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Danganronpa / Tropes E to M

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Danganronpa Trope Examples
A - D | E - M | N - Z
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    E 
  • Early-Installment Weirdness: While the characters themselves serve as interesting deconstructions of the archetypes they represent, the first game is jarringly lacking in the plot-particular Deconstructor Fleet elements the series is known for afterwards.
    • The first couple major installments usually tends to have a few main/playable characters in the story with being responsible for the events that went on in the story. Starting around Danganronpa 3, there has multiple main/playable characters with Danganronpa 3 having Makoto, Kyoko, Chisa, Ryota, Kyosuke, Chiaki, Junko, and Hajime/Izuru and Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony having Kaede, Shuichi, Himiko, Maki, Keebo, Kaito, and Kokichi.
    • It should be noted that the first couple of installments lack of any direct romance and they mostly rely on Ship Tease. Starting around Danganronpa 3, a lot of characters ended up being involved in an Official Couple and they actually were involved in a direct romance.
    • The executions in later installments were much more brutal in comparison to the executions in the first two major installments.
    • The first game is the only one with the Re:Action feature.
    • Whenever a Truth Bullet is obtained in the first game, the music currently being played always starts from the beginning once again. The later games fixed this sound problem and made sure the music plays continuously.
  • The Ending Changes Everything: It's standard practice for a game to save some earth-shattering revelations about both the game itself and the state of the world for the very last chapter and trial.
  • "Everybody Dies" Ending:
    • Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair has this as the Junko AI's final plan. She intends to kill all (or at least as many as possible) of the students on the Neo World Program in order to upload her consciousness into their bodies. This is most clearly shown in Chapter 4, where she (through Monokuma) locks them in the Funhouse without food attempting to starve them to death, only stopped because Gundham killed Nekomaru in order to get the other students out.
    • Subverted in Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony. The only way to put a stop to the killing game contest is to have all the remaining students, including the mastermind, refuse to vote in the final trial, resulting in them being executed for not voting and a disappointing ending. Everyone abstains from voting, at which point Keebo self-destructs, destroying the school and getting the mastermind crushed under a pile of rubble. The three remaining students survive, though.
  • Everyone Went to School Together:
    • 99% of the pre-retool cast can be traced back to Hope's Peak Academy.
    • Averted in V3. It's established that those accepted by the Gifted Program are scattered throughout the country and have never met each other in person. Tsumugi later overwrote this with a setting where everyone went to Hope's Peak Academy in order to end Kokichi's stalemate.
  • The Executioner: Monokuma is an example of a Psychopath Executioner. He is responsible for executing the students who have been found guilty of killing another student, or broken his rules. He gets outright ecstatic over having the chance of executing someone, shouting proudly in his insane manner of speaking "IT'S PUNISHMENT TIME!" before the execution begins.
  • Exploring the Evil Lair: Once per Episode, the final chapter involving exposing the truth has the protagonists investigate where the Big Bad resides. Barring the second game, however, as Monokuma is an AI and doesn't need a lair, and Side:Future as the Future Foundation building is said lair.
    • The first game has the protagonists investigate the Data Center and the Monokuma Control Room.
    • Another Episode has Komaru investigate the bedrooms of the Warriors of Hope, where she discovers certain truths about them.
    • Killing Harmony has Shuichi and co. investigate the hidden room in the library, where they discover that Kaede was framed for the first murder by the real mastermind.

    F 
  • Faceless Masses: Most extras are depicted as faceless blue (or pink for females in Another Episode) silhouettes, even if they do have distinct voice actors.
  • Failed a Spot Check: The reasons as to why the protagonist is the only one who has to stop a potentially circling debate between the characters is because the protagonist is the only one who ever actually manages to investigate thoroughly and collectively without bias, since the main goal of each trial is to save everyone from execution by pinning the identity of the only one the evidence lines up with.
  • Fanservice: Occasionally pops up in the main storylines, but all main series games have secret scenes that have plenty of it:
  • Fantastic Caste System:
    • How Hope's Peak worked: students without talents were seen as cash cows, subjected to education of lesser quality while paying enormous sums of money, all that money was used to invest on the students of the main course, who had a habit of burning money away like there was no tomorrow and the school's secret experiments on talent, this eventually led to The Parade.
    • The Gifted Inmates Saga, which starts with Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony is implied to have the same situation, but expanded through the country, instead of just a school. The government has the "Gifted System", which gives privileges to those who prove their talents.
  • Final Boss: For the murder cases, Junko Enoshima in Trigger Happy Havoc, Nagito Komaeda in Goodbye Despair, and Kokichi/Kaito in unison in Killing Harmony. The game's mastermind serves as the True Final Boss per each game, which Junko manages to also do in the first game when revealed as the culprit of the final murder.
  • First-Episode Twist:
    • In Trigger Happy Havoc, Sayaka is set up as Makoto's Love Interest, but not only is she the victim of the first case, she actually intended to murder someone and frame him for it. Notably, the demo tried to hide this by changing the killer and the victim of the first case.
    • Goodbye Despair has Nagito being revealed as a hope-obsessed and rather unstable Death Seeker midway through the first trial, a characterization that becomes important throughout the rest of the game.
    • In Killing Harmony, Kaede is set up as the protagonist for the game in promotional materials, but is then revealed as the first killer, resulting in her being executed at the end of the first chapter and Shuichi taking over as the protagonist afterwards. Still, the final trial reveals that Kaede wasn't the true culprit at all.
  • Flashback Cut: In the premise of the entire series, this happens very frequently, mainly as a way to keep the player's memory consistent with the events the characters are conversing about and subconsciously remind them of past events. A most prominent example of this happening too often with the same event is Kyoko Kirigiri telling Makoto Naegi about Mukuro Ikusaba's identity as the 16th student, labelled as Ultimate Despair by her peers.
  • Foreshadowing: Starting with 2, the series begins Leaning on the Fourth Wall in ways that aren't Played for Laughs, often with twists that involve the story being manufactured as a 'game' by some character. In Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, this is taken to its logical conclusion, with the franchise of Danganronpa being fictional and the cast, real people who have been turned into characters in the new, live-action entry, having to confront the fact that their world is fictional.
  • Forgotten Fallen Friend: Unfortunately, a lot of victims and killers will stop being mentioned after their deaths once a class trial is completed or soon after it concludes, with only a few exceptions throughout the games (Such as Ibuki saying she misses "Byakuya" a whole chapter after his death). This is partially justified, as some characters weren't friends with the deceased, but it can be rather jarring to see them deeply mourning someone only to soon go back to how they always were.
  • Freeze-Frame Introduction: * Whenever a new character is introduced, a frame freezes with the character's name and talent flashes behind them.
  • The "Fun" in "Funeral": Monokuma's reaction to the killing game going according to plan, and the absolutely joyous attitude he has while the students are suffering from his enactment. When he kills the culprit via execution, he's seen very much so taking pleasure and putting all of his efforts into the lethal labour of killing someone who killed another, having no regrets.

    G 
  • Gambit Roulette:
  • Gender-Equal Ensemble: The survivors in the first game are three boys and three girls, and the other two main games in the franchise had a class consisting of eight boys and eight girls for a total of 16.
  • Genre-Busting: Many of the characters were designed with different genres in mind according to Word of God, and the series changes its genre on the drop of a hat.
  • Geodesic Cast: The casts of the two main installments in the Hope's Peak Academy saga share a number of reflective traits, with the primary difference being that one represents hope while the other represents despair, with a traitor who goes against this (Junko and Chiaki).
  • Giving Someone the Pointer Finger: Hardly a single character in the series doesn't have a sprite that involves them pointing at someone. The only type that's more common is the thinking/concentration sprite.
  • Go Out with a Smile:
    • In Trigger Happy Havoc:
      • Sakura commits suicide to save her family's dojo by fulfilling Monokuma's order to kill someone, and to restore trust among the remaining students. So confident is she that this was the right choice that there's a smile on her lips when the others discover the body. The pose is a direct Shout-Out to the trope's example from Tomorrow's Joe.
      • Mukuro has a confused and terrified smile when she realizes she's been impaled several times over by Junko. Speaking of which, Junko herself is cheerfully grinning from ear to ear while waving at the surviving students right before being crushed by a giant block.
    • In Goodbye Despair, Gundham smiles to his Four Dark Devas of Destruction as he lays dying following his execution.
    • In Killing Harmony:
      • Kaito dies in the middle of his execution thanks to his illness. His body has a smile when we receive a glimpse of it, fulfilling his dream of visiting space and having saved Maki from dying herself.
      • Justitified later in Chapter 6. After Shuichi lets out a hell-bent persuasion to the audience as revenge, he just stands there in silence with a smile. Even after Tsumugi abstained from voting in hopes of keeping the Killing Game going, Shuichi just still stands there with a smile and with his eyes closed, because he somehow has confidence in the literal impossibility he just pulled off. And miraculously, it wasn't in vain. The audience also abstains from voting, ending Danganronpa for good.
  • Grief Song: A murder mystery without a horrible soundtrack to immerse the audience into the scenes where people's motivations are sympathetic would never be reputable (or maybe it would), so Danganronpa includes many for outcomes of that manner.
  • Guide Dang It!: The first two games each have a skill whose description reads "Reduces an argument to three statements or less." It's a little hard to intuit that it cuts down your choice of Truth Bullets to three or less, thus reducing the false possibilities you have to consider.

    H 
  • Heinousness Retcon: In Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, Junko announces that Izuru massacred the entire student council at Hope's Peak, leaving Hajime stunned. In Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School, it's shown instead that Junko herself set up a killing game resulting in the student council murdering each other in a matter of hours, and proceeded to frame Izuru.
  • Heart Is an Awesome Power: Super High School Level Luck, beginning as a plot device to get an ordinary high school student protagonist into the same school as a bunch of Ultimates, is retconned into an actual intrinsic ability that Hope's Academy Peak scouts for by random drawing, and it's considered one of the more prized talents by the staff.
    • This eems to be the unofficial motto of Hope's Peak in general. Whether you're the best teenage neurosurgeon or swimmer or mangaka or programmer, they want you. Even if your talent is abstract and only barely distinguishable (30% success rate) in your field, if it's recognizably the best, you're a guaranteed student.
  • Hero Antagonist: Anyone not part of the large roster of active villains but is also a murderer in the killing game scenarios and isn't Ax-Crazy (Korekiyo) or is sympathetic but is equally as destructive (the Warriors of Hope except for Monaca) is one of these, as they're ultimately pushed into becoming culprits because of Monokuma/Junko, and would otherwise not have compromised their agency to commit a murder. Nagito is Ax-Crazy himself, but is a twisted version of one instead.
  • Hero Killer: Of the Indirect Serial Killer variety, Monokuma/Junko Enoshima (and her fanatical replacement Tsumugi Shirogane later on) manipulates countless protagonists and innocents into killing themselves or each other through Flaw Exploitation, the few times she directly kills being during execution setups. This includes the times where she serves as a Posthumous Character due to her influence continuing to spread to others following her death, either in an attempt to either resolve the destruction she caused or to aid it.
  • Hijacked by Ganon: Junko Enoshima tends to show up near the end of most works in the franchise.
  • A House Divided: In each of the main games, Monokuma informs the students that the only way to escape from the Closed Circle they're in is to murder one of the others without getting caught. On top of this, he gradually introduces extra motivation, leading to more paranoia as nobody can be sure who's going to try and get out. However, after the fourth or fifth chapters in each game, the trope gets defied with a final group of surviving students who work together to defeat the mastermind behind Monokuma and escape the place.
  • Humans Are Bastards:
    • The series' overarching conflict is wholly caused by Junko Enoshima, who is reportedly biologically human. Junko is prideful, impulsive, hedonistic, and apathetic, only wishing to sow despair for the sake of it, but it all stems from the fact that she is a human being and represents humanity's worst vices. It is also worth noting that there aren't any real non-human antagonists, or at least none that stem from Junko's will, with every antagonist in the series actually being human.
    • Ultimately played straight, and hard, with V3, though. The reason the franchise is even going on? Every single entry in the series is part of a twisted reality show where the contestants are brainwashed and refitted with new personalities, and all of them, save one, were in it for fame and glory. No one even minds the fact that we're seeing hundreds of people die (enough to go on for 53 seasons) because it's all so exciting. Then again, it's not clear how much of it is real.
  • Humans Are Flawed: A number of the murders committed in the series are the result of desperation, characters being at their lowest point, or simply irrational acts. There are genuinely good and evil characters, however when pressed into terrible circumstances, even the most well-intentioned people see their worst traits surface with fatal consequences. It's also worth taking in account that they're attending high school and going through puberty, which can be a very difficult time as it is. For all its focus on high school students committing murder and gruesome executions, the series is filled with some genuinely good, moral people. Those who do kill are only driven to do so thanks to Monokuma's manipulations and are often remorseful about their actions. Even the Remnants of Despair, who've committed some of the worst crimes in the franchise, are given a second chance through rehabilitation.
  • Humble Hero: Every. Single. Protagonist. None of them act arrogantly when praised for saving everyone from death and claim that they're doing what they should be doing. In Chapter 4's trial in Danganronpa V3, this trope is finally invoked as the living cast praise Shuichi for being affable enough to work everything out about the case for them.

    I 
  • Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: Most games in the series name their difficulty "Gentle/Kind/Mean", and can be applied to logic and/or action. Gentle Logic reduces the number of Truth Bullets and Weak Points, and Gentle Action simplifies minigames by leaving out more complex mechanics. Mean Logic adds extra Truth Bullets and Weak Points to pick through in debates, while Mean Action makes mistakes more damaging and increases the speed and obstacles of minigames. V3 swaps the difficulty names to "Kind/Normal/Mean", with "Kind" the new equivalent to "Gentle".
  • Idiot Ball: This is rather common to the series. In spite of all the sharp observations and specific flashbacks made by the cast on average, they do act highly oblivious to something as clear as daylight to the player. A glaring example of this is in Chapter 3 of Dananronpa V3 when no one, bar Kokichi and Miu, had a true, straightforward suspicion for Korekiyo being the culprit, both because of the fact that he adored the katana that killed Angie in his research lab, and because he held responsibility for performing the séance that killed Tenko. Even though he was always a suspicious person that could kill at any time.
  • Idiot Hair: A trademark of the series' protagonists. No less than six main characters have one, two of whom did not receive it until being Promoted to Playable.
  • Indirect Serial Killer: The basic premise of the series involves a mastermind locking up a group of people into a small enclosed area and not letting them leave unless one of them kills another and gets away with it. In addition, the mastermind also isn't above bribing or manipulating the other students into murdering whenever they start to band together.
  • In Medias Res: The entire series begins with the events of the Killing School Life in Trigger Happy Havoc to introduce Junko as the Final Boss. The game is set during the Tragedy, rather than before or after it, essentially meaning that it starts in the middle of the main storyline.
  • I Reject Your Reality: How all three protagonists succeed and keep the remainder of the Killing Game participants as survivors.
    • Makoto Naegi defies Junko's word that the rural outside world from landmarks to the whole population is now surplus, telling her that hope still exists within that despair.
    • Hajime Hinata defies Junko's dilemma by encouraging everyone to pursue their futures even if they have to return as the villain, Ultimate Despair.
    • Komaru Naegi fuels herself up with the assistance of Toko's bonding, powering up a 'Hope' Truth Bullet and defeating Big Bang Monokuma.
    • Shuichi Saihara rejects fiction rather than reality in order to save the remainder of the cast from participating in another game, preventing the Danganronpa series from continuing.
  • Intentional Mess Making: This is a surprisingly rare tactic for killers, as most tend to clean up the crime scene to avoid leaving evidence behind. Examples where killers actually use this tactic include:
    • In Chapter 3 of Trigger Happy Havoc, Celeste has Hifumi spray blood on himself to fake his death before killing him for real not long after. This actually gives away what happened, as after the class mistakenly pronounced him dead, he wiped off his glasses in order to navigate the hallways, so they were clean when his corpse was found.
    • In Chapter 5 of Goodbye Despair, Nagito does this in an extremely disturbing fashion. He ties himself up and stabs his limbs with a knife to make it appear as though he was tortured, and sets up several Monokuma cutouts by the doorway so when the other students rush in, the cutouts will fall over like dominoes and start a fire by knocking over an oil lighter. The end result is an extremely confusing and messy crime scene that obscures what actually went down.
    • In Chapter 3 of Killing Harmony, Korekiyo covers up his murder of Angie by taking her body from the spare room he killed her in and leaving it in her lab, where he takes some swords and stabs her effigies which hang from the ceiling, obfuscating the fact that he spun one around to catch the sliding lock on the door when he exited, creating a locked room mystery. When the other students enter, the whole place looks like a horror show.
  • Irony: The first game reveals in Chapter 4 that the Killing Game is being broadcast to the world at large like a television show with many people tuning in. It's supposed to lead us to believe that the World and Society outside of the school is very messed up for allowing this kind of game to be held in the first place, but it all makes sense when it's revealed that the World fell to Despair and any semblance of normal life and society has been destroyed in the ensuing apocalypse, there's no order anymore. Fast forward to Danganronpa V3 when it turns out this Killing Game actually IS being held in a normal world where the Fall to Despair never happened, it's just a society who loves watching people killing each other in a reality show, and even has people begging to sign up to join in the next installment, this game marking the 53rd installment of Danganronpa in-universe.

    J 
  • Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: Each entry in the franchise creates new plot threads for the next entries to pick up. It can get a bit complicated to follow everything, not to mention requires a lot of reading.

    K 
  • Kick the Dog:
    • The basic way Junko Enoshima (AKA Monokuma) operates throughout the series is mocking, killing, manipulating, and ruining the lives of other people solely for fun - and she makes no real attempt to justify this, with every false attempt she tries to claim it's actually for a good reason being contradicted instead by her admission that she's doing it For the Evulz.
    • A common practice of the Chapter 3 culprits is killing a second person for an unnecessary or cynical reason. The first two culprits (Celestia and Mikan) kill Hifumi and Hiyoko, when their main targets are Kiyotaka and Ibuki, respectively, because they observed the crime in detail and would be able to tell the spotless the truth of what happened. As for the third, Korekiyo, he kills Angie for the same reason as the former two, but she wasn't his intended target to send to his sister; that was the girl he was planning to use his seesaw trap on, which would've likely been Tenko, due to her Heroic Spirit, but as Tenko was his second murder, him killing her as well is admittedly just him doing it For the Evulz.
  • Killed Off for Real: One of the most significant parts of the series is that characters die. And when they do, they never come back. The exception to this is Trial 6 in the first game, due to Junko Enoshima, who died in Chapter 1, returning to the cast as her true self. And then dying after that return, and then returning throughout the series over and over again. The other exception to this is Danganronpa 2, ignoring Chiaki- and even then the "dead" characters remain unconscious until Danganronpa 3.

    L 
  • Lampshade Hanging: An endeavour this series partakes in frequently is this. However, different characters decide to do it in a sequence, and not only the protagonist does it, in order to establish the Morality Kitchen Sink. Danganronpa V3 is the most prone to this as it dissects characters in more depth than the previous two games, ranging from Kaede's naive will to Kirumi's constant devotion.
  • Laser-Guided Amnesia:
    • Played straight in Trigger Happy Havoc, where it's one of the main twists, and Goodbye Despair, where it's the first motive.
    • Averted in Ultra Despair Girls, since Komaru never had her memories removed, and Toko had hers returned.
    • In Killing Harmony, the trope is exploited over the course of the game, as the Flashback Lights give the students memories about their talents, the Gofer Project, and the remaining students their status as the new students of Hope's Peak Academy, and then subverted when the last trial reveals that these memories are all fake due to inaccuracy with the History of Hope's Peak.
  • Late-Arrival Spoiler:
    • The first sentence in Danganronpa Zero gives away The Reveal of the first game.
    • Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair has a rather unusual example. The game's cover and store screenshots prominently show what appears to be Byakuya Togami from the first game among the character roster, thus apparently spoiling that he survives the events of the first game. However, it turns out that although Byakuya does return, the character shown on the promotional material is actually the Ultimate Imposter impersonating him.
    • By Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls, the franchise is clearly expecting people to know everything about the previous installments before even trying to look up anything about the new ones. What used to be just about every single spoiler in Trigger Happy Havoc becomes a non-spoiler by this point, even in promotional material and trailers.
    • The franchise even manages to exaggerate the trope to its standards of using it in the "Ultimate Talent Development Plan" bonus mode of Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony and Danganronpa S: Ultimate Summer Camp, a pair of non-canon installments where characters from all three main games are playable, including Walking Spoilers from previous canon installments such as Mukuro, the real Junko (who appears as the central character on the cover of Ultimate Summer Camp), and Izuru. It also casually spoils things such as Chihiro's gender, Kyoko being the Ultimate Detective, and Hajime being a Reserve Course student without an Ultimate talent.
    • Danganronpa Kirigiri does this to itself. The cover of the fourth volume depicts three characters who were introduced in a case in the previous book, which had four suspects, one of whom was the culprit. While no direct visual image of the characters is shown there, enough information is given that the reader can match them to the fourth volume's cover, and the identity of the culprit (Korisu Kakitsubata) becomes obvious through exclusion.
  • A Lighter Shade of Black: Monokuma, controlled by Junko in the main saga and Team Danganronpa & Tsumugi in the retool, are plainly evil and sadistic with nothing to really redeem them of it, but there are other villainous characters who have a sense of morality or a reason for their actions.
    • Every murder culprit serves as an antagonist within each chapter, but they either have a Duress defense or are lesser of an evil by comparison in some way that makes them seem more humane than the Big Bad, this including Korekiyo, who despite everything is at least not a killing game mastermind, and someone like Kokichi, who is marginally driven by the fact that he's in a killing game in the first place and would otherwise not go to those extremes in different circumstances.
    • While Mukuro Ikusaba is Junko's assistant, she is driven by a familial love (that isn't returned) than the actual drive for despair, and unlike Junko, is capable of caring about others without using that to sate her own evil desires. However, she also cares little about the amorality of Junko's desires in the process, and willingly gives into Junko's every desire.
    • In the second game, Nagito is a Well-Intentioned Extremist who desires to spread hope, and Izuru Kamukura is a Tragic Villain who is bored of the world around him and had his inhibitions forcibly removed by Hope's Peak Academy, and Junko taking advantage of him led to a burning desire for revenge, which comes up in the form of the second game's events.
    • Dowplayed, as it's not much lighter by comparison, but even Monaca, despite being a Hate Sink, has a Freudian Excuse for her behavior, which is no thanks to Haiji, and Haiji himself is mostly driven by his trauma, though it doesn't excuse his awful misdeeds throughout his feature game.
    • In Side:Future, Kazuo Tengan is a Knight Templar who genuinely believes brainwashing the world will save it from despair, and Chisa Yukizome is a Nice Girl who was brainwashed by Junko to be a Sycophantic Servant of despair.
  • Local Hangout: In the mainline games, the protagonists always gather in the dining hall for their meetings during breakfast time to hang out with each other and discuss their experiences with the Deadly Game setup.
  • Lore Codex: The main games have the backlog of the "e-Handbook" (called "Monopad" in V3) in the pause menu, which, asides from including information about the characters, setting and cases the player has gathered thus far, also features tabs for items the player currently has (or used to have in the record of truth bullets from previous cases).
  • Love Hurts: While the first game doesn't have much romance to do this, starting with Danganronpa Zero, this trope is in full effect. Needless to say, if two have some kind of romantic relationship, implied or otherwise, it is near guaranteed to end in tragedy.

    M 
  • The Main Characters Do Everything: Or, at least, main character. Whenever the trial happens and a corpse is discovered, the only peer of the group who does a thorough investigation and carry everyone through to the end of the killing game with completely accurate information, deduction, and skepticism is The Protagonist, except Kyoko Kirigiri, who shows to be perfectly capable of carrying everyone through the murder trials by herself despite not actually doing so, acting as Makoto's Stealth Mentor.
  • The Many Deaths of You: Each game has many executions and methods of murder for each of the characters.
  • Meaningful Appearance: Each character has their own unique set of poses as a result of their combined talent and upbringing. For example, Makoto wouldn't imitate this sprite of Kaede because his upbringing is submissive compared to Kaede's upbringing involving performing in front of people.
  • Memorial Photo: Whenever a student gets killed, a photo of them will be placed in their podium during the trials.
  • Meta Fiction: The entire franchise is this to some degree, and it gets more obvious with each installment in the franchise, especially starting with the second game onwards.
  • Meta Guy: Byakuya Togami, Nagito Komaeda, and Kokichi Oma.
    • Byakuya is a meta character by thinking that the life-or-death game he's playing is one of betrayal, where there's only one winner and everyone else loses. He begins to show this side of his persona in Chapter 2's Daily Life, and it's countered by Chapter 4's Deadly Life. Similarly to the protagonist rivals in the two games after, Nagito and Kokichi, he thinks that the only way to win is to kill someone and make the case unsolvable. Because of the constant declaration he makes, Chapter 2 onward makes him a Red Herring culprit. In Chapter 2, he only alters the crime scene. In Chapter 3, Celestia makes a series of events transpire to frame a specific character, which is what Byakuya would likely plan as well. In Chapter 4, after finding out Sakura's role as the traitor, he becomes the most aggressive toward her, interpreting her existence as a waste and saying that everyone should be suspicious of her. The attitude he has here is also why Aoi suspects him noticeably more than Yasuhiro and Toko.
    • Nagito is an intelligent adolescent obsessed with the philosophy of hope, desiring to create despair in order for other people's hope to thrive. It's similar to Junko's goal of creating despair for the sake of doing it, and "not yearning for despair so she doesn't have to hope for it" and vice-versa. Being the rival of the protagonist, he engineers the first murder by allowing Teruteru to hear about his own plan to start the game. This is so he can "become the class trial" and "give people an enemy so they become stronger", according to his explanation after Teruteru's exposure. Monokuma actually seems to have these intentions when he abruptly places Japan's most intelligent line of characters in a zero-sum game for the sake of despair while they don't know anything about the truth of them once being classmates. Both Junko and Nagito have a reason for their detrimental obsession with their opposing ideals, as Nagito's yearning for hope is fueled by his universally-favoring luck, and Junko's yearning for despair is fueled by her ability to perfectly predict the outcome of a situation.
    • Kokichi is the example that most obviously shows that he's supposed to represent an audience's initial thoughts on what the goal of the game is. Similarly to Kyoko, he acts completely disappointed in everyone else's failure to search for a cold, hard truth to prevent mass execution, and of the opposite to what Kyoko does, he actually makes the trial sequences much longer than they should be, rather than shorter, by complaining, unnecessarily interfering, and mocking everyone else's attempts to survive Monokuma's spontaneous antics. He's also prone to intentionally keeping important information secret until an appropriate moment during the class trial because he mostly desires for the fight for everyone's life "entertaining". Likewise to Nagito, he eventually engineers a case that would be impossible to solve without his direct participation, but only in the fifth trial, by blackmailing Kaito Momota into killing him and obfuscating the identity of both killer and victim in hope that it will stop Monokuma's game.
  • Mood Whiplash: The tone can swing wildly between highs and lows. It's common for silly asides or pop culture references to appear in the middle of tragic reveals.
  • Mundane Made Awesome:
    • The moral grounds of the entire series. Hope versus despair are elaborated on in many different ways.
    • The most notable examples are Makoto and Junko. A Big Good creates a force strong enough to oppose and fight against the Big Bad once they reveal their true identity and exposition their whole plan.
  • Murder Is the Best Solution: Invoked by Monokuma, who sets up the Mutual Killing Game scenarios so that the participants have to kill each other in order to leave. However, most of the good characters choose murder over anything else even without Monokuma's direct encouragement despite there being better solutions due to holding the Conflict Ball.
  • Myth Arc: All instalments in the franchise center around the Tragedy, which was created by Junko and Mukuro in the backstory of the debut game. In the case of Killing Harmony, it still refers to Junko herself, whose reputation is built upon the Tragedy.

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