guide them into "ruin", a society where people fell into nihilism and apathy.
  • Izanami operates on Blue-and-Orange Morality and only acts to fulfill what she believes humanity truly desires. She also implies she would have fully left the world alone if the P4 protagonist had “won”, the Killer’s actions were just more prolific. Yaldabaoth is a Control Freak who seeks to subjugate mankind under his "guidance", and is willing to brainwash the populace of Tokyo by exploiting their subconscious desire for order. He also had no intention of either leaving the world alone or letting anyone destroy and recreate it regardless of which of his players “won”.
  • Izanami stays behind the scenes during the cat-and-mouse chase between the Investigation Team and the Killer. Her disguise as a generic NPC that lacks a character portrait highlights this aspect. Yaldabaoth directly interferes in his own 'game' to rig it in his favour by impersonating the Big Good Igor so as to oversee Joker's "rehabilitation".
  • Izanami's experiment is centered in the rural town of Inaba, where she exploits the people's discontent with the mundane and quiet lifestyle of the town to ascertain humanity's desire. Yaldabaoth's 'game' takes place in Tokyo, whose populace is too apathetic due to their societal struggles to resist his control.
  • Izanami is based on traditional Japanese mythology, whereas Yaldabaoth is conceptualized after Gnosticism.
  • Lastly, Izanami's true form is a monstrosity with a decrepit appearance that reflects her status as a Fallen Hero as per the myths she's based on, due to her misguided opinion on what humanity truly desires. Yaldabaoth's true form is a glorified angelic robot, which befits his desire to become a god to the masses.
• Control Freak: What's his motive? He gets a kick out of dictating the lives of others. He is given the title of "God of Control" for a reason. For him, everything should stay the same.
• Dark Is Evil: His first appearance as the Holy Grail is a black cup with red liquid connecting him to those who wish to be slaves to social order. He loses this over the first fight as he is nourished by the people's desires; the Grail slowly turns lighter until it's shining gold.
• Dark Messiah: As the embodiment of the desire for social order, Yaldabaoth represents the people's desire for utopia at any cost, which is reflected in his insidious methods to influence and control the world. Yaldabaoth also takes on a divine, angelic image and uses Shadows shaped into archangels to enforce his will, which shows that he sees himself as a hero in spite of his evil methods.
• Death by Irony: After harnessing the sins that embody chaos against the Phantom Thieves as proof of man's destructive nature, Satanael's Sinful Shell turns the power of those same sins against him. This reflects both his origin and resultant demise; mankind's subconscious desire for safety brought the Holy Grail to life, only for the same mankind to then wish him gone. Yaldabaoth seems to notice, and he's okay with it.
• Diabolus ex Machina: He really likes to throw this around a lot. While the most glaring case occurs during December 23 where he deliberately manipulates the public's support for Shido to near ridiculous levels, it's implied that December 23 isn't the first time he's been manipulating the public's cognition, it just happens to be him stepping into action himself, and way before then there's very glaring signs that he also engineered the Phantom Thief bandwagon that resulted in Okumura's murder, followed by collapsing the Thieves' popularity and elevating Shido to a godly figure within the last two heists.
• Disc-One Final Boss: In Royal, provided the player is able to reach the highest rank for the Councilor Confidant before the start of the third term. Not long after Yaldabaoth's ultimate defeat, Takuto Maruki almost immediately takes his role as god and presents a similar threat.
• Distracted by the Sexy: One of his attacks inflicts Lust, a unique status ailment that has a chance of causing the party member with it to miss a turn because they're "indulging in a lewd fantasy".
• The Dog Was the Mastermind: The Big Bad who created the Palaces and gave Akechi and yourself access, kicking off the entire plot, was none other than Igor, the narrator and guy in charge of the room where you can fuse Persona... or at least an impostor who's been posing as the Igor from previous games since the opening narration of Persona 5.
• Dying Declaration of Hate: Downplayed due to being a Graceful Loser. His last thoughts before his death are to curse his enemy Igor, having been forced to admit that he was right about humanity's potential.
• Eldritch Abomination: He is a representation of a negative aspect in all humanity, with the power to shape the collective unconscious to its whim, and warp or outright control the minds of people.
• Evil Counterpart: To Igor, being a false manipulator guiding humanity to destruction rather than the gentle mentor trying to protect everyone.
  • He's also one to Morgana. Both are beings made from desire, but Morgana was a rebellious thief made from a positive emotion that was born to protect humanity. Yaldabaoth was made from the Seven Deadly Sins and was the embodiment of humanity's desire for a dictator.
• Evil Former Friend: This is the "Igor" that you had formed a confidant with throughout the game, and ironically, he's the guy keeping you alive until he himself takes action — Because he's actually doing an experiment to prove that people want him to control them. He's why the government can't do things such as track your SNS records down and it took them so long to catch you red-handed.
• Evil Is Angular: He's basically a gigantic robot deity whose design prominently features pointy geometrical shapes, most notably an inverted triangle for the torso and several hexagons on his sides from which he "manifests" his weapons such as a "Sword of Conviction" and a "Book of Commandment". The mooks patrolling his area take the form of golden robotic angels with a similar sharp design as well.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: He's on the giving end of this for The Conspiracy, as he was what lurked within the Metaverse that they thought they could use to create their own ideal version of the country. All their efforts were really something that he was counting on them to be unable to do. (So he can use it as an excuse to prove that humanity is ignorant and blatantly take over the world)
• Evil Laugh: Lets out quite the chuckle when The Reveal happens.
• The Evils of Free Will: He truly believes that his way of maintaining order at all costs is what's best for humanity, since humanity is too weak to guide itself. Of course, that comes with the knowledge that no matter who "won" the game between Akechi and Joker, Yaldabaoth was just going to do whatever he wanted.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Speaks with a deep, commanding voice, that turns out to be far deeper than the real Igor's.
• Faux Affably Evil: One of the main indicators, other than his deeper voice, that distinguishes him from the real Igor is his condescending tone when he addresses Joker. The real Igor always speaks politely.
• Final Boss:
  • In the original Persona 5, Yaldabaoth is the final threat the thieves have to defeat to save Tokyo. He also plays this role in Royal if the player doesn't complete Maruki's social link before he leaves, as failing to do so locks them into the ending route for the original game.
  • The Hopeless Boss Fight against his Holy Grail form becomes the final fight of the game if Joker chooses to accept Yaldabaoth's deal.
• Fixing the Game:
  • His "game" between Joker and Goro Akechi is displayed as the Trickster's rallying of the masses versus Akechi's sowing of chaos. If Joker wins and rallies everyone to his cause, Yaldabaoth will leave the world alone, but if Akechi wins, he writes the world off as a lost cause and remakes it. In truth, however, this is an elaborate farce facilitating him to Take a Third Option and enslave humanity. As humanity's sins incarnate, he knows humanity won't just change its tune for the Trickster so readily, and is proven right until multiple spanners in the works force the populace to reject him.
  • It's also implied that awakening Akechi's persona abilities years before Joker's was also a deliberate attempt to fix the game, as it meant the two Wild Cards would be unlikely to Take a Third Option themselves by teaming up, and if Yaldabaoth's own third option failed, the Wild Card representing the outcome he preferred (remaking the world) had a head start.
  • Another implication is that he did attempt to rig the public's perception of the Phantom Thieves into a bandwagon after defeating Medjed, although it would seem as if the IT Company President behind the Medjed threat was doing it. This is the same for how the Phantom Thieves were considered dangerous murderers after Akechi killed both the principal and Okumura, in which Yaldabaoth was implied to rig the public's cognition into thinking the Thieves are murderers, then making everyone but Joker's Confidants think that Shido is god after Joker survives the interrogation. After the public began to even remotely awaken to Shido's pure evil, he brings out his final payload where starts making the public worship Shido contrary to what is supposed to happen. In all of these cases, he nonetheless blames the public's collective indolence for allowing things to progress so far.
• Foreshadowing: There's a number of hints to him not being the Igor from previous games.
  • He sits in his chair resting his head in one hand with his legs crossed at the knee while Igor sits with his legs uncrossed and his fingers laced together.
  • His voice is considerably deeper and comes off as more commanding than your previous encounters with Igor. Granted many could assume this would be because of a new actor, but even so, the fact that the new actor doesn't even try to sound like the old one surely sets off some alarm bells. Indeed, when the real Igor does return, he sounds much more like the original voice actor. In the Japanese version, the real Igor is even voiced entirely by archived dialogue by Isamu Tanonaka due to his passing.
  • He speaks in a clearly more possessive and controlling manner than the real Igor does, emphasizing his position as being above Joker and de-emphasizing the importance of the Velvet Room as the Guest's subconscious. This is carried across differently depending on the spoken version:
    • In the original Japanese his Japanese Pronoun is Watakushi instead of Watashi. He also refers to you as Omae instead of Anata.
    • In the English version his greeting is "Welcome to MY Velvet Room," not "Welcome to THE Velvet Room."
  • The Tarot Motifs using the Marseilles deck rather than the series' traditional Rider-Waite deck -inspired imagery and the friendship system being referred to as "confidants" instead of the usual "social links" is a subtle Interface Spoiler in addition to a stylistic choice.
    • He also has a confidant while Igor has none in Persona 3 and Persona 4. This means that you are contracted by him to do his bidding, something that the real Igor never does.
  • He never actually fuses a single Persona for you, as Justine and Caroline do it all.
  • He regularly refers to events taking place as "a game".
  • He's extremely vague about what Joker's "rehabilitation" actually entails, and dodges the question every time you try to ask him to clarify.
  • When asked a question that has to do with the real world and the hero's journey, he often gives a straight answer even when being deceitful. The real Igor meanwhile always dodges such questions and encourages characters to find the answer on their own.
  • Once the Thieves learn of the existence of someone else traversing the Metaverse, Igor tells Joker that he doesn't know who this is. However, he also outright stated earlier in the game that he was the one who gave Joker and the thieves the Metaverse App. At first, it could be chalked up to Igor's usual decision to withhold information from you so that you can decide freely for yourself what to do, but it comes across as an outright lie this time around and contradicts how he often assists you. And as mentioned elsewhere, Igor never deceives you.
  • During the arc where the Antisocial Force starts leading the Phantom Thieves' arrest using the Medjed cleanse threat, the real effects only show up after Igor finishes talking.
    • Pay attention to the scene right after you clear the Futaba heist. He tells you not to let off your guard or you may swept off your feet and at the next day, the Phantom Thieves' approval rate increases from 30% by twofold right after he finishes talking!! This is an obvious sign that he's manipulating the bandwagon for the sake of advancing his plan. Surely, everyone gets caught off guard and he's capable of advancing the "game" to its climax because of Okumura's murder.
    • On a similar tangent, after the successful Okumura heist, he outright warns you that "something unexpected will happen" and it really does afterwards as Okumura got a mental shutdown and died. When you go to bed the day Okumura died, he will warn you of an "upcoming contingency" and that your rehabilitation might not go through. Surely after, if you pay attention, the Phantom Thieves poll drops from 93% to 70% approval rate and it just goes all the way down from there, again, right after he finishes talking. It should also be noted that people are celebrating his death before Igor starts the conversation and the Phantom Thieves were treated as murderers instantly after. This is another sign that he's clearly rigging stuff in your face and this time is possibly putting you into an extremely dangerous position with the public.
  • During the first bad ending you can get, Igor imprisons you in the Velvet Room for the rest of your life after Akechi shoots you dead in the interrogation room. Triggering any other bad ending in Persona, including the one where you cut a deal with Yaldabaoth and Maruki results in the Velvet Room forsaking humanity (It's simply never to be heard of again). This indicates that the real Igor is not in charge of this Velvet Room, since it isn't supposed to exist anymore when its guest makes a doomed decision.
  • When you meet him in the interrogation room after getting past Sae's interrogation without triggering the bad ending, his dialogue will imply that he taught you how to outsmart Akechi. The real Igor never teaches you how to outsmart the culprits.
  • In your confrontation with Akechi in Shido's Palace, Akechi reveals how he received his powers long ago. He attributes this to either the hand of a god or a demon. This foreshadows that there is a bigger player beyond that of The Conspiracy who has had a hand in the plot.
  • Also crossing over with Interface Spoiler, but every major character, Confidant or Target, has special eye cut-ins that'll pop up depending on the emotion that the developers want to convey. While Igor does have them, they never once show up during the time Yaldabaoth impersonates Igor. This should be a subtle clue that Yaldabaoth has been hiding his intentions from the start, even to the player.
  • Pay attention to the Holy Grail's voice, especially his Japanese voice when you first meet him in Mementos Depths. That's the exact same voice as the "Igor" you met throughout the game, just with extra echo effects.
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: You're not safe from Yaldabaoth's manipulations across the screen either — the standard "this is a work of fiction" disclaimer at the start of the game appears here, but unlike previous games where it pops up, he voices the disclaimer and tells you to agree with it. If you click "no" the game just boots you back to the Title Screen, meaning that he's making you sign his contract. Within the game itself, the distortions he induces take the form of very legitimate-looking political gesturing towards Shido that can be easily mistaken for organic events by the player. He also outright Ret-Gones the Phantom Thieves from public cognition at one point, so the "this is a work of fiction" disclaimer can be interpreted as him trying to make you not care about the Thieves being erased.
• Glamour Failure: His disguise as Igor, for all its effectiveness or lack-thereof, has an unrelated but serious flaw. It's made abundantly clear when Joker awakens his metaverse outfit inside the Velvet Room, something that only happens when the ruler of a Metaverse location sees you as a threat. Igor would never see his guests as a threat.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: After you challenge him, the eyes of his Igor form start glowing bright yellow.
• God Is Evil: In Gnostic belief, Yaldabaoth the Demiurge is the entity worshiped as God in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, along with any other religion that has a "supreme" deity. Though in some versions he is seen as a pretender of sorts who is unaware of other divine entities, acting as the "God" of the material world and trying to keep humanity trapped in it (which goes well with his scheme in the game). And sometimes it is said that the true "Good God" banishes him to Hell where he essentially becomes the Devil or something similar to that. Overall though, this game's depiction of Yaldabaoth is a subversion of this trope because he isn't anywhere near powerful enough to be considered God, being merely a deity born from the wishes of the masses, though the theme of his character (a god who believes in The Evils of Free Will and places absolute order as priority) certainly plays with this trope considering it is very much how YHVH is depicted in the main Shin Megami Tensei games.
• Gods Need Prayer Badly: Yaldabaoth nearly overpowers the Phantom Thieves by using the Tokyo citizens' faith in absolute societal order to make himself nigh-invincible. Once their faith heals and protects the Phantom Thieves from his Rays of Control, Joker summons his ultimate Persona, Satanael, by breaking Arsène's chains, which enables him to defeat Yaldabaoth.
• Gone Horribly Right: However accidental, Yaldabaoth is the physical culmination of the masses' collective unconscious desire for utopia by any means necessary.
• Graceful Loser: After he is finally defeated, Yaldabaoth acknowledges the power of hope within humanity before fading away to nothing, leaving only a golden goblet.
  Yaldabaoth: What power... it surpasses mine own... a god born from the wish of the masses. So this... is the true Trickster. Damn that Igor... it seems he wasn't spouting nonsense...
• Greater-Scope Villain: He is the one who granted Goro Akechi and Joker their ability to use Personas and access the Metaverse, making him the power behind both the Phantom Thieves and the Antisocial Force. This makes Yaldabaoth indirectly responsible for the conspiracy's crimes and the suffering caused by the conflict between the Thieves and the conspiracy. In addition, Yaldabaoth subtly influences the people of Tokyo towards the extremes of social conformity, causing many people in the city to suffer while also encouraging them to do nothing for the sake of societal harmony. Royal also has his machinations play a part in the additional events long after being destroyed.
• Have a Nice Death: Prior to The Reveal, he often has some choice words for you should you screw up and get a Game Over. This is the most apparent in the interrogation room bad ending, where he coolly points out how screwed you are since Akechi successfully assassinated you.
  Yaldabaoth: Our game has ended. Ruin shall be coming momentarily. Enjoy spending the rest of your life in the prison repenting for your actions.
• Heads I Win, Tails You Lose:
  • Much like with Izanami from Persona 4, after you empty his second form's HP, he pulls an I Am Not Left-Handed and crushes the Thieves with sheer power. Also, the first fight with him before his true identity is revealed plays out this way, as the prayers of the people simply heal him from all the damage you do.
  • This is how his "game" is ultimately set up. On paper, it's supposed to determine humanity's fate; whether Akechi's distortions would lead to ruin and the world's destruction, or if Joker would lead the world to salvation. Since Yaldabaoth was created by humanity's distorted desires, however, he had an interest in remaking the world in his image, and to that end, tried to rig the game in his own favor. Namely, by giving Joker a taste of his power of removing them from existence, and after seeing him survive, offering him control of the world at the expense of free will.
• Hidden Villain: The true Big Bad behind everything? The Treasure of Mementos, which is sentient and has turned itself into a god. Also, he's been disguising himself as Igor.
• Hobbes Was Right: The literal embodiment of humanity's desire for a strong leader who will dispense with The Evils of Free Will to maintain law and order.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • After using the Seven Deadly Sins against the party during his boss battle, Joker has Satanael shoot him in the head with a bullet powered by those very sins.
  • He's the founder of the Confidant system and the first Confidant you make in the game. These very same Confidants later give Joker enough power to turn against him and the ruin he imposes upon Tokyo.
• Holy Grail: His true form is a dark version of it, representing the desire for a great king like Arthur to take away The Evils of Free Will.
• Holy Halo: A gold ring lined with gold angel wings rotates above his head. The halo was originally folded around his head as the cup of the Holy Grail.
• Hope Crusher: He wants to destroy all hope of anything better than what he offers to society. Yaldabaoth uses despair as a tool to keep people obedient and he is quick to talk down any hope that he could be defeated. By the time the Phantom Thieves encounter the Holy Grail within Mementos, Yaldabaoth has already smothered much of the city's hope, resulting in the peoples' Shadows submitting to him out of a mixture of despair, fear and reverence.
• Humanity on Trial: Like Nyarlathotep before him, Yaldabaoth sets up the events of the game with the Phantom Thieves and the Antisocial Force as his pawns playing against each other. The game is supposedly to decide whether humanity would embrace its inner "sloth" and submit to the Antisocial Force's rule, or join the Phantom Thieves' rebellion against said inner "sloth". Of course it wouldn't really matter and he's more than willing to rig that trial in his own favour that would see him as the absolute ruler over humanity.
• Humans Are Morons: He believes in this wholeheartedly and this is his biggest reason for why he should rule humanity instead of letting it make its own decisions. He deliberately chooses the most despicable people to ascend into abnormal popularities only to set them up as bait for the Phantom Thieves or Goro Akechi to remove, then projects this mentality onto his unwitting followers (the people of Tokyo) so they would accept his false paradise and give him their faith to strengthen himself and remove anyone who removed his made-up conspiracy as well. Nonetheless, Yaldabaoth has a low opinion of humans in general, considering them to be Gullible Lemmings. Only a few exceptional humans, like Joker and Goro Akechi, pique its interest, but even then he treats them as little more than disposable, transient entertainment. Overall, he's merely using everyone for the sole reason to prove a point that sums up as "If you don't want dumb and corrupt conspiracies like this to rule you, let me rule over you." Once, Haru even asked Yaldabaoth outright if being defeated by such humans would change his worldview, and his paraphrased response is a blunt "no".
• I Am Not Left-Handed: You know Rays of Control, that super-powerful attack that comes from his extra arms that requires you to destroy them? He doesn't need the arms to cast it, removing them only reduces the damage dealt. After his HP goes to 0, he just gets back up and fires the attack with no warning to stomp the party. Even in the final battle, he enjoys being a Hope Crusher a bit too much.
• I Have Many Names: The Holy Grail, Yaldabaoth, and Igor.
• Identity Impersonator: How he kick-started his plans. First, he invaded the Velvet Room, sucker-punched and then imprisoned the real Igor, then split Igor's latest assistant into two amnesiac forms he could order around without arousing suspicion. Finally, he disguised himself to look just like Igor, taking over the Big Good role while doing the exact opposite in secret.
• Lack of Empathy: For all his concern about human behavior and his interactions with others, Yaldabaoth has no concern at all about human emotions. His only concern was to rule over humanity through his Knight Templar ideals, no matter how much suffering he must cause to enable this to happen. Yaldabaoth only acknowledges and respects power, particularly his own. Even after he is defeated, he only acknowledges the power of hope demonstrated by the Phantom Thieves, not once considering the feelings of the humans he oppressed (he does ruefully admit that Igor was right).
• Last Villain Stand: He represents the last stand of the Antisocial Force conspiracy. After Shido is arrested, his remaining allies commence an all-or-nothing plan to wipe out the Phantom Thieves and maintain their corrupt chokehold over Japan. For this plan to work, Yaldabaoth directly influences the people of Tokyo to forget Shido's crimes and blame the entire debacle on the Thieves. After Yaldabaoth is defeated, public opinion promptly turns against Shido and his allies, eventually bringing an end to the Antisocial Force and its schemes. In the bad ending where Joker sides with him, the outcome is superficially similar as Yaldabaoth himself deems the Phantom Thieves more trustworthy than the corrupt conspiracy opposing them, ending the latter's significance entirely.
• Light Is Not Good: The black covering of the Holy Grail that consists of his head flakes away to reveal his gold composition, and the full entity is a giant robotic god covered in white and gold armor, and one of his main attacks is "Arrow of Light."
• Made of Evil: He's literally made from the public of Tokyo's desire for complete harmony and order.
• The Man Behind the Man: The true villain behind the creation of the Palaces, the Antisocial Force, and the Phantom Thieves.
• Manipulative Bastard: Manipulated most of the events in the story by usurping Igor and splitting his attendant to serve him, then giving power to Akechi and later Joker to take control of the collective unconscious. Akechi ends up using his power to set in motion The Conspiracy for his father Shido, while Joker ends up forming the Phantom Thieves.
• More than Mind Control: Yaldabaoth has the ability to manipulate the cognitions of the general public to an extent bordering on outright mind control, and he starts cranking things up a lot shortly after Shido's defeat, turning up his inmates' Weirdness Censor up to ridiculous levels. But since Yaldabaoth is the embodiment of the masses' desire to submit to an all-powerful ruler rather than think for themselves, he only exists in the first place because on some level the general public wants to be controlled.
• Morton's Fork: His "game" was set up to determine whether humanity should receive "reform" or "destruction and rebirth". "Destruction and rebirth" is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. "Reform" was the Phantom Thieves reforming society by changing people's hearts. In reality, for him his "Salvation" a.k.a the enslavement of humanity is the only acceptable goal because people are too stupid to deserve freedom for thinking Shido (a good-for-nothing corrupt politician who delights in committing atrocities) as some sort of god that will somehow bring Japan prosperity and happiness (Which he makes sure happens by blatantly controlling their cognition). However, the Phantom Thieves managed to escape from this by beating the crap out of him.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: His boss fight form has 4 spindly robotic arms sticking out of his back, each holding an item from the Book of Revelation - and a pistol.
• Mythology Gag: He's the closest equivalent to YHVH in the Persona universe.
  • Both think themselves Gods with a capital G, and both are the embodiment of Law and control. Both also desire to take away the free will of humanity and rule over them.
  • Both will keep existing so long as humans desire to be controlled or believe in a higher power dictating their lives.
  • Both control the Four Archangels (real ones in service of YHVH, Shadows that take the forms of them in the case of Yaldabaoth)
• Narcissist: Yaldabaoth reeks of this, considering that he embodies both the sins of Vanity and Pride. He desires for the masses to worship him to satiate his sense of self-worth, and will eliminate those who challenge him. His appearance as a robotic angel adorned in gold and silver reflects this.
• Never My Fault:
  • Blames the Phantom Thieves' temporary Ret-Gone when Mementos and the real world merge solely on the public, even though he was the one responsible for the merger that made it possible in the first place. On one hand, he is the Anthropomorphic Personification of their desires, so he could also mean that their general opinion became strong enough for him to gain the power to do so. On the other hand, he's still practically admitting that he couldn't have done it without them.
  • Before he Ret Gones the Phantom Thieves, he also deliberately rigs the Phantom Thieves' abnormally high popularity, crash-lands it after Okumura's assassination and transfers the abnormal popularity to Shido, then blames Shido and the masses for it; he even warns Joker about the popularity crash land after Okumura's death. Again, while it is true that the masses and their desires were part of his creation and rise to power, he still took advantage of their general opinions and feelings in order to make them submit; he warned Joker because he knew what would happen and there was nothing he (Joker) could apparently do about it.
  • There are also implications that he has been manipulating the public into worshipping Shido as a mockery against humanity and to make them look ignorant and foolish while putting all the blame on them. While as mentioned above, Yaldabaoth is an Anthropomorphic Personification of humanity's desires, this is pretty clearly done to make sure they submit to him because it seemed like they will believe in almost anything.
• No Cure for Evil: Subverted. He is outright healed by the prayers of humanity who seek to be slaves in his Holy Grail form. Disconnecting their prayers from him is required in order to defeat him.
• Not as You Know Them: Before his true identity gets exposed, longtime fans may notice how "Igor" seems considerably more dismissive of Joker and humans in general, doesn't actually fuse any Persona himself, and has a menacingly deeper voice.
• Obviously Evil: Technically when disguised as Igor, who once again turns out to not be this, acting and sounding more sinister than the real deal would.
• Oh, Crap!: After striking the entire party down with his powers, everyone in Shibuya starts to give the Thieves their support, giving them strength. When he unleashes another of his attacks, it has zero effect on them.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Concludes humanity is beyond saving and destined for ruin after Shido's change of heart fails to affect significant change among the public. It's actually subverted, since he doesn't really try to destroy existence, but seeks to keep everyone in his absolute control and ignorant of the outright absurdities he imposes upon them.
• Order Is Not Good: He is the god of control and order and he wants to impose order into the world by removing chaos through any means necessary. Yaldabaoth's societal order is evil because his methods are corrupt and immoral, causing unspeakable suffering to humanity.
• Order Versus Chaos: He seeks to impose order upon the world and remove the chaos that blights it by imprisoning everyone who has chaos in them in the depths of Mementos forever. Fittingly the four Archangels that serve YHVH appear as his heralds in the final dungeon.
• Out-of-Character Alert: Though there are many small signs beforehand, the first concrete piece of evidence that all is not what it seems with "Igor" is him claiming to be disappointed in Humanity.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: The only reason his Igor disguise works is because Joker has never met the real Igor and possibly only works on the audience through Refuge in Audacity (“The Big Good would never be the villain, right?”). He sounds nothing like Igor, he acts condescending towards Joker, he never fuses a Persona himself, and generally acts very little like the real Igor.
• Perception Filter: He creates one shortly after Shido is defeated, causing the citizenry of Tokyo to ignore several things, like his conquest of the world or Shido's confession. It is also apparently linked to the Four Archangels, as more and more people notice the mutated world and him banishing people from reality as they're defeated.
• Playing Both Sides: He more or less plays Akechi, The Conspiracy, and the Thieves against one another for his own purposes.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Despite his arrogance, the ending where Joker sides with him makes it clear he does value the work done by the Phantom Thieves, if only because it would help keep societal order stronger and united. He is very much sincere about his intention to "re-evaluate" Joker should he make the deal, as he suspends his plan of fusing Mementos with reality and allows the Phantom Thieves to do his bidding.
• Reality Warper: He physically superimposes Mementos onto the entirety of reality, filling the land with the bones of giant creatures and red water. He also tampers with the cognition of the populace so that they don't even perceive the obvious changes. Also, by using the people's faith in absolute societal order, Yaldabaoth is able to project his own idea of reality onto the real world, whether or not that reality is a truth or a lie. This is how he is nearly able to wipe the Phantom Thieves out of existence at the height of his power.
• Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies: Attempts to pull one with his Ret-Gone of the Phantom Thieves in Mementos Depths, but is Out-Gambitted by Joker and Lavenza.
• Seven Deadly Sins: He wields all seven, with each of his skills being named "Distorted Lust / Wrath / Pride / etc." in your final battle with him. He uses them as examples of how naturally evil and selfish humans are, to prove that they need his rule.
• Slouch of Villainy: One of the differences between him and Igor is the disinterested posture Yaldabaoth takes when sitting at the desk in the Velvet Room. The real Igor sits up straight.
• Smug Super: When he drops the Igor act, he shows himself to be the embodiment of divine hubris and self-righteousness, assuming he's better than anyone just by being a god and never shutting up about it.
• Spell My Name With An S: His name is spelled with a Y in the game, but his boss theme is called "Jaldabaoth". Averted in Royal as the theme is retitled "Yaldabaoth" in the Thieves' Den.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute:
  • Is quite similar to YHVH from the mainline SMT series, even using the four Archangels as his heralds for the Phantom Thieves to fight.
  • His view on humanity as well as his conflict with Igor greatly resembles Nyarlathotep. And like him, Yaldabaoth had also disguised himself as a service provider to manipulate the main characters: the Time Count for Nyarlathotep while Yaldabaoth took the form of Igor. It should also be noted that in some Lovecraftian circles, the Demiurge, or Yaldabaoth is considered Nyarlathotep in disguise, and it is also often identified as Yahweh in Gnosticism.
• Tautological Templar: His bringing of salvation-through-order is something he views as an inherent good, largely because he's the one doing so.
• This Cannot Be!: Fully believing himself to be the true embodiment of humanity's desires, Yaldabaoth expresses disbelief when he witnesses the Phantom Thieves' ability to stand up to him and ultimately defeat him.
• Treacherous Advisor: He's your and Akechi's boss after all, aside that he wants to sink both of you to the pits of despair.
• True Final Boss: In the original Persona 5, he's the final opponent that the Phantom Thieves face off against if both of the bad endings have been avoided. In Royal, he's instead delegated to a Disc-One Final Boss if the conditions for the Third Semester have been met.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Yaldabaoth's fusion of Mementos and reality had the unexpected side-effect of allowing Maruki to awaken to his Persona, Azathoth, and subsequently take over reality as the next God of Control.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: While Yaldabaoth enjoys controlling humanity for its own sake, he does feel that he is helping humanity on some level. By eliminating The Evils of Free Will through absolute societal order, Yaldabaoth truly believes that he is bringing paradise to humanity and that he should be worshipped for this.
• Vichy Earth: What his goal is (and he succeeds if Joker accepts his offer), though Yaldabaoth isn't an alien per se.
• Villainous Breakdown: During the last moments of the battle, he starts to display anger when everyone starts to place their hope to the Thieves, especially being shocked at his powers becoming ineffective at them. When Joker unleashes Satanael's last attack, Yaldabaoth quickly shows his rage.
  Yaldabaoth: Preposterous! You dare rob the people's wishes?!
• Villain Has a Point: Like other supernatural antagonists of the Persona series, humanity's flaws and/or malevolence were what brought him into existence and only made him stronger with their desires. He didn't cause the blind desire for order at any cost, the blind desire for order at any cost made him. The problem is that he tried to take full advantage of it by Fixing the Game so that he could gain as much power from them as possible.
• Villainous Legacy: Even though he dies at the end of the Mementos Depths arc, his unintended consequence of awakening Maruki's Persona by fusing the Metaverse with the real world means Yaldabaoth is also one of the main causes of the Third Semester arc.
• Villain Respect: He seems to truly respect Joker's cunning, ingenuity, and character as a Trickster. Coming up with the plan to trick Akechi, for instance, was "truly ingenious", in Yaldabaoth's words. He also offers Joker the chance to join up with him before the final battle, and is sincere about keeping his word if Joker accepts.
• Voice of the Legion: Gains one after being exposed as a fake Igor.
• We Can Rule Together: He actually offers to cut a deal with Joker, in thanks for being such a help to him and for actually figuring him out. So as long as he leaves him alone, he'll restore him and the Thieves and stop the worlds merging, let him keep his ability to enter the Palaces and use it for whatever he desires, and continue watching how he uses his power on society. If accepted, he does keep his word and you get another Bad Ending, where Joker is basically in control of the city, and all of the police and government officials who were opposing him are forced to keep their distance from him, lest they get their hearts stolen. However, since none of the other Thieves were even physically present and still barred from existence in the Prison of Regression, the implication is Joker has given in to the temptation of abusing their power like Akechi did, and society will never be free from Yaldabaoth watching everyone from behind the scenes.
• Xanatos Gambit:
  • His game involving the Phantom Thieves and the Antisocial Force is a rather simple one, and he goes various steps to ensure that he would emerge as the victor regardless of who wins his game. If Akechi wins, the public would not react to Shido's exposure like he hoped, and Yaldabaoth's control over the populace is cemented. If the Phantom Thieves manage to succeed in changing the hearts of the corrupt, those corrupted individuals would lose their distorted desires and be reduced back to faceless masses under Yaldabaoth's control. The public will also not react to Shido's Change of Heart like the Phantom Thieves would expect, and he still cements control over the populace. It's only when the Phantom Thieves expose Yaldabaoth's true identity, Joker refuses to cut a deal with him, and the Confidants rouse the people into shifting the empowering faith factor from him to Joker which leads to the summoning of Satanael to kill him outright, that he loses entirely.
  • Based on the Phan-Site counter abnormally fluctuating overnight after false Igor's speeches prior to the Okumura and Niijima heists, it's also implied that he was responsible for setting up the public's cognition to go with Shido's framing plan.

Others

The Prisoners of Regression

The People of Tokyo

Apathetic Legion of Regression

"What are you doing to our Grail?!"

Sin: Acedia (Sloth)

The general populace of the city of Tokyo, whose hearts have collectively created the massive Palace, Mementos. This Palace is a manifestation of the people's Sloth, due to their unwillingness to challenge authority in general or take responsibility for selfish decisions. As a result, the Phantom Thieves often come here to change the hearts of people who have yet to establish a personal Palace. Their treasure is the Holy Grail, a.k.a. Yaldabaoth.

---

• Accomplice by Inaction: By turning a blind eye to the evils of society and allowing corrupt people to guide their lives, the people of Tokyo are partially responsible for the success of the Antisocial Force.
• Apathetic Citizens: Concerned only with their personal goals and problems, the people of Tokyo feel that overall society is too big of a problem for them to handle and are happy to let others deal with it, be it the Phantom Thieves, the Antisocial Force, or an evil god.
• Bystander Syndrome: Most of the people in Tokyo are prone to this. Despite having the ability to change or be free, most choose not to for a variety of reasons, usually involving some kind of disruption to their orderly lives.
• Chaos Is Evil:
  • The people of Tokyo have this oversimplified belief about chaos in general. Because of this, anything that does not follow social norms is ignored, frowned upon or strongly discouraged. Any subversion of civil order is considered a serious crime, no matter what the cause or end result is. For example, Ryuji was punished for hitting a teacher even though said teacher cruelly insulted his family at the time. Despite having just cause, Ryuji was labeled a pariah for the act of violence. This is also one reason why it is easy for the Antisocial Force to label the Phantom Thieves as evil villains, no matter how much evidence there is to the contrary. Their actions were against the law and this was enough for most people.
  • When Shido publicly confesses his crimes on national television, the people of Japan are terrified of the societal chaos that would result from his dismissal and arrest, rather than angry that such a vile man nearly became Prime Minister. While Shido's allies and Yaldabaoth controlled the public opinion to a degree, they played on the Japanese public's fear of chaos. After this, the Phantom Thieves eventually find and defeat Yaldabaoth, thus robbing the people of their distorted desire for social order at any cost.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: The people of Tokyo inadvertently aid Yaldabaoth in his battle with the Phantom Thieves because he uses their belief in absolute societal order to make himself nigh-invincible. Later, the Confidants manage to persuade the people of Tokyo to believe in the Phantom Thieves' justice rather than the corrupt societal order of an evil god. As a result of this change of heart, the Protagonist gain enough power to summon his Ultimate Persona, Satanael, which enables the Thieves to defeat Yaldabaoth for good.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: Many people in Tokyo have accepted the flaws of their society as a fact of life, no matter how much it truly harms them. If anyone ends up dead because of societal pressure or some other mishap, most people accept it with a shrug and carry on with their lives as if nothing happened. This is taken to obvious extremes within Mementos. Despite being prisoners in a gloomy prison, the peoples' Shadows believe that they are in utopia because they have been "freed" from all desire.
• Extreme Doormat: Because of injustices and incompetence within the city's government due to corruption or inability, most of the people of Tokyo have learned to keep their heads down in order to avoid attracting the wrong kind of attention. In suppressing their own desires, whether good or evil, they hope to find a place to belong to within society. By the time the story begins, things have gotten so bad that simply standing out in any way attracts the attention of those who would use the city's societal harmony for selfish gain. Yaldabaoth also subtly encourages this mentality to kill the chaos of individualism to strengthen his selfish idea of social harmony.
• Faceless Masses: This is how the game portrays the people of the city except for those who play a role in the game's story (i.e. the Phantom Thieves, the members of the Antisocial Force, the Confidants).
• Freedom from Choice: Rather than make their own fallible, imperfect choices, the people of Tokyo give themselves over to the Holy Grail so that it could make choices for them instead. Various prisoners in the Mementos Depths refer to this as the ultimate freedom, which the Phantom Thieves are very disturbed by.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: The shadows of previous targets were originally imprisoned within Mementos Depths, before they managed to escape on their own and later become the rulers of their respective palace.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The opinions of the general public, belief in an orderly society and apathy have influenced the selfish decisions of individual citizens to various degrees, even though these individuals are ultimately responsible for said decisions.
  • Toshio and Hiromi Takase spend excessive amounts of money on expensive brand-name products and services because society looks down on those who don't.
  • Youji Isshiki was treated as a nobody by everyone around him, including his family, for many years until the day he won a jackpot at gambling. For a while, he received the attention and praise that eluded him, resulting in him later becoming a gambling addict.
  • Ichiryuusai Madarame, Junya Kaneshiro, and Kunikazu Okumura have all sacrificed moral decency in exchange for wealth and influence because of the public's scorn for the poor.
  • Suguru Kamoshida and Sae Niijima both believe that society will only remember and respect winners while losers will be ostracized and forgotten, leading them to resort to questionable means to maintain their "victorious" stances in their respective fields. Kamoshida's stress over maintaining his public image as an Olympic athlete have resulted in him trying to satisfy his base desires at any cost.
  • Goro Akechi's miserable upbringing was largely due to the social stigma of having been born out of wedlock and being an orphan since his mother committed suicide out of shame. As a result of being bullied, ignored and ostracized since birth by Japanese society, he became driven not only to become respected at any cost, but also to get back at society by causing its collapse in an insane scheme. Japanese society, including his mother, was just as responsible for Akechi's childhood misery as his father Masayoshi Shido.
  • The collective unconscious desires of the public for utopia at any cost resulted in the creation of Yaldabaoth, the ultimate conclusion of said desires. Even when he is defeated, in Royal, Yaldabaoth's Qliphoth World somehow effects a distraught Takuto Maruki and his Persona, Adam Kadmon/Azathoth, and the people's public opinion of the Phantom Thieves unknowingly turned them into the new masters of Mementos, but their wishes and control of the Metaverse went to Takuto, who'd go on to cause the Third Semester Arc, and grant another variation of humanity's utopia, but not one not ruled by absolute control to remove free will, but where everyone's desires and dreams are granted, so that all ambitions, yearnings, wants, and wishes are erased, which while not as bad as Yaldabaoth, still has the side effect of causing humanity to enter oblivious stagnation, effectivly.
  • It should also be noted that the game itself only refers to the public of Tokyo; All of the gods acting as the major antagonists of Persona are summoned by humanity which they are a part of. Nyarlathotep and Hi-no-Kagutsuchi are summoned by humanity's negativity and desire to inflict harm, Nyx and Chronos are summoned by humanity's wish for death in the form of Erebus, Izanami and Mikuratana-no-Kami were summoned by humanity's wish for happiness and refusal to accept the truth, Enlil was summoned in order to grant humanity's desire to escape the harshness of life through toxic escapism, and Yaldabaoth, Adam Kadmon, and EMMA/Demiurge were summoned to free humanity from their own desires and free will to live in peace of mind. In other words, they aren't just the Greater Scope Villains here; They are the Greater Scope Villains of Persona history, and their creations are the ones that the Persona users must fend Japan and the world from. Even if Yaldabaoth is defeated, they will still summon another god to terrorize us in no time.
• Gullible Lemmings: Yaldabaoth believes humans to be little more than lemmings due to how easily they fall for lies because it's easier. Even the people he considers to actually be good would rather die because of a lie than take action.
• Humans Are Morons: Because of this belief, the Shadows found in Mementos willingly allowed themselves to be imprisoned. They allowed an evil god to guide their lives because they have lost their faith in humanity being capable of making its own decisions.
• I Am Legion: In Japanese culture, societal harmony is considered a virtue in and of itself. As a result, the people of Tokyo are often encouraged, at various levels, to fit in with the crowd even at the cost of their individual needs or opinions. People who refuse to fit in are usually forced to somehow participate or are ignored/rejected by society altogether (the common idiom is "the nail that sticks out gets hammered down"; it's often considered the inverse of the American idiom "the squeaky wheel gets the grease"). In Mementos, the people's Shadows have the tendency to think of themselves as one entity through fear and order, both of which are enforced by Yaldabaoth. Shadow Shido once commented that the true power of the city is the general public, which implies the idea of the people as a single entity.
• It Can't Be Helped: Deconstructed. This trope is a core value of Japanese society and it is normally seen as a quality to be admired and emulated. However, the story of Persona 5 shows how this trait can lead to the perpetuation of corruption and evil with reprehensible authority figures, while encouraging the average Japanese citizen to do nothing for the sake of The Needs of the Many. Corruption and extreme selfishness become tolerated as long as the societal status quo isn't disrupted. In fact, such evil is pertuated and encouraged when it brings outward prosperity to society as a whole. The plights of individuals are outright ignored and rendered meaningless, as demonstrated by how Principal Kobayakawa tries to downplay and ultimately ignore Shiho Suzui's attempted suicide, Kamoshida's crimes and Kaneshiro's blackmail of students for the sake of outward appearances.
• Lazy Bum: Their sin and motif is Sloth, encompassing laziness (the desire to perform evil deeds or let them exist unopposed because it is easier than doing good), cowardice (evil born of fear), apathy (ignoring the plights of the individual believing they have no gravity on the plights of the whole), and despair (disaffection from life motivating selfishness and abandonment of moral and ethical duty).
• Never My Fault: The people of Tokyo usually claim they are not personally responsible for any troubles that occur and tend to blame other factors for their selfish actions or inaction (i.e. societal pressure, lack of direct involvement, the selfishness of others, inability to defy superiors). Yaldabaoth claims it's just too much of a burden for them to handle themselves, which is why they're subconsciously turning to him to carry it for them.
• Obliviously Evil: They had no idea that their actions only further the Big Bad's goal.
• Order Is Not Good: In the story of Persona 5, the Japanese core value of social harmony has been unconsciously twisted into a distorted desire for order at any cost by the people of Tokyo. They see the ethic of order as the only moral worth following, upholding it at the cost of everything else. These people care nothing for the suffering of individuals as long as overall social order is maintained and they willfully ignore or frown upon anything that openly disrupts the established social status quo, whether it is for the greater good or not.
  • While this might not be relevant in Persona 5 lore by itself, in Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth it has degraded to the level where people who cannot fit in and get abused for it became withdrawn and were consumed by catatonic depression, having their souls trapped in theaters governed by a third party godly being who heaps them with more depression by having their souls watch movies that are formed from pure negativity and portray these hapless people as failures in a misguided attempt to relieve their pain.
• Order Versus Chaos: The people of Tokyo have developed a dependence on strict societal harmony, allowing that to guide their lives rather than by their own will. The Phantom Thieves spend most of the story exposing and correcting the flaws of this societal harmony, one person at a time.
• Sanity Slippage: Just like their incarnations in previous games, as you reach further and further into the endgame, they become more insane and hectic. In this case it's especially obvious as after the Futaba heist they begin to worship you in fervor, then after the Okumura arc they instantly treat you as some sort of vile creature. Finally after the Shido arc, they simply think that you don't exist at all...and after Yaldabaoth unleashes his Reality Bleed plan, they don't even notice something is horribly wrong!
• Selective Obliviousness: Caring only about their own selfish needs and the need for societal harmony, most of the people of Tokyo prefer to ignore anything that could disrupt their comfortable, mundane lives. They also use rationalizations, fall back on willful ignorance or omit inconvenient truths to avoid responsibility for selfish decisions or to maintain personal innocence. For example, after giving praise to the Phantom Thieves for some time, the people of Tokyo immediately turn on them once the media condemns them and they later try to forget the Thieves ever existed in a selfish effort to maintain their own innocence.
• Self-Inflicted Hell: Many people in Tokyo feel trapped by strict societal culture of the city, but most of these people have either learned to accept it or feel that nothing can be done about it, resulting in their apathy. Others have even learned to take advantage of this societal harmony for their own selfish ends, such as the members of the Antisocial Force. This mentality is why Mementos resembles a prison.
• Slave to PR: People only care about what they see or what they believe in and are unwilling to make a change. This is evident after Shido has been defeated but people still see him as a fair and just man worthy to lead Japan and worry what will happen without him. In addition, the people of Tokyo try not to get involved too much in other people's affairs in order to avoid trouble, such as ignoring a crime in progress or even calling an ambulance following a suicide. This reflects most of the antagonist's beliefs that the masses "wanted" to be enslaved.
• Social Media Before Reason: The people of Tokyo are usually willing to just believe whatever the media tells them rather than take the time and effort to question the events. This made it easy for the conspiracy to frame the Phantom Thieves for Kunikazu Okumura's death. After Shido's confession on live TV, his allies tell Blatant Lies on social media to blame the entire debacle on the Phantom Thieves and most of the people eat it up, no questions asked. This forces the Phantom Thieves to deal with the city's collective Bystander Syndrome by destroying its source within Mementos.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: As far as they know in the real world, all these people were doing were minding their own business and going on with their lives. There was no way for them to know that their desire for order would actually manifest itself as a godlike entity that plans on influencing them to give into said desire and let it rule over them.
• Utopia Justifies the Means:
  • Most of the people in Tokyo inwardly believe that utopia can be achieved only when perfect social order is achieved. Due to this belief, these people endure needless suffering and make pointless sacrifices to achieve their personal goals. They also turn a blind eye to corruption because exposing it would be too disruptive to their own lives. The people of Tokyo always find excuses for this selfish behavior or use popular opinion to silence any dissidence. In fact, Yaldabaoth is the embodiment of this belief taken to its logical conclusion.
  • Despite being known as a physical abuser and a sexual predator, Kamoshida was able to get away with his crimes for a long time because his status as a former Olympic medalist brought good publicity to Shujin Academy. Students, teachers and parents were willing to endure/ignore his abuses because his recommendation alone can get a student into a top-tier university. When Kamoshida publicly confesses his crimes, the parents and teachers are more concerned about the bad publicity that would result from this, rather than be happy with finally catching a known criminal.
• Villain Decay: Previous targets such as Kamoshida, Madarame, Kaneshiro and Shido end up as mere faces in the crowd after they are robbed of their distorted desires. As result of losing their desires, their reputations and being surrounded by the ruthless societal harmony of Tokyo, these villains have lost the will to live and prosper, leaving their fates in the hands of Yaldabaoth just like most of the people of Tokyo. Their Shadows can be found again as prisoners in Mementos among countless others.
• Weirdness Censor: The people of Tokyo prefer to forget or ignore anything they cannot immediately comprehend because they are too concerned with their own everyday lives. This includes ignoring the existence of the Metaverse and the possibilities it offers until it affects them personally. After Shido's social force seemingly kills Joker and declares his "death" on the media, the death of what was supposed to be a reviled criminal was quickly glossed over in favor of praising Shido. After Akechi seemingly dies in Shido's Palace, nobody even mentions him by name despite the disappearance of a nation-wide "detective prince" should be fairly jarring. The Calling Card sent to Shido is also seemingly forgotten instantly in days, despite it being a grandiose broadcast hijack. When Yaldabaoth begins to superimpose Mementos over Tokyo as the first step of imposing his own version of reality upon the world, most of the people in the city do not even notice the frightening change due to a combination of Yaldabaoth's influence and their own belief that it did not concern them personally. In addition, they don't even remember that Shido all but resigned from the election on national TV due to their inner desire to believe a pleasant lie rather than an inconvenient, ugly truth. Only the Phantom Thieves and the Confidants have the willpower to comprehend the strangeness as soon as it begins, along with the consequences involved. The people of Tokyo gradually notice the changes to their city as Yaldabaoth is weakened by the Phantom Thieves, by which time the evil god was almost too powerful to be stopped. This is also an example of how societal problems could run rampant in the face of apathy. Most people would ignore such problems until they are personally affected by them, by which time the problem would be too rampant to be quickly solved.

The Heralds

The Archangels

Pictured (clockwise from top left): Uriel, Raphael, Gabriel, Michael

"Dare thee destroy the very ruler thou wished for? Human arrogance truly knows no bounds."

The Holy Grail's Four Heralds that appear on the Day of Reckoning in the Qliphoth World, acting as the Elite Four before facing off against the Final Boss. Players familiar with the Mainline SMT series will recognize them as the 4 Archangels that serve the forces of Law under Satan and YHVH.

More Information about them Series-Wide in the Shin Megami Tensei Forces of Law page.

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• Black-and-White Insanity: They all have a sense of morality, but to them the only moral thing is for the Thieves to return to their prisons and submit to Yaldabaoth and knowingly defying that is an act of evil. Morgana figures out early on that the team will not be able to reason with any of them.
• Chaos Is Evil: They fight to preserve Yaldabaoth’s order, sharing the same beliefs as their master. Michael is the only one that actually talks about it at length.
  Michael: Since the dawn of time, man hath failed to quell the strife born of their own liberty. Now they finally seek the guiding yoke of a master's rule. What empty justice seekest thou in defying their wish?
• Co-Dragons: They all share the role to Yaldabaoth, but Michael is the strongest of them and last to be defeated.
• Combination Attack: Both Gabriel and Michael have Maziodyne and Mabufudyne which can apply shock or freeze. Combined with Cosmic Flare this can deal technical damage to shocked and frozen enemies.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Of all their skillsets, Raphael has it the worst. He only has Sword Dance, a single target physical spell, and his other abilities either buff Swords Dance, buff himself or remove buffs from your party. If you put Tetrakarn on your team, he would be unable to harm you. If Joker came to the boss battle with a Repel/Absorb/Null Physical Persona, it would be impossible to lose.
• The Dragon: Michael is The Leader of the Archangels and is the penultimate boss of the vanilla game as a whole (or just the Mementos Depths arc in Royal). Unlike Shido, he serves Yaldabaoth directly, without being manipulated. He is also the biggest Yes-Man to him, going out of his way to defend his master's actions.
• Elite Four: All 4 of them are fought in the last stretch of the game (or just their arc in Royal) before the Final Boss, though not back-to-back.
• Flunky Boss: Uriel and Michael will summon up to 2 extremely powerful versions of the Shadow, Angel, and resummon them if they both die.
• The Jailer: All of them are basically glorified prison guards for Yaldabaoth and the Prison of Regression.
• Light Is Not Good: Their Shadow forms are golden and they're associated with light, but directly serve Yaldabaoth.
• Made of Evil: Just like Yaldabaoth they are ultimately just Shadows who took the form of their mythical counterparts.
• Mini-Boss: Effectively they are the last of these in the vanilla game. Michael has a lot more health than the rest of them and has a much more complete skillset, but he does not have any real gimmicks in his fight either. Michael does get his battle theme upgraded from the normal "Keeper of Lust" to "Blooming Villain", the same track as the Palace Rulers, to add to the finality of it.
• Mook Lieutenant: Before transforming into the Archangels, they look the same as the golden robot angels patrolling the path to the Holy Grail Shrine.
• Order Versus Chaos: Fitting with the mainline SMT games, the Archangels are the Lieutenants for the forces of Order, and in this case, the Phantom Thieves are the forces of Chaos.
• Perception Filter: This appears to be their purpose, since the Thieves defeating each of them gradually awakens the public to the Reality Bleed happening before them.
• The Quiet One: Raphael only says two short sentences before Morgana tells the team to kill him.
  Raphael: Halt rebels! I shall not allow you to continue forth!
  Morgana: Come on, let's beat this one too!
• Red Baron: Their titles if you have not unlocked their Persona forms are as follows: Herald of Death (Uriel), Cleanser of Heaven (Raphael), Declarer of Anguish (Gabriel), and Apocalyptic Guide (Michael)
• Support Party Member: The Angels that Uriel and Michael summon only know buffs and Recarmdra (which heals all their allies to full but sets their HP to One).
• Token Good Teammate: Gabriel is the only one of the Archangels that attempts to reason with the Thieves instead of chastising or threatening them, though due to her Black-and-White Insanity, it doesn’t work and comes across as Condescending Compassion. When she engages, she is more of an Apologetic Attacker, who treats the battle as discipling disobedient children, rather than the other three who treat it as punishing sinners.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: The Archangels justify killing the Thieves to protect societal order.
  Uriel: Those who wish to disturb society shall be slain on the very spot they stand.
• Vocal Evolution: In the English dub of Royal, Michael's voice changes from an elderly and raspy-sounding Evil Brit from the original English release to one very similar to Yoshida's (due to it being the same voice actor), a slightly-younger but more authoritatively deep voice with an American accent, not unlike YHVH himself in Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse.

Antagonists exclusive to Royal

The Dreamer

See The Dreamer's page here.

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