Danganronpa V 3 Killing Harmony / Tropes P to Z

Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony Trope Examples
A - D | E - H | I - O | P - Z

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P

• Passing the Torch:
  • In the demo, Makoto Naegi refers to himself and Hajime as Kaede's senpai, offering her words of encouragement all throughout.
  • Knowing her death is approaching, Kaede entrusts completing the trial to Shuichi (as well as her role as protagonist).
• Pictorial Letter Substitution: The title logo has a stylized version of Monokuma's eye acting as the '3.'
• Platform Hell: "Death Road of Despair". The difficulty approaches the level of the most infamous Platform Hell games, such as Kaizo Mario World, Syobon Action, and I Wanna Be the Guy: bombs falling out of nowhere, bombs disguised as coins that drop on top of you, bottomless pits and fire traps that appear out of nowhere, moving platforms that change speed when you approach them, all while you're being swarmed by flying exploding drones, and compounded with slippery controls. Of course, this is all intentional, since it's meant to emotionally torment the characters by giving them a slight hope of escaping, and completing it would make the rest of the game pointless, although it does grant an alternate ending. Later in the game, you need to clear the Death Road to advance the story, but this time you're armed with special hammers that can disable all the traps, making it much easier.
• Pool Scene: The hidden bonus scene in Chapter 2, where Shuichi sets up a parasol for Tenko at the pool, who brings Angie, Himino and K1-B0 along for a "celebrity like vacation" at the poolside, with Kirumi pampering them.
• Power Up Letdown: The "better" Psyche Taxi granted by the Twin Six skill will just make you crash into the walls and other cars with its faster top speed and big fat ass blocking your view, while also causing you to miss letter cubes that would have otherwise been perfectly timed to move into your path if you were using the default taxi.
• Production Foreshadowing: Two mannequins on the left side of Tsumugi's research lab feature the costumes of Sachika Hirasaka and Yuma Mashiro from Spike Chunsoft's then-upcoming game Zanki Zero: Last Beginning.
• Propping Up Their Patsy:
  • Kaede Akamatsu has a noticeably sympathetic example. During the first trial, Shuichi Saihara and Miu Iruma come under suspicion due to proximity to the crime scene and having developed cameras used in the murder, respectfully. Kaede, the actual blackened, comes to their defence, since she is actually perfectly willing to confess and face execution, and the only reason she doesn't do that immediately is because she wanted to use the trial as an opportunity to find out the mastermind, her actual intended murder target, and end the Deadly Game. Upon realising she can't find them, she fully confesses, and proceeds to Face Death with Dignity.
  • Inverted with one of Kokichi's preferred methods of helping during Trials being accusing students he knows aren't the Blackened, as the group hates him enough to argue the opposite and prove the person's innocence.
• Public Domain Soundtrack: Clair de Lune by Debussy is used twice, when Shuichi grieves over Kaede at the end of the first chapter, and during the Rebuttal Showdown between K1-B0 and Shuichi. The Flea Waltz shows up as the tune Kaede forcibly plays during her execution.
• Puzzle Reset: Danganronpa V3's last investigation features a time limit placed in by K1-B0, justifying itself with his claim about how much integrity his robotic body has. Despite the length being decent enough, every first attempt to complete the investigation in the set time period is impossible due to how slow the dialogue is. If the game allowed more than a possible whole hour before dawn came, then the player would be able to complete the investigation without potentially being crushed by K1-B0's debris.

R

• Recurring Element: Recurring designs of previous installments have appeared again:
  • Gonta Gokuhara as the Gentle Giant, similar to Sakura, Nekomaru, and The Great Gozu. Also, Sakura, Nekomaru, and Gonta all die during Chapter 4.
  • Himiko Yumeno as the Token Mini-Moe, similar to Chihiro and Hiyoko. And like Byakuya and Sonia, she also has her own Stalker with a Crush.
  • Ryoma Hoshi as the Nonstandard Character Design, similar to Hifumi, Teruteru, and Bandai.
  • Angie Yonaga as the energetic dark-skinned girl, similar to Aoi and Akane.
  • Rantaro Amami is this game's Ultimate ???, similar to Kyoko and Hajime previously.
  • Tenko Chabashira and Maki Harukawa are female characters with spectacular fighting ability, similar to Sakura, Mukuro, Peko, and Akane.
  • Kokichi Oma is a cute Tiny Schoolboy much like Makoto, Chihiro, Fuyuhiko, and Ryota. Also similarly to Mondo and Fuyuhiko, he has a talent that is typically considered evil.
  • K1-B0 as the Token Non-Human, similar to Alter Ego, Chiaki Nanami (AI), and Miaya Gekkogahara. He can also be considered the "Naegi lookalike", similar to Komaeda.
  • For the demo, we have Yasuhiro being the victim, killed in the bathroom again. Monokuma even lampshaded this stating how this was the "second time" Yasuhiro died.
  • In the Japanese dub, there is a major male character voiced by a woman named Megumi. Both Makoto and Nagito were also voiced by a woman named Megumi.
  • The first culprit is attached to a metal collar and leash and is dragged by the neck to their execution.
  • In the Japanese dub, the real protagonist is a boy who is voiced by a woman. Both Makoto and Hajime were also voiced by women.
  • The Leitmotif that plays during murder investigations, "Despair Searching", gets a more dramatic remix that plays during the investigations of Chapter 5 and 6, titled "Hope Searching". Just like "Box 15" and "Box 16" of the first game and "Ikoroshia (Homicide)" and "Ekoroshia (Kill Command)" of the second.
  • The Chapter 5 class trial is completely rigged in an unfair sort of way, and leads to the execution of one of the most important cast members who never intended to commit murder. The first game's 5th trial is Monokuma trying to kill off Kyoko Kirigiri by framing her for a murder that Junko committed. The 2nd game's 5th trial has Nagito Komaeda, the victim, set up his own death so that the culprit is completely random, unaware, and unidentifiable, a la Russian Roulette. This time, Kokichi Oma and Kaito Momota work together to hide the identity of the victim's corpse and make it impossible to tell for sure which one is dead and which one is still alive.
  • The Chapter 6 class trial brings to light an earth-shattering revelation that renders everyone's motives for murder completely meaningless.
  • Similar to Sakura Oogami and Chiaki Nanami's roles as the "Traitor" in their games, K1-B0 joined in as one. Although, he wasn't aware that he is one.
  • In Chapter 3, there is always one fake-out death. The first game has Hifumi faking that he is dead to complicate the order of the murders. The second is Nekomaru's, who was barely alive after the impact of the missile. V3 has Kokichi looking like he's dead, but turns out okay before the cutscene ends.
  • Chapter 3 features two victims once again.
  • Shuichi Saihara fills the male high school student with an ahoge protagonist role as his predecessors did before. Chapter 1 protagonist Kaede also has one, as does in-universe protagonist Keebo.
  • The final victim, Kokichi, has the most brutal death, similar to Mukuro, Nagito and Ruruka. His body is so destroyed the rest of the group is unable to identify him.
  • The more a character was promoted during pre-release, the more said character is going to die in first chapter — Kaede is the newest member of the club, joining Sayaka, the Ultimate Imposter, and Chisa.
  • The highest title of the game similar to what Makoto Naegi and Hajime Hinata (as Izuru Kamakura) got as the Ultimate Hope was achieved by K1-B0, the In-Universe protagonist, in the final trial.
  • Maki has a hidden talent, similar to how both Toko and the Ultimate Imposter have hidden talents.
  • Much like the other 2 games, they accuse the main character of being the culprit in the first chapter. However unlike Makoto and Hajime, Shuichi isn't the player character at the time and you have to prove his innocence while playing as Kaede.
  • Both here and in the second game the murder in the fifth chapter is orchestrated by the victim, and is constructed in such a way as to make it unsolvable.
• Red Is Heroic: Of the five Monokubs, the red Monotaro acts as the de facto leader of their sentai parody team and is the only one to briefly act on the side of the students. Also, when Kaito participates in a class trial inside an Exisal, it is the red one that is chosen, but given how this is only because he's the blackened for this case and for most of it he's assumed to be Kokichi, this may be a subversion.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Inverted with Maki and Tenko. Maki's signature color is red, yet she's The Stoic and is rather distant towards the group, while Tenko wears all blue and is easily one of the most emotional characters in the game.
• Rewatch Bonus: Replaying the second half of Chapter One knowing Kaede is the culprit makes a lot of seemingly innocuous things take on an entirely different meaning. It's also possible to pinpoint the exact moment during the trial that Shuichi realises she's the one who seemingly killed Rantaro. Replaying it with knowledge that Kaede is innocent and Tsumugi is the true killer recontextualises a lot of things about Rantaro's murder too, especially Rantaro's wound being on the back of his head rather than the top as it should have been if Kaede actually was the culprit.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: In the third trial, Korekiyo gets accused of being both Tenko and Angie's killers a lot, though in nearly all cases until you actually accuse him of both it's for reasons the evidence contradicts. You even have a Debate Scrum for the sake of not prematurely voting for him after he's confessed to Tenko's murder but not Angie's!
• Rotating Protagonist:
  • It first starts off in the first promo with K1-B0 as the protagonist, then in the second promo it became Kaede as the Protagonist, but turned out to be a Decoy Protagonist and it switched to Shuichi as the Protagonist in the real game, but then the cycle went back again with K1-B0 being the new protagonist in the Final Trial, and it ended with Shuichi being the protagonist again! Not to mention that you also get to play as Maki and Himiko for a short period of time.
  • The assistants in each chapter rotate. In chapter 1, it's Shuichi, in chapter 2, it's Kaito. In chapter 3, it's Maki, and in chapter 4 it's Kokichi. No one assists you in chapter 5 and in chapter 6; each of the survivors up to that point get a brief chance to act as Shuichi's assistant during the investigation.
• Ruder and Cruder: The franchise has always had regular profanity, but they were mostly occasional across individual characters (save for certain Sir Swears-a-Lot ones) and relatively mild in the first two main games. Killing Harmony, however, is much more offensive, with explicit sex jokes and harsher, constant swearing thanks to Miu and Kokichi.
• Rule of Funny: Who's the victim in the demo? Yasuhiro Hagakure, right down to reusing the image used of him for the Trigger Happy Havoc's demo. In its ending, he rejoins Makoto and Hajime, with it being revealed that the entire scenario was set up. This later takes on a much darker tone, since the actual game's main twist about the setting was also that the entire scenario was a ruse made up for the entertainment of others.
• Rule of Three:
  • Out of the playable characters, the three students with ahoges are the main playable characters.
  • Three people, Shuichi, Maki and Himiko, end up surviving the killing game.

S

• Sad Battle Music: The final Rebuttal Showdown in the last chapter, with K1-B0, trying to talk Shuichi out of his Heroic BSoD following the revelation that everything he knew is fiction.
• Sadistic Choice: As per series standard, the climax of the final chapter pits the remaining cast in one: Hope or Despair. Choose hope, and Tsumugi the mastermind shall receive punishment, but the remaining four will have to pick two to receive punishment as well (and by receiving punishment in this sense, it really means having to move on to the next iteration of the killing game). Choose despair, and K1-B0 is executed and the killing game continues. Either way, the audience is sated and Danganronpa will continue. The only option that won't allow Danganronpa to continue is by refusing to vote and giving the audience an ending they wouldn't like. However, doing so has another catch, as those who abstain from voting will be executed. Shuichi eventually talks the remaining cast into abstaining.
• Schrödinger's Butterfly: The only source of information we have about the killing game and the outside world is from Tsumugi, who is very much an Unreliable Expositor and whose story is full of contradictions, especially upon looking back from the beginning. This obviously raises a lot of questions: Does the entire world really watch these killing games? Were those videos of the participants real or more Fake Memories? How much of their personalities are their own and how much are the product of the flashback lights? Even the three survivors question what they were told at the end as they prepare to venture into the outside world. Very fitting for a game about truth and lies.
• Scenery Porn: The 2-3 seconds of exploration shown in the second teaser are absolutely beautiful.
• Self-Contained Demo: As with the first game, the first class trial in the demo contains a different murder victim, once again being Yasuhiro. In addition, it also features characters that do not show up in the actual game, at least not the real versions anyway; the aforementioned Yasuhiro, and the previous two protagonists, Makoto and Hajime.
• Sexy Discretion Shot: While most love hotel events are merely romantic, there are a few characters that aren't exactly ambiguous about what they want Shuichi to do with them. The events where a character successfully seduces him (Kaede's, Himiko's, Tsumugi's, Angie's) trail off before anything explicit happens.
• Sheathe Your Sword: The final confrontation requires you to refuse to play the mastermind's game by letting the time limit run out several times and abstaining from voting.
• Show Within a Show: The Danganronpa franchise is revealed to be this. After the success of Danganronpa and Super Danganronpa 2, Team Danganronpa started producing a reality TV series of Danganronpa, with New Danganronpa V3 being its 53rd installment. Hope's Peak Academy and the events surrounding it does not exist, but the students of the Gifted Inmates Academy (who were originally ordinary talentless students, who themselves were devoted fans of Danganronpa) had their memories altered to believe that it is real. The real world that has been watching them is a peaceful world; so peaceful, that the denizens have become languid and bored, and need stimulus in the form of Danganronpa. Maybe. The Stinger suggests the possibility that Tsumugi may have been lying about some or all of this.
• Shouting Free-for-All: This one introduces Mass Panic Debate, a harder version of the Nonstop Debate, where the characters frantically shout all at once, making the game even more confusing as the screen becomes a mess of panicked statements.
• Significant Name Shift: Such a shift occurs in the Japanese script of the game, specifically for Kaito and Shuichi. Kaito referring to Shuichi by his given name in the Japanese script is a sign of great respect and closeness. In the aftermath of chapter 4, the events of the trial's climax lead to Kaito feeling angry at Shuichi, and he shows this by going back to calling him Saihara, his surname. This is Lost in Translation, due to the English script having everyone just use given names, and as such, even when Kaito is angry, he still refers to Shuichi as such.
• Single-Attempt Game: Monokuma creates a VR game using the code from the Lotus-Eater Machine from the previous killing game and it's explained that if you suffer fatal trauma in the game, your real body goes into shock and dies as a result. Guess what happens immediately after.
• Spiritual Successor: What Gifted Inmates Academy is to Hope's Peak Academy, per preview material. According to the plot, the "Super High School Level" talents were scattered across the country, and only got gathered for the Killing Game.
• Spiteful Spoiler: Played for Drama. During the fourth trial, Shuichi has to lie in order to keep things moving. This enrages Kokichi, who reveals that the culprit of the trial is Gonta. As he puts it, if he can't win the game, then he's going to make it boring for everyone else.
• Status Effects: Despair Dungeon, being an RPG, has a smorgasboard of them.
  • Sleep: Character can't do anything until they take damage.
  • Confusion: Character cannot be controlled, starts attacking allies.
  • Poison: Character takes damage over time.
  • Blind: Character cannot connect with physical attacks.
  • Curse: Character cannot use abilities.
  • Apathy: Character loses Awakening points with every turn.
  • All Down: All stats for the afflicted character. The opposite of this is All Up, which is only cast on enemies. Both skills are exclusive to the bosses.
  • Despair: Character cannot heal. Effect exclusive to Monokuma V3.
• Stealth Pun: The subtitle, "Killing Harmony", takes on a literal meaning as Kaede, the initial protagonist and a pianist, dies.
• Stealth Sequel: The game is supposed to show the events that occurred following the dissolving of Junko Enoshima's influence on the world in the Hope Arc anime, after Makoto reopened Hope's Peak Academy and allowed anyone to enter through submissions than scouting. Instead of showing the effects in real-time, however, they are instead shown through the Flashback Lights under the guise of the Metafictional plot of the Danganronpa TV show.
• The Stinger:
  • The initial teaser trailer includes one, depicting the message "And more" from Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School, followed by a grainy image of an unseen female figure, apparently Chiaki Nanami from Side:Despair.
  • The game itself ends with one. Shuichi, Maki, and Himiko wake up outside in the aftermath of Keebo's Heroic Sacrifice; Tsumugi has been killed, the Danganronpa TV show has apparently been shut down, and a massive hole has been opened in the wall surrounding the Ultimate Academy, leading to the outside world. Shuichi points out that Tsumugi implied she copied this plan from someone, raising the possibility that she was lying about the backstory she presented to the group and that Hope's Peak and the Remnants of Despair really do exist. The three then decide to move forward into the outside world, reaffirmed in their belief that fiction can change reality.
• Sudden Contest Format Change:
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: In the final chapter, Shuichi finds some evidence that suggests the first trial was rigged, and Kaede was falsely executed, leading to him calling for a retrial. While this is seemingly unprecedented, Monokuma shows amusement in the idea and agrees to it. In the trial, Shuichi reveals the truth, exposing Tsumugi as the one who actually killed Rantaro and got away with it, undermining the rules of the game. At this point, Tsumugi reveals herself to be the mastermind, having used her position to subvert the rules and continue the killing game, which again, is an Immoral Reality Show, but this time, instead of hijacking the airwaves, the killing game is fully legal and backed by a studio, the result of a "Truman Show" Plot. Tsumugi then changes things up, so again, the vote is between hope and despair, but as a full on Sadistic Choice. Hope will have Tsumugi and two of the survivors move onto the next season of Danganronpa and partake in that killing game (it's implied Rantaro took a similar deal in the previous season), while despair will lead to K1-B0, the Ultimate Hope Robot, being executed and the killing game's continuation. Shuichi instead decides to Take a Third Option, where everyone abstains from voting, even knowing that doing so will lead to their execution, in order to give the show the most disappointing ending possible and drive the viewing audience away from the show. It takes a lot of effort, but Shuichi eventually convinces the others to abstain, even with K1-B0 being hijacked by said audience in the studio?s last ditch effort to foil his plan. Despite the intent for everyone to be executed, K1-B0 performs the execution, only killing Tsumugi and then proceeding to self destruct to destroy the set, allowing the remaining three to escape alive.
  • Kaede's Rube Goldberg Hates Your Guts killing machine in Chapter 1 is extremely impractical, relying heavily on precise, unlikely timing and positioning. Sure enough, it actually failed.
  • Kaede convinces the group to attempt the long, painful and frustrating Death Road of Despair over and over for a few hours. However, a few members of the group eventually get exhausted and revolt against Kaede after Kokichi Gaslights her into thinking she's torturing everyone else. Kaede may be an extremely inspirational and encouraging leader loved by all the other students, but even she has her limits. Thankfully, they've all made up by the next morning. Although some, such as Miu, Himiko, and Maki still blame her regardless, most of the students such as Tenko, Kaito, and Shuichi wouldn't forgive Kokichi for his harsh treatment to her.
  • No matter how much you talk about The Power of Friendship, a Death Seeker like Ryoma wasn't going to last long in a Killing Game.
  • The Love Hotel scenes have Shuichi taking a starring role in one of his classmates' fantasies. However, he has no way of knowing what that fantasy actually is beforehand, so he has to try to work it out while he's experiencing it. This often results in the classmate being upset or offended that Shuichi is seemingly playing dumb and forgetting their relationship, which he then has to smooth over.
  • When Shuichi, Maki, and Himiko discover that Danganronpa is a Reality Game Show that fabricate their minds for the sake of entertaining a world of humans who love nothing but killing games, They undergo a HUGE nightmarish Heroic BSoD and Sanity Slippage.

T

• Take That!:
  • In the English version of the Prologue, Monophanie says that "Daddy gets all his alternate facts from the most trusted names in fake news!", specifically while Monokuma is wearing a hat fashioned after a stereotypical military dictator and an evil eyepatch.
    • During the blackened of Chapter 2, Kirumi's motive explanation (also in the English dub), Monokuma says "the Prime Minister asked Kirumi to (in Donald Trump's voice) 'make this country great again.'"
  • After Chapter 2's intermission, Monodam says they're "BACK-TO-SQUARE-ONE", Monotaro quips "...Square won? If square won, they wouldn't have got eaten by the competition!", to which Monophanie replies "After that terrible movie, they had no other choice!"
• Take That, Audience!: Essentially what the entire final trial is, but especially the Bad and Meta Ending is; a lampooning of the fanbase's enjoyment of the Danganronpa franchise by criticizing its desire to see more killing games just to see who lives and who dies, who the new mastermind is, etc. Even previously it had a scene that called out audiences with uneventful or mediocre lives who cling hard to fiction, sometimes to the point of wanting to BE in a game as dangerous as Danganronpa because it sounds so exciting compared to their peaceful lives. Indeed, Danganronpa is a massive source of Sailor Earth.
• Taking You with Me: K1-B0 blows himself up to destroy Danganronpa at the end of the game.
• Tertiary Sexual Characteristics:
  • Being the only female Monokub, Monophanie wears a bikini top. Her left side is also pink.
  • During the initial explanation of the school rules, the boys and girls are represented by blue and red colored icons, respectively, though the girl icons also feature a red ribbon their heads.
• Theme Song Reveal: To the point of nearly being a Musical Spoiler, but typically their significance isn't immediately obvious.
  • Two of the Nonstop Debate themes, "Discussion -3rd Mix-" and "Discussion -PERJURY-", are almost identical, with a very subtle difference. When the latter is playing, you're able to lie.
  • When Kaede makes an objection, "Exisal Tribe" plays. This is the same music that plays when you're asked to select the culprit later in the trial.
• This Is a Work of Fiction: The game's opening start-up uses this, even though no previous installment had such a disclaimer. It later turns out to be quite literal with its words and it's NOT played for Laughs.
• This Loser Is You: The Makoto (not Makoto Naegi) in the real world who is hooked onto Danganronpa.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: Revealed in Chapter 6 when Shuichi watches Kokichi's motive video and discovers that DICE had a strict no-killing policy. It is explicitly stated in the original Japanese version, although it's only implied in the English version despite being used as evidence in the trial. This is possibly subverted when he was willing to manipulate Gonta into killing Miu.
• Timed Mission: The final investigation is this. K1-B0 gives you until dawn to investigate the entire school. The timer is based on the number of things investigated and the progress of real-world time just to make matters more confusing. If you ran out of time, you will receive a Non-Standard Game Over. Overlaps with Death Is a Slap on the Wrist, since if it happens it just rewinds to the last room you visited and refills half the timer bar.
• Title Drop: Chapter 6 surprisingly drops "Danganronpa" with the reveal that the series is actually a reality show. The Japanese subtitle is also dropped: "everyone's killing school semester" refers to the show's enormous audience and its ability to influence the killing game.
• Toilet Humor: Danganronpa V3 in particular features more crude, childish humor than the previous two games. An example is Miu's addition to K1-B0 to "analyze her turds." Since, even in this instalment, the script is aware enough to appear authentic, this was most likely an intentional trope since Danganronpa has continued for 53 whole seasons in a reality show. After 53 seasons of people being encouraged to kill each other by proxy of a motive, the humor in the script only gets stale. Conclusively, Miu's entire character is an example of how crudely the humor has devolved.
• Torch the Franchise and Run: In-Universe, this is the gambit Shuichi employs in the climax in order to permanently end the killing game, by convincing everyone to abstain from the final vote so that the audience will be left disappointed. He even confronts them directly after they possess K1-B0 and emphatically states that the killing game is history. It works.
• Total Party Kill: Subverted. At the end, K1-B0 levels the academy and self-destructs with the stated intention of ending the killing game permanently and making himself and the others Doomed Moral Victors. However, The Stinger shows he actually deliberately spared Shuichi, Maki, and Himiko.
• Transformation Sequence: Kaede has a Magical Girl-style one when she changes from her high school uniform into her Ultimate Pianist clothes in the prologue.
• "Truman Show" Plot: All the characters are participants in a Danganronpa reality show based off the video game series, currently in its 53rd installment (counting the ones that were actually games/animes/etc.).
• Trauma Conga Line: Shuichi suffered through far more than a normal teenager should be ever put through. He got trapped in a Killing Game, saw Rantaro's corpse with the knowledge of who killed him, had to fight Kaede and watched her being executed in front of his face, had to fight against his closest friend, Kaito to prove Gonta killed Miu, had to deal with Kokichi who was being a Jerkass to everyone, had to fight Maki and lose Kaito in Chapter 5, faced the truth of being in a reality show where the role his past self wanted was "the detective who committed the best murder of all", and out of trauma, goes against K1-B0 while under the effects of Despair Event Horizon, and that's not even the full list...

U

• Unreliable Narrator: Chapter 1 depends on this, because while the audience is privy to Kaede's thoughts during her attempted murder of Rantaro, all of the ones relevant to her plan are carefully omitted. Note that she never actually lies about what she's doing, she just doesn't elaborate — the part where she arranges the books selectively cuts off the audience's access to her thoughts at the time, she mentions within the narration that she "dropped" everything she was holding but doesn't specify the fact that she rolled a shot put ball through the vent, and all throughout the investigation, at no point does she actually express uncertainty as to who the killer is...so the audience is instead inclined not to suspect her through her (completely genuine) horror that an innocent person was killed and her desire to expose the mastermind, expose the truth, and get everyone through the trial alive.
• Useless Useful Spell: Kaede and Rantaro have bonus skills if you max out their Friendship Fragments while playing as Shuichi, but they are only available to bond with after you've finished the main story, thus restricting these skills to replayed Class Trials.

V

• Varying Competency Alibi: No one believes Gonta could be Miu's killer as he's both a Nice Guy and not very intelligent, while the scheme to kill Miu required careful planning while accounting for the bizarre elements of the Neo World Program. It turns out that Gonta is indeed the killer, but the scheme was devised by Kokichi who had manipulated Gonta into carrying it out.
• Vehicular Kidnapping: When Kaede and Shuichi first wake up as ordinary students, they recount how they got there. Kaede was walking to school as usual when someone shoved her in a van. Despite her screams of help, everyone ignored her, reminding her of how rotten the world is. Shuichi faced the same situation.
• Villain-Based Franchise: It may be a new school, but Monokuma's still here to bring the despair! In fact, Monokuma is the only returning character from the previous games... mostly.

W

• Who Murdered the Asshole:
  • Chapter 4. While Miu is a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, her "jerk" side overshadows her nicer side, making her seem more detestable to the other characters than she should be. She's also discovered to have attempted to kill everyone just to escape when she eventually refused to trust anyone else anymore, which is what led to Kokichi and Gonta trying to kill her in the first place. Despite this, everyone still works out her murder case, and they are very much disappointed to discover the truth.
  • Chapter 5. Kokichi ends up Hated by All as part of his gambit to make him the enemy to the rest of the cast, and spends the entire game constantly antagonizing and mocking everyone, while showing no real shades of actually wanting to help. Granted, he does think miles ahead of the rest of the students and is able to momentarily outwit the mastermind because of this. However, everyone unknowingly decides to solve his murder when he's crushed by the hydraulic press in the Exisal hangar and think he's actually Kaito.
• Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing: In the final trial, once Shuichi decides to stop playing Monokuma and Team Danganronpa's game, you go through several sequences where you win by sitting on your bum and running out the clock.

Y

• Yank the Dog's Chain: In Chapter 4 Miu, after being abused by Kokichi for three previous chapters and having this abuse dismissed by the other classmates due to their dislike of her, finally decides she's had enough, making a desperate plan to murder him and escape the academy. Kokichi makes Gonta kill her just as she, for the very first time in the game, attempts to stand up to him.
• You Bastard!: If you've read this far down the page, you've probably already put it together that most of the final trial can be easily interpreted as calling you, the player, a bastard for enjoying a series where high school students are forced to murder each other and feel despair (despite constant denial from Word of God).
• You Can't Thwart Stage One: Even while replaying the Chapter 1 class trial knowing that Kaede is in fact being set up by the real mastermind Tsumugi, it is impossible to successfully save Kaede and accuse Shirogane of the murder since the evidence that establishes her guilt hasn't been discovered yet.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: Korekiyo invokes this when he admits that he killed Tenko and taunts Himiko that even though she hates him, she can't do anything to him because Monokuma states they're only looking for Angie's killer... unfortunately for Korekiyo, he left behind evidence that he did indeed kill Angie too.
• You Wake Up in a Room: Kaede starts the game finding herself waking up in a locker.

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