Persona 5 / Tropes C to F

Main Page | A-B | C-F | G-M | N-R | S-Z

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Persona 5 provides examples of the following tropes:

CA - CH

• Call-and-Response Song:
  • "Blooming Villain", the boss theme when the Thieves fight the ruler of a Palace, is an instrumental version. The song starts with a threatening and percussive guitar opening with strong bass notes, representing the villain, and segues into a more traditional guitar solo, representing the Phantom Thieves. This song incorporates the villainous Leitmotif "Blood of the Villain" for the villain section, and the heroic guitar solo is incorporated into the next track "Regret" that plays when the villain is defeated.
  • Yaldabaoth's boss theme follows a similar setup - the song begins with a wicked, frantic, industrial rock section that leads into an equally-frantic guitar solo, representing the boss, before segueing into a smoother, more heroic guitar solo, representing the Phantom Thieves. The heroic solo is given a Triumphant Reprise as the background music when Satanael performs his finisher on Yaldabaoth.
• Call-Back: Has its own page.
• Call-Forward:
  • During one of the mental health check questions in Maruki's Palace, the last question is: "You've gained power to steal people's hearts! Thoughts, emotions, information...you can steal all of it from anyone in the world! Not only that, you can use this power without fear of getting caught! In this scenario, which sounds closest to what you would do?" The answers are: "A: Steal something valuable B. Never steal anything C. Steal my own heart to heal. D. Steal evil hearts to fix society and E. Steal the one I love's heart". The correct answer is "D. Steal evil hearts to fix society" because this is Maruki's view of happiness. In Persona 5 Strikers, the sequel of this game, this is how Konoe, Ichinose or the EMMA application itself views as the ultimate happiness of humanity: changing the hearts of the public by removing their desires so they can no longer suffer from the actions of themselves and others. As for the other options: option A is for Natsume who stole his publisher's hearts with EMMA so he can make money for his plagiarized novel, B is for Hyodo who was a noble politican that let herself taken advantage by a corrupt legislator for a political scandal that she can't be taken full blame off to force her step down that forced her to steal the hearts of all corrupt politicans with EMMA, C. is for Ichinose to "correct her own flaws" with Sophia only to fail because Sophia triggered her insecurities and E is for Alice who deliberately breaks down marriages by stealing hearts so men go after her instead. Needless to say, Hyodo, Natsume and Alice end up badly in the hands of the Phantom Thieves and D. is exactly what led to Ichinose unleashing a nationwide-Metaverse catastrophe.
  • In the Royal version, you can take Caroline and Justine to the movie theaters, where they remark that humans must immerse themselves in movies as a form of escapism. This a major plot point in Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth where Nagi/Enlil deduces that humans desire escapism from the pains of reality through movies, and trapped the suicidal Hikari in a nightmarish theater broadcasting pure negativity. In the Persona 5 timeline, Q2 takes place during the Casino heist in November.
  • During the events of Strikers, the Police is still finding an oppurtunity to capture the Phantom Thieves to save their public image, even if Shido and his conspiracy are removed and its remnants rendered incompetent. This is what The Men in Black during the credits of the game are actually foreshadowing.
  • At the beginning of the new Third Term Events in Royal, Makoto makes a comment about how Ryuji will need to keep up with his summer homework when she's not there. In Persona 5 Strikers, Makoto lectures Ryuji about the assignments he's put off, while he tries to forget about over the road trip.
  • In Royal, there's a Mementos Target called Anji Fuwa whose family conditions are so bad that he escaped into the Idol world and got obsessed with an Idol called Lily-Nyan, to the point that he's buying merchandise until he's close to bankrupt and even Lily Nyan herself was actually worried about his well-being. In Strikers, the Starter Villain Alice Hiiragi happens to be an idol and a fashion designer who uses EMMA to mesmerize the public so they buy her merchandise until they actually go bankrupt.
  • Another Mementos target in Royal manipulates women into fighting for him, even going as far as bullying a few out from their schools. The aforementioned Alice Hiiragi also mesmerizes men in Shibuya to fight over her like this target, but for a more sympathizable reason other than to feed on their suffering.
  • One of the targets in Royal, Ryoko Aino, is the first unique target that doesn't need to be defeated in a fight to finish the job. In a hold-up the Phantom Thieves learn that her actions of stealing cats in Yongen isn't from malicious intent, but she is hurting in her grief of tragically losing her own cat, Snowball, and was warped by her desire to save all of them from being killed, even though she knows it's making the cats miserable. The Phantom Thieves talk her down to make her realize her misguided intentions and genuinely make amends without forcefully changing her heart. In Strikers this is how the Phantom Thieves defeat the Jail Monarchs. The Monarchs of the Jails know what they are doing isn't right, but feel so lost from being humiliated and used that they believe revenge is the only way to validate themselves. While the Thieves still have to fight them as bosses, they get the Monarchs to peacefully surrender once they're defeated by empathizing and convincing them that their actions are wrong, and the Jail Kings willingly surrender the desires they stole and to make amends in real world without turning into weeping husks in the Metaverse.
  • During a lesson by Mr. Ushimaru (who has been affected by Maruki's ideal reality) on January 21, he starts a lecture about Justice using Featherman as an example and concludes it telling the class that everyone has their own sense of Justice. In Strikers, Akira Konoe, the final Jail Monarch is an avid fan of Zephyrman, a Captain Ersatz version of Featherman and he's an avid follower of his own version of Justice, which is to brainwash everyone in Japan with Jail Kings.
• Calling Card: Played with. You send out a calling card to the target, but it's required in order to materialize the palace's treasure^note The idea being that, in order for the treasure (aka the target's twisted desire) to become a physical object that you can steal, the target must be aware that you're trying to steal it, so that it transforms from a vague desire to a concrete representation of their desire: until it's threatened, their twisted desires are too broad and undefined to steal., and unlike most instances of the trope you only send it out after you've already made your way through the palace to find where the treasure is.
• Calling Your Attacks:
  • Characters shout "Persona!" or the actual name of their Guardian Entity when summoning them, and sometimes the party Combination Attack.
  • Asmodeus will tell you he's about to use his "Super Death Spike" exploding volleyball attack the turn before he actually hits you with it.
• Calling Your Nausea: A notice of nausea happens after being told I Ate WHAT?! During one of Haru Okumura's Confidant rank ups, she invites the player to try out an expensive blend of coffee at a buffet. After the player takes a sip, she reveals that the coffee beans are fed to elephants, collected from their poop, and processed into coffee. A possible response is "Excuse me while I vomit."
• The Call Knows Where You Live: The Metaverse Navigation app keeps reappearing on the Protagonist's phone no matter how many times he deletes it, and forcibly sends him to the Metaverse twice.^note Though in both cases, it follows the same rules that are later established: the first time, it begins navigating as soon as Kamoshida's keywords are (inadvertently) entered, just as it does with all subsequent Palaces. The second time, Ryuji uses the app to navigate back to Kamoshida's Palace by going to a previously entered destination, which happens every time you go to the Palaces later.
• Camera Abuse:
  • The screen will momentarily "crack" whenever you perform an All-Out Attack.
  • One of Morgana's victory animations has him bump into the screen.
  • Sometimes when selecting "Return to Title" under Systems in the main menu, Joker will swing and crash into the screen, cracking it.
• Cannot Keep a Secret: Shadows, generally speaking, are very simple creatures. They're the part of someone's personality that they deny or don't make publicly known. They feel no shame or need to keep secrets while in turn being much more volatile than a real person. As a mere fragment of someone's full personality they lack any sense of shame or caution, so they might very well start bragging about all the secrets their true self is so desperate to hide. However, what they say is actually not completely reliable given that they have a tendency to exaggerate.
• Canon Identifier: The series gives each player character a Canon Name in expanded material and adaptations, but also distinguishes them by a title from the third game onwards ("The Protagonist" for Persona 3, "Main Character" for Persona 4 and "Joker" for Persona 5). In Royal's DLC challenge battles, the P3 and P4 protagonists are identifed only as "S.E.E.S. Boy" and "Investigation Team Boy", respectively.
• Canon Immigrant: Each party member's bedroom, where they obtain their third-tier Persona in Royal, first appeared in the Dancing in Starlight spinoff game.
• Can't Drop the Hero: The protagonist/Joker always has to be in your active party. While every other party member is required to be in at least one battle (where their Persona awakens), they can otherwise be removed at any time. It's possible to go into battle with just Joker, but he can never be removed.
• Can't Get Away with Nuthin': Though the protagonists this time are thieves for a Mental World, ultimately, they are trying to do a good deed, in an odd way; however, as they are still thieves and are technically brainwashing people regardless, society condemns them for it and Joker is at risk of being imprisoned even after Shido and Akechi are defeated and Yalbadoth stops masking the public's desire for a god to look up to, therefore seeing Shido for who he is after they have him expose himself, requiring help from his comrades over the course of the game to lift the sentence.
• Caper Rationalization: The Phantom Thieves conduct heists in order to literally steal pieces of people's psyche and induce a Heel–Face Brainwashing. The people who are targeted are also very corrupt and largely unsympathetic, to the point that their abuse of power directly endangers the lives of the main cast and their loved ones unless they are dealt with.
• Captain Obvious: The tour guide during the school trip to a TV station, who points out commonly known things about how television shows are produced, like that TV stations are funded by advertisements, and that TV programs are edited down to fill the desired length.
• Captured on Purpose: It is revealed that Joker allowed himself to get arrested in the game's prologue as part of the Phantom Thieves plan to lure the traitor (Goro Akechi) and foil his plan to kill Joker during the interrogation.
• Cassandra Truth:
  • As part of his interrogation, the Protagonist tells Sae all about the Metaverse and working with a talking cat right from the start, while leaving out details that would incriminate his allies. She has a hard time believing him at first, but is willing to hear him out.
  • Joker can be upfront about the Velvet Room to his fellow Phantom Thieves from the start, but they don't believe his stories about a long-nosed man in a secret room. Dancing In Starlight later makes it clear that they eventually come to believe him, as they are not surprised by the appearance of Caroline and Justine, and indeed the Velvet Room itself.
• Cast from Hit Points: Physical and Gun skills require a percentage of the caster's HP to use. Stronger attacks require more HP.
• Casting Gag:
  • A retroactive one, given how Royal is an Updated Re-release. When the Phantom Thieves first meet Jose in Royal, the boy initially mistakes Morgana for a tanuki before correcting it to "cat". Morgana angrily responds that he's not a tanuki, and then adds that he isn't a cat, either. Ikue Otani has some experience with a very similar gag in another series.
  • The fact that Shūichi Ikeda, best known as Ace Pilot Char Aznable, was casted as the definitely Corrupt Politician Masayoshi Shido; it could be an inherent gag to cast another 70's voice actor to voice his Foil for politicians, the more genuinely decent (but not after a fall from grace) Toranosuke Yoshida, the voice actor being Keiichi Noda, who's best known as Ace Pilot Tetsuya Tsurugi. Both of them (Char and Tetsuya) has either worked together or clashed against each other when their series cross over (a lot of times). Their roles also reflect the genre of the shows that raised their names: Shūichi Ikeda's roles reflect the darker, negative side of mankind more often found in the Real Robot Genre, while Keiichi Noda's roles reflect the lighter, positive side of mankind often found in the Super Robot Genre.
  • Bryce Papenbrook voices human Morgana in the English dub of Royal, marking his second time voicing a black-costumed hero with a cat-like appearance who is romantically interested in his red-costumed teammate.
  • Tae Takemi's original voice actress Kirsten Potter had previously voiced another sexy doctor with a Dark and Troubled Past who had death-themed motifs. Helps that both games were developed by Atlus.
• Catching Some Z's: When people are shown sleeping, Zs come out from their head. This even includes in-battle targets.
• Celebrity Lie: One day on his way to school, the protagonist eavesdrops on two girls talking about a guy who told one of them he was a Phantom Thief in order to impress her, that same guy being an NPC Joker himself can talk to. Unfortunately, the lie may have backfired badly on the guy, as the girl is considering sending his picture to the cops when the real Phantom Thieves get framed for murder.
  • During one of the loading screens showing Central Street at night, some random schmuck attempts to get himself a date with someone by telling a similar lie, presumably getting shot down and met with similar results once the real Phantom Thieves get a thirty million Yen price on their heads.
• Celebrity Paradox: Futaba's Super Smash Bros. reference in Sae Niijima's Palace retroactively becomes this in Royal, since by that point Joker had become a playable fighter in Ultimate. One wonders who Fighter #71 was in the Persona-verse.
• Central Theme: Thieves, Rebellion and Justice.
  • Each protagonists' starting persona is inspired by a historical or literary thief, and the party themselves become thieves to reform corrupt or broken members of society.
  • The party's ultimate Personas are based on mythological figures that rebelled against their respective gods and were cast out of the heavens for it.
  • A person's reputation might not reflect their true character and you should make an effort to get to know people, rather than judging them based on rumours.
  • Being wronged yourself doesn't excuse wronging others.
  • Just because someone lets you get away with something doesn't make it okay to do it - taking advantage of someone's kindness, passive nature or inability to confront you without consequences is deplorable.
  • The times when it is a relative or family member show that it can be much harder to stand up against someone you care about or to accept that you feel angry at them. Yusuke in his confidant still felt some affection for his mentor and initially completely refused help from the Phantom Thieves due to denial caused by this affection and Haru still clearly loved her father later in the storyline.
  • Every individual is worth helping - taking down the main bad guys helps a lot of innocent people, but mostly as the player you are invested in your party members and helping them first and foremost.
  • In Royal, unattainable dreams and the merits of moving forward with experiences and choices that have left lasting emotional pain. Is it better to live with that pain or to forget it?
• Character Catchphrase: Used by the hacker organization Medjed. "We are Medjed. We are unseen. We will eliminate evil."
• Character Customization: You get to pick the protagonist's name and personality through Dialogue Trees. Further, the skill card and expanded fusion systems let you customize the skills and stats of his Personas.
• Character Select Forcing:
  • Fittingly, Haru is practically required to both get through Okumura's Palace and actually beat Shadow Okumura himself: the Corporobos resist all but a select few elements, but Haru both excels in Psychic damage (which the most powerful green variants are weak to) and learns a move with a chance of confusing the entire enemy team (Corporobos are vulnerable to most status effects), meaning she can still do heavy Technical damage even if they resist her attacks. She's also the only team member besides Joker himself to learn additional Gun skills at that point in the game, which none of Okumura's Corporobos resist.
  • Royal goes out of its way to ensure you use Kasumi during the Third Semester. A lot of enemies in Maruki's Palace are weak to her signature element, Bless, which none of the other party members (aside from Joker) have access to. Kasumi's third-tier Ultimate Persona is both immune to Bless and resists Psychic, which the Final Boss loves to throw around with impunity. The Superboss on New Game Plus, Lavenza, has a phase that requires the party land a critical hit every turn, making Kasumi — a Critical Hit Class who can boost the party's critical hit rate with Brave Step — a must-have against them.
• Checkpoint Starvation: Initially, this isn't much of an issue for the first third of the game, as Kamoshida and Madarame's Palaces have Safe Rooms be relatively close together. However, starting with Kaneshiro's Palace, Safe Rooms start to become incredibly spaced apart, meaning if the player is killed by a Shadow before making it to the next Safe Room, they'll be sent to the last one visited and end up losing all their progress. It's possible to circumvent this by returning to the previous Safe Room after making progress ahead and saving, but this not only requires a sizable amount of Backtracking, but also comes with the risk of Shadows respawning.
• Chekhov's Classroom:
  • Class lectures cover topics like the Cognitive Representation concept that serves as the basis for the cognitive projections you encounter throughout the Palaces, Plato's tripartite theory of soul that explains how you're able to heel-face brainwash the villains, and so on. They are also very conveniently timed. For example, a few days after you recruit Makoto, you'll get a question in class about Pope Joan, her Persona and the figure thought to be depicted on the La Papesse tarot card, her Arcana. Morgana takes notice of this.
    Morgana: Subconscious personalities... It's a fascinating topic, and it has a lot to do with us. That teacher's surprisingly smart, huh?
  • In a rather realistic and justified example, any random question you hear in class may be asked on the next exam, so pay attention. And just because you were asked a question doesn't mean that that's the question that will be on the exam. Did the teacher follow up with an additional comment after your answer? THAT could be the question!
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • As early as the first dungeon, it's explained that the people in control can create "cognitive existences" of other people: they are basically copies of a person that's shown as the master of the palace sees them (such as the scantily clad copy of Ann that Kamoshida makes), or wants them to be, and this comes up from time to time. This is later used to save the Protagonist from Akechi, because the police station is part of the landscape surrounding Sae's Palace, and she is the master of the latter, so the team relies on her having a cognitive copy of the protagonist in that room, so that Akechi "kills" him, then thinks he's dead. After that, in Shido's Palace, a cognitive version of Akechi as Shido sees him (an expendable, bloodthirsty, and completely obedient underling) appears, and because Shido was planning to kill him in the end, he ends up killing the real one.
  • During the field trip to the TV studio Akechi overhears the gang's conversation about pancakes. This is what tips Joker and Morgana off that there was more to him than it seemed, since he understood Morgana it meant he must have been to the Metaverse before and was in close proximity to them to be able to hear Morgana.
  • During the second Palace's arc, Morgana mentions that it's possible to slip into the Metaverse without realizing it if it's an area with minimal cognitive distortion (i.e. looks like reality). Tricking Akechi into doing this later forms a key part of the Thieves' plan to fake the protagonist's death.
  • Related to the above, it's pointed out in the very first dungeon that it's possible to return to the real world simply by going back to the point you entered from. This is used to sneak Akechi and Sae back to the real world after they've both been tricked into entering the latter's palace.
  • When Joker takes a group selfie before boarding the plane to Hawaii, Futaba messages them to tell them that Ryuji still has rheum in his eyes. Just as they're wondering how she knew that, Futaba explains that she sneaked an app on the protagonist's phone that lets her access the camera remotely. This is the same trick that the Phantom Thieves will use to monitor Akechi's phone calls later on.
  • In the Casino, Futaba makes two identification cards. The alias for the first, "Taro Tanaka," is considered too generic to use (since it's more or less equivalent to "John Doe"), so she gives it to Akechi for him to throw out. Akechi secretly keeps the card, and uses it to win 900,000 coins on his own thanks to perusing the games rigged by Futaba and generous usage of Loophole Abuse concerning the coin-borrowing service, enabling the group to meet even the revised total of 1 million needed for the final passage.
  • Conveniently, the MetaNav has a bookmark tab in case you have to leave a Palace early so you can easily come back to it later without having to recite the keywords. Futaba exploits this by hacking Joker's phone to pretend that he's tapping on the bookmark for Sae's Palace in order to trick Akechi.
  • In Royal, pay attention to the train cabinet where you first meet Kasumi. There's a blue poster of what appears to be a black silhouette of Okumura alongside the words "Live like an elite," presumably being a poster of his book "The Okumura Way."
  • In Royal, as soon as the traffic jam based on the mental shutdown-related train crash happened in the first few days of the game, Sojiro will talk about a 15-year old girl who died of a car crash a month ago before you arrived to Leblanc. It turns out that the victim is Kasumi Yoshizawa, who died trying to save her sister Sumire from being run over by a car, and the "Kasumi" you meet is actually a product of cognitive manipulation overwriting onto Sumire.
  • Related to the point above nearly every hangout with Kasumi displays oddities or inconsistencies about her. And it's for a good reason, as you find out when she reveals that she's actually Sumire. The oddities were the result of Sumire's body reacting to a mind that believed herself to be Kasumi.
  • In Royal, early in the game, the Phantom Thieves meet Jose, a mysterious boy who's studying humans while he's in Mementos. He gives the team a star, which the Thieves try to wish upon at first, but to seemingly no avail. Later in the game, the star does react to and grant wishes that allow for the flashy Showtime attacks between certain pairs in the group. In the end, Morgana is able to drain all the star's power to turn himself into a helicopter and escape Maruki's collapsing Palace.
• Chekhov's Gunman:
  • You can find Makoto hanging around the library at school and studying long before she has any involvement in the plot.
  • You can find some of Junya Kaneshiro's henchmen in Shibuya, asking if you're interested in one of the "part-time jobs" that it later turns out they're using to Blackmail students, months before it actually becomes a plot point.
  • TV shows will mention Hifumi Togo, one of your later confidants, as early as June.
  • Throughout most of the game you can find a "Showbiz Manager" in Shinjuku trying to recruit a young teenage girl. His jobs for her get increasingly uncomfortable as the game goes on. It's all but stated that he's the final Mementos target, a manager who molests young idols.
  • Similarly to the Showbiz Manager, there's a homeless man in the Underground Walkway in Shibuya that you can talk to throughout the game and seems to know more than he lets on. As it happens, he's a target in Mementos as well, being an ex-mercenary that's now a hitman.
  • You first see Haru very briefly during the fireworks festival cutscene, and you meet her again during the Class Trip to Hawaii. While you can speak to her, she isn't named by the narrative until later.
  • The head of The Conspiracy is Masayoshi Shido, who turns out to be the guy responsible for the Protagonist's probation. Justified by the fact that Shido was inadvertently getting in the Big Bad's way, and thus they gave the person Shido had most recently wronged the power to eliminate him.
  • The woman that was molested at the beginning of the game is brought up again near the end of the game, where she testifies against Shido to ensure his imprisonment.
  • Akechi is mentioned on television as early as April and will be seen in an animated cutscene within the first three days of the game.
  • And that Igor that you see during the end of the first day in-game? He's actually Yaldabaoth, the Greater-Scope Villain.
  • In Royal, during the new Palace glimpse event in October 3rd, you will see Kasumi encountering a cognitive copy of her sister in a violet-blue leotard outfit before it gets crushed by a Shadow, and the sister has her hair down and wears a pair of glasses. That's actually the "Kasumi" you are hanging with all along, a.k.a. Sumire.
  • After escaping Kamoshida's Palace with Ann awakened, if you pay attention, you will see a man in a brown coat coming out from the school briefly. That is actually Takuto Maruki on his way home after enrolling to Shujin to become counselor for the sake of completing a cognitive psience essay. Just in time to see Ryuji, Ann and Joker materialising out of nowhere in the alleyway and learning that they were Phantom Thieves before they'd even given themselves the moniker.
• Chest Burster: Shadows in dungeons change from human forms to demonic ones by having their demonic selves burst from the chests or out the backs of their human bodies, reducing it to a puddle of back and red.
• Chucking Chalk: One of the protagonist's teachers hits him in the head with a piece of chalk from straight across the room in two scenes in the vanilla version of the game, and on a regular basis in Royal. It's possible to get a stat gain to Charm by dodging it, if you have enough Proficiency.

CI - CY

• City of Adventure: Unlike the fictional settings of previous installments, P5 takes place in the very real city of Tokyo, though the real district of Sangen-jaya, home to the cafe where the protagonist lives, is replaced with a fictionalized version named Yongen-jaya.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: The guiding principle of the Metaverse: if the thought-based residents of the Palaces believe something to be real, then it's real. For example, the Phantom Thieves' guns are at best airsoft replicas that still pack the punch of real firearms because the Shadows can't tell the difference. This also causes a big problem when Yaldabaoth overlays Mementos onto the real world at a time when no one believes the Phantom Thieves are real... causing them to fade from existence. (Thankfully, they end up in the Velvet Room instead of disappearing completely).
• Class Trip: Partway through the year, the party members who go to Shujin High School get to go on a trip to Hawaii. Futaba and Morgana stay at home. Yusuke, who goes to a different school, ends up joining them in Hawaii due to plane issues on his school's trip. While the third-years aren't supposed to attend (due to exams), Makoto and Haru end up coming to serve as chaperones, since the senior faculty are tied up with the Phantom Thieves investigation.
• Cloudcuckooland: A downplayed example. The few mentions that Yusuke makes of Kosei Public High School (the school he and Star Confidant Hifumi Togo attend; you never see it or visit it in-game) implies that it's at least a bit more...colorful compared to the average school, especially the very utilitarian Shujin Academy. For one thing, their school pet is a peacock (Shujin's is a more mundane turtle), a regular item for sale at their school store is a book of eccentric poetry by their principal, and Yusuke receives a gold star for drawing a picture on the back of a test.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience:
  • In series tradition, regular, "heroic" Personas have a blue sheen with white highlights, and they are summoned in bright blue flames, while the aura of Shadows and evil Personas is Red and Black and Evil All Over.
  • If you use Third Eye while walking around in the real world, confidants will turn blue with their card/arcana hovering over their head.
  • Using Third Eye in the Metaverse will cause Shadows to glow with different colors. Green Shadows are at a much lower level than Joker (and can be insta-killed by Ryuji's Rank 7 skill), Blue Shadows are at a lower level, yellow Shadows are at the same level, and red Shadows are at a higher level. Also, treasure you can take turns gold.
• Color Motifs: Red, in opposition to the somber Persona 3's blue and the upbeat Persona 4's yellow, to underscore P5's themes of danger and rebellion. It also heavily uses black and white for a pizazz-filled "black with white highlights" look.
  • In Royal, when Joker is inhabiting Maruki's alternate reality, the normally white-on-black date display in the upper left of the screen is inverted - black numbers, white background - just to further hammer home that, as happy as people are, the world Joker's in is wrong.
• Color Wash: In Royal's third semester, there is a noticeable gray filter over the outside areas of Tokyo, representing the chill of winter. During actively-snowy days, the filter is present in interiors too.
• Combination Attack:
  • The "All-Out Attack", where all standing party members attack every downed enemy.
  • "Bullet Hail", where the entire party showers random enemies in bullets.
  • "Baton Pass", where one character gives their turn to another to gain bonuses like enhanced stats.
  • Royal introduces "Show Time" which are more cinematic versions of the combination attacks introduced in Persona 4 Golden, as well as more versatile as they are more combinations than the latter as well as party members joining up in multiple attacks rather than having a set pair.
• Combined Energy Attack: The Protagonist defeats the Big Bad by combining the seven deadly sins into a bullet, which the ultimate Persona, Satanael, then shoots through its head.
• Company Cross References: You can catch a glimpse of a Catherine figure in Futaba's bedroom, which she purchased when she went shopping all by herself as the final part of her Social Link.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Shadows fought as normal enemies usually have the same elemental weaknesses/resistances as their Persona counterparts, but not always. For example, Mara as a Persona is weak to Ice, but the Maras that appear as enemies late into the Mementos Depths are not, and in fact have no weaknesses entirely.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror:
  • The Shujin High School boys' volleyball team (and honestly, the entire school) is so used to Kamoshida owning the place that they're in complete denial about his physical abuse of the students. They call it "training".
  • On a slightly more amusing note, if you take your time completing Kaneshiro's Palace and draw close to the deadline, Makoto will remind you to get it done ASAP, because she has been getting her own friendly "reminders" daily via text. When asked if she's okay, she will reply that she's gotten used to it.
  • Discussed during Okumura's palace, when the group wonders why the robots that serve as the cognitive versions of his employees don't try to resist. Yusuke says that the more present oppression is, the harder it is to live without it, and he learned that while living with Madarame- even after Madarame's exposure and fall from grace, Yusuke can't help but sometimes remember his teacher fondly.
  • This is the problem driving the final dungeon, the Prison of Regression in Mementos Depths. It houses the Shadows of all the masses in society who recognize the corruption and injustice in their society but are too afraid to do something about it, and thus perversely long for the status quo to remain.
• Console Cameo: When Joker rides on the subway, you can occasionally see another passenger playing a Play Station Vita.
• The Conspiracy: The Phantom Thieves' activities eventually attract the attention of a secret, wealthy organization that seeks to eliminate them for their knowledge of the world inside the collective unconscious.
• Continue Your Mission, Dammit!: Once you get free rein over what to do after a Palace becomes available, you'll periodically receive reminders from the rest of your party to work on the Palace. Even if you drop by to advance their Confidants, they initially anticipate that you've approached them to start a meeting. However, if you're within 7 days or less from a deadline without the Palace completed, your entire party will stop being available to hang out in order to pressure the player to advance the plot.
• Continuity Cameo:
  • Rise and Kanami appear in individual advertisements at subway stations. Ann even gives you the poster of Rise if you hang out with her at Harajuku, which can be put up as decoration in your room.
  • Haru gives you a kumade of Teddie if you hang out with her at Asakusa.
  • You're able to buy goods from Tanaka if you buy a busted laptop from the second-hand goods shop and fix it up.
  • Akechi gets compared to Naoto in one television program.
  • Takemi calls Uehara to compare notes with her colleagues about an illness during her Confidant.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Goro Akechi is known as "the second advent of Detective Prince". The original Detective Prince was Naoto.
  • Posters of Rise Kujikawa and Kanami Mashita can be found in the Shibuya subway station. You can even get a Rise poster to decorate your room with.
  • Black Mask's outfit is a corrupted version of the costumes from Phoenix Ranger Featherman R, the Persona series's Super Sentai TV Show Within a Show that first appeared in Persona 2.
  • Futaba has a set of Phoenix Ranger Featherman R figures in her room.
  • Similar to Persona 3, you can occasionally catch shows on TV that are talking about or outright interviewing characters from previous games.
    • Persona 2: A detective who wears distinctive red glasses (Katsuya Suou).
    • Persona 3: A legendary gumshoe who claims to have punched a bear (Akihiko Sanada). Also, Yukari Takeba is still in college and still acting on the Ranger Featherman show.
    • Persona 4: A female police cadet who apparently can use kung-fu^note Chie Satonaka not only uses kung fu, but if you max out her social link, in the ending, she reveals that she's planning on joining the police. A convicted killer who claims he did it just because "the world is a shitty place" (Tohru Adachi). The beautiful, young proprietress of the Amagi Inn (Yukiko Amagi). Rise Kujikawa still working as an idol at 20 years old, with a sultry and sexy persona nowadays. Although she herself doesn't make a cameo, Naoto Shirogane is mentioned during a segment about Akechi. Taro Namatame has returned to politics.
  • You can get DLC packs that let you wear the uniforms of students from St. Hermelin, Seven Sisters, Gekkoukan, and Yasogami.
  • In Takemi's Confidant, she makes a phone call and speaks to someone she calls "Uehara-san." Considering that Takemi's calling a hospital, it's entirely likely that she's calling Sayoko Uehara, a nurse who is the Devil Social Link from the previous game.
  • One of the news bulletins on the train mentions an incident at Wild Duck Burger.
  • The theme park Destiny Land comes from Shin Megami Tensei I (and was also occasionally mentioned in other games).
  • The drugstore in Shibuya is Aohige Pharmacy, the same as the one in Paulownia Mall in Persona 3.
  • Similarly, the flower shop in the Underground Mall is Rafflesia, the same as the one in Port Island Station in Persona 3.
  • Several of the vending machine drinks from Persona 3 and 4 return.
  • Lavenza's All-Out Attack involves her splitting herself back into Caroline & Justine, an ability that was established in Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight.
  • A sign with the logo of Chagall Cafe from both Persona 3 and 4 stands near Yusuke in the Underground Walkway.
  • The penultimate dungeon has one to its parent series, interpreting Tokyo as a half-sunken city.
• Contractual Boss Immunity: Most major bosses are immune to status effects or critical hits, preventing you from scoring a Technical hit or an All-Out Attack.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: In general, the previous game's antagonists tend to be either dangerously misguided or can be redeemed, and most bosses are mostly trying to repair one's self doubts and be a better, accepting person (Indeed, most of the bosses you fight were the personifications of your party members' self doubts). The final boss herself was a genuine Well-Intentioned Extremist. In contrast, this game's antagonists are chock full of despicable assholes that are hugely selfish, sometimes just pure evil and there's a lot of intentional hate designed from them, making the 'Black' part of morality a lot clearer. And the final boss is also a selfish Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist.
  • Royal is this to the base game, as Maruki is dangerously misguided and Affably Evil at his worst, but genuinely sympathetic and a Tragic Villain at his best.
• Contrived Coincidence:
  • School lessons have a weird habit of relating to whatever's going on in the story, don't they?
  • The characters themselves note the astronomical odds of the fact that the man responsible for the false charge against Joker, The Man Behind the Man to Yusuke and Makoto's abusers, and the man who murdered Futaba's mother and Haru's father are all the same man - Masayoshi Shido.
  • The Metaverse app listening and reacting to Ryuji's sotto voce rant about Kamoshida; thus, Ryuji bears responsibility for entirely on accident taking them to Kamoshida's castle-palace the first time. Also, that Morgana (aka the being created by the real Igor that was supposed to help the Phantom Thieves along their journey) was right in that castle instead of some other palace.
  • Madarame just happens to have a door in his house that sticks out like a sore thumb against the décor inside. How else are the Phantom Thieves supposed to know where to look for evidence of his treachery?
• Cool Car: If you didn't already think the Citroën H Van was cool then you certainly will by the end of this game. Makoto drives one at the end of the game to take Joker home and to replicate their Mementos adventures.
• Cool Mask: All the characters' Persona turn into nifty thief masks when not in use.
• Copy-and-Paste Environments: Most of the Mementos dungeon is a set of blocks of warped subway tunnels stuck together by random generation, much like the dungeons in previous Persona games. The rest of the game however, and the bottom of Mementos, is custom made.
• The Coroner Doth Protest Too Much: The reason faking Joker's death works so well is because not only is the coroner on the payroll, he didn't even bother to look at the body and see that it didn't, you know, exist. This buys a lot of precious time until the ruse is uncovered and Shido has revealed his weakness. Nope, the death was simply ruled a suicide because the traitor said so.
• Cosmetic Award: By taking certain confidants on a date to the right place, the player may receive a gift from the confidant. Some of these confidant/location combinations can be difficult to figure out, only occurring between certain confidant levels, on certain days of the week, or after the player has already taken that confidant on a certain number of dates before. However, these gifts can only be used to decorate Joker's room — there isn't even an achievement associated with them. And to make it even worse, the shelf where most of the decorations are kept is on the wall to the camera's right in Joker's room, making them hard to see if you're not in the decorating menu.
• The Cracker: Medjed, a global organization of "hacktivists" who claim to be just by targeting corrupt businesses by stealing and destroying data. The original Medjed, Futaba, was accurately this, but her "successors" are just a motley group of individuals doing her own thing. Some are even impostors using the name and reputation for personal gain and commit crimes of their own; Futaba isn't thrilled about this, and it's one reason she opts to help the Phantom Thieves take them down.
• Crack is Cheaper: In-universe example. Okumura's Treasure turns out to be an old plastic model set of a flying saucer that was popular when he was young. When the Phantom Thieves look up its value in the present day, they get sticker shock.
• Crapsaccharine World: This is how the third term arc's distortions turn out to be, starkly contrasted to the Crapsack World with Yaldabaoth in-charge. Everyone is happy and content, with all human tragedies and suffering being erased out of the fabric of history, Joker being a free man with Akechi loyal on his side, Morgana becoming a human, Shiho was never abused by Kamoshida and was happily hanging out with Ann, Ryuji reconcling with the track team, Madarame atones for his sins and lets Yusuke exhibit "Sayuri" in an art museum using his mother's name and Makoto's father, Wakaba and Okumura revived, with Okumura being a Reasonable Authority Figure and a Benevolent Boss. True enough, all of these seems to be too good to be true, and it obviously is. It turns out that because you taught Maruki how to use Mementos in his psientific essay and he already has a persona who can warp cognition way before this, Yaldabaoth was somehow able to drive him insane and materialize his persona in a distorted form, so he occupies Mementos to run his "salvation plan" of giving all human desires with no strings attached. And it's outright said that the Phantom Thieves desire him to change the current reality by the subconscious level. While Maruki is genuinely motivated by altruism instead of malice or Blue-and-Orange Morality unlike most major enemies in the past, it doesn't make the situation any less terrifying since the whole world might be dragged into the voids of existential nihilism if he gets his way.
  • This trope extends visually to Maruki's Palace. On the surface, it looks like a clean, bright, functional mental health clinic, but a dark Lovecraftian tentacley motif runs throughout it: from the overworld appearance of the Shadows patrolling the place, to their demon forms (including the horrifying cutscene preceding the Hastur miniboss), culminating in the boss battle against Azathoth. Lovecraftian Gods aside, the other Shadows in the Palace are pretty much figures associated with heresy or death such as Macabre, Nebiros, Belial or Baal. The last area of the Palace is the golden and lush Garden of Eden, yet the boss arena is dark and depressing, symbolising the madness at the core of the utopia.
• Crapsack World: There's a reason the Thieves are willing to risk everything to reform the world — they really do have no other choice if they want to live a halfway normal life. Physically and sexually abusive predators are employed as teachers — something both staff and parents are fully aware of and choose to do nothing about. Random accidents caused by "psychotic breaks" could end your life in an instant. The police are in the pocket of corrupt monsters, which sees innocent people arrested and real criminals allowed to go free thanks to their connections. When tragedy or injustice strikes, authority figures can't or won't protect you, bystanders are too apathetic or scared to get involved, and by the end of it you'll be so Conditioned to Accept Horror that you'll probably be one of the faceless masses who just keep their head down in the hope that nobody dangerous notices them. Or worse, you'll snap and figure that if the world's full of rotten people that get away with everything and nobody cares, you might as well be rotten yourself. Oh, and not even the Velvet Room that guided you in the past games will be spared from this, since the real head of the conspiracy has hijacked it as his headquarters. And the rampant corruption and distortions in the outside world? That's his doing, all for the sake of proving that only he is capable of ruling over the ignorant masses.
• Crazy-Prepared: Joker's fake death plan is ripe with this. To wit:
  • Makoto found out that inside the Metaverse's interrogation room that not only did their clothes not change inside unlike in pretty much everywhere else in the Metaverse, but the surroundings of the interrogation room were the exact same as the real world. Once Makoto told the rest of the crew about it, they immediately went to check it while keeping Akechi in the dark about it.
  • Futaba found a way to activate the Metaverse Navigation App remotely from her laptop by tricking the phone into thinking the user was tapping the screen — after all, the app still follows the phone's "rules" despite being an explicitly supernatural element. Then, she used this trick to send Sae and Akechi to the Metaverse and timed it to the moment Joker's and Akechi's phones were in close proximity from their GPS data.
  • During the Casino heist, the crew prepared themselves an empty briefcase beforehand and merely acted like they were taking the Treasure inside Sae's Palace — being Akechi's first heist, he didn't realize this wasn't their standard procedure. They also made sure before the heist began that the police would be waiting to ambush them and arrest Joker once they completed the heist.
  • If you ask Futaba after you returned back to the cafe post-interrogation, Futaba reveals that Makoto woke up one night realizing the possibilities of a Cognitive Akechi inside Sae's Palace, which the real Akechi could accidentally run into and realize he wasn't in the real world. So the team headed to the Metaverse and Makoto singlehandedly knocked out Cognitive Akechi, and tied him up somewhere inside Sae's Palace far from the interrogation room to prevent that from happening.
• Cringe Comedy: A new event in Royal at a summer festival, Ryuji makes rather cringy comments to a news team on-camera in the hopes that they won't use the footage. Yusuke's response is that his behavior was "truly cringeworthy". A later text from Mishima shows that the plan failed.
• Critical Hit:
  • Physical attacks have a chance to deal extra damage, which is accompanied by an extended attack animation where the party member uses both their melee weapon and gun, or pops a creepy Slasher Smile if they used a Persona's physical skill instead.
  • At certain confidant levels, teammates can offer to assist in downing or eliminating an enemy, provided Joker's attack didn't do this initially. This can range from a melee attack utilizing their weapon to its full extent, i.e. Ann using a Noblewoman's Laugh and beating the crap out of her target, Ryuji winding up for a grand slam, Yusuke showing his skill as an Iaijutsu Practitioner, etc.; or a ranged attack where both Joker and the teammate line up shots on the target, accompanied by a convenient bullseye background.
• Cruel Mercy: Ann Takamaki's rationalization for sparing Kamoshida's shadow: "I think revenge is better served if I can make him repent. Realizing what he's done, he'll grovel for forgiveness for the rest of his life, you know? I just believe there are fates worse than death."
• Cue the Sun: The first shot immediately after defeating Yaldabaoth is a view of the sun shining straight through the bullet hole you and Satanael just shot through his head.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • When ordered to kill Joker by Yaldabaoth, Caroline and Justine render their target unable to move before repeatedly bombarding him with attacks. The only reason Joker doesn't die then and there is his Heroic Willpower causing him to keep taking their attacks until the twins start doubting their purpose.
  • Happens in the final battle with Satanael vs. Yaldabaoth. The latter uses his strongest attack on the party, only for Satanael to completely No-Sell it, and Satanael finishes the fight with a single Sinful Shell to Yaldabaoth's head.
• Cute Clumsy Girl: The staff at the Akihabara maid cafe seem to be going for this deliberately, contributing to the creepy artificiality of the place's attempts to be cute and charming.
• Cutscene Incompetence: Akechi's (apparent) death could have easily been avoided if the party had just used a Goho-M to escape the shadows surrounding them, assuming they have one. Then again, considering the person in question wouldn't have been too keen on the idea anyway, it might be handwaved as that.
• Cutscene Power to the Max: When most characters awaken to their Persona in a cutscene, they tend to incapacitate or kill every nearby Shadow instantly, which they then can't reproduce in following battles.
  • Prologue Arsène has access to Eigaon and Brave Blade, two moves that are well beyond what the Arsène you ultimately start with can ever naturally learn, with the latter being impossible for Arsène to know at that point on an initial run.^ExplanationWhile it's possible for Arsène to know Eigaon at this point of the game by using the gallows and Save Scumming until he inherits it, the only way for him to learn Brave Blade is to use a skill card on him, as it's impossible for physical skills to carry over to curse-type Personas in a guilotine or gallows execution. However, the only way to obtain a Brave Blade skill card is to fuse Futsunushi, which unlocks after completing Morgana's Social Link, and then execute him in the electric chair. The problem with this is that Morgana's Social Link maxes out very late in the game during one of the last few dungeons. So by the time you can fuse Futsunushi and execute him for his Brave Blade skill card, it will have already been well past the point of the game where Arsène is supposed to have this move. So basically, the only way for Arsène to know this move by the point of the prologue is to start a New Game Plus. This is actually amended in Royal, where the Brave Blade skill card is gained by itemizing Atavaka, who doesn't require anything special to fuse.
  • Ann uses a Shadow's BFS when she first awakens, but can only equip whips for the rest of the game.
  • Goemon uses an area of effect freezing attack when Yusuke first awakens, only for Yusuke to lack Mabufu or any other multi-target ice magic in the mini-boss battle that happens seconds later.
  • Satanael, despite being the single most powerful Persona you can fuse in the New Game Plus, can't obtain its Sinful Shell skill because that's what it uses to kill Yaldabaoth in a very memorable cutscene. To make it available elsewhere would render everything else completely moot. ^note Funnily enough, hacking the game to add this attack to his skill set reveals that it does an amazing one damage.
• Cutting the Knot: All of the Palace boss battles bar the fifth and seventh ones utilize "special orders" that allow you to break through the boss' defenses and defeat them in a more efficient way. Some operations can be avoided, however, and a well-prepared party can just brute-force their way onto the boss with no issues.
  • Shadow Madarame's special order involves having the player attack his four-portraits form with the same Weaksauce Weakness-inducing paint that he can inflict on you. However, the operation won't occur unless Shadow Madarame transforms back into his portrait form for a third time. There's no real need for the extra damage output since his portraits never revive on full health, and on lower difficulties, a sufficiently-leveled party can very likely defeat him before the operation even gets mentioned.
  • Shadow Kaneshiro's order involves distracting him from using his March of the Piggy attack by throwing an item at him. While giving him an item renders him defenseless, you can also just attack Kaneshiro himself while he's on top of Piggytron to knock him over. And given that Kaneshiro only tends to get distracted by valuable items that your party really cannot do without (such as physical/magic ointments and somas), the order, despite Morgana's insistence otherwise, comes off as a rather bone-headed idea.
  • In order to actually provoke Shadow Niijima to a fight, you need to perform a special order that has you sending one of your allies to act as a sniper in order to expose the boss's cheating by breaking a pane of glass on the mechanism that makes up the field of battle, which takes up about five turns. You can actually avoid this by only having Joker in your party; Futaba will call the Shadow out for cheating, ensuing the actual boss fight. Also doubles as Developer's Foresight. This gets averted in Royal, where it can take two or three turns to spot the cheat and set up the sniper.
  • The final boss of the fourth palace, The Sphinx, generally requires that you shoot it down with the ballista, which prevents it from attacking and greatly increases the damage you inflict with each attack...but if you're patient enough, you can just keep hitting it with long range magical skills. It will take a looooooooong time, though, as even the strongest skills will only inflict about 200 points of damage, and the boss has upwards of 8000 HP (the skills that you'll have normally at the time you fight the boss will inflict about 50-75 damage).
• Cyberspace: While the primary theme is Temple of Doom, Futaba's Palace has several computer motifs.

D

• Damn You, Muscle Memory!:
  • Due to the interface overhaul in Persona 5, players who later return to previous Persona games after playing it find themselves accidentally wasting turns due to being overly familiar with the newer combat controls. Most notably, in 5 Personas are summoned with the triangle button, and in Persona 3/FES/P 4/G that same button rushes the enemy. Using skills and attacks is based on a simpler list-scrolling based UI which makes it counter-intuitive for players familiar with 5.
  • In the original release, the square button could be used during dialogue scenes to view the log of previously spoken lines, while in Royal it toggles the auto advance on and off. Veteran players might find themselves getting stuck on a single line of dialogue when they meant to go back and reread a previous line.
• Dancing Theme: The main characters can be seen dancing around the city in the opening animation that plays before the title screen. The poses and spins make it look like they're figure skating on concrete.
• Dare to Be Badass: How the Persona awakenings go. The Persona reaches out to the character, urging them to be honest with what they want, form a contract, and cut loose on those holding them down.
• Darker and Edgier:
  • Compared to Persona 4, with characters receiving visible, bloody injuries, regular use of Body Horror, the heroes being Anti-Hero thieves, much more dangerous antagonists and some fairly dark plot twists. As just one example, Ann's early game plot really kicks off when her friend Shiho, who is being terribly abused by Kamoshida to start with (to the point of having dead-looking eyes), leaps off the top of a school building, in full view of all her classmates, including Ann. That pretty much sets the tone for the entire game.
  • It should also be noted that unlike Persona 3, most of its dark elements are drawn out from political thriller/horror, such as perverted teachers, political assassinations and ignorance of the masses.
  • It's still Lighter and Softer than Persona 3 tone wise. The topics of the game are as dark or darker than P3's, but the game manages to be generally more upbeat than the rather melancholy P3, ending with an unambiguously happy ending compared to P3's Bittersweet Ending.
  • The DLC Personas come with not only their original variations, but also new "Picaro" forms, which are shades of black and red, and in a Shujin outfit, the idea being that Joker's mask changed their form.
  • The Social Link system, which is presented as a friendship of sorts, was changed to the more morally ambiguous Confidant system. While some relationships are the typical friendships (for example, the party members), others are more like deals or agreements (Ms. Kawakami agreeing to let you slack off in class to prevent her maid service side job from becoming known).
  • The tarot cards all deviated from the designs used in previous games, with most depicting some type of crime/sin/cruelty (For example, the scale in Judgment is unbalanced, favoring money over the heart).
  • The Velvet Room's Summoning Ritual changes from a Tarot Ritual to a guillotine execution, the itemization ritual becomes an electric chair, and a way to use Personas to give EXP to others is a hanging. The Twin Wardens are also both more aggressive towards you than earlier attendants, with Joker being trapped in a cell until he has the spirit of rebellion to break free from this, when he himself was sentenced to execution.
• Darkest Hour: The game enters this by the time the game catches up to the present day. The Phantom Thieves' reputation is at an all-time low and the Big Bad has used the public's opinion of him to propel his campaign for Prime Minister, putting him in a very good position to get elected. Not to mention that Joker has to fake his own death and the other Thieves are also scheduled for "accidents" later. And somehow the situation still gets worse even after they steal Shido's heart. His evil conspiracy is still going strong without him, their manipulation of the media and law enforcement has all but ensured that Shido will go unpunished despite his confession and change of heart, and Yaldabaoth uses this all as an excuse to put in to motion his plan to Ret-Gone humanity, starting with the Phantom Thieves.
• Dark Reprise:
  • Mementos' theme, "Mementos", was already pretty eerie, but it becomes more ominous and oppressive with the addition of a guitar, strings, and heavier percussion as "Freedom and Security" (renamed on the soundtrack to "Freedom and Peace"), the theme for the final Palace, the Prison of Regression, located at the bottom of Mementos. It's also used in the credits for the bad endings.
  • Sections of "Tokyo Daylight", an upbeat world theme, make a subtle, minor-keyed reappearance in two late game themes. One is Ark, for Shido's Palace, in the violin melody. The other is the previously mentioned "Freedom and Security", in the electric guitar melody. Both represent the willingness of Tokyo's public to submit to greater powers for order and, well, security.
  • Played with during the battle with Black Mask. During the second phase of the battle, the song "Will Power" plays. Previously this has been a heroic, determined theme played when each of the characters awakens to their Persona. This time, it represents Akechi revealing both his true Persona, Loki, and his identity as the masked villain who's been causing the psychotic breakdowns. It also echoes his own desperation to defeat the Phantom Thieves. The song is used to clearly juxtapose against its previous heroic intentions.
  • In Royal, should Joker agree to stay in Maruki's reality during the third term, a more somber version of "Ideal and the Real" plays during the end credits.
• Dark World: The Metaverse is a warped version of the real world that grows and transforms based on human desires.
• Deadly Ringer: The Bell of Declaration is one of the four weapons that the Final Boss wields. The sound waves can cause damage, increase the user's defense, decrease the opponents' defense, or inflict Vanity (weakness to all attacks) or Jealousy (brainwashing) upon an opponent.
• Deal with the Devil: Inverted Trope; each character's Shadow, the other self, first manifests as their voice with a magnificent bastard air either confronting them about not standing up for others or themselves, or commenting that they had been waiting for them, and offering them a "contract", which results in the Shadow becoming a Persona in exchange for unleashing their rage and hatred on the world that wronged them. However, since Shadows are part of them and Persona are Shadows given form by the strength of heart, it basically means it is a contract with themselves to no longer compromise who they are, which is what gaining a Persona essentially is.
  • Case in point: Makoto gains her Persona after being pushed around one too many times by one of the villains. She is far happier and more well adjusted after this and decides to make her own path instead of just doing what is expected of her.
    Johanna: You have finally found your own justice... Please... Never lose sight of it again...
  • Near the end of the game, Yaldabaoth offers one towards the protagonist; should he decide to leave Yaldabaoth alone, he would remove Mementos from reality and allow the protagonist to use the Metaverse as long as he desires, playing it completely straight.
• Death by Despair: Present as a game mechanic — the despair ailment causes the afflicted to not take any actions, lose SP with each turn, and eventually kill themselves. For players, this can be both useful and terrifying; in the case of the latter, should Joker get hit with this and not cured in time - it's an immediate game over. In the case of the former, during Flu Season days, enemies encountered in Mementos have a random chance of being hit with despair as soon as a fight is initiated...this extends to ALL enemies excluding bosses. Which means that yes, the REAPER can have a case of despair and kill itself in an encounter. Using this to the player's advantage is accepted as the best way to rapidly gain levels. This rather amusing oversight in regards to bosses was fixed in Royal.
• Death by Irony: Yaldabaoth is killed by Joker, who is completely empowered by the prayers originally directed at the former, and he's shot in the head by Satanael, when he originally set up Akechi to do this to Joker.
• Death Glare: The Persona critical/weakness-hitting eye cut-in is now closer to this, showing the characters' pissed off expressions from a more dynamic angle. Special contenders include Yusuke and Makoto.
• Death of a Child: Or more accurately, teenager.
  • Failing a heist deadline or making a deal with Sae results in the 16-year old protagonist being shot dead.
  • Kasumi was just 15 years old when she saved Sumire from a potentially lethal traffic accident, causing the latter to fall into deep Survivor Guilt.
• Defeat Equals Explosion: In Royal, defeating a Disaster Shadow will cause it to explode and inflict Almighty-type damage on other Shadows, if there are any.
• Degraded Boss: Several mini-bosses show up later as regular enemies. Done weirdly however, these bosses are often overpowered versions of the normal enemy as noticed when weaker versions of the enemy show up immediately after the boss fight.
• Deliberately Non-Lethal Attack: The Phantom Thieves only attack a Shadow until it's defeated, preferring to steal the Heart of their target to reform them, as killing a Shadow would murder the person in the real world. Akechi, on the other hand, has been killing Shadows for years and it's implied he can't hold back at all in a serious fight, given he leaves the entire battle with Sumire to Joker, whom he knows could win without resorting to murder.
• Dénouement: After defeating the final boss, Joker pulls a non-lethal Heroic Sacrifice to put an end to the conspiracy once and for all by turning himself into the police. After a few months, his fellow Phantom Thieves and confidants rally to get him released from jail. After that, the player can wander across the streets of Tokyo before calling it quits and seeing the game's ending.
• Denser and Wackier: The Metaverse is this compared to the Midnight Channel and the Dark Hour. The battle visuals and sound design is more cartoonish than the previous games. The Thieves also fight in comical battle outfits whereas SEES and The Investigation Team fight in their school uniforms. This gets increased further in Royal, by introducing Showtimes, which are all very cinematic and comedic in nature. This does not apply to the game's story or to the visuals in Tokyo which highlights how different the Metaverse is from the real world the Phantom Thieves inhabit.
• Deus ex Machina: Royal has a minor but crucial one close to the end where Morgana turns into a helicopter to help the Thieves escape from Maruki's collapsing Palace just by wanting it really hard. While it's shown that this was possible due to the wishing star Jose gave them, there was no previous indication that the star was capable of such a thing, considering it had only been used to give the Thieves access to Showtimes beforehand.
• Developers' Desired Date: Royal introduces Kasumi Yoshizawa, actually her sister Sumire, who zigzags this trope. On the one hand, she's the only romance option to get a Showtime with Joker, she actually confesses her feelings to him before the player can choose to make things romantic^note Although Ann technically confesses when her romantic route is picked, and numerous aspects of their designs mirror each other. On the other hand, it takes so long for her social link to open up (and can be missed altogether if Rank 8 of Maruki’s Confidant isn’t reached) that Joker can only become a couple with her during the final month of the game, and several romantic events like Christmas or Hawaii are completely inaccessible with her.
• Developer's Foresight: There's so many examples, they have their own page.
• Dialogue During Gameplay:
  • Compared to previous Persona games and the Megami Tensei franchise as a whole, there's far more idle chatter in the middle of gameplay without taking control away from the player:
  • In Tokyo, there's a ton of idle rumor dialogue Joker can eavesdrop on, changing as the game progresses and the Phantom Thieves increase their notoriety.
  • While dungeon crawling, characters will occasionally speak up in the middle of exploration - sometimes for generic lines offering assistance for when spotting a treasure chest or when Joker can ambush an enemy, while other times, it's more plot-specific. While exploring Mementos, the party has numerous Seinfeldian Conversations that can randomly occur at any time.
  • Cognitive entities in the Bank, Casino, Cruiser and Research Laboratory Palaces will have chatter as you travel through them.
  • A relatively small one, but Ohya's Rank 9 Confidant event elicits different reactions from Joker depending on how far in the story you are. If the event is initiated prior to the Cruise Ship Palace, Joker will be confused when Ohya mentions Shido's name since by that point he will not know who they are. If done after completing the Casino Palace, Joker reacts in shock when Ohya mentions them.
• Dialogue Tree: Talking with party members, answering questions in class, doing part-time jobs, and negotiating with demons all involve picking multiple options from a list of potential responses.
• Diegetic Soundtrack Usage:
  • In the end when the now-disbanded thieves drive off celebrating their newfound freedom, Makoto turns on the radio and "Wake Up, Get Up, Get Out There" first plays from the radio, before carrying over into the background music at full volume.
  • In the true ending of Royal, "Colors Flying High" can be heard as Joker leaves Tokyo by train.
• Difficulty Levels: You can play the game on Safety, Easy, Normal, Hard and Challenge/Merciless. Progressively harder difficulties give enemies higher stats, and makes damage from elemental weaknesses more punishing, making battles tougher. However, the story is unaffected regardless of the player's difficulty choice.
• Dirty Cop: The cops who apprehend the protagonist drug and beat him to try and get information on his accomplices. The head of the department is also a member of The Conspiracy, and plans to kill the protagonist and their friends to protect his illicit activities. It's also mentioned that the police and prosecutors are likely to plant evidence and frame the thieves in order to pin the various deaths on them.
• Disc-One Final Dungeon: Assuming you avoided selling your teammates out near the end of the interrogation and thus getting a Bad Ending, you proceed onto Shido's Palace, the Big Bad's palace. It features the climactic battles against The Dragon and the Big Bad. However, afterwards is is Mementos Depths, which is The Very Definitely Final Dungeon. It's the very bottom of Mementos and what Morgana's character arc has been building up to. It houses the Greater-Scope Villain, although it is a Hopeless Boss Fight. After avoiding another possible Bad Ending, all that's left is the Qliphoth World section, which has the True Final Boss.
• Disc-One Nuke:
  • Swift Strike is available as early as level 19 for Joker, but causing a guaranteed 3-4 light hits to all foes is a lot more powerful that it sounds. Don't be surprised if you find yourself keeping this skill on most new Persona you upgrade from.
  • Shiki-Ouji is a level 21 Persona that Nulls Phys/Gun/Curse skills, an absurd level of resistance for that early in the game. Given the amount of Phys skills alone you come across, Shiki-Ouji more than makes up for his level in sheer usefulness right out the gate. Royal makes him even better by reducing his level to 18 and giving him Null Bless in addition to the resistances he already had. Moreover, his only weakness is the relatively uncommon Nuclear element, while gathering all the Will Seeds in the 2nd Palace gives you an accessory that removes all weaknesses from your personas.
  • Itemizing Ame-no-Uzume (which the player would no doubt end up fusing if they're working on the Strength Confidant) will create Senryou Yakusha, a katana for Yusuke that gives an impressive +5 Strength bonus. Even if its power or accuracy will get overshadowed later on, this stat boost continues to be useful into the late- or endgame, where the player would be using his physical skills more than his basic attack.
  • The Downloadable Content allows you to pretty much coast through the early game. Even better, it's all included in the 2023 rerelease for no additional cost.
    • The Legacy Personas (Orpheus, Izanagi, Thanatos, Kaguya, Magatsu Izanagi, Messiah, Ariadne, Tsukiyomi, and Asterius), as well as the DLC Personas added to Royal (Izanagi-no-Okami, Athena, and Orpheus F) are overpowered for how early you get them in the game — you absolutely destroy the level <10 enemies with the level 20-90 Personas, even on Hard or Merciless difficulty. What really drives them into this territory however isn't just their strength, it's that the first summoning of any of them (even the level 90 Personas) is entirely FREE of charge. Any summons after this should you use them in a fusion must be paid for of course, but still a free courtesy summon is too insane to ignore. Once item fusions are unlocked, each of them can also be fused into exceedingly powerful weapons, armor, or accessories, too.
    • By merely checking your cardboard storage box after Ryuji awakens Captain Kidd, you can get an absolute treasure trove of healing and weapon fusion items, plus ¥100,000 (enough to buy an SP Adhesive 3 from Tae or get through Chihaya's Cash Gate) before you've even Opened the Sandbox.
  • During New Game Plus, you carry over all of your money and registered Personas. This means you can summon your late game Personas from the registry as soon as you get access to it. If you hoarded money before beating the game, you can have a team full of level 70+ Persona as soon as the first Palace.
  • Treasure Demons come jam-packed with useful skills that make them great fusion fodder, and will be recruited without demands if you knock them down. The first one, Regent, is a fixed encounter in the second Palace designed to serve as a tutorial for how they work, and cannot be missed. Said Treasure Demon comes with first-tier area-hitting spells for all eight magic elements, which is great if you're missing elemental coverage. Once the Gallows are unlocked, the Treasure Demons become invaluable for imparting bountiful amounts of experience to power-level your Personas in exchange for some money, on top of imparting a random skill they possess.
  • In Royal, the Councillor Confidant gives you Detox X at its second rank. This gives Joker a (reasonably high) chance to instantly heal himself of any of the normal status effects as soon as they're inflicted on him. As this Confidant is started fairly early in the game, before items and spells that can be used to heal status effects are easily available, this is a huge bonus. The third rank of the Confidant gives Flow, which gives Joker the chance to start a battle with Concentration (the next magic attack will inflict 2.4 times the normal damage) and Charge (the next physical attack will inflict 2.4 times the normal damage). These are both abilities that you won't normally have access to until late in the game and while it's random whether Flow will activate or not, when it does it can potentially end the battle right there.
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • Most targets of the Phantom Thieves, while not all on the scale of the main bosses, generally are pretty horrible people with crimes ranging from physical abuse to power harassment. Meanwhile, the Mementos mission required to unlock the Tower Confidant involves... a guy who cheats at video games. This is strange considering the villain of Makoto's confidant, an actual human trafficker, doesn't experience a change of heart in Vanilla/Royal (though he does in The Animation), while this guy does.
  • Some citizens try to invoke this by asking the Phantom Thieves to change the hearts of people they have personal grudges against, like their exes. All this does is annoy the protagonists, who lament that the site is being used by others to whine about people they don't like.
• The Dissenter Is Always Right: Maruki grants everyone's wishes so they can live in an idealistic utopia where all their past suffering is erased. While the Phantom Thieves easily fall under the spell, Akechi, being too cynical and broken to believe it, pushes Joker to reject Maruki's world. In the Bad Ending, despite Akechi's protests, Joker accepts it and Mementos fuses with reality, causing a Death of Personality for Sumire and Akechi, the former forever believing she's Kasumi and the latter left a pleasant and friendly husk, with mankind ceasing to progress as their wishes all come true.
• Distracted by the Sexy: If you level up Ann's Confidant, she can occasionally distract Shadows and cost them their turn by doing a sexy pose.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • A Mara boss in Kamoshida’s Palace is strong against literally everything except for physical attacks. In other words, you have to beat the meat to defeat it.
  • When Shadow Kamoshida goes berserk and begins turning into Asmodeus, a clear viscous substance starts dripping onto the floor when the camera is pointed towards the Phantom Thieves. It turns out to be drool.
  • When Futaba first awakens Necronomicon, it produces tentacles that abduct her and bring her inside, simultaneously changing her into her Phantom Thief outfit.
  • In Royal After the world falls into Maruki's reality, Akechi is one of the first people to realize it's fake due to him being unable to believe that anything good could ever happen to him, and vigorously pushes Joker to reject the dream world despite knowing he would likely disappear. Even if the player chooses the dialogue option accusing Akechi of oversimplifying, he will dismiss the issue and continue to advocate for the dream world's destruction. Altogether, this heavily resembles suicidal ideation.
• The Dog Was the Mastermind: The true villain turns out to be none other than Igor, the guy who's been your main support for creating new Personas throughout the entire game. What makes this an even bigger twist is that it's not even the real Igor.
• Do Not Adjust Your Set: Because of the recent hit to their reputation, the Thieves can't send the usual Calling Card to Masayoshi Shido. Futaba's solution is to hack into all of Japan's airwaves to broadcast their denouncement and challenge of Shido.
• Do Not Spoil This Ending:
  • For the first few weeks of the game's release, Atlus posted gameplay video and live streaming guidelines asking fans not to spoil the plot beyond the Futaba's Palace arc via photos and/or videos so that more players can enjoy the game.
  • In Persona 5 Royal, all footage from March to December are permitted. There's still a footage ban placed on the third semester however.
• Door to Before: Every Palace features ways to backtrack without needing to retread your steps through a difficult area. Generally speaking, after getting through an area laden with traps or enemy encounters, there will be a way to open a door or bypass the area without needing to go through it again.
• Double-Edged Buff:
  • The Sleep status prevents the target from acting, but also slowly regenerates their HP and SP.
  • The Rage status increases a target's attack power in exchange for making them uncontrollable and lowering their defense.
• Double-Meaning Title: In Royal, the final area of The Very Definitely Final Dungeon plays a track titled "Out of Kindness". This refers to both Maruki doing everything out of the kindness of his heart, but also running out of kindness to spare to the Phantom Thieves, who he does not want to fight, but will if it means preserving his idealized reality.
• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male:
  • After narrowly escaping from Shido's Palace, Ryuji sacrifices himself to save the team. While the Phantom Thieves are mourning the loss, he walks up like nothing happened. He teases Ann for crying, and she slaps him. Then all the girls back him against a light post while he begs for them to stop or explain. The screen then fades to black for a few seconds, then shows an unconscious Ryuji propped up against a light pole, implying the girls had mercilessly beaten him up. Everyone but him just walks off, talking about what to eat for dinner. Even if one thinks he shouldn't've teased Ann, assault was a complete overreaction, and the game takes it seriously when Ryuji's male coach breaks the kid's leg because Ryuji stood up to his abuse. The anime downgrades it to Ann, Futaba and Haru yelling at Ryuji, while in The Royal, one Thieves' Den conversation has them belatedly admit that they were too hard on him
  • Don't date more than one girl. Don't. Do. It. When they catch you on Valentine's Day, Sojiro and Morgana abandon you to your fate, and the game cuts to your broken and beaten ass lying on the floor of Leblanc.
  • This is notably averted more often than not however compared to previous games, especially with the many minor female targets in Mementos, which consist of a lot of abusive mothers/girlfriends who need to be changed for their actions.
• Do Well, But Not Perfect: When playing the darts minigame in Royal, it's beneficial to leave some points left over on your third round and then allow your partner to finish (so long as you say the right thing that allows them to do so), since this will increase their Baton Pass rank by 2 instead of 1.
  • Failing to max out the Councilor confidant before the deadline locks you out of the third term and shunts you into the vanilla game's ending. However, if you want 100% Completion in the Thieve's Den, you must do this in order to unlock the cutscenes exclusive to that ending.
• Downer Beginning: Both the In Medias Res prologue and the actual beginning of the game.
  • The prologue shows the Thieves completing a caper at the casino... only for Joker to be arrested due to a member of the team selling them out, and suffering violent Police Brutality once caught.
  • The game proper opens with the protagonist being framed for assault by a man who he stopped from sexually assaulting a woman. When he arrives in Tokyo, he's basically forced to live in a dirty storage room in a back-end shop that he has to spend several hours cleaning up to make habitable. Everybody speaks down to him condescendingly and makes it clear they don't have much faith in him based off his record, and he's perpetually one step away from being expelled and getting sent to Juvie. After spending only a few days at Shujin Academy, he finds out the gym teacher Kamoshida basically owns the place: he physically abuses males who stand up to him and sexually abuses female students, and everyone is too scared to stand up to him, or willing to turn a blind eye due to the good publicity he brings to the school. The protagonist and Ryuji accidentally stumble into his mental world, where his Shadow immediately decides to have them both killed, and the two barely escape with their lives. Shortly afterwards, Ann's friend attempts suicide due to Kamoshida's advances, and the three decide to become vigilantes to take him down. Emphasising how bad their situation is, the thieves are aware that stealing Kamoshida's desires could cause him to have a Mental Shutdown, but they simply don't have any other option to stop him.
• Downer Ending: The game has a few bad endings, as well as some Non-Standard Game Over endings.
  • Compared to previous game, where the downer only came through Fridge Horror, the first bad ending is far more overtly brutal as Joker is sadistically murdered by Akechi. This occurs either through the Non-Standard Game Over endings, which occur when you fail to clear a Palace in time, or it can occur if you decide to sell out your teammates to Sae. The credits will roll after the latter, with "Freedom and Security" in the background.
  • The second bad ending can happen if you choose to accept Yaldabaoth's bargain at the end of the game. If you accept, then the Metaverse remains, and Joker basically controls Tokyo for Yaldabaoth. It's also implied that he eventually abuses his powers, making him not so different from his past targets. This will also roll the credits, with "Freedom and Security" in the background.
  • Royal adds another in the form of the stay ending, and there's even two opportunities where it can come up. During the third term, in Maruki's distorted reality, he offers Joker a chance to abandon his old reality and stay in Maruki's, where everyone can live happily, without any strife or suffering. He extends this offer at the start of the term, and right at the end, but they both lead to the same ending. If you accept, the Phantom Thieves enjoy life forever, but Mementos returns and is impossible to remove, and everyone, including the Phantom Thieves, are robbed of their futures and their potential for growth, with Sumire being metaphorically murdered and Lavenza and Igor left isolated from humanity. The worst part is, Joker is actually aware of this, and there are dialogue options that indicate that he truly regrets it. This will also roll the credits, but instead of "Freedom and Security", a rearranged version of "Ideal and the Real" plays instead.
  • Royal also adds another Non-Standard Game Over ending if you fail to complete the new palace of the third term in time. The Phantom Thieves aren't sure if they are making the right choice and believe their indecision was subconsciously preventing them from securing a route to the Treasure. Maruki visits Joker in his dreams and states that he wanted to let him accept his reality out of his own free will, but because Joker cannot decide, he feels responsible for burdening him. As a result, Maruki makes Joker sleep forever, where he won't have to think about anything for the rest of his life. The camera pans out from Joker, revealing that he's been in Maruki's reality for an indeterminable amount of time. Lavenza, represented through the butterfly, desperately tries to reach Joker but falls to the ground and fades away.
• Downloadable Content: Both the vanilla Persona 5 and Royal have lots of digital content that can be bought from the PSN store; all of the DLC for the original release was included for free with Royal, and all of the DLC for Royal was included for free in the 2022 ports. Additionally, owners of the original PS4 version of Royal have been able to purchase the additional content for free as of the release of the 2022 ports.
  • Costumes and music from other Persona games from the original to 4 (including its spin-offs Dancing All Night and Arena Ultimax), as well as other Shin Megami Tensei titles like Shin Megami Tensei IV, Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army and even Shin Megami Tensei if...; Catherine gets a set as well.
  • Downloadable Personas include Orpheus, Thanatos, Messiah, Izanagi, Kaguya, Magatsu-Izanagi, Asterius, Ariadne, and Tsukuyomi, each with their own darker-colored and marginally more powerful "Picaro/Zokujin" versions.
  • The English language version includes the Japanese language track as DLC.
  • Other pieces of DLC include a small selection of high end recover items, like soma, and the option to play on the Harder Than Hard "Challenge" difficulty from the start.
  • Royal adds some new DLC, including some new Personas (like Orpheus F, Athena, Izanagi-no-Okami, and Joker's evolved ultimate Persona Raoul), new cosmetics (including a set of Velvet Room outfits, Featherman outfits, and outfits from Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight, Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth, and Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey), and a set of Challenge Mode battles, which feature the protagonists of the past two games as bosses to fight.
• Dramatic Red Samurai Background: Any All-Out Attack that either finishes off a single enemy, or kills all of them in the field at once will result in a special animation unique for the party member who initiated it, ending in a splash screen of said party member striking a stylish pose while black silhouettes of enemies in the background spray High-Pressure Blood. Joker's splash screen in particular features a striking red background.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Happens in-universe later in the story. When the Phantom Thieves are framed for Okumura's murder, Ann notes that the public are starting to treat their past targets like victims, even Kamoshida.
• Dramatic Thunder: It's only a crack of thunder with no music that accompanies the arrival of Satanael, Joker's ultimate Persona.
• Dub-Induced Plot Hole: There are some oddities and mistranslations here and there in the English translation of the game. All of these were fixed in Royal:
  • In Sae's first appearance, a police officer is telling Sae in the original Japanese that they got a call from her boss, telling them to allow Sae to interrogate their prisoner. In the English version, it's translated as if the officer's telling her she's about to get a call from her boss, despite how odd it sounds for him to ask the police officer to tell Sae he'll be calling her on her personal phone, rather than asking the officer to hand Sae their own phone, or something similar.
  • Ryuji will mention his "Folks" at some points in the English translation, despite it being a plot point that his dad left years ago and he lives alone with his single mother, who explicitly feels ashamed for having to raise him as such, even now.
  • Futaba explicitly refers to Morgana as Mona in one scene shown after her slumber when her heart is stolen. Yet, when it comes time for her to choose a code name, the rest of the team has to explain to her what a "code name" is.
• Dub Text: While it was present in the Japanese version, the English dub of the game made Akechi's feelings towards Joker more apparent, which includes changing a line that the protagonist can respond to Akechi with from a simple "I'm home." to "Honey, I'm home", with Akechi chastising him for coming home late if it's picked.
• Duel Boss: For an added challenge, clearing your Party before every boss fight (except for Kamoshida) can count as this, but the instances below are scripted.
  • The Battle Arena in Sae's Palace is a double subversion: initially, Joker is up against two Ganeshas, then three Rangdas, and finally finishing with a lone Thor.
  • Akechi and Sumire in Royal are fought 1v1 as part of their Confidant and the third semester respectively.
  • In Royal, a new phase in Shido's fight has him remove the other Phantom Thieves from the battle, leaving Joker to finish the battle himself.
  • The Post-Final Boss sequence with Maruki in Royal, though brief, counts as this.
  • Outside of the main story, there's also Sojiro's Mementos Request, which involves only Joker and Oracle, since the latter doesn't want the other Phantom Thieves involved in what she feels is personal business.
• Dueling Player Characters:
  • In the original game, Akechi is fought just before the Phantom Thieves leave to access the Treasure Room in Shido's Palace. In Royal, he can be optionally fought as part of his Confidant.
  • In Royal, Kasumi, or rather Sumire after The Reveal, is briefly fought against in Maruki's Palace before Maruki himself forces Cendrillon to go Berserk.
• Dumbass Has a Point:
  • In one Mementos conversation, the group wonders about the true nature of Mementos, at which point Ryuji says that the easiest way to find out is to get to the bottom. Lampshaded when Morgana, who frequently mocks Ryuji's intelligence, says that "unfortunately, Ryuji is right."
  • During an event near the beginning of the Third Semester in Royal, the group brings up the ethical quandary of taking the heart of Takuto Maruki. Ryuji then puts the argument to rest by explaining that, yes, while there are plenty of good reasons for their target to want what they want, and indeed there are probably multitudes of people who would be better off if the Phantom Thieves didn't intervene, that doesn't change the fact that their methods were totally in the wrong and the Phantom Thieves need to make a stand to make things right. After an awkward silence, Makoto states that she's amazed at how right he is.
  • In Royal, one of the exam rooms in Maruki's Palace asks what you'd steal if you had the ability to steal people's hearts. Ryuji immediately suggests they pick the option D - "steal evil hearts to fix society", i.e. what the Phantom Thieves have been doing all game, after listening to the questions. Morgana and Akechi chide him for his impulsive decision because of the unlikelihood of Maruki's skewed morals aligning with that of the Phantom Thieves', but, as it turns out, Ryuji ends up being right.
  • When the Phantom Thieves meet Jose at the true end of Mementos, he explains that his research into the humans has possibly backfired, as the more experience he has with them the less he actually understands them. Ryuji posits that it's just like love, before he's called out for an idiotic response by both Futaba and Yusuke. Jose then states that, no, Ryuji is actually correct, and his experience is comparable to falling in love. Even Ryuji is taken aback by him being correct.
• Dungeon Bypass: Royal introduces a shortcut that allows you to head straight to Okumura's boss fight without dealing with the other Shadow mooks or waste your time to get to the lift. However, this requires you to back track to the previous area and find a vantage point where you can use the grappling hook on a floating UFO to get there.

E

• Early-Bird Cameo: In Persona 5 Royal, some of the Phantom Thieves and confidants appear in the background before they are properly introduced or become one of the Phantom Thieves.
  • If you look closely as you walk into Yongen-Jaya for the first time (on April 9th), you can briefly see Takemi walk by.
  • Ohya can be found interviewing a policeman about the Mental Shutdowns inside Shibuya's subway station on April 11, your first day of school.
  • After Joker and Ryuji return home from the beef bowl shop on April 12, Akechi and Sae walk past them.
  • Ann and Shiho are walking to school behind Joker on the morning of April 13.
  • After Ann's awakening, when the party returns to reality from Kamoshida's Palace, Maruki can be briefly seen walking out of the school. This one turns out to be plot-relevant, as Maruki is later revealed to have noticed them exiting the Palace, and deducted they were the Phantom Thieves from there.
  • On Joker's first day of school, if you go to the third floor, you can listen in on an optional conversation between Haru and a teacher about maintaining the garden on the school's roof. She is also seen walking to school on April 20 and June 11, at the Inokashira event on May 30 and in Hawaii (both as a Freeze-Frame Bonus in the animated cutscene and in an interaction on 9/9).
  • Besides seeing Makoto study in the library, she is also seen walking to school on April 15 and April 19. On April 21, she is seen at the train station with Sae. You can also find her on the first floor of Shujin on April 15th - in the immediate aftermath of Shiho's suicide attempt - talking about the situation with a teacher.
  • Yumeko Mogami, a female classmate stalking Ikesugi (another classmate), can be found on the second floor of the school beginning April 18, and her side quest isn't available until much later in the game. You can also see her chasing Ikesugi in the scenes when you're walking to school (without Morgana talking to you), which occurs at random.
  • Yusuke sees the Phantom Thieves leaving Mementos on May 7.
  • Hifumi can be seen at the train station on June 17.
• Early Game Hell: While the game is good in giving multiple options (including skills) to allow you to restore SP, the bulk of these happen later on in the game, making the first palace you tackle a situation where you will regularly run out and either be forced to use expensive items or leave entirely. Several other tactical options, like methods of increasing experience or money earned, are tied to Confidants that become available later in the game, which increases the tedium of progress in the game's first chapter.
• Earn Your Happy Ending:
  • At first, it goes for a Bittersweet Ending with the Protagonist turning himself in as leader of the Phantom Thieves so that he can testify against Masayoshi Shido and ensure that he gets a guilty verdict. Because of his prior record, though, the Protagonist gets sent to juvenile hall; however, thanks to the efforts of the rest of the Thieves and the Confidants, they manage to clear him of his prior record, allowing him to go free early.
  • Royal adds another, extremely twisted version if you max out Maruki's confidant and accept his offer: after months of grueling battles and heartbreak, the Thieves can live out the rest of their lives in a reality where everything went right for them: Ryuji is on the track team, Morgana is human, Ann's friend Shiho never suffered Kamoshida's abuse, Madarame acted as a kind mentor to Yusuke, Futaba's mother, Haru's father and Goro Akechi are all alive and well and Sumire permanently became her sister Kasumi in mind. However, this comes at the cost of their bonds (as the events that led to them forming the Phantom Thieves never happened), both Joker and Goro are noticeably unhappy about the situation, Sumire herself is dead, and Maruki himself is miserable due to not properly dealing with his own traumas. Whether the rest of the thieves' happiness was Worth It is highly dependent on the viewer.
• Easier Than Easy: Safe Mode. In addition to making the enemies weaker and the players stronger, it's also impossible to lose. However, choosing Safe Mode locks you into that difficulty for the remainder of that playthrough.
• Easter Egg:
  • In Royal, rubbing the DualShock 4/DualSense touchpad or Switch touchscreen while in Mementos will result in Morgana purring like a cat as if he's being petted, while pressing the touchpad on the DualShock 4 or DualSense, - Button on Switch, or Select button on Xbox/PC, will have him meow loudly.
  • Also in Royal, fast travelling and taking the subway on the night of Halloween replaces the normal subway crowd with revelers, including one man in a Jack Frost costume. Certain other locations have the normal crowd of NPCs replaced with costumed individuals as well.
  • An additional one in Royal, checking the Stats page after a fight that involved Ann and Morgana using their Showtime will see their usual portraits replaced with the Showtime's shoujo anime-eseque ones.
• Easy-Mode Mockery: Zigzagged. Choosing Safety Mode prevents you from changing the difficulty for the rest of the game, and is the only difficulty that does this. However, the game lets you see all the content no matter which mode you're playing on; during the initial difficulty selection, the game even says "this choice will not affect the story."
• Eccentric Artist: Yusuke is so immersed in art that he tends to view everything through an artistic lens, like being more interested in the plating aesthetic of food than in enjoying how it tastes.
• Eldritch Location:
  • The Metaverse, a region inside the collective unconscious that warps into massive, unstable structures called palaces based on the warped desires of humans and is reached using a cell phone app. Mementos in particular, a manifestation of the Metaverse tied to the Shibuya subway station that's described as "everybody's palace." Its layout is constantly shifting and changing, strong winds are perpetually blowing through it (which the party members will occasionally describe as sounding like screaming), and it starts looking more and more warped and distorted the deeper into it you explore.
  • The Velvet Room, an ever-changing location existing not in space or time but inside the collective unconscious of the human psyche, returns.
• Epiphanic Prison: A major theme of the game is finding how to free yourself of the metaphorical chains society puts on you.
  Katsura Hashino: We may feel some sort of suffocation in this world today, but as long as the world is comprised of relationships among humans, it is a person's character, or a group's character, that will provide the "power" to destroy that "feeling of entrapment".
  • Mementos Depths is the embodiment of this. The entire place is styled as a giant prison, and all the cognitive representations within it express relief that they're stuck inside because it means that they'll be safe, representing humanity's collective Bystander Syndrome.
  • The Velvet Room, being shaped by the feelings of the guest, has Joker's room be a prison, complete with wardens, his clothes being prison attire plus a ball-and-chain while he's stuck in a cell, and executions for fusion. Near the end, when Joker is going to be executed by Caroline and Justine for "failing", he instead rebels against this, gaining his Phantom Thief outfit, and the cell door being removed to represent him "breaking free" from his prison.
• "Eureka!" Moment: A rare villainous example. Being interrupted by an audience member's phone during a TV taping gives Akechi the spark to realize how Joker and Sae might have used their phone to fake his death.
• Everybody Did It: An odd example with the third term in Royal. All the driving forces unknowingly played a part in what led to Dr. Maruki becoming the Post-Final Boss. Shido had previously used his connections to seize his research, with Akechi probably still working under him at the time, while the Phantom Thieves approached him for his counseling sessions, giving him an idea of their desires, and Yaldabaoth merging Mementos with the real world caused his Persona to fully awaken in an incomplete state. This resulted in him becoming Mementos' new ruler through his Persona and what he had learned since then.
• Everyone Looks Sexier if French: The Rider-Waite tarot deck lacks a certain stylish je ne sais quoi. And that's why Persona 5 uses Le Marseille.
• Evil Is Visceral: Throughout Mementos, there are large bright red arteries running in and out of the walls. In the final dungeon, Mementos Depths, it's revealed that these arteries carry the perverted desires of the masses for social order down to the Holy Grail, aka the Big Bad Yaldabaoth. When Yaldabaoth overlays Mementos onto reality, blood starts raining from the sky and covering the ground, while huge structures made of bone appear.
• Evolution Power-Up: Along with the standard stat and elemental resistance upgrades, your Guardian Entities' identities actually power up when your party members reach Rank 10 in their Level-Up at Intimacy 5 "Confidant" sub-plots; each Persona transforms from an Anthropomorphic Personification of a Picaresque hero to a Rage Against the Heavens mythological figure.
• Exact Words: How Joker tells Sae that Akechi is the traitor. Sae asks him if Goro Akechi is one of the Phantom Thieves which Joker flatly denies no matter what option you choose. Then Joker insists that he wasn't betrayed by the Phantom Thieves.
• Expelled from Every Other School: Joker gets expelled from his high school after getting convicted of assault, and no other school would take him aside from Shujin Academy, which is a stuffy elite preparatory school, all while on probation for the assault. Multiple characters note that, if Joker gets expelled from Shujin, he's going straight to jail.
• Explosive Decompression: Discussed in the Space Station palace. Futaba cheerfully informs the rest of the party that they won't explode when out in space, but they'll last 30 seconds, tops, if they cover their noses and mouths. Thankfully, since it's the Metaverse, the party can (and must) travel through space between airlocks without problems.
• Extra Turn: Battles use the "One More!" system from Persona 3 and 4 - getting a Critical Hit or exploiting an enemy's elemental weakness gives you an additional action. The new "Baton Pass" mechanic meanwhile allows you to pass this turn to any party member you've reached Confidant level 2 with.
• Extremely Short Timespan: The majority of the game technically takes place within a few hours, with Joker getting arrested and then relaying his testimony spanning over events across several months to Sae while she's put on a short and strict time limit. After Joker fakes his death, the game continues as normal.
• Eyed Screen: Once again, a cut-in of just the character's eyes will appear when you perform powerful Persona attacks. Yu Narukami also has his one in Royal under the same conditions in his DLC fight.

F

• Face Death with Dignity: If you execute Arsène to fuse a new Persona, he confidently states that he'll meet you again at the end of your journey and ends his speech with an Evil Laugh. It probably helps that you can bring him back for a small amount of yen. Noticeably, he's also one of the very few - if not only - Personas who don't enter a despairing pose when facing the Fusion (guillotine), Strengthening (hangman's noose), or Itemization (electric chair) devices.
• Face/Heel Double-Turn: Royal features a double switch between Goro Akechi and new character Takuto Maruki. During the events of the main story, Akechi is revealed to be a murderous hitman who was ultimately behind the psychotic breakdowns throughout the game, while Maruki is a kindly psychiatrist who genuinely wants everyone in the world to be happy. However, come the Royal-exclusive third semester, Maruki becomes a Well-Intentioned Extremist who wants to create a utopia where no one can ever be sad again at the cost of never experiencing personal growth, while Akechi pulls a Heel–Face Turn and allies with the thieves to stop him.
• Faceless Masses:
  • Non-important NPCs are generally far less detailed in model, most easily observed by comparing the protagonist to other generic student NPCs since he actually wears his uniform to code as they do. Look and it's easy to notice all kinds of details missing from their uniforms compared to the protagonist, theirs will come off as blurry.
  • The portraits of Madarame's previous students he ruined are mostly done in a flat style with blank faces, with the exception of Natsuhiko Nakanohara and Yusuke's, whose portraits are more-detailed in comparison so the player can also recognise them.
• Facial Horror: When characters first awaken to their Personas, they have to rip off masks that are part of their faces, causing blood to erupt as they for all intents and purposes rip their own skin off. Thankfully, this stops happening afterwards.
• Failed a Spot Check
  • This apparently occurred in one of the Palaces when the Shadows running the place didn't find it suspicious that Akechi was using a coin card under the name of "Taro Tanaka" (the Japanese equivalent of "John Doe").
  • After accessing Shido's Palace for the first time, it seemingly takes several minutes for anyone to realize that it is, in fact, quite literally a ship, in motion, and cruising around a flooded Tokyo where the buildings are all at least half submerged.
• Failure Gambit:
  • Joker getting arrested in the beginning? That was deliberate. However, none of the Phantom Thieves predicted that he would get drugged and nearly lost most his memory because of that.
  • In Royal, Ryuji has a minor one: He plans to ham up his response to the reporter's questions when he, Yusuke, and Joker are caught by some reporters at the festival on July 17th, so that they can't use that footage. That evening, Joker can see that the footage was used after all. Mishima is none too pleased about not having been invited when he sees the footage himself.
• Fake Difficulty: More in the "time management" aspect of the game than the combat, but the game uses quite a few shortcuts to raise the player's blood pressure:
  • You are regularly cheated out of free time to socialize and build stats, often without warning. Sure, you can't predict everything that will happen in the future (like Sojiro suddenly hijacking you to work in the cafe), but in a game about time management it is frustratingly common for Morgana to refuse to let you go out at night because "you must be tired". Finally, as with Persona 3 and Persona 4, the story ends after nine months instead of the promised year. As a result, similar to the rest of the series, it is very difficult to max all stats and clear all Confidants without either a guide or New Game Plus, even if you're familiar with the series^note However, unlike the previous two games, there's never a point where you lose significant time. In fact, you play through every single day from April 3rd through December 25th, unlike Persona 3, which removes (via incapacitation) a full four weeks from the calendar, and Persona 4, which removes several days. Unlike in Persona 3 and Persona 4, where social links were always available on the same days each week unless there was a plot- or weather- related reason for them to be absent, confidants in Persona 5 don't have consistent, predictable schedules, with a couple of exceptions. While more realistic, it makes things significantly harder on players who are actively trying to plan ahead and budget their time accordingly.
  • Persona negotiation options might be confusing to those who don't know which answers are fitting for which Shadow mood, which might cause them to be pummeled by the free turns the Shadows get if they decide to attack instead of flee. With a little investigation into the Personas' moods on the Enemy Analysis screen, you can at least get an idea of what statements to make to which creatures. If a Persona is Timid, be nice and understanding. If they're Irritable, show 'em who's boss and take no crap. For gloomy ones, resort to sarcasm. If they ask you about how you're going to eat them, or what you'll do with them after you kill them? Guess, and write down the results to make it easier in the future, or something.
  • The Calling Card mechanic drains an additional two days out of your calendar, as you will be unable to do anything on the day you send it, then have to commit to fighting the next day (and therefore be unable to do anything in the evening^note However, doing activities that favor palace infiltration such as making coffee, curry and tools can still be done).
  • Bosses will frequently use moves that you need to guard against, but will take several turns to charge up. There's not any indication that they won't do the attack immediately, so most players would typically waste turns defending because they don't know when the attack is coming.
  • In Royal, the reimagined Okumura fight acts as this; none of the enemies are any stronger than their vanilla variants (and in fact have weaker affinities), but Okumura will fully restore his entire wave after two turns and he will cast Rakukaja on one robot and Hunger or Dekaja on you to make sure they become incredibly difficult to kill, so he can infinitely loop this animation and cause you to time out. What seems to be the defining factor however, is that one Rakukaja he sneaks on a robot, which doesn't seem much. In reality, if this defense buff is not lifted, it will almost always result in the buffed robot barely surviving after the 2-turn limit, resulting in the choke-locking scenario stated above.
• Faking the Dead: In order to avoid the Bad Ending where he dies, the Protagonist exploits a phone modified by Futaba to activate the Meta-Nav app remotely, and a section of Sae's Palace that looks like the real world in order to make Akechi kill a mental projection instead.
• Fan Community Nicknames:invoked In-universe, as the popularity of the Phantom Thieves rises, the Phantom Aficionado Website becomes known as the "Phan-site," with its users known as "Phanboys."
• Fan Disservice:
  • Kamoshida has a harem of topless female volleyball students in his Palace, all writhing and moaning in ecstasy over their "king". Even Ryuji is disturbed. He's also accompanied by a scantily-clad Valley Girl clone of Ann. His boss form, Asmodeus, is a fat, misshapen demon in nothing but a crown, cape and pink speedo. In Royal, he has a cognitive Shiho in erotic bunny outfit that you can kill in a few physical attacks just to stop his Signature Move, tank the move and let her go, or attack Kamoshida himself and he automatically drives her away.
  • The bunny suit overworld Shadows in the casino have grossly-exaggerated proportions and much, much too eager Jiggle Physics.
  • Shido's Boss form, Samael is a muscular shirtless man whose muscles keep growing more and more grotesquely huge as the battle continues.
• Fantasy Kitchen Sink: All Shadows and Personas take on the form of mythical beings of human literature and mythology. Justine describes this as "related to them being the image of power that mankind shares."
• Fastball Special: In Royal, Ryuji and Makoto have a rare variant of their Showtime attack that features her leaping onto the handle of his weapon, which he uses to hurl her into the sky before she crashes down onto the target with a Ground Punch.
• Fast-Forward Mechanic: You can press start to skip cutscenes and fast forward through dialog. The dialogue fast forward even imposes VHS fast forward effects on the screen.
• Fate Worse than Death:
  • After changing his heart, Ann muses that Kamoshida will spend the rest of his life begging for forgiveness. In her own words, she believes that this fate is worse than death.
  • If the deadline for Maruki's Palace is not met, Maruki will put Joker into an eternal slumber.
• Faustian Rebellion: Invoked. Morgana, Lavenza and Igor spend the entire game trying to help the Protagonist use his abilities to destroy the very Big Bad that empowered and manipulated him.
• Females Are More Innocent: There are seven palaces beyond Mementos Depths, two of which are made by women: Futaba Sakura and Sae Niijima. The men who own Palaces and get reformed (Suguru Kamoshida, Ichiryusai Madarame, Junya Kaneshiro, Kunikazu Okumura, and Masayoshi Shido) have long abused their positions of power and the people around them. Meanwhile...
  • Sae's only real "crime" is her ardent Second Place Is for Losers mentality that has stemmed from pressure at her job, and she's otherwise by-the-book when taking on the Phantom Thieves case. Unlike the other targets, whom the Thieves seek to punish for their crimes, the Thieves target her at Akechi's suggestion, to prevent the investigation from closing in on them, and Makoto also does so in hopes of helping her sister be happier and rediscover her sense of justice, even if she finds it quite painful to face Leviathan. Not only is Sae the only target who doesn't get her treasure stolen (as she reforms on her own), but she allies herself with the thieves after Akechi is outed as Black Mask.
  • As for Futaba, she deliberately targeted herself, as she wanted the Thieves to steal her heart so that she could be rid of her suicidal impulses and put an end to her shut-in lifestyle. In fact, the main problem was that Futaba was blaming herself for something that wasn't in any way her fault.
  • Regarding the Shadows of women who appear in Mementos, however, this is still present, but downplayed. There's a much closer to even mix of men and women culprits in that dungeon, and the women are legitimately bad people who need to change - but there's a gap in how evil the men are versus how evil the women are. The women range from stalkers to abusive mothers and girlfriends, while the Shadows of men in Mementos include murderers and sexual abusers.
  • In Royal, this is inverted with the last Palace, Takuto Maruki's. He is genuinely a Well-Intentioned Extremist who cares about other people suffering, his Nice Guy behavior isn't an act, and at numerous points offers ways out of conflict with the Phantom Thieves because he doesn't wish to have to fight them. Even his measures to cling to his goal are done out of desperation and because he has no other choice, rather than anything truly despicable.
• The Fellowship Has Ended: At the end of Royal, beyond the Phantom Thieves breaking up with the Metaverse gone, it turns out most of the cast are moving on in their personal lives too. Joker is going back to his hometown, Morgana is going with him, Ryuji is at least temporarily moving to a special facility to try to repair his messed up leg, Ann is going to study abroad, and Makoto and Haru are going to college. Only Yusuke and Futaba are remaining in Tokyo.
• Ferris Wheel Date Moment:
  • At rank 10 of Ann's confidant, but only if Joker romantically pursues her. She'll confess a few things to him while they're sitting in a stopped ferris wheel, then go in for a kiss.
  • Chihaya's rank 10 confidant event also ends with a ferris wheel confession if she is romanced.
• Fictional Counterpart: Triple Seven, being a convenience store chain with a pronounced 7 in its logo, is a very blatant homage to 7-Eleven, which, while being founded in America, is owned by a Japanese parent company.
• Fictional Painting: The Sayuri, a painting of a young woman looking down and smiling, which delighted the art world in its mystery — who is that woman and why is she smiling? The painting is a self-portrait by Yusuke's mother, and the original version showed her holding the baby Yusuke in her arms. When Madarame took advantage of her death and took Yusuke on as a protege, he painted over her arms so that the baby was no longer visible on the correct prediction that the added ambiguity would make it more appealing (and profitable). Thankfully for Yusuke, Madarame's treasure in the Metaverse and reality is the original painting without any modifications, which is hung on a wall in the coffee shop for safekeeping.
• Final Dungeon Preview:
  • The Thieves visit Mementos early on to complete requests, train up, and collect Personas. In the final stage of the game, it becomes everyone's Palace, forcing the Thieves to infiltrate and steal its treasure to free all of Tokyo from its own apathy.
  • In Royal, a palace resembling a large structure made of glass and gold will be briefly visited on October 3rd (or 4th if you chose to fight Okumura on the 3rd), and ends with Cendrillon's awakening where a Biyarky shadow is defeated. This is actually the final palace of Royal, Maruki's Palace.
• Firearms Are Cowardly: Played with. While most characters use model firearms that become functional in the Metaverse, only Akechi has used a real gun. After betraying the Phantom Thieves and getting Joker arrested, he goes to the interrogation room with a silenced pistol which is used to assassinate the Thief. However, the group actually knew of Akechi's two-faced nature and planned in advance so Joker survives.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing:
  • During "Operation Maidwatch", Mishima and Ryuji are terrified by the appearance of "Becky the maid" and she somehow recognizes their voices. Then you get a better look at her face and realise why: She's Kawakami!
  • Assuming the player didn't pick up on all the Foreshadowing, right before The Reveal of Akechi as Black Mask, the game makes it blatantly obvious by offering the player a chance to sell out the rest of the Phantom Thieves. Not only is Akechi singled out, the player cannot actually say he is a Phantom Thief at all.
  • Right before meeting the Palace owner of the third-semester palace, you can see the image of a girl that resembles Kasumi, but with brown hair, brown eyes, and a beauty mark below her left eye, who reaches out for her sister "Sumire" as she won a local gymnast competition. When Kasumi sees the image of this girl she goes into distress. Of course, that's actually the real Kasumi and she sacrificed herself to save Sumire from a lethal traffic accident....and the "Kasumi" you are with? That's actually Sumire.
• Flash Step: One of the Protagonist's field abilities allows him to quickly move from cover to cover in the blink of an eye.
• Flying Saucer:
  • Futaba's initial and third-tier Personae both take the form of a UFO, with Necronomicon being one of these, and Al Azif taking the appearance of a modern-looking Black Triangle.
  • Kaneshiro's Palace is an enormous bank floating on a UFO-like platform over downtown Shibuya.
• Follow That Car: When the Phantom Thieves realize that Makoto is recklessly trying to get an audience with the mob boss extorting people across Shibuya, they flag down a taxi in order to follow her (after Yusuke manages to sketch the plate number).
• Food Porn: During the All You Can Eat Buffet Dinner after the Kamoshida mission, you have Ryuji rivaling Chie Satonaka in fondness for meat dishes, Ann describing cake in great detail, and when you get up to get food, you have Morgana describing every type of food on the tables (except veggies).
• Forced Transformation:
  • Similar to the Fly and Bat statuses in the Shin Megami Tensei series, this game comes with the "Rattled" status, where a character is transformed into a rat, lowering their defense and making them unable to attack. This can be temporarily inflicted by Mot's "Trapped Rat" spell, and also during Shido's Palace when the party is in the same room as an "activated" statue. In the latter case, it also acts as the level gimmick by allowing the party to travel into small air vents.
  • Though he has no memories of his past, this is what Morgana believes himself to be for much of the story, with his goal being to discover the secrets of the Metaverse in the hopes of turning himself back into a human. It turns out that this isn't the case, and that he was always a cartoon-esque cat creature created by the real Igor from humanity's hope for freedom before Yaldabaoth captured him, so that Joker would have someone to guide him on his quest.
• Foreshadowing: Has its own page.
• Forged Message: The conspiracy forged a suicide note to cover up the murder of Wakaba, claiming that she regretted giving birth to Futaba. They also forge a calling card for Principal Kobayakawa, framing the Phantom Thieves for his murder.
• The Four Gods: The four elemental animal guardians Seiryu, Suzaku, Byakko, and Genbu return as enemies and recruitable Persona. You can also use all four to fuse Kohryu in an Advanced Fusion after completing Sojiro's Social Link.
• Fourth-Date Marriage: Implied. During a break from their group study session at Leblanc by the end of the game, it's revealed that all four girls in the Phantom Thieves are very comfortable with the idea of marrying the protagonist someday, were any of them to be in a relationship with him. Save Scumming through Joker's three possible answers to Ryuji's question about his opinion on marriage gives the player a good idea of each girl's thoughts on the matter:
  • Makoto seems to think Joker is a Confirmed Bachelor in the making because she will be pleasingly (if embarrassedly) surprised or look painfully unsurprised depending on whether he likes the idea of marriage or not. That, or letting out an annoyed "Oh, come on," if he dodges the question.
  • Haru is struck speechless with emotion if Joker confesses that he's thought about getting married someday, but answering the opposite will prompt a downcast look out of her as she reasons, mostly with herself, that they're still in high school after all. She'll try to ask for elaboration in case of a Non-Answer, only for Yusuke to change the subject.
  • Similarly to Haru, if Joker shows no interest in marriage, Ann will awkwardly argue that's not something he could know for sure just yet. Or blush and giggle to herself if it's the other way around. A noncommittal answer will leave her at a loss, unsure of what he meant by that.
  • Futaba apparently never considered the possibility before, and will let out a startled "M-M-M-Marriage...!?" if her boyfriend says he did. As it was the case with Joker's Love Confession in her Confidant, this is just the surprise talking and she will become despondent if he either says he's never thought about getting married or doesn't give the team a straight answer.
  • Should Haru be romanced, her Rank 10 Confidant Menu description mentions she dreams of a future where she is running a cafe with a new fiancé, which is all but stated to be referring to Joker.
• Fragile Flyer: Winged Shadows such as Pixie are frequently weak to Gun attacks, making them weak to every party member so long as they happen to have ammo. In addition, Cognitive Wakaba has a silent five times weakness to physical attacks. However, she's flying out of range and has to be shot down with a ballista, immobilizing her for several turns, for physical attacks to connect.
• Framing Device: The protagonist's interrogation is an interesting variation of one. All but one of the in-game months that make up the protagonist's probation are recounted to Sae during his interrogation, which starts at the beginning of the game. Whenever you advance the story by taking out a big target, and every time you initiate a Confidant link except for three^note Specifically, the Fool, Strength, and Judgment, the game skips forward to the interrogation, where Sae asks the protagonist to give her the details. While it's made clear that the protagonist mentions how the targets are taken out and all of the supernatural elements that entail, he leaves out names (both party members and Confidants) for everyone involved, even when Sae specifically figures out who the Phantom Thieves all are through logical deduction (like figuring out that her sister Makoto MUST be a Phantom Thief if Joker is telling the truth) - in fact, if you decide to sell out your friends and confidants at the very end of the interrogation, you get a bad ending. Eventually you get to the point where you infiltrate the same casino Palace seen at the very beginning of the game and get captured, and it's revealed that the thieves deliberately let the protagonist get captured in order to get Sae on their side and out detective Goro Akechi as a member of The Conspiracy. Should you successfully answer Sae's questions correctly, the protagonist (who had been addled with drugs up until this point) remembers his plan and initiates it, successfully escaping with Sae and going into hiding. Once the final arc begins, the framing device is no longer used^note Which means that if you start a social link during or after the final arc, you will not see Sae's comments on it.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • Pay close attention to the rapidly-shifting calendar in the interrogation flashforward cutscenes, and it's possible to notice that the date of the interrogation is November 20th, long before this point in the game is reached.
  • The elevators summoned by Okumura all have writings on them that relate to the enemies they release. For example, the General Manager elevator features a long-winded rant about corporate philosophy, and the final empty elevator features the words "Currently consulting occupational physician".
• French Maid Outfit: The servers at the maid cafe all wear the standard frilly black and white maid outfits, as does Sadayo Kawakami in her second job.
• Freudian Excuse: The Treasure in every Palace represents one for the owner, being the physical embodiment of the desire twisting the owner's actions. By stealing it, the Phantom Thieves remove its influence, causing the owner to return to their senses:
  • Kamoshida's is a crown which turns into his Olympic medal, representing the pressure he was under trying to live up to everyone's expectations as the hero who brought home the gold for Japan, which led to him becoming a Broken Ace as a result.
  • Madarame's is a representation of the (real) Sayuri painting, showing the inadequacy he felt as a fading artist compared to his younger and more talented students, which turned him into The Svengali.
  • Kaneshiro's are stacks of gold bullion which turn into an actual gold briefcase full of fake bills, representing his insecurity from having been poor and helpless in the past, leading to him becoming a cruel mob boss.
  • The fourth Palace's is actually the owner, Futaba, who is suffering from survivor's guilt and believes she is to blame for her mother's death, which resulted in her becoming a Hikikomori.
  • Okumura's is a mysterious metallic orb, which turns into the model rocket he was denied as a child due to his family's unfortunate financial situation, which led him to grow up to be a Corrupt Corporate Executive who'll do anything to get what he wants.
  • The sixth Palace's is unrevealed, but is suggested to be the police journal of Sae's father, representing the combined weight of his death, the burden of taking care of her sister, and trying to succeed in her career, which led to her becoming a borderline Amoral Attorney and overbearing towards Makoto. In the ending, Sae asks what the form of her Treasure was, but all the possible responses indicate that you don't know,
  • The seventh Palace's is the steering wheel to the cruise ship the Palace is on, which turns into Shido's legislator's pin, representing Shido believing deep down that despite all his evil actions, he truly can lead Japan to a better future.
  • The general populace's treasure at the Depths of Mementos is the Holy Grail within Yaldabaoth, representing their subconscious desire to remain apathetic, and free from having to take responsibility for their actions.
  • The treasure from the Royal palace - the one conceived by new Shujin counsellor Takuto Maruki - is a newspaper clipping detailing the murder of his girlfriend's family, which led to her catatonia and, by extension, him erasing her memory of him and their relationship in order to "actualise" her ideal existence.
  • Most of the Treasure Buds of Mementos targets tend to be items(often weapons, skill cards or items to unlock Persona fusions) with less of a clear tie to the source of the Shadows' distorted desieres. In Shadow Makigami's case, the bud is a key to a drawer (which, in the OVA, contains a picture of himself with his brother), while Shadow Kishi's is a theme park magazine (suggesting that he cares about his family).
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: The Thieves give this answer to any target who tries to justify themselves with one, telling them that no matter what happened to them they are all responsible for their own actions. Kaneshiro gets this the hardest, with the Phantom Thieves being especially appalled at the idea that he thinks it justifies his behavior and especially due to the high probability that his motive is legit.
• A Friend in Need: When in the end the Protagonist turns himself in as leader of the Phantom Thieves so he can testify against Shido, the other Phantom Thieves spend the next month and a half trying to find a way to save their leader. Any Confidants that have been maxed out will also be shown tapping their connection, rallying others and generally doing everything in their power to prove the Protagonist's innocence and earn him his freedom. It pays off in the end, and the Protagonist's record is wiped clean, allowing him to leave juvenile hall a free man.
• Friendship-Hating Antagonist: Despite his charming exterior and a well-crafted illusion he calls his social life, Goro Akechi actually despises friendship and bonds, considering them shackles that prevent his heart from being free. Despite this, he envies Joker for being loved without having to put in tireless work in getting people to want and need them, because Akechi was actually a bastard child of Shido and was only helping him so that he could betray Shido later on.
• Friend in the Press: To improve the Phantom Thieves' public image, Joker can contact the reporter Ichiko Ohya, who offers him good PR and her investigative talents in return for any exclusive inside information on the Thieves he can share without endangering the group.
• Friendship Trinket: In your last day in town^note Unlike in the previous two games, in which Social Links gave you the gift during the final event of their Social Link, any character whose Confidant you have maxed out will give you an item to remember them by. These items also automatically unlock late-game bonuses from their side-quest if you start a New Game Plus.
• Funny Background Event: Royal added a few new scenes where you may see some Non-Player Characters, confidants, or party members in the background when you walk to school:
  • Kawakami is seen running to school on April 25.
  • On some mornings (May 28, June 6, June 11), Ikesugi and his friend walk past you. You might not notice they're them at first due to them having nondistinguishable features, but just as they pass, sometimes you might see Ikesugi's stalker run past you to chase them. She will stop pursuing him if you complete her Mementos side quest.
• Funny Foreigner: A minor character in both the base game and Royal is the tall, black barker for a night-time bar in Shibuya. Talking to him reveals that he loves living in Japan, but has trouble at work and feels ostracized — in the Japanese version, it's due to the language barrier (with him speaking in broken Japanese peppered with English phrases), while in the English localization it's because of cultural differences (with him being an energetic loudmouth whose extreme friendliness unnerves people).
• Fusion Dance: In Royal, during the cutscene where a party member unlocks their third-tier Persona, it shows their initial and ultimate Persona fusing together in a flash of blue light.

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