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L
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: All the students had their memories of their time at Hope's Peak after attending erased, to set it up so that they had never come to the school before, with the exception of the two students who performed the brainwashing on the others.
- Last Episode Theme Reprise:
- Setting a trend for the whole franchise, Chapters 5 and 6 give us a rockified reprise of the investigation theme. Fittingly for the climax,
it is awesome. - The final discussion involves Makoto trying to give Aoi, Yasuhiro, Jill, Byakuya, and Kyoko hope so they can stop the mastermind. Once he convinces the first four, the main theme kicks in when the discussion loops back around and Kyoko's previously untouchable statement changes to a weak point.
- Setting a trend for the whole franchise, Chapters 5 and 6 give us a rockified reprise of the investigation theme. Fittingly for the climax,
- Law Procedural: An aspect of the Class Trials, hence the comparisons to Ace Attorney.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
- In chapter 5:Aoi: Hey, Hiro. When did you get that way? I don't remember you acting like that when we got here...
Yasuhiro: My character wasn't yet well established back then. - Another one in Chapter 5, when discussing the locked biology lab.Yasuhiro: Based on what we experienced so far, it's probably some kind of a freaky creature. A gigantic last boss type.
Aoi: But... this isn't an action game... - After the final trial, as the survivors prepare to leave:Makoto: We stood there, as if we were in an epilogue that comes before the ending credits.
- During the sixth trial, Junko says she's tired of expositioning stuff.
- In chapter 5:
- Left Hanging: What the Tragedy was, what Junko's Ultimate Despair group is, how the students lost their memories, why Junko and Mukuro have different last names, and what actually happened to the survivors after leaving the school in the epilogue is left unexplained. Most of this has been answered in later installments, however.
- Limited Wardrobe: The game takes place across about two weeks, during which nobody is seeing wearing a different uniform than usual, though a few students make reference to having multiple copies of the same outfit.
- Linked List Clue Methodology: This trope seems to direct the flow of the investigations.
- Locked Room Mystery: Chapter 4. The victim was found in a room barred from the inside, that Makoto had to break down to open. Kyoko even explicitly calls it out as one of these and describes four main types of locked rooms: the door was locked from the outside after the victim was killed, the victim was killed via some sort of trap or device from outside the room, the killer hides in the room and leaves after the door is unlocked, and the room only looks locked and had a secret exit that the killer used. It eventually turns out that it's none of these. Instead, it's what our analysis page calls a Type 4; Suicide, Not Murder. Sakura killed herself and used the locked room to make sure nobody else could be blamed for her murder.
- Logical Fallacies: The "Bullet Time Battle" sections of a trial occur when a suspect is no longer using arguments that can be defeated with evidence and instead tries to bully Makoto with various fallacies.
- Loophole Abuse: Monokuma's rules all have loopholes in the wording, something he explicitly points out, saying that he loves people finding clever ways to exploit his rules.
- For instance, students aren't allowed to sleep anywhere but the dorm rooms — but they also don't have to sleep in their room specifically.
- It's also noted that it is specifically deliberately falling asleep outside the dorms is prohibited; fainting or being knocked out is fine, which is why Makoto and Fukawa aren't killed for fainting upon seeing corpses.
- Students cannot lend their IDs to other students. However, there are no rules forbidding borrowing or stealing one, and dead students can't be punished or stop anyone from taking theirs.
- One that comes up in chapter 3 is that it's useless to be someone's accomplice, because only the killers graduate. But if two people act as each other's accomplices and both kill someone, then both are killers and can graduate together. It also doesn't stop the killer from tricking another student into becoming their accomplice, which is what Celeste did with Hifumi; she convinced him they were going to exploit the former loophole, but in reality, her plan involved killing him and graduating alone.
- In Chapter 4, Monokuma makes a new rule stating that students are not allowed to break down locked doors, so Sakura can't break into the Headmaster's office. However, doors that weren't locked but barred by some other means, such as the subsequent Locked Room Mystery, don't count.
- Students can only kill two people each, to prevent someone being able to win by just killing everyone who could vote to convict them. But Monokuma is not bound by this, and in fact the rules say he'll kill all students (Blackened excepted) at once if they vote wrong. When Aoi wants to kill all the others for supposedly causing Sakura's suicide, she takes advantage of that by deliberately tampering with the scene to frame herself, hoping that they'd all vote for her and die. Of course, this would mean she died too, but Aoi also blamed herself and wanted to die with the rest.
- Sakura was ordered by Monokuma to kill someone or her family's dojo would face the consequences. However, Monokuma never said Sakura had to kill someone else.
- For instance, students aren't allowed to sleep anywhere but the dorm rooms — but they also don't have to sleep in their room specifically.
- Lost in Translation: In the Spike Chunsoft version, Chapter 5 is titled "100 Meter Dash! Problems of a Junk Food Junkie". The original translations make a pun on the phrase "if you want peace, prepare for war" ("If you want Donuts, Prepare for Despair"), and the original Japanese title (which roughly translates to "The Despair Junk Food of a Dashing Youth") is based on a Light Novel (whose title roughly translates to "The Parabellum of a Dashing Youth"), but the Chunsoft version doesn't have any hints to the phrases in dialogue and so does not make sense if you don't know that background.
- Lotsa People Try to Dun It: In the case of Chapter 4, Sakura appears to have been killed by a blow to the head. The attempt to determine who delivered the killing blow is complicated when it turns out that Yasuhiro hit Sakura over the head with a Monokuma bottle, and then Genocide Jill also hit Sakura over the head with a Monokuma bottle shortly after. Rather than either of them, it turns out that Sakura actually committed suicide by poison in order to protect everyone.
- Lucky Charms Title: Show Within a Show Demon Angel ☆ Pretty Pudgy Princess. Hifumi corrects Makoto when he doesn't pronounce the ☆.
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- A MacGuffin Full of Money: In Chapter 3, Monokuma offers ten billion yen (ten million dollars in the English dub) to the first student to murder a classmate and escape the school as a murder motive. Togami thinks it's not enough of a bribe.
- Made of Indestructium: According to Monokuma, the e-Handbooks can withstand 10 tonnes of pressure and are waterproof up to 100 meters deep (with heat being their only weakness). The anime made them look like typically-delicate modern smartphones too.
- Manslaughter Provocation: Discussed during the first case: While ferreting out Leon as the murderer, it's revealed that the victim, Sayaka, lured him into a trap that backfired. Once exposed, Leon tries to claim that he was forced to kill Sayaka in self-defense. However, Makoto points out that after Sayaka dropped the knife and shut herself in the bathroom, Leon went back to his room unimpeded. He would have been safe if he'd stayed there and locked his door, but instead he went back to Sayaka's room after he'd fetched his tool kit, used it to break into the bathroom, and stabbed her with the knife, making it murder rather than self-defense. The manga gives Leon's argument more of a point, as he was intending to calm down Sayaka, who was panicking, but kept the knife he took from her and accidentally stabbed her in the process.
- Medium Blending: The Closing Arguments are manga panels.
- Mistaken for Evidence: Happens frequently, sometimes because the evidence was planted, and other times because the students love jumping to the most obvious conclusion.
- The students initially think that Sayaka being killed in Makoto's room means that he did the deed, though he protests that he switched rooms with her.
- Chihiro's crucifixion and the 'Bloodbath Fever/Blood Lust' note were red herrings planted by Byakuya just to be a troll.
- The Justice Hammers in chapter 3 are tools to create a false narrative, as is the Robo Justice costume.
- Toko's name being written in blood on the magazine in chapter 4 isn't evidence; Yasuhiro is just really bad at framing people.
- Nothing in chapter 5 is legitimate evidence, being entirely planted by Junko to frame Kyoko.
- The Mole: The end of Chapter 2 reveals that one of the students is in league with Monokuma, but does not show who it is. The presence of a mole amongst the students is the theme of Monokuma's fourth motive. The twist is that he reveals who it is right off the bat — and openly orders them to kill one of the others.
- Motive Rant: In one chapter, Monokuma actually does this for the murderer, who doesn't want to explain what happened even after exposure. Lampshaded by Aoi in Chapter 4, when she demands to know why the others want her to explain everything to them just because she's the culprit (she's not the culprit, and Kyoko wants her to elaborate because she's pretty sure that Aoi doesn't know some important things about the crime).
- Mundane Made Awesome: The school trials are some of the flashiest debates you'll ever see — you literally shoot down arguments as they fly across the screen in text form.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Twice in case 4. Aoi Asahina first, when Monokuma gleefully informs her that the suicide note that caused her to try to frame everyone else was a fake, so Aoi badly screwed up. The second one is by everyone else, who admit that the real problem was that they all got angry at Sakura in the first place, so they decide to let bygones be bygones, not punish Aoi, and unite against Monokuma.
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- Never Suicide: Averted in Chapter 4, where the trial's discussion transferred from multiple suspects before arriving at this conclusion (thus justifying the Locked Room Mystery).
- Never Trust a Trailer: Promotional material showed all fifteen students in the trial scenes (obscuring who dies in Chapter 1) and heavily implied that Sayaka would be the main love interest for Makoto — while Makoto is somewhat interested in her, she's ultimately the first victim. The free demo goes so far as to change the victim of the first case to Yasuhiro. This was repeated in trailers for the anime.
- New Game Plus: The player can replay chapters after completing them, letting Makoto keep any skills he has gotten from the other characters. In the PSP version, which lacks School Mode, this is required to view all the friendship scenes for certain characters who don't make it past the first chapter.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Chapter 2 introduces the men's idol group Tornado.
- No Mercy for Murderers: Case 2 has Mondo regretting killing Chihiro due to his envy, but was executed due to the rules.
- Non-Standard Game Over: Should the player choose to pursue Kyoko's lie during the chapter 5 trial, she'll end up as the blackened and be promptly executed. The game then fast-forwards to show that the remaining students have settled down in their Gilded Cage, with Aoi bearing children to the remaining male students and Toko dying sometime in the interem. Makoto questions whether this is truly hope before declaring that it isn't. The game then jumps back to the point where the player chooses whether or not to pursue Kyoko's lie.
- Noodle Incident: We never do find out what the Despairing Incident actually was — at least, until the prequel shed some light on it, and the sequel even more so.
- Not Hyperbole: Junko makes it clear that the Tragedy and society's collapse is not an exaggeration or joke on her part, even though her former classmates are in denial of this fact. She is also the one responsible for it, and as shown in the prequel anime, she did in fact personally conduct it alongside Mukuro.
O
- Obvious Rule Patch: Monokuma often does does it whenever the students point out something game-breaking he left out (though he'll leave loopholes in just for funsies).
- When it's pointed out that anyone could get around the gender restrictions on changing rooms by using somebody else's student handbook, Monokuma adds a rule forbidding students to loan them to others... though he leaves a loophole where anyone can nick a dead student's handbook.
- When Hifumi freaks out over a potential serial killer going on a rampage, Monokuma adds a limit of two victims per Blackened; multiple kills are allowed to keep things interesting, but a student can't get around class trials by killing everyone until there aren't enough people left to convict them.
- When Yasuhiro comments that there's no real need to worry about the headmaster's door being locked because it's still just wood and Sakura is strong enough to break through it, he adds a rule forbidding breaking down locked doors- though as it turns out, Sakura breaks it anyway because she was going to kill herself and so didn't fear Monokuma's punishment.
- Oh, Crap!: Sayaka has one when Leon breaks into the bathroom she was in.
- One-Steve Limit: It becomes a plot point that there's two different students with the name Yasuhiro. One has it as a given name and one as a surname, and only one of them is common knowledge.
- Ontological Mystery: None of the characters have any idea how the school was locked down (or even if they're still in the school). However, Monokuma explicitly permits the students to investigate what's going on, as long as they abide by his other rules.
- Overly-Long Tongue: Genocide Jack has one that is constantly on display.
P
- Pac Man Fever: A meta-example, in that the game, while not having any video games within the game, features monochrome 8-Bit representations of all of the students, and the executions feature 8-bit animations of Monokuma dragging off the culprit to their doom, complete with sound effects ripped straight from the Atari 2600 port of Donkey Kong. As if to reiterate to the characters that this is a game to the Mastermind. The anime ups this with the end credits that spoof an NES title screen.
- The Password Is Always "Swordfish": Played with. At one point, Kyoko finds a door with a password lock and uses every bit of information she can find on the man who set it up to try and figure the password but comes up empty-handed. Makoto then guesses it on his first try, because it's 'kyokokirigiri'- fairly obvious to most people, but Kyoko's personal bias against him meant she never considered that he might care enough about her for her name to be his password.
- Pictorial Letter Substitution: The title logo has the crosshairs of a gun as the dot of the 'i' in 'Trigger.'
- Pink Girl, Blue Boy: Invoked by the dorm rooms, which are identical besides having blue sheets/blankets for male students and pink for females. A similar theme is used for the locker room doors on the second floor (except with red replacing pink).
- Poor Communication Kills:
- Some of the students are more willing to cooperate with Makoto than others, but it's not unusual for somebody to hold back information until the trial.
- Poor communication almost kills everyone! In chapter 4, Aoi reads a fake suicide note by Monokuma implicating the others, so she tries to frame herself for murder so they'd all die with her. The others forgive Aoi, though, because their own poor communication skills caused them all to get angry at Sakura in the first place since they thought, as the mole, Sakura was going to kill them and they didn't even talk to her to confirm it, which made it necessary for her to commit suicide to calm the discord and chaos.
- Prisoner's Dilemma: Celestia Ludenberg references the concept and uses the example of two countries building their military strength under fear of betrayal from the other to explain the School Life of Mutual Killing that the 15 students have been forced into (in which uniting together against The Mastermind would be ideal, but none can escape the possibility of someone cracking under the pressure of wanting to escape the school by choosing to kill someone else).
- Public Execution: The fate of every culprit who fails to get away with murder. The audience seems to be limited to the surviving students, until it's revealed that each execution, along with the rest of the happenings in the school, had been broadcast to the entire world since the very beginning.
- Public Bathhouse Scene: In Chapter 3, if the player gets the "A Man's Fantasy" item during Chapter 2, it will trigger an opportunity for a bonus cutscene during Chapter 3 where Makoto will gather the courage to go peeking at the girls while they're bathing. The player gets a fanservice event CG with Sakura, Aoi, Kyoko, Toko, and Celestia all clad in Modesty Towels while bathing, except for Sakura, who wears her towel around her waist, but her modesty concealed by having her bare back turned to the camera, though she's still showing a generous amount of Sideboob. The scene also reveals that Kyoko has Hartman Hips.
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- Rape as Drama: Invoked and Exploited when Celeste lies to Hifumi that Kiyondo assaulted her, to convince him to assist her.
- Rapid-Fire "No!": Leon exclaims several no's before he gets executed.
- Rasputinian Death: Sakura's death. First, she fights Monokuma, who is unable to land a killing blow but still leaves her injured. After that, two people try to kill her by smashing bottles on her head. Both times, her assailants think they succeeded. Finally, she commits suicide by drinking poison.
- Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic: The trials always run smoothly enough that every student will usually have the chance to speak clearly and concisely, no matter if their characterization would imply a higher likelihood of shouting over everyone else (with things like stuttering and pauses usually being used as a sign of guilt). As heated as the discussions get, only the protagonist will actually jump into someone else's sentence, to the point that the sequel decided to include interruptions as a gameplay element in the form of Rebuttal Showdowns. The various "white noise," however, does seem to imply that people are talking in the background.
- Relationship Values: Makoto can hang out with the other students and give them presents. They'll reward him either with skills to be used during trial scenes, or by raising the maximum number of skill points Makoto has during trials, depending on how far he's progressed in hanging out with them. The downside to this, however, is that there's a limited number of "free time segments" in each chapter. When students get killed, they are no longer available to spend time with, and their skills cannot be acquired. Furthermore, even if they're still alive, some characters may be unavailable to spend time with for plot reasons. Fortunately, skills and free time progress both carry over on subsequent playthroughs, and in the re-release they can be earned at leisure in School Mode.
- Retcon: Subverted by the manga's depiction of Sayaka's death and Celestia's motive. While they do differ from what's presented in trials, said trials are Makoto's best deductions of what happened, and even then he notes that he's still unsure about certain things. Leon still killed Sayaka in the same way Makoto described, but Makoto was guessing about his motive (it's never mentioned in the game but implied to be Leon getting the idea that since Sayaka had tried to kill him first, nobody would miss her if he killed her to graduate), and while Makoto thinks Celestia might be lying about her motive, the manga confirms it.
- Revealing Cover-Up:
- In Chapter 6, the mastermind goes out of their way to avoid showing Junko's face in any images depicting her before the memory-wipe happened and the Deadly Game started. This is a necessary measure to prevent the characters from figuring out that the real Junko didn't look like the Junko they were introduced to (especially as "Junko's" initial excuse was Photoshop, but who'd photoshop class pictures?), but it makes it really obvious that she's the mastermind. Indeed, Makoto uses it as a crucial piece of evidence to come to that conclusion.
- Earlier, in Chapter 1, some of the major pieces of evidence against Leon besides the dying message come from his attempt to destroy his bloodstained jacketnote . Not only does it not burn completely, leaving a piece of bloody sleeve that matches his Limited Wardrobe, the other debris he leaves near the locked-down incinerator indicates it was turned on in a way that could only have been done by someone with his particular talent. All in all, he might have done better just stuffing it under his bed.
- Chihiro's broken e-card is a zig-zagged example. It's the clincher against Mondo since he's the only one who could have known they could be broken that way since he accidentally took his into the sauna with him to his sauna duel with Kiyotaka, but he wasn't really trying to exonerate himself but to keep his promise to keep Chihiro's true gender a secret; had Chihiro's e-card been looked over as part of the trial, the students would have immediately learned he was a boy.
- Reverse Whodunnit: The first case is an unintended variant in that it's not the case for the original Japanese audience, but very clear to the overseas fanbase. A major plot point is that the victim wrote down the killer's name in blood, but that it's in a code the students can't initially decipher (which Kyoko lampshades, noting that victims' messages are usually in some form of code so as not to alert the killer to their importance) so they think it's the number '11037'. Thing is, Sayaka's code was to write upside-down, mirrored, and in English, which is trivially easy to decipher if English is one's native language. Thus, the mystery for English-speaking fans isn't 'who killed Sayaka', but 'How did Leon get into Makoto's bedroom when Sayaka clearly stated that she wouldn't open the door for anyone?'
- Riddle for the Ages:
- Kiyotaka and Mondo refuse to answer who won their endurance contest in the sauna. The manga purports that Kiyotaka was the first to pass out, but its canonicity has never been confirmed nor denied.
- The nature of most students' dark secrets that comprise Monokuma's murder motive for Chapter 2. Makoto has his revealed to the player immediately, as he's the protagonist, and Chihiro, Mondo, and Toko have theirs come up in the trial, but Monokuma keeps his word of not revealing the others after Chapter 2's murder happen.
- Kyoko and Toko's motivational photographs in the final investigation, because Toko's never came up in the discussion and Kyoko refused to take hers. The anime shows Toko's, depicting the students playing in the snow without her, with Junko's face hidden by a recently-thrown snowball.
- Most of the mysteries brought up in the final trial are addressed in later installments, but it's never explained anywhere why the twin sisters Junko Enoshima and Mukuro Ikusaba have different surnames. When asked about it, Junko says she's tired of always getting asked that question and that the students should think of a reason themselves, and anyway the real answer is pretty boring.
- Running Gag: Aoi interrupting Monokuma at the start of the trials, claiming they already know who the culprit is.
- Rushmore Refacement: One of the images of "the outside world" that the mastermind shows the class in the final trial is of several famous monuments with Monokuma's face added to them. While it's real (as Genocide Jill proves) and is stated to be one of the things that happened due to "The Biggest, Most Awful, Most Tragic Event in Human History", it's still undetermined to what extent the total damage is.
