Nightmare Fuel / Danganronpa Class Swap

As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

If you thought the original games were already full of this, then get ready for another round of Despair.

Danganronpa Class Swap - Hope's Peak Academy

In General

• As per Danganronpa tradition, the murders and the state the dead bodies are found in get more gruesome with each chapter:
  • Fuyuhiko: Received two blows to the head and ultimately died of electrocution.
  • Hiyoko: Unknowingly ingested poison, and then received numerous stab wounds after she was already dead.
  • Akane: Impaled through the heart with a sword and then pinned to a wall with a pickaxe.
  • Nekomaru: Fell one floor down and neck snapped upon impact with the ground.
  • Teruteru: Attacked by Monokuma and electrocuted to death.
• If the murders weren't bad enough, there's also the subject of the executions:
  • "Chiaki": In "Boss Rush", after evading numerous deadly trials based off of The Legend of Zelda, Mega Man (Classic) and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, "Chiaki's" execution ends with her being incinerated alive by a giant Monokuma dragon.
  • Sonia: In "Novoselian Revolution", an army of Monokumas attempt to shoot Sonia dead while she escapes. When it seems Sonia has reached an escape route, it turns out to be another trap by Monokuma, which makes her fall onto a mob of Monokumas holding up pitchforks, impaling her.
  • Peko: Her execution is still "One Woman Army" from Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, the only different thing about this is how the robots end Peko's life. Rather than repeatedly stabbing her, the robots manage to cut Peko in half.
  • Kazuichi: "Crash Test". Monokuma makes two test cars crash into concrete walls, and when it seems like he will do the same to the car Kazuichi is in, he does something way worse; the car abruptly stops and makes the seatbelts snap, causing Kazuichi to be launched head-first against the wall with a Sickening "Crunch!", his motionless body sliding down the wall and leaving down a bloody trail behind. It's way worse when you remember that Kazuichi gets sick during car trips.
  • Hajime: The execution is titled "Polished to Perfection". Hajime is tied up to an operation table, has the long hair that he grew on the story cut back to his original hairstyle, has a Hope's Peak uniform stapled on him and then his clothes are sprayed grey. Afterwards three manequins show just what will happen to Hajime; a machine will pour acid on him that will strip him to the bones, which will then be dumped into the school's trash room. Thankfully, the execution fails and Hajime ends up in the trash room alive. That said, Monokuma has no qualms about letting Hajime starve to death.
  • The real Chiaki: Like Junko in canon, Chiaki puts herself through the other previous executions and ultimately dies when the Monokuma dragon that incinerated the Ultimate Imposter eats her alive.
• Because Mikan is the only one in the class with any medical knowledge, the group has her perform autopsies for the victims of the killing game. With every student that pops up dead, the stress Mikan feels does nothing but grow. By the time Teruteru dies, Mikan has a severe mental breakdown at the sight of his body and refuses to perform an autopsy.
  Mikan: No! I'm n-not doing it anymore! I'm done! I'd rather d-die! We'll all die a-anyway! This is h-horrible! We can't escape! We’re doomed!"

Chapter 1

• Good news; Mahiru's friend Sato is alive and the Twilight Syndrome: Murder Case deaths never happened in this continuity. Bad news; she's the subject of Mahiru's motive video. As seen by Fuyuhiko and Teruteru's reaction to their motive video, the same goes for the former's sister and the latter's mother respectively too.
  • Given what is revealed about this specific motive in Ultra Despair Girls, the three of them, alongside the rest of the students' loved ones, will end up on the Warriors of Hope's hit list in Towa City. If being kidnapped was bad enough on its own, imagine how fun it must be finding yourself in a ruined city overrun by Killer Teddy Bears and psychopathic children.
• Teruteru gives into the motive and tries to murder Ryota to make sure that his mother is okay. Ryota found the note Teruteru gave him suspicious and asked Akane for protection. Had she not been there, Ryota would've been the first victim of the killing game.
• How the first victim is found. Mahiru is just on her way to do laundry only to come across Fuyuhiko's dead body. His eyes wide open, but devoid of any life. The fact that he died from electrocution only makes things even worse.
• When Chiaki is exposed as Fuyuhiko's killer, Peko's first instinct is to try to kill her herself in revenge for what she had done to Fuyuhiko. Monokuma only stops her because of the execution he has prepared.
• Chiaki reveals the reason why she killed Fuyuhiko instead of reporting his actions to everyone: seeing Teruteru attempting to kill Ryota led to her deciding that no matter how much everyone tries to restrain attempted murderers, the killing would eventually begin, so she decided to start the game herself and try to get out. What is really disturbing is how she states, very calmly may we add, that it is a game and that the only way to end it is by killing others.
  • After the reveal of Chiaki actually being The Ultimate Imposter in disguise, "Chiaki's" final words about how the killing game must keep going and how "it is the way things are meant to be" take a much darker turn. They were in league with the Mastermind, the real Chiaki Nanami, all along, and started the killing because she had promised them safety, and as shown by their expression of pure terror when they find themselves about to be incinerated alive, they never expected the betrayal.
    • When you compare this to the canon Trigger Happy Havoc, Chiaki's betrayal of the Ultimate Imposter is way worse than Junko's betrayal of Mukuro; whereas Junko made Mukuro believe that she would spare her of the Class Trials and the killing game as a whole, Chiaki convinced the Ultimate Imposter that they would face no consequences for murdering someone else; Chiaki encouraged her accomplice to kill whereas Junko never gave Mukuro a reason for doing so.

Chapter 2

• Poor Kazuichi couldn't have predicted that his words of encouragement to Sonia would cause her to target him for murder, the same Sonia who invited some of her female classmates to a pool party and was such a nice person to everyone was driven to commit a murder after being reminded of her illegitimate position as princess of Novoselic.
• Instead of Kazuichi dying as Sonia intended, Hiyoko took the poisoned juice Sonia had given him and drank it, causing her death. Who would've thought that the Running Gag of Kazuichi giving his meals to Hiyoko so Sonia would notice him would have resulted in such a tragedy?
• Hiyoko's body is found laid on top of a kitchen counter with a stab wound. Later on, during the attack on Mikan's lab, which leaves behind a bloody mess and an unconscious Mikan, Hiyoko is found with even more stab wounds, her eyes open, yet lifeless, and with her hands positioned to make it look like she stabbed herself despite already being dead. If it weren't for the context of the killing game, it could pretty much be passed as some sort of demonic possession.
  • What's worse than that? The initial stab wound wasn't what killed Hiyoko, Kazuichi did that to her, as well as the other stab wounds, in order to disguise her cause of death and save Sonia from execution, even if that means he and everyone else died. It is also quite disturbing to see Kazuichi trying to defend Sonia fully knowing that the poisoned juice that killed Hiyoko was intended for him. Something even worse is that had Mikan not recovered from the attack to her lab and revealed that Hiyoko's stab wound was inflicted postmortem, Sonia would've gotten away with murder and everyone else would've been executed.
• Hiyoko had locked Teruteru in the freezer of his lab as one of her pranks. She probably wasn't planning on letting him inside it for too long, but then she suddenly died and Teruteru spent a lot of time in the freezer and was unable to get out due to being too short to reach the lock override button. It may not be much compared to what happened to Hiyoko, but had no one noticed, Teruteru would have died of hypothermia.
• Until Mikan brought up how Hiyoko wasn't stabbed to death, Sonia didn't have the slightest idea that she was responsible for Hiyoko's death. Not only does she have to deal with targeting Kazuichi for murder, but also watching him almost condemn himself and everyone else to death just to protect her. Kazuichi may have succeeded a little too well when disguising Hiyoko's cause of death.

Chapter 3

• Hajime and Izuru's lab is basically the room Izuru was confined to in Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School, consisting of a bed, a walk-in closet, a single lightbulb as a light source, and old wooden floor that creaks every time it's walked on. No doubt it was an unpleasant surprise for the amnesiac Hajime.
• Think of the discovery of Akane's body from Ibuki's perspective: she is simply carrying stuff to Hajime's lab so she can redecorate it for him only to find one of her classmates pinned to a wall with a pickaxe, with said pickaxe being placed where her heart should be.
• Peko both figuratively and literally backstabs Akane and is partially responsible for Nekomaru's death. Her desire to get revenge on the Mastermind is so strong that she no longer cares about the consequences and purely wants to avenge Fuyuhiko at all costs.
  • Doubles as a Tear Jerker in the sense that this time Peko doesn't have Fuyuhiko convincing her that he doesn't consider her a tool, but a loved one. She spent her final moments thinking of herself as something inhuman without anyone to convince her that she has people that indeed care for her.

Chapter 4

• The Mastermind finds Mahiru in the second-floor restroom's hidden room and chokes her with a rope until she falls unconscious, allowing them to steal all the files hidden there. Thanks to Mahiru's camera snapping a photo as she passed out, she's able to see her attacker, whose face is completely hidden by a mask with a Slasher Smile. They were both alone in a room nobody but Izuru knew existed, and the Mastermind could've strangled Mahiru to death without anyone ever knowing about it.
• Like in the first chapter of Danganronpa 2, the victim of the chapter dies during a blackout. A blackout happening in a relatively small space is one thing, but it's nothing compared to it happening in the entirety of the already claustrophobic Hope's Peak Academy, which has four out of five floors available for exploration at this point.
• Teruteru being dead is already bad enough on its own, but him being found dead wearing a gasmask would definitely creep out anyone not used to seeing them. Hell, him trying to find his way around the fourth floor in pitch darkness while wearing a mask that doubles as night-vision goggles while holding a cleaver was what caused Ibuki and Gundham to freak out and try to attack him, and each of them understandably believes their attacks are what caused him to die.
• The students learn of Nagito's true nature after figuring out that he helped Teruteru cause the blackout in the school. It's somewhat a bit creepier here than it was in Danganronpa 2 since it has taken Nagito a few more days rather than just two to reveal what he's really like to the other students.
• Monokuma considers Kazuichi to be Teruteru's killer simply because he was the one who made the radio that shocked Teruteru to death and that no one had told Teruteru beforehand that touching the radio's exposed wiring could be lethal, even though Teruteru was the one who accidentally shocked himself. Kazuichi is executed for something that is not his fault just so Monokuma can have a bigger body count. Nagito points out that the Mastermind doesn't care about who kills who or whatever the circumstances were, they just want Despair. It says something that even Izuru is put off by this revelation and decides to help the other surviving students end the killing game.

Chapter 5

• A minor one, but Gundham tells Mahiru how all the animals in his Research Lab have not been taken care of properly. It's obvious that it would affect Gundham, with him being the Ultimate Breeder and all, but if you are an animal lover, the implication of defenseless animals being mistreated by a twisted individual can be pretty gruesome.
• Izuru's constant meddling in his life causes Hajime to have an existential crisis. Because he is now able to experience the frustration Izuru felt after the fourth trial, he fears that his Split Personality will end up fully taking over his body and cause him to disappear.
  Hajime: Don't you get it? That means that whatever is happening in my brain, we're growing closer... And if that keeps going, I might just end up... disappearing. I don't want that... I want to be myself!
• Ryota stated a few episodes ago that his aim was to create an anime that would inspire hope in whoever saw it. When he shows Mahiru part of the final product, it is shown that he achieved his goal... because it causes Mahiru to behave like Nagito. Ryota is understandably horrified with the result and shows Mahiru a different anime to get her back to normal.
• The second Monokuma Theatre segment is a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment showing a scene in which Sonia's grandmother, Olga Nevermind, has a nobleman poisoned and killed for what seems to be trying to take advantage of the then-twelve-year-old Sonia. When Sonia walks in, her grandmother has a 180-degree personality change and makes herself look like an innocent bystander. To sum up the whole thing, an old lady has a nobleman posioned and murdered and a few minutes later kindly treats her granddaughter to sweets as if nothing had happened.
  • The assassin that Sonia's grandmother sent to end the nobleman's life appears to be doing it out of revenge. What did he do so someone would want him dead so badly? We never learn, as Monokuma abruptly cuts the segment before the revelation.
• The third Daily Life segment opens up with Mahiru having a nightmare in which she meets all of the deceased students in the cafeteria. When she leaves to find the absent students (the surviving students and Chiaki), she hears Monokuma's laugh and returns to the Cafeteria to tell others, where she finds her classmates dead, as well as two extra corpses and a dismembered hand. These are the lovely descriptions Mahiru provides:
  A skeleton. (Jin Kirigiri, most likely)
  Wide open eyes, bashed head and burnt hand. (Fuyuhiko)
  A big burnt lump of flesh. (Chiaki)
  Pale face and countless chest stabs. (Hiyoko)
  Countless pitchforks stabbed through the body. (Sonia)
  A snapped neck. (Nekomaru)
  Single sword pierced through the heart. (Akane)
  Two halves. (Peko)
  Battered, burnt and cut mess. (Teruteru)
  Contorted and cracked bones. (Kazuichi)
  A bloodied hand. (???)
  A mummified husk. (???)
• Because the nightmare caused her to oversleep and miss the morning announcement and because of how she was acting after seeing Ryota's anime, the other students, believing Nagito had done something to Mahiru, tie him to a chair and question him about her whereabouts, with Nagito being completely confused.
  • According to Ibuki, Mahiru's laugher after seeing Ryota's anime was uncanny. Think about how Nagito laughs and you might get an idea of how creepy it must've been.
  • Ibuki suggests using pliers to torture Nagito for answers. It's never explained how she would exactly use them on Nagito, but it really doesn't take much imagination to make a correct guess.
• The fourth Daily Life begins with yet another nightmare of Mahiru, in which she sees the other survivors and herself dead, with Monokuma smugly taunting her.
• The Monokuma Flower is found with its bulb closed and completely covered in blood. Then the Body Discovery Announcement plays. Someone got murdered, there are only four possible options, and their body isn't even anywhere to be seen. When Gundham makes the plant open its bulb, this lets out a stream of blood with a putrid smell, which causes Ibuki's face to turn green. Feel free to not picture any of that in your head if you don't want to.
  • The only thing Gundham manages to recover from the Monokuma Flower is an eroded bone, as everything else was already processed. You won't be able to look at Venus Flytraps the same way ever again.
• Mikan, Hajime and Ryota wake up in different Research Labs instead of their rooms. While it's entirely possible that Izuru left Hajime somewhere else other than his room, The idea that someone went inside Mikan and Ryota's rooms and took them to different places while they were sleeping is outright chilling.
• Mikan finds Nagito's severed hand in the kitchen's freezer, which is completely covered in blood. Because everyone else is alive, everyone comes to the conclusion that the one who died was Nagito. Monokuma is also rather enthusiastic about Nagito being dead, way more than previous victims.
• While the execution fails, it's easy to guess how utterly terrified Hajime must've been as a result of almost dying for something his Split Personality allegedly did.
• We get to see the Downer Ending in this story: Hajime most likely starved to death in the trash room, and the other remaining students proceeded to live together in the school for the rest of their lives and have children with each other (Gundham and Ibuki have a daughter together and it is implied that both Mahiru and Mikan have kids with Ryota). They're all trapped in Hope's Peak forever and will grow old and die there. It is revealed to be yet another nightmare of Mahiru's however.
• Chapter 5 ends with Mahiru waking up... and seeing Nagito, whom everyone thought got eaten by a carnivorous plan not long ago, standing in front of her bed with his left hand missing.

Chapter 6

• How did Nagito lose his hand? He chopped it off with a kitchen cleaver himself as part of his and Izuru's Faking the Dead scheme.
• Mahiru's reaction to the second floor of the dormitory area is highly likely to be the same reaction players had when they first gained access to this area in the original Trigger Happy Havoc.
• Nagito implies to Mahiru that he only had enough time to sabotage Hajime's execution during the previous Class Trial. Had Mahiru ended up covering for Izuru like Makoto did for Kyoko when Junko tried to set her up for Mukuro's murder in canon, there would have been no saving Mahiru from execution.
• Mahiru sliding down a dark vent face-first definitely counts, and when she gets to the trash pit, she mentions how the floor is pure concrete and that landing in a big pile of trash was what broke her fall.
• Monokuma is far from happy to see Nagito and Hajime alive and realize the former was never murdered in the first place. Had not it been for Nagito giving him "The Reason You Suck" Speech, he would've just executed them on the spot.
• In order to treat Nagito's wound, Mikan has no other choice but to perform a surgery she only knows theoretically and without any anesthesia to give Nagito due to the lack of it. She tells everyone else that is best if they leave her lab due to how painful it's going to be for both Nagito and anyone who sees it.
• Ryota's animation is able to inflict a desired result on whoever watches it, but said result always turns out to be rather extreme. Later on during the trial, the Mastermind reveals that they used Ryota's animation in order to make everyone in Class 78 forget about the Tragedy and the two years they spent at Hope's Peak Academy. Ryota can't do anything but blame himself for the state of the world and his classmates' deaths even if he didn't have anything to do with it directly.
  • Ryota is immune to the effects of his own animation, so the Mastermind injected him with torture drugs in order to give him amnesia. Those nightmares he gets are none other than The Biggest, Most Awful, Most Tragic Event in Human History. Even Mikan finds the courage to call the Mastermind a Complete Monster upon this reveal.
• Mikan states that she examined the nine bodies in the bio lab to make sure all of them belonged to the deceased students. Not only are some of those bodies not in the best state (Chiaki was burnt alive, Nekomaru's neck was incredibly bent, and Peko was cut in half), but Mikan had a mental breakdown after having to perform so many autopsies. She's trying to overcome her trauma just so she and the other six remaining students can get out of Hope's Peak.
• After reading the documents that go more in-depth about the Kamukura Project, Nagito is completely impressed by the prospect of a talentless student being used as a vessel for an individual that possesses every single talent known to mankind. Even when Mahiru points out that the project was meant to replace Hajime's personality with Izuru, Nagito just says that Hajime managing to reemerge from within Izuru helped him discover his talent and that it would have been a waste if it had stayed hidden.
• The Headmaster's room features a coffin with Jin Kirigiri's burnt skeleton on the bed. Whether the original present box with bones or this is worse is for you to decide.
• The Mastermind's identity is revealed to be Chiaki Nanami, the one who got executed for killing Fuyuhiko was the Ultimate Imposter disguised as her, and whom she betrayed as a way of both faking her death and following the rules.
  • Junko's reason for clinging onto Despair in canon was that she saw hope as boring due to how predictable it was. In Chiaki's case is because she states that she is unable to feel anything and Despair is the closest thing she has to feeling something. Being the Ultimate Gamer, she also sees Despair as a game she would like to play with everyone. Just before her demise, she states that she has tried all sorts of things to be able to feel something but that the only thing that worked was Despair. Even Nagito feels sorry for her.
  • Even when saying the most malicious things imaginable, Chiaki never loses her calm and friendly persona. Ibuki and Gundham both describe her as Cute and Psycho. In fact, her personality is almost the same as in canon, with the only additions are her being both insane and empty, as the same also applies to her talking about mundane topics, such as organizing game night with the surviving students should they accept living in the school forever, somehow manages to come off as unsettling. Mahiru's narration states that she found it difficult to believe that someone like her was responsible for the deaths of so many people.
• Why was the Ultimate Imposter helping Chiaki run a killing game? All the Ultimate Imposter ever wanted was a friend, and they went along with Chiaki's plans because she was their first, and possibly, best friend. When you look back at Chapter 1, it becomes rather eerie to know that they willingly joined a Deadly Game thinking they were helping out a friend.
  • Chiaki says that the Hope's Peak Academy Killing Game was meant to be the final taste of Despair to both the entire world and her, as seeing her classmates get brutally murdered and executed brought her great pain and therefore Despair. Remember how in canon Chiaki is the one who brings her entire class together? Yeah, this story takes that concept to a much more morbid level.
    Chiaki: The Killing Game was meant to be the final blow to the world. And to myself. After all, that year we spent together... it tore my heart apart to execute you. And Imposter? I’ve known them for a while. They were my closest friend ever...
    Mahiru: And you killed them!
    Chiaki: Yep. It was apex of both of our despairs, I'm sure of it... Despair of death, despair of betrayal... perhaps something so personal may have finally made them an actual person and not imitation of another? Or did it kill what little individuality they may have had? Regardless... I could see the despair in their eyes. That's what matters.
• Even Mahiru is about to give up hope and just allow Chiaki to kill her after seeing the state of the world. Thankfully she decides she cannot allow herself to die or the others to just stay at Hope's Peak forever.
  • Chiaki states that she has decided to only kill Mahiru because of how persistent she is, otherwise she would've gone for Nagito.

Epilogue

• After the seven survivors escape Hope's Peak Academy and Chiaki's death is broadcasted to the entire world, we get a scene with Kyosuke Munakata, Kazuo Tengan, and Chisa Yukizome in which the former expresses their intentions of taking the survivors of Class 78 to safety. When Tengan and Chisa are left alone, their dialogue implies the possibility of them being in a state of Despair.
• The following scene features a young man on a phone call discussing the aftermath of the Ultimate Despair's defeat. The person on the other end of the line tells them about certain plans. In the end, it's revealed that this person is Makoto Naegi, and he is heading towards Towa City to interfere with the plans his classmates have prepared. Given the premise of the whole story it's easy to guess that Makoto and his classmates are the Remnants of Despair and that they are preparing to carry out Chiaki's will on Towa City and set up the events of this universe's Ultra Despair Girls and Danganronpa 2.

Danganronpa Class Swap 2 - Jabberwock Island

In General

• Usami is able to stand her ground against Monokuma and prevents him from turning her into Monomi and taking over the school trip. However, Usami is not stronger than Monokuma, but is evenly matched with him, meaning that no matter how much they fight neither can gain full control of the school trip and reluctantly agree to co-host it. Monokuma has to go along with Usami's plans to help the students get along, but Usami is also forced to assist Monokuma with the executions and the murder motives. That's right, Monokuma is making Usami kill the very same students she swore to protect!
• Like in the first story, the murders get progressively more and more gruesome.
  • Yasuhiro: Stabbed in the abdomen with his own sword.
  • Hifumi: Crushed by a chandelier.
  • Mondo: Stabbed in the neck with a pair of scissors and then having his lifeless body mounted on a wall with several of those same scissors.
  • Genocider Syo: Strangled to death with a rope and then hung.
  • Aoi: Starved and Dehydrated to death. While she wasn't murdered, the fact that her depression prevented her from drinking or eating anything before entering the Funhouse only makes things even worse.
  • Celeste: Shot in the head and then decapitated.
• With the murders out of the way, we can talk about the executions:
  • Sakura: In "Weight of Sin", Sakura gets crushed by a giant pile of heavy and light objects Monokuma and Usami throw respectively (the latter pretty much being forced to do it), and is ultimately crushed to death when Usami is forced to throw a single feather on top of the whole thing.
  • Sayaka: Her execution is titled "For the Fans", and it features Sayaka being trampled to death by a mob of Monokumas who are dressed up as her fans while a recording of one of her songs plays over a cardboard of Sayaka moving on-stage, simulating dancing. When all the Monokumas leave the concert hall, the only thing remaining is Sayaka's body, completely bruised and stomped-on.
  • Kyoko: "Shocking Twist". Kyoko is bound to an electric chair, with Monokuma gradually increasing the power of its shocks. The most disturbing part is Kyoko's Slasher Smile throughout the whole thing, having remembered her life as a Remnant of Despair. Usami, not being able to bear Monokuma inflicting Electric Torture on Kyoko anymore, presses an emergency button that makes the chair's helmet twist ninety degrees, instantly snapping Kyoko's neck and putting her out of her misery.
  • Byakuya: "Down With The Ship". Byakuya finds himself on an old fashioned wooden ship in the middle of the ocean. Several sharks are swimming around the ship. Monokuma, dressed like a pirate, then appears on his own ship and begins blasting at Byakuya's with cannons, causing the ship to begin sinking. Byakuya scales the mast, but it's clear he's only delaying the inevitable, before a final cannonball hits Byakuya dead on.
• It may not seem like much at first, but why is Mukuro incapable of remembering her talent and what she had been doing in her teenage years? In the original game, Hajime couldn't remember it because he never had one to begin with, but what reason is there for Mukuro to forget about her position as the Ultimate Soldier upon entering the Neo World Program?
• Some of the perks the students have access to are pretty terrifying. The worst of them all is definitely Genocider Syo's, which basically allows her to get away with murder once. She is never able to use it, but the implications of a Serial Killer being able to kill someone and not face the consequences are chilling.
  • Taka's perk allows him to imput additional rules. Remember that breaking the rules results in execution. Now be thankful that Taka is a completely rational individual.
  • Junko and Sakura's perks allow them to lock and unlock any door they want as long as they have direct contact with it. Sakura in particular makes use of her perk to commit murder.
  • Kyoko's perk allows her to alter any Monokuma file she wishes to, which she does in the third chapter in an attempt to get away with murder and disguise the second victim's identity.
  • Mukuro's perk makes her immune to rule 12 (not being able to kill more than two students), meaning that she could easily go on a killing spree and leave a single person alive, likely Junko, and allow both to escape the Island. The perk is fittingly named "Massacre".

Chapter 1

• Even with Usami having half of the control of the school trip, Byakuya is more interested in Monokuma's take on it and tells off Usami when she tries to convince him that getting along with everyone else is better.
• Outside of the traitor that is working with Usami, Monokuma himself also has a traitor of his own. Usami's traitor is definitely the classmate that was killed by Chiaki at the start of the Tragedy, but why did another student end up siding with Monokuma?
• Yasuhiro spends half of the chapter completely paranoid, accusing Sakura of plotting a murder and warning Leon that someone would try to kill him as he had made predictions of these things happening. In the end, his own paranoia ends up getting him killed.
  • At one point upon coming upon Sayaka, Kyoko, and Mukuro, he points accusingly at them and claims to "know what [they're] planning." Given that Sayaka and Kyoko end up becoming the blackened in the next two chapters respectively, what does that mean for Mukuro?
• Sakura kills Yasuhiro after his accusations of her giving into Monokuma's motive makes her realize that she has the chance to learn what happened to her boyfriend, Kenichirō, during the two years she spent at Hope's Peak. Before being executed Monokuma decides to throw her a bone: He's dead. Sure, he could've died from his illness, but given that the DR1 students are the Remnants of Despair in this continuity it's not far-fetched to think that Sakura possibly killed him herself.
• After the trial, the surviving student reemerge from the Trial Grounds only to find a lookalike of Toko calling herself Genocider Syo. Suddenly the reason why Toko didn't turn into her Split Personality after fainting earlier in the chapter and that empty podium in the Trial Grounds makes perfect sense.
  • Just how did Genocider Syo get separated from Toko? So far it hasn't been explained how exactly the Neo World Program managed to separate the two of them.

Chapter 2

• Celeste goes blind with rage the moment Kiyotaka calls her a Spoiled Brat. She lifts him up by the collar of his shirt and throws him against a table with dishes.
• Mukuro is awoken in the middle of the night by what seems to be a shadowy figure and decides to follow it. It heads towards Jabberwock Park, and when she corners it, she discovers that it's barely human. For some reason, it seems it also has destroyed the arcade machine Usami provided as a motive. What exactly was its reason for destroying it?
  • Mukuro's reaction to the thing is also pretty chilling:
    Mukuro: Then the thing looked at me. I remember seeing an eye glinting for a moment in the dark. It was completely red as blood. I thought I was stoic and could handle anything. But something about that look... It was wrong. And it was...
    f a m i l i a r...
  • Even the Monokuma theater segment at the end of this Daily Life segment plays with the concept of the monster being right behind the reader themselves.
• The prize for clearing Kyoko's route in Magical Girls Unite! is a recording of Jin Kirigiri's execution. Yes, Kyoko did just watch a video of her father getting shot into the sun and reduced to bones.
• Turns out Monokuma had hidden two additional routes for Toko and Sayaka in Magical Girls Unite! and Hifumi managed to find them. The only one he managed to play was Toko's route, and the prize for beating it was none other than a police case file showing the murder of Takaaki Ishimaru, Kiyotaka's father. He was killed by Genocider Syo in the same way all of her previous victims were: stabbed to death with scissors and mounted onto a wall with those same scissors. The motive was made so that Taka would try to kill Syo for killing his father, and Hifumi, already being terrified of living with a Serial Killer, decided to get Revenge on his behalf by killing her.
  • Hifumi only managed to finish Toko's route before the arcade machine was destroyed. If Toko's route contained such a gruesome "reward", just what exactly was hidden in Sayaka's route?
• Genocider Syo threw away Hifumi's letter and Celeste ended up finding it. Believing that the note was intended for her, Celeste began working on an elaborate murder plan (dropping the library's chandelier on the would-be attacker and framing Mukuro for the crime) that would've been successful had the real killer not gotten involved in the situation. The only reason Celeste didn't become the blackened was because of a mere coincidence.
• The fact that Sayaka only became the blackened because her survival instincts kicked in and caused her to push Hifumi under the falling chandelier only to realize to her horror that Hifumi wasn't actually trying to kill her. It gets so bad that she throws up after realizing she has caused someone's death. She was just enjoying herself in the beach a few moments ago, and now she is responsible for the second murder.
• After being exposed as the killer, Sayaka, out of desperation, decides to hold Hina hostage at knifepoint, believing that Monokuma can't execute her as long as she's holding someone who is completely innocent. Kyoko is forced to physically subdue Sayaka and rescue Aoi, allowing Monokuma to proceed with the execution.
  • Mukuro's narration states that Sayaka pulled the knife out of her uniform. If she had it hidden with her the whole trial, does that mean that she was planning on threatening someone with a knife from the start?

Chapter 3

• Kyoko's Research Lab doubles as a morgue, whereas no such thing existed in the original game. And yes, she did check the four bodies there, even Sakura and Hifumi's.
• Monokuma had prepared a pamphlet so that the students would be able to treat those infected with the Despair Disease, but Usami decided not to give it to them because Monokuma called them "total losers" in the title.
  Junko: Are you saying you seriously let us get mistreated because you didn't want people to read a pamphlet that calls them 'Total Losers'? That's messed up!
• The motive of the Despair Disease gets so bad that even Byakuya decides to bail out of the killing game once the motive makes him realize that the Mastermind only wants to see the students dropping like flies.
• Upon Mukuro interrogating Monokuma about the Despair Disease, he suggests to her to indirectly provoke a killing to end the disease and keep her hands clean. This causes Mukuro to try and find a way to get Kyoko to commit suicide in order to save Junko, although she is unable to go through with it. This reinforces a side of Mukuro shown in Side: Despair and Danganronpa Zero: she may be as much a victim of Junko's in canon as everyone else, but she was still a willing accomplice in bringing about the Tragedy.
• Kyoko, who was a capable leader and wanted to prevent more murders, kills Mondo after catching the Despair Disease and remembering her status as a Remnant of Despair. Her murder of Mondo is by far the most brutal of them all, as she exactly replicated Genocider Syo's modus operandi. Hina's words on how they can't trust anyone if they cannot trust their leader suddenly become much more darker.
  • What's worse? Kyoko was planning on committing suicide in order to stop the motive and avoid any murders or Mondo, Junko and Celeste dying from the disease, but decided to kill Mondo instead when she caught the disease. Her Despair-self even states how she is thankful to the Disease for saving her life.
  • Thought the reveal of Despair Mikan with her Yandere love for Junko and Despair was terrifying in canon? How about the mostly stoic logic-based detective suddenly becoming a Laughing Mad killer who gets off on the thrill of trying to get away with murder, and doesn't care whether or not she succeeds in doing so? That's basically Despair Kyoko for you.
• At first, the readers are led to believe that Toko was the secondary victim, but no, it was actually Genocider Syo. Both of them walked in on Kyoko killing Mondo and she lured them to the Music Venue, where she locked them up. Toko, realizing that only Kyoko would get punished for Mondo's death, decided to strangle Syo to death with a rope as revenge for ruining her life for so long. When Kyoko comes back and finds Syo dead, she infects Toko with the Despair Disease so she begins acting like Genocider Syo, the most despised version of herself, in order to incriminate the now deceased-Syo for the crime.
  • Keep in mind that once a student's avatar experiences death in the Neo World Program, their body is rendered comatose in the real world, but what about Genocider Syo? She shared a body with Toko and the Neo World Program separated them somehow, so it could also mean that Genocider Syo might permanently die since her consciousness doesn't have a body to return to anymore.

Chapter 4

• Outside from being themed after Bananas and Blueberries instead of Strawberries and Grapes, there are now two Final Rooms, one in each area of the Funhouse. Even the one in the Banana House, Usami's side, is a life-or-death trial.
• Rather than being able to call the elevator at any time the students desire, this one moves by itself every three hours, and in order to keep the mystery of the funhouse hidden, both houses are gassed with sleeping gas every time the elevator moves. Not only is the gang stuck in a strange place with no food, but they also have to deal with being constantly knocked out with sleeping gas.
• The way Hina just shuts down and refuses to interact with the group is as sad as it is unsettling. She refuses to explore the Funhouse and spends most of her time sobbing and curled up in a fetal position. Being betrayed by Sakura, threatened with a knife by Sayaka, and being told by Kyoko that she shouldn't be alive really has taken a toll on her sanity and she now expects the other students to turn on her as well, making her lose all hope. Monokuma disabling her perk to prevent any of the students from eating doesn't help in the slightest.
  • When interacting with her at the beginning of the chapter, Mukuro doesn't get a Hope Fragment, but a Despair Fragment. Hina's situation is just that bad.
  • Aoi later dies of starvation and dehydration. The Funhouse only deprives the students of food and Junko concludes that Aoi never left her room after arriving at the Funhouse. Seeing that Mukuro is still alive if very weakened, it means Aoi lost the will to live even before being trapped in it, and the motive only accelerated her death by making sure that she couldn't have access to food and diverting the attention of the other students from her. Even worse, because her death is considered to be of "natural causes," there is no Class Trial for her, the motive will continue, and Aoi's body will be left to rot until a murder happens. The surviving students decide to lock her room with her body inside because neither they nor Usami can do anything else about it.
• The cast suffers tremendously from the starvation, whether physically with Mukuro going from an athletic woman to being unable to walk without the help of someone, or mentally with Leon breaking down in tears before attacking Makoto and Celeste having a mental breakdown after learning that Aoi's death will not trigger a Class Trial and won't end the motive. Celeste is later found beheaded in the Banana Tower.
• It's strongly implied that Junko would have resorted to eating Aoi's corpse to save herself and Mukuro if the motive lasted longer, as she used her perk rather than the key to Hina's room to lock it before giving it to Byakuya. It's a startling reminder that despite being far more benevolent, Junko is still ruthless and will stop at nothing to accomplish her goals.
  Mukuro: Junko... don't try to lie. We both know that if someone else dies of starvation... I'll be the first.
  Junko: No. You won't be. I have a contingency.
  Mukuro: What? What are you talking about?
  Junko: Nothing you should think of just yet. You can handle a day or two more. I might be able to get through a week before needing it. We can endure.

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