Danganronpa 2 Goodbye Despair / Tropes E to M

Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair Trope Examples
A - D | E - M | N - Z

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E

• Easy Level Trick: Racking up Monocoins - and, consequently, earning the Trophies/Achievements for earning 999 Monocoins and getting every Present in the game - becomes a cakewalk by simply farming Monokumas in the Pet minigame. For a paltry 9 Monocoins, one can turn a whopping 291 Monocoin profit in the span of under an hour, which is still considerably less time than it takes to earn a similar number of Monocoins via other methods. For bonus points, the Monokuma pet is the easiest pet to raise in the game once it reaches its evolved form, since unlike other pet types, it can’t die.
  • And since the steps you take are not only how the pet progresses, but how Hajime levels up, it's just a matter of being willing to grind it out walking around the islands to max Hajime out at level 99.
• Egopolis: Most of Jabberwock Island is this for Monokuma (with a few holdovers from Usami suggesting that it was supposed to be the same way for her, too). The Junko AI eventually plans to turn the entire world into "Junkoland" by taking over everyone on Earth.
• Embarrassing Alibi:
  • In Chapter 1, Peko Pekoyama's alibi for the Ultimate Imposter's murder is that she was stricken with terrible stomach cramps and as such, had been on the toilet the entire time. This is initially met with suspicion, until Nekomaru — who was outside waiting to use the stall himself — confirms it. The others sheepishly admit there's no way someone would lie about such a thing, and Peko is off the hook.
  • In Chapter 3, they initially deduce the possible time for the murders to be before or during the morning announcement. Excluding the ill, the rest of the cast were asleep in their own rooms at that time and thus lack alibis. Mikan then awkwardly fesses up that she and Hajime were together, as she fell asleep on top of him. Chiaki's only response is "Too Much Information."
• Emergency Food Supply Animal: After the group gets locked in the funhouse in chapter 4, Kazuichi briefly contemplates having to eat Gundham's hamsters. Sonia quickly shoots that idea down.
• Emergency Transformation: After Taking the Bullet for Akane, Nekomaru is turned into a Cyborg, but he still gets killed later.
• Empty Chair Memorial: Just like the first game, dead students are replaced during School Trials with a "memorial" picture that has their face crossed out. However, the game adds a bit more Black Comedy by customizing the cross marks of certain students. Teruteru's cross is a knife and fork; Mikan's cross is made up of bandages and rotated so it looks more like a first aid symbol; Peko's cross is a shinai and sheath; Ibuki's cross is two drumstricks; Gundham's cross is a capital letter "X"; and Nagito's cross is dripping blood.
• Empty Shell: Monokuma claims the students killed in his game were reduced to this. Hope is held out in the end that their condition is more of a Convenient Coma—which thankfully isn't just blind hope, as there are several inconsistencies between how the Neo World Program is supposed to work and what actually happens, such as the forced shutdown sequence taking the form of the supposedly deleted Usami.
• "Everybody Dies" Ending: This is the basis of 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.
• Everybody Lives: The game ends with all of the human characters at least physically alive. Everybody except the "survivors" (Hajime, Sonia, Kazuichi, Akane, and Fuyuhiko) are currently Empty Shells, but Hajime and Makoto retain hope that they can still be fully restored (and Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School ultimately resolves this plot thread).
• Evil Me Scares Me: Hajime's reaction when he encounters remnants of Izuru Kamukura in his mind, during the final trial. A downplayed version of this trope is utilized for the other members of Ultimate Despair, although they never see what their true selves are like.
• Evolving Credits: As the game progresses, the intro sequence tints the introduction screens of the deceased students in red. In addition, during the third trial where Nekomaru is incapacitated and unable to participate, his intro screen is darkened.
• Exact Words:
  • Monokuma agrees that he promised to return the students' school memories when the killing started... but he never said he would return the memories right away.
  • Mikan uses this to sow further distrust of the Future Foundation among the class after she regresses to her Ultimate Despair personality, saying that they truly deserve to be called "World Ender" because they intend to destroy 'our' world. The world she's referring to is the post-Tragedy world of chaos and despair they brought about as members of the Ultimate Despair.
  • In Chapter 4, Monokuma claims there are "ship parts" hidden in the amusement park. Much to Kazuichi's frustration, the "parts" turn out to be the electric motor from a remote-controlled toy boat.
    Monokuma: Tee-hee! You totally got tricked! I never said a single word about the ship being real!
  • Early on in Chapter 5, Nagito boldly declares that he's going to discover and "weed out" the Future Foundation traitor in the group. He then enacts a very, very complicated plan to manipulate the traitor into killing him in an assisted suicide, while setting up multiple layers of deception (and ultimately, relying on his own insane luck) to ensure the resulting class trial would be impossible to solve logically. As the others question what his motives were, Monokuma gleefully spells it out: Nagito only said he would "weed out" the traitor, not kill them. His plan was designed to make the traitor the Sole Survivor by getting everyone else executed in an unsolvable trial, and it would've gone off without a hitch if not for Chiaki all but giving herself up to protect the others.
• Eye Scream:
  • Monokuma inflicts this on Usami when he takes over, then mocks her about it, calling her Monomi from then on.
  • Later on, Fuyuhiko loses an eye when he tries to stop Peko's execution.
  • During a montage that demonstrates the kind of self-mutilation that members of the Ultimate Despair inflicted upon themselves, one of the examples is of someone who gouged out their own eye and replaced it with the eye of Junko Enoshima. He and Fuyuhiko might actually be the same person.

F

• Failed a Spot Check: It somehow does not occur to Hajime that Mikan's strange behavior is a sign that she's caught the Despair Disease. Despite knowing that it alters your personality, and that she's been taking care of the students who had it.
• False Confession:
  • During the first trial, Nagito presents himself as an increasingly obvious candidate for being the culprit. Helps that he really was planning to cause a murder...
  • Twisted all around during the second trial, where Peko claims after the trial she was taking the fall for somebody else so they could successfully graduate, assuming that this person merely saw her as their tool.
• Fanservice:
  • The prologue features some of the cast in the swimsuits Usami provided for them. These students are (left to right) Gundham, Mahiru, Sonia, Ibuki, Kazuichi, Nagito, Teruteru, Nekomaru, Peko^note She's drawn from a distance and so whether it's truly her is unclear, but she has red eyes, so it must be her. Peko's also absent outside of the graphic and isn't shown on the beach, previously accepting the idea., and Mikan.
  • Chiaki, Akane, Peko, and Sonia^note The one who planned the meeting attend a party where they go to the beach to bond with one another. Akane's crosses into Fan Disservice, due to her being covered in blood from a head wound from sparring with Nekomaru.
  • A hidden event in chapter 2 allows Hajime to peep on Mahiru and Hiyoko showering together.
• First-Episode Twist: Nagito is 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.
• Foil: Nagito to Makoto. They're both Ultimate Lucky Students voiced by Megumi Ogata (Bryce Papenbrook in the English dub). Makoto does have a certain level of luck, but it's subtle and mostly annoying or inconvenient for him. Nagito, meanwhile, has incredible good and bad luck—his life is a series of horrible incidents such as his parents dying or his plane crashing, but his luck will "cancel it out" and deliver him some kind of miraculous windfall afterward like winning the lottery as soon as his plane crashes or being accepted into Hope's Peak Academy right after being diagnosed with a deadly brain disease. Needless to say, the stress of this has warped his personality. Makoto also seems fairly comfortable with his supposed lack of talent, while Nagito has a huge Inferiority Superiority Complex that ruins his self-esteem and causes him to both idolize the other Ultimate students and treat normal people like garbage. As for both characters' relationship with hope, Makoto's version is for the most part played as a positive, while Nagito's version of hope drives him to cause despair so a "better hope" will rise above it.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: Mikan is naked when she screams orgasmically during her execution.

G

• Gainax Ending: The initial ending to the Twilight Syndrome game (at least until the secret code at the end is entered at the title screen to unlock the second part, which explains a lot more).
• Game-Breaking Bug: While walking around Grape House in Chapter 4, you can randomly be teleported above the map. You can't move or fast travel, the only way out is to reload a save. At least it doesn't spoil the secret of the Funhouse on you.
• Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • No matter how well you do in the first part of Peko's Rebuttal Showdown in Chapter 2's Trial, you have to duel her to push forward. Turns out the Ultimate Swordswoman talent even extends to verbal swordfights.
  • When everyone is trapped in the Funhouse in Chapter 4 and starvation takes its toll on Hajime, the movement speed is slower than usual.
  • Because Fuyuhiko is very much against any sort of socialization, you cannot engage with him in Free Time events until chapter 4.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • During Chapter 4, everyone is locked inside of a funhouse with no food. You can still do free time events, even Akane's, who mentions having lots of food available during some of her events. You can also hand out food items as presents after spending time with someone, which they can even reject if they don't happen to like the gift, starvation be damned. But no matter how many bags of chips and cookies you are carrying with you, everyone will keep on complaining about hunger.
  • A gigantic case of this crops up when doing free time events in Island Mode, as lampshaded in the tutorial. In Fuyuhiko's very first event, which was originally scheduled for comparatively late in the game, there's references to his attempted suicide and Peko and Mahiru's deaths, with him asking Hajime to visit their graves with him after everything's over and you can discuss this while you're on a tropical Monokuma-free idyll in which Fuyuhiko is still in one piece and Peko and Mahiru are very much alive.
• Gender-Equal Ensemble: Much like before, and now we even have a female mascot character to balance out Monokuma with Usami/Monomi. However, unlike in the first game, this is averted with the surviving cast (two girls, three boys).
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: In-universe example: Sonia mentions a certain anime is insanely popular in Novoselic. She herself is a great fan of old Japanese police shows.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: Chiaki slaps Akane in Chapter 5 when her attempted Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique on Nagito goes too far.
• Giant Medical Syringe: Mikan Tsumiki's execution has Monokuma approaching her with a giant syringe of glowing green liquid... which he then uses to fill a giant arm-shaped rocket up with fuel and launch Mikan into the stratosphere.
• A Glitch in the Matrix: Happens near the very beginning to represent Hajime's memory loss from being put into the simulation. Those who played the first game can easily put it off as just the memory being altered and not think about a virtual world at all. However, at the end of Chapter 5 this starts happening very frequently...
• Godlike Gamer: The VN has Chiaki Nanami, the Ultimate Gamer. The only games she's bad at are Dating Sims.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: Hajime Hinata's response to catching a brief glimpse of his past self (Izuru Kamukura) is to scream and deny himself.
• Good All Along: The Future Foundation is portrayed as an antagonistic force until very late in the game. Though besides Makoto and his allies, they really do want the students dead, due to them being Remnants of Despair.
• Go Out with a Smile: Gundham smiles to his Four Dark Devas of Destruction as he lays dying following his execution.
• Grand Finale: While its not the end to the franchise itself, the game puts an end to the story of Hope's Peak Academy and Junko Enoshima. Junko even states in the final trial she won't be taking up the Monokuma handle again.
• Grand Theft Me: The Junko AI wants to insert herself into the bodies of those who were either murdered or executed.

H

• Hand Wave: After the true Makoto Naegi appears in the last trial, A.I. Junko Enoshima mentions how he doesn't look like he's aged a day because of the program recognizing him as a high school student (with the same presumably going for his two partners). Ignoring the question of why a program designed for a specific group of people would even have high school data on him while out of his uniform, the better answer is that the designers probably didn't want to draw new sprites for the returning characters.
• Hard Work Hardly Works: The subject of a monologue/Hannibal Lecture at the start of Chapter 2, where Nagito claims that unless somebody's born with incredible talent, they can never earn it.
• Hate Plague: A non-supernatural version of this is essentially the end result of the Ultimate Despair's ideology. It began when the reserve students were Brainwashed and Crazy by Junko Enoshima and revolted against Hope's Peak Academy over their shabby treatment compared to the "main course" students. This spread into general social revolt due to the talents of SHSL Despair as the "have nots" rebelled against the "haves", and eventually descended into war without purpose.
• Hates Being Alone: Mikan. She intentionally makes a spectacle of herself to garner attention. Both times that she does, everyone calls attention to how unlikely it is that she could land in such embarrassing positions.
• Heel–Face Brainwashing: The entire point of the game's plot, and probably the most merciful thing one can do to a despair follower.
• Heel Realization:
  • The entire main cast, who realize that they are the remnants of Super High School-Level Despair, and thus the students who caused The Biggest, Most Despair-Inducing Incident in All of Human History.
  • Hajime realizes that the person who allowed the events of the game to take place was himself, when he smuggled the AI Junko program into the system as Izuru.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Subverted toward the end of the game. In order to beat AI Junko, the final five survivors all activate the Neo World Program shutdown sequence, which would also delete the memories they'd created up to that point (and in Hajime's case, his entire existence) and cause them to turn back into Ultimate Despair. However, the epilogue heavily implies that they made it out with their memories intact.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Hope's Peak Academy itself — there were hints at this in the first game, but the sequel spells it out. It exists to foster an obsessive level of elitism, splitting the world into "the super-talented" and "the rest," a philosophy that wouldn't sit well with many people. However, the actions detailed in this game make it clear that it accidentally engineered its own destruction.
  • The academy only cares about talent. If you possess enough of it, even if it is a bizarre or very subjective or very similar to a talent they already have, you're in. No matter how unstable, unethical or criminal you might be, and even if your talent could be harmful to yourself or to others, you'll be accepted and thrown in with your more peaceable peers without any supervision. So when one of them (Junko) turns out to be a nihilistic sociopath, she has access to a pool of hyper-talented people she can bend to her cause — including her Ultimate Soldier sibling and a nigh-unstoppable Academy experiment.
    • Several of these talented people were also unstable in a way that let them be easily taken advantage of. Mikan had a very abusive and neglectful background, Nagito had a degenerative disease messing with his brain functions, Gundham seemed to be seeking attention by being overly dramatic. Some of them additionally would have still been easy to manipulate due to obliviousness like Sonia and Akane, though the former at least partially comes from culture shock.
  • Any dubious (or downright criminal) activity they might commit was covered up by the Academy for the sake of reputation, up to and including mass murder. As a result, Izuru is left running loose, and Junko uses the cover up for her own ends. Danganronpa 3 confirms the Academy also covered up Fuyuhiko's murder of Sato.
  • They used the Reserve Course to bankroll their super-special students (and the research the academy was doing on them). These reserves were only for use as cash cows for the Academy and received none of the special treatment the Ultimates did — and they were made fully aware of their second class status. Unsurprisingly, when the Reserves saw that the Academy treated them like dirt, only to use their money to create a mass-murderer, they revolted just as Junko wanted them to, which allowed her to further manipulate them later.
  • The Academy used (at least) one of those "mundane" students as a guinea pig by exploiting his admiration for Hope's Peak, effectively killing the good-natured original student and replacing him with what they saw as "The Ultimate Hope". They inadvertently created the killer who will be a major factor in the Academy's downfall - and even after he kills multiple people, they still insist he is "The Ultimate Hope".
  • In general, the Academy didn't supervise or rein in its students, and encouraged the idea that they weren't answerable to "average" people. The lack of supervision ensured that nobody even realized that Junko was a threat or that she was manipulating other students to bend to her will, and both the games and side materials indicate that having free access to the Academy's expensive and specialized facilities was extremely useful to Ultimate Despair (for example, the mind-wiping device — apparently nobody on the staff thought it might be a bit risky to have such a thing lying around).
    • Even after the event had gone on to the entire world and was causing endless havoc, the Headmaster still didn't know that Junko and Mukuro were part of Ultimate Despair because the lack of supervision left him with no idea who actually was and who wasn't Ultimate Despair. If they'd actually tried to get the murderers in the school arrested, instead of covering up every murder that ever happened, this situation likely could have been averted.
• Homage: Monokuma's doujin game, Twilight Syndrome Murder Case, is incredibly faithful in both graphics and gameplay style to the real-life series, Twilight Syndrome by Human Entertainment, it is based on, albeit with somewhat simplified mechanics and a story that (for understandable reasons) is much, much smaller in scope.
• Hope Is Scary: Arguably the entire point of the game, for how interrelated hope and despair are as concepts.
• Hope Spot: A rather cruel one appears in the fifth chapter. In the fourth chapter, characters point out how there's been a pattern between the events in this game and that of the previous one. In the first game's fifth chapter, a character actually manages to survive Monokuma's execution by a last-second interruption. So when Chiaki notices an exit door in her execution chamber and runs off with one of the last Monomi spares, you're briefly led to believe that they might make it out after all. Then she smacks into a glass wall, revealing that Monokuma planned for this to happen just to rub it in.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: When the Junko AI causes everyone to come close to crossing the Despair Event Horizon in the Chapter 6 trial, the next Nonstop Debate section glitches out: the screen darkens, Hajime's health bars begin to fluctuate wildly, controls become unresponsive (the evidence bullet can't be fired, no matter how hard you try), and Hajime's health bottoms out once the dialogue finishes.
• Hormone-Addled Teenager: Teruteru, and Kazuichi to a lesser extent. Teruteru hits on the boys just as much as the girls, while Kazuichi has Single-Target Sexuality for Sonia (although he certainly has no qualms about the other girls, as he ogles how nice Chiaki and Peko look in their bikinis).
• Hotter and Sexier: While the previous game had a few Fanservice moments, this game ramps it up considerably. There are numerous swimsuit scenes (featuring both genders), far more innuendo (both accidental and intentional on the part of the characters), and a Shower Scene between two girls that's very NSFW.

I

• Idiot Ball: Briefly held by Hajime towards the end of Chapter 4. Nagito, who's been established throughout the entire game to say things of questionable validity, claims the file only contained Hajime's school profile and Hajime doesn't bat an eye at this. Even Nagito is a bit confused by how such an obvious lie actually worked.
• If You Can Read This: The diagram near the end of the game illustrating the procedure for the Hope Cultivation Plan includes tiny text that is actually a repeating news article about South Korea's economy.
• I Love the Dead: In the NISA translation, members of SHSL Despair apparently tried to impregnate Junko's corpse. In every version, the art strongly implies necrophilia.
• I Never Said It Was Poison: More or less the final nail in Mikan's coffin. Trying to shoot down the theory that she was the "Ibuki" in the fake suicide video, she states that it'd be impossible to spot any obvious differences between the two of them based on the video having only been shot from one angle - but since no one other than Hajime saw the video, the others quickly realize this means she's the one who staged it.
• Innocuously Important Episode: Chapter 3. Mikan's ruthless murder of Hiyoko and Ibuki happens because she's reverted to being a Remnant of Despair, which she was brainwashed into becoming by Junko Enoshima. However, it's not revealed that it's an indication of what the rest of the students (besides Chiaki) really are in the real world until the actual Wham Episode of Chapter 6.
• Insane Troll Logic:
  • Mikan tries arguing (very poorly) that her double murder of Ibuki and Hiyoko wasn't her fault because everyone else obviously hates her and they drove her to do what she did by making her into her current self with their bullying, so everyone should just immediately forgive her. Never mind the fact that sans from Hiyoko and Fuyuhiko in the first two chapters, literally everyone else in the of the cast shows no hostility towards Mikan, and in fact, a lot of them have shown her the exact opposite, and even Fuyuhiko was nice to her in Chapter 3. This is also a doubly awful excuse, as Hiyoko, the only person in the whole cast who is shown directly bullying Mikan, and thus the only one Mikan might have some ounce of justified hostility towards, was only killed out of necessity due to being a chance witness in Ibuki's killing. Ibuki, the most cheerful and friendly character bar none, never did anything to harm Mikan, despite being who she picks as her victim.
  • During Chapter 4's trial, when Hajime questions Gundham how he was able to hear the funhouse's alarm going off even though the Deluxe Room he was supposedly sleeping in was soundproof, Gundham responds with a claim that's ridiculous even for him: because he and his hamsters collectively have five sets of ears, he has 5x the hearing ability of a normal human. Everyone is so dumbfounded by this explanation that he has to walk back his own chuuni-persona a bit and provide a more plausible lie to keep the suspicion off of him.
• Impaled Palm: Nagito does this to himself during his elaborate suicide to make it seem like his right hand was incapacitated from the start.
• Improvised Imprisonment: Kazuichi and Nekomaru tied up Nagito in order to prevent another murder from happening in Chapter 2. They have him chained up and kept in the lodge, where they regularly feed him meals to prevent him from starving.
• Interface Screw: The investigation and second half of Chapter 6's trial has many of these.
• Intimate Lotion Application: When the cast has a beach party in the prologue, the perverted Teruteru brings some suntan lotion and asks the group if anyone would like him to rub them down. Everyone can see through his perverted intentions and refuses... except for Nekomaru, who innocently accepts the offer. At first, it looks like Teruteru won't want to do it on a man (for now, he's only acted as a pervert towards the girls), but then he accepts, claiming that "his tastes are pretty open", much to Mahiru's surprise.
• Irony: In regards to how the killing game is conducted in comparison to the one in Trigger Happy Havoc.
  • In Trigger Happy Havoc, the mastermind's goal is winning a game of hope versus despair, and they use rules to create a killing game and they provide motives to tempt the cast into killing each other. However, the setting is grounded in reality and there is nothing stopping the mastermind from breaking said rules, besides the risk of "defeat by disqualification" in the eyes of those watching the game. In fact, the mastermind does cheat the game and break the rules in an attempt to kill off their most dangerous threat.
  • Here, the mastermind's objectives are killing as much of the cast as possible, and luring their enemy into an extremely dangerous trap. In other words, the mastermind isn't playing a game here. However, since the setting is within a virtual reality (referred to as an actual game), and because the mastermind exists as an "NPC" within the virtual reality, they are physically forced to abide by the rules that already exist (though they can still add new ones). Because the mastermind can't kill the cast directly, they have to work around the rules and construct a fake killing game and either tempt or force (via Brainwashed and Crazy and/or Morton's Fork) the cast members to kill each other. The mastermind is even forced to save the lives of people that are mortally wounded if Monokuma was the one that injured them, assuming they aren't a rule breaker.

J

• Just Eat Gilligan: During the first trial, Nagito reveals himself to be highly dangerous, essentially being the reason why the first murder happened the way it did, even if he's not the direct perpetrator. To their credit, some of the students, specifically Nekomaru and Kazuichi, decide that Nagito is definitely too dangerous to be left to his own devices and tie him up at the start of chapter 2... But after Monomi frees him in a misguided attempt at teaching forgiveness, the others just kind of forget about how much of a threat he is, despite him making it clear that his offer to cooperate with anyone planning to kill him still stands. Nagito is thus left to meddle with the following cases as much as he wants (which he surprisingly doesn't do much, but the others couldn't predict that). It takes until chapter 5 for them to attempt tying him up again, at which point it's too late to stop him.
  • The class treats Fuyuhiko's constant death threats as a joke at worst and at best see him as a limited threat even though he's deadly serious, and is obviously very unstable snapping at everything for little to no reason, while Hajime takes note of this especially after its clear Fuyuhiko played Twilight Syndrome and is bordering on deranged when Hajime talks to him, and even thinks to himself that he should tell the class about this. He then doesn't say anything and the class doesn't act upon the very clear threat in front of them. Then Fuyuhiko proceeds to completely snap, luring Mahiru to her death and indirectly getting Peko killed, a very easily preventable situation if the class didn't ignore his 100 plus death threats and monitored his very suspicious activity instead of allowing him free reign to do whatever he liked.

K

• Kill It with Fire: As the culmination of the various appalled reactions to the disturbing-looking memorial to Mahiru, Nekomaru proposes they burn it.

L

• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Monokuma reveals early on that all of the cast have had their memories stolen by the Future Foundation. This is true, but for good reason: they were all traumatic memories of their time as part of Ultimate Level Despair, and the Neo World Program was designed to create new, happier memories to fill the gap.
• Last Episode Theme Reprise: Kicks in during the final moments of the game, for a truly satisfying moment when Hajime and his peers choose hope and purge their reality.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: Even if he looks quite different in this outing, the presence of a character named Byakuya Togami with an identical talent suggests that he survived the Killing Game from the first game. This becomes an explicit spoiler in Chapter 4, when the group find a report showing all survivors of the first game. Byakuya's presence there becomes a mystery that doesn't get resolved for a while.
• Lava Is Boiling Kool-Aid: Teruteru's execution involves him getting dropped into an active volcano, upon which he proceeds to float to the surface after being deep-fried.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • Throughout the game, Monokuma seems to subtly wink at the player several times. For example, shortly after his arrival, he derides the sappy idea of a friendly school trip, since his "school life of mutual killing" is way more exciting. This is likely to evoke the player's feelings, who was presumably waiting impatiently to get to the juicy murder mysteries already.
  • When Ibuki mistakes sparring for a serious fight:
    Ibuki: I'mpanickingsomuchIdon'tevenhavetimetospacemywords!
  • In Chapter 6, upon the reveal that the game took place within a program, Monokuma compares it all to a "game world", leading to this line from Kazuichi:
    Kazuichi: If this is a game... are my words being displayed in a text window right now?!
  • Also from Chapter 6:
    Sonia: I do not want any more last-minute plot twists!
  • Yet another from Chapter 6:
    Junko: The game where you throw words back at my face is over.
  • And another from Chapter 6, after arriving in Hope's Peak Academy:
    Monokuma: I went to the trouble to bring you to Hope's Peak Academy, and you don't feel surprised or nostalgic... Oh well, it's not like I did this for you guys. Even if you don't feel nostalgic, I'm sure someone is feeling nostalgic right now!
    Hajime: ...Someone?
  • Really, the very concept of them being in a game in the first place. Monokuma could have just called it a simulation, but he specifies that it's a game, and the dialogue afterwards creates intentional parallels between the game they're in and the game you're playing. Junko even asks the protagonist a question that prompts another gameplay section merely because it's the rules of the game.
• Lending a Backhand: When Monokuma attempts to starve the students into committing a murder in Chapter 4, he notices that the students look "unhealthy" and "helps them be healthier" by forcing them to participate in "Monokuma Tai Chi", which exhausts the students and leaves them hungrier than before.
• Lesser of Two Evils: Within the events of the story, this happens twice.
  • The first time this trope is invoked is in Chapter 4, when Gundham chooses to murder someone else over having everybody else starve to death. To test everyone's will to live and to subvert the trope, he made the case a Xanatos Gambit that would benefit him whether everyone eventually found out he was the culprit or not.
  • The second time this trope is invoked is in the last dilemma Junko gives to everyone before having her artificial intelligence corrupted by the Forced Shutdown. Between uploading their avatars into the system and, therefore, Junko herself into the system; or returning their consciousness to their Ultimate Despair forms before being transported to the Neo World Program, Hajime is encouraged by an apparition of Chiaki, who encourages the rest of the game's cast, to choose the latter choice as it will result in something less likely of a Class 2 edition of the Tragedy.
• Lighter and Softer: The game starts out looking like this. Its first opening animation is very upbeat, almost dating sim-like, and the colors of the characters and the environment are notably much brighter than the first game. And then Monokuma comes into the picture. In the end, the game arguably still qualifies. Compared to the original, it keeps a much more optimistic attitude in regards to a lot of things, and ends on a much more overtly hopeful note. Additionally, most culprits are Sympathetic Murderers with understandable motives in one way or another, and since all the murders happened inside a simulation, every student stayed alive, with those "killed" actually being rendered comatose.
• Lights Off, Somebody Dies: During the party in Chapter 1, there's a blackout. The lights come back on to reveal... that Tsumiki has tripped again. It's a Double Subversion. The real victim was hidden underneath one of the tables.
• Literary Allusion Title: The subtitle seems to be a reference to Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei.
• Loophole Abuse:
  • After everyone has voted her as the blackened in chapter 2, Peko tries to argue that she is not actually the murderer, but rather the murder weapon: she considers herself to be a tool without free will of her own to be used by Fuyuhiko, who is therefore the real murderer. This would mean that he gets to go free while everyone else is executed, as the votes have already been cast. Monokuma says he is willing to accept this argument, but only if Fuyuhiko is willing to admit that he does not care about Peko. It doesn't work: Fuyuhiko says he never saw her as a tool and confesses he's actually in love with her, so she is considered to be the blackened. Which is exactly what Monokuma expected to happen, since he then basically admits he never planned on letting the "tool" excuse slide in the first place and only pretended to go along with the idea since he knew Fuyuhiko's confession would only cause both him and Peko to feel more despair before her execution.
  • In Chapter 5, Hajime demands that Monokuma stop Nagito from blowing up the islands by pointing out that it breaks the rule about an individual not being allowed to kill more than two people. Monokuma refuses, saying that since Nagito hasn't broken the rule yet, he isn't deserving of punishment until then. Of course, he possibly only said that because he knew Nagito's bomb threat was a bluff and in no danger of killing anyone.
  • The whole killing game is only possible because of this, something Junko lampshades explicitly at the final trial. Once Monokuma took on the authority of "teacher," he was forced to find loopholes in the school trip's unbreakable rules in order to create a killing game without also violating said rules. Because Usami was a highly-developed AI, the rules bound her (and later Monokuma) as much as the students to prevent her from going rogue or acting outside the bounds of her programming. Monokuma was subsequently caught by rules meant to ensure the students' safety: not only may he not harm any students directly (unless they break a rule), he also can't allow any innocent students to die. In order to get around this, Monokuma made the "student activity" the Mutual Killing Game, both so the students began killing each other (and each murderer would need punishment, as being discovered as the blackened would be breaking the first rule, hence it fitting the "execution" formula with little effort) and to avoid being forced to intervene to save the students — the teacher is explicitly forbidden from meddling with the student activity, regardless of what the student activity is. The fourth motive, making "see how long the students can last without food or water until a killing game starts" the student activity, also matches this loophole and the "No more than 2 victims per killer" is following the "no excessive violence" aspect of the first rule in the eyes of Monokuma.
• Loss of Inhibitions: The Despair Disease in Chapter 3, which changes people's personalities, is revealed to have inflicted this on Mikan as well as restore her memories from before the Killing Game. During the third Class Trial, she drops her submissive persona and screams about her rage towards those who have tormented her, becoming much more assertive and even getting Nagito to shut up.
• Lotus-Eater Machine:
  • The entire game is revealed to be this, as a radical new method for rehabilitating those who were Brainwashed and Crazy by Junko and the Ultimate Despair by replacing their traumatic memories with new, happy ones.
  • In the Chapter 6 trial, when a Sadistic Choice leaves Hajime paralyzed with indecision, the Junko AI fires a "Nihil Beam" that traps him in an endlessly looping Nonstop Debate with Usami and all of Hajime's friends, alive and well.

M

• Madness Mantra:
  • Prologue: "Always always always..."
  • Chapter 3: "Not fair not fair not fair" and "Forgive me!"
  • Chapter 4 (in Hajime's head): "I'm hungry hungry hungry hungry hungry hungry..."
  • Chapter 6: "death death death death death..." and "Disappear disappear disappear disappear disappear..."
• Major Injury Underreaction: In chapter 2, Akane sees nothing wrong with going ahead with her beach plans despite having a gushing head wound from her sparring session with Nekomaru.
• Mama's Boy: A sympathetic example with Teruteru, who's motivation was to get back to his sick mother, and he screams for his mother just before he's dragged off to be executed.
  • Also, Gundham mentions in his free time events that he'd eat his mother's terrible cooking because she'd cry if he didn't. He also refers to her as "an angel" when talking about his origins. Aw!
• Massive Numbered Siblings: Akane is the oldest of seven siblings and she had to take care of them growing up.
• Meaningful Echo: Makoto uses 11037 as a pass-code for the students to use to assure their safety, the same "number" Sayaka scrawled on the wall to save him during the first game's first trial.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Jabberwock is a combination of Jabber (arguments) and wocer (result), according to Lewis Carroll.
  • The kanji for "Chi" in Chiaki Nanami, meaning "thousand," is the same as the "Chi" in Chihiro Fujisaki.
• Meat-O-Vision: In Chapter 4, Sonia sees Hajime and Chiaki's faces as cake after nearly two days locked in the funhouse with nothing to eat.
• Mechanical Animals: Monokuma summons "The Monobeasts": five mechanical weapons shaped after animals (a horse, an eagle, a tiger, a snake, and a gorilla) to protect him and block off access to other areas on the island chain until later in the game.
• Medium Blending: The Twilight Syndrome game in Chapter 2 (much like the real-life game series) ends with one of the girls in the game found murdered, which is an edited real-life photo.
• Mêlée à Trois: Subverted. Monokuma makes the Future Foundation out to be an evil organization that caused The End of the World as We Know It, making the story a three-way conflict between himself, the students, and the Future Foundation, but in the final chapter it turns out the Future Foundation (and by extension the "traitor" planted by them) are on the students' side, and Monokuma leading them to believe otherwise was just another plot to get them to kill each other.
• Mental Shutdown: This was Junko's ultimate plot in orchestrating the killing game. With the avatars of the remnants dead, their bodies in the real world are left without functioning brains. Junko planned to infect the dead students' brains with her conciousness, but Hajime uses his newfound hope power to summon Usami and destroy her. At the end of the game, the living students isolate themselves on the real Jabberwock Island to hopefully restore the brains of their friends.
• Mind Screw: Everything after the Chapter 5 trial, with the entire plot getting turned upside-down, almost veering into Gainax Ending territory.
• Mind Virus: The "Despair Disease" that Monokuma spreads in Chapter 3.
• Moe: In-universe, this is invoked by Hiyoko to win more fans as a traditional dancer. As popular as this makes her, it's not her true personality.
• Mood Whiplash: Several. Some of the more notable ones:
  • In Chapter 2, an extended Fanservice sequence ends with Kazuichi stumbling across the second murder victim. The murderer being wet in this sequence is later used against her.
  • In Chapter 3, Ibuki tries to raise everyone's spirits with a rock concert, provoking some hilarious reactions... until Monomi interrupts with the news that Akane is trying to kill Monokuma, and everyone runs off, which results in Nekomaru ending up almost killed.
    • Also, later on in the chapter, Hajime wakes up with Mikan in bed with him a second time... then Hajime sees the video of someone hanging themselves...
  • In his final free time event Teruteru has a typical end-of-free-time epiphany about what's really important to him... then apparently gives Hajime a Mickey Finn in a rice ball.
• Mythology Gag: Several plot twists of the first game are discussed, usually to be made fun of.
  • After revealing information that made up one of the final, climactic reveals of the first game, Monokuma declares that "Only a total hack would wait until the end of the story to reveal a cliched twist like that!"
  • "Or, in other words... that one of us is a serial killer? That sounds like a plot twist from some kind of weird game or something..."
  • When infected with the Despair Disease and only able to tell lies, Nagito goes on a bizarre rant claiming that one of the students is actually a pair of twins masterminding the mutual killing.

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