Persona 5 / Tropes N to R

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Persona 5 provides examples of the following tropes:

N

• Named After Somebody Famous: All of the Confidant NPCs (besides Caroline, Justine, and Igor, who retain the Frankenstein theme naming of the previous Velvet Room attendants) and a few party members are named after important figures in Japanese history — usually rebels who fought against societal norms in one way or another. Some examples include:
  • Yuuki Mishima is named after infamous right-wing author Yukio Mishima, who attempted a failed coup in a Japanese military base in 1970. Yukio Mishima was also the inspiration for Gotou, a villainous military nut who has appeared in a few mainline SMT games.
  • Toranosuke Yoshida is probably named after Torajirō Yoshida, a short-lived intellectual who would nurture many activists that would give birth to the Meiji Restoration.
  • Sae Niijima is named after Yae Niijima, a woman from the Edo period who fought alongside men in the Boshin War.
  • Haru Okumura's name likely stems from Haru Hiratsuka, a feminist, anarchist, and political activist who founded the New Japan Women's Organization. The family name of Hiratsuka's lover was "Okumura".
  • Ryuji Sakamoto's almost certainly an allusion to Ryoma Sakamoto, a rough and tumble lower-nobility samurai who became one of the most prominent anti-shogunate advocates of his day. His diplomacy and tactics lay the groundwork for what would one day become the Meiji Restoration.
  • Goro Akechi is an obvious reference to Kogoro Akechi, a beloved Japanese literary character who is a brilliant, eccentric detective in the same vein as Sherlock Holmes. And a more subtle reference to Mitsuhide Akechi, an infamous samurai who, for better or worse, led a surprise attack against his own lord. His name has gone down in history as synonymous with unexpected betrayal, much like Judas and Brutus.
• Named by the Dub: The unnamed principal becomes "Principal Kobayakawa" for the English dub.
• Narrow Annihilation Escape: Taking down a Palace Ruler makes their Palace crumble and be removed from the MetaNav. Almost every chapter ends with a cutscene of Phantom Thieves barely escaping the collapsing Palace.
• Nerf:
  • In this game, the Tetrakarn (reflects physical attacks) and Makarakarn (reflects magical attacks except for Almighty) spells can now only be cast on one person at a time instead of on everyone. Haru gets a party-wide version of these spells in Royal, but it costs 95 SP to use it, and she only unlocks it after she gets her third-tier Persona.
  • Doing well on tests is less beneficial than in the previous game — instead of getting points in all your school-related Confidants, you get a boost to Charm (albeit a big one). If you go out of your way to talk to Sojiro within a few days after test results are posted, he'll also give you a reward based on how well you did, for all four tests.
  • The ability for a party member to take a mortal blow for you, an ability you get immediately upon starting a S. Link with a party member in Persona 4, is now an ability that you have to reach Rank 9 Confidant in order to unlock, like in Golden.
  • Futaba's after-battle SP recovery skills are weaker than Rise's, recovering 1 and 3 percent of the party's SP rather than 5 and 10 percent. Plus, Futaba's skills only affect sidelined members, which has the drawback of being unable to benefit Joker, the one character that can't be removed from the front lines and that is most likely to need the extra SP, given his Wild Card versatility.
  • Previous games with Shock and Freeze not only removed physical resistance from those suffering from them, but also turned any physical hits into criticals, leading to multiple turns of free criticals and damage. Here, Shock and Freeze enable bonus damage from Physical and Nuclear attacks, which doesn't give the bonus turn a Critical Hit would, instead giving you the unique "Technical" critical, which does just as much damage, but doesn't give you a One More. It does allow bypassing Physical resistance, though. Royal lets you restore One More on Technicals if you finish up the new billiards activity.
  • Attacking an enemy while they are down, whether it's with a weakness or not, no longer makes the opponent dizzy and forces them to miss a turn. If an enemy is knocked down and not killed, they'll get up on their next turn and still attack you normally. Dizzy is now a status effect that reduces accuracy instead.
  • Covering weaknesses is a little less effective in this game. The previous games either had armor and accessories that provide resistance our outright nullify an element which made it easy to cover weaknesses in your party or for your current Persona. In this game, while there are armors and accessories that reduce damage from elements, they still will not negate the extra turn a weakness exploitation will give. When your party members' Personas evolve, they still retain their weakness, though they do learn an Evade passive that can contribute, albeit not perfectly. Resistance passives are also harder to come by within the skill set of your own Personas, and cannot be itemized into Skill Cards. This is to promote the use of Lockdown or Isolation to obtain them.
  • In the original game, studying at the diner would get you two points in Knowledge (plus an additional point on rainy days) and one point in one of the other four statistics depending on what you ordered. In Royal, the diner's base Knowledge point gain is reduced to one.
  • In the original game, Swift Strike hits all enemies for light damage (which is roughly equivalent to a low-level physical skill like Bash or Cleave), four times. In Royal, the damage is reduced to miniscule damage(equivalent to Lucky Punch, a move that is useless unless it gets a critical hit).
  • Zig-Zagged with guns: in the original game, gun ammo couldn't be replenished in the Metaverse once used by any means, making them Too Awesome to Use since you had to go out of your way to keep them properly stocked up. Royal overhauled this system to allow ammo to replenish after each fight, but to compensate, all guns can only hold one clip's worth of ammo at a time (ensuring they can't deal as much damage per fight as they used to) and the Down Shot can only be used once (later three times) per Metaverse visit.
  • Interestingly, Yusuke's ranged Infinity +1 Sword Heaven's Gate has its power lowered from 378 to 330 and accuracy from 88 to 75 in Royal. Its Fusion Alarm upgrade Providence can't match the original gun's power either, only raising its power by 20.
• Nerf Arm: The Phantom Thieves weapons aren't actually real, instead they fight with replica weapons and model guns, but they cause real damage due to the Your Mind Makes It Real nature of the mental world. As long as the Shadows think the weapons are real, they can be hurt by them. Akechi takes it to the extreme by using toy swords and ray guns in battle.
• Newbie Immunity: In the opening section, Joker is in the process of escaping a casino until he comes across a Shadow that turns into a Moloch. Even though he can take damage during this section, it's impossible for his HP to reach zero as the Moloch will simply stop attacking after a certain point. Royal adds a second battle where you fight Shadows alongside Kasumi that is also impossible to lose.
• New Game Plus: After beating the game, you can start a new file retaining your social parameters (Guts, Charm, etc.), Persona compendium, cash, and equipment. Confidant ranks are reset to zero, but certain bonuses from previously maxed out Confidants will be carried over and your previous girlfriend (if any) will rank up more quickly as well, both thanks to gifts from those characters. You'll also unlock the ability to fuse a new Ultimate Persona, and the option to fight a new Superboss. In Royal, this also allows for you to swap Akechi's outfit between his Black Mask outfit and his Crow outfit at will and let you equip the Crystal from collecting the True Final Boss's Will Seeds (as well as let Jose upgrade it) if you unlocked the third semester.
• New Kid Stigma: When the protagonist first arrives at his new school, he's treated coldly by both staff and students. In this case, it's because he's been transferred there after getting into trouble and being expelled from his old school, and so people are wary of him.
• New Media Are Evil: Modern use of the internet has a greater focus than in Persona 4, and its flaws are discussed along with it. The Phantom Thieves have a website called the Phan-Site where people can discuss the Phantom Thieves and later choose the most horrible people whose hearts should be changed. It is easily manipulated by Shido's team into luring the Phantom Thieves into a trap.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • After a particularly bad row, Mona leaves the group, thinking he can get along by himself. The P-Thieves stakeout Mementos after finding out that message board requests are being filled by him and Noir and try to apologize, except Ryuji gives a backhanded apology, driving the wedge further.
  • After all the Thieves get their original memories back in Royal's third semester, they realize that Maruki used their talks with him to manipulate cognition and give them what they wanted.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
  • If the Shadows in Okumura's palace had killed Mona when they had him at Death's door, the Phantom Thieves would've been stuck behind the biometric door early in the palace, Haru would've been sold off, and Yaldabaoth would've eventually won the game.
  • If Shido had never framed Joker for his "assault", Joker never would have been sent to Tokyo, never entered the Metaverse, never formed the Phantom Thieves, and never taken down Shido's entire conspiracy. Justified, since all of these events are rigged by Yaldabaoth for the sole purpose of using Shido as bait for his public experiment.
  • Kaneshiro trying to blackmail Makoto designates her as a "customer" of his bank Palace, allowing the Phantom Thieves access so they can change his heart.
• Nipple and Dimed: There are many shirtless male Shadows with clearly visible nipples. But shirtless female Shadows, such as Yakshimi, have their nipples carefully hidden by Godiva Hair or some other convenient blocker. The one exception to this is Kali, whose nipples are very visible through her shirt.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed:
  • Most of the villains' confessions, though particularly Madarame's crying press conference, borrow liberally from a 2014 press conference by a Japanese politician named Ryutaro Nonomura, who broke down crying while confessing to misappropriating 3 million yen, or approximately $30,000, of taxpayer funds.
  • Councilman Matsushita, a former colleague of Yoshida's that appears during his confidant, mentions starting out as a professional wrestler before going into politics. A clear reference to famous Japanese wrestler Antonio Inoki, who served two terms in the House of Councillors in the early 1990s and ascended to the National Diet several years before the game released.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: As part of the Crapsack World the characters find themselves in. While there are plenty of corrupt authority figures shown, the adults who try to do the right thing end up blamed for crimes/misdemeanors that they were totally innocent of, because someone with more power or authority was actually responsible. Examples include a teacher who wanted what was best for a student getting blamed for and blackmailed over that student's death, a doctor who saw her research hijacked by a superior only to take the fall when he screwed up, and an earnest politician with high ideals getting a name for scandal when his superior stole public funds.
• No Indoor Voice: Ryuji Sakamoto. A boisterous delinquent who becomes your first party companion (though second if you count the characters in the order they acquire their Persona). It can be argued that Ryuji is the sole - or, at least, chief - reason that a large portion of the party members learn - or come up with the theory - that the Protagonist is a Phantom Thief. In fact, Makoto and Ann - two of the three female party members - likely catch onto what's going on because they overheard Ryuji's loud exclamations and got suspicious/curious.
• Non-Action Protagonist: Futaba Sakura of Persona 5 may not do any sort of fighting, but like Rise and Fuuka before her in being her group's resident Mission Control, she ends up being exceptionally useful through her analysis abilities, immediately taking over in the second half of the climax of Futaba's Palace, against Cognitive Wakaba. She is also an exceptional hacker whose skills prove vital to the Phantom Thieves in many of their heists. This talent ends up proving crucial in the climax of the story, where she literally hacks into the broadcasting system to go especially loud at sending a Calling Card to Masayoshi Shido. It works.
• Non-Indicative Difficulty: Some players argue that Merciless difficulty is actually easier than Hard despite dealing less basic damage and taking more. Why? Because the triple modifier on Merciless for crit/technical/weakness hits also applies to enemies, meaning it's very easy to knock them all out effortlessly. This is a mixed blessing, however, as you deal so much damage that negotiating to acquire new personas for fusing can become surprisingly difficult.
• Nonstandard Game Over: Eight variations, three of which lead to a Bad Ending:
  • Not accepting the contract at the start of the game to the effect that This Is a Work of Fiction ends the game and returns you to the title screen.
  • Like in Persona 4, if you fail to complete the dungeon in time, you're shown a sequence of what happens afterwards, however what happens in unique to each dungeon. Possible consequences include: Ann being left to the perverse whims of Kamoshida, Yusuke remaining stuck in a life of being exploited by Madarame, Makoto ending up at an "illegal services shop" and Haru being forced into an abusive marriage. However, these are false memories caused by the drugs the Protagonist was under during the interrogation with Sae after the Casino Heist. They all end with Sae leaving the room to give the Protagonist time to recover from the drugs so that he can give a truer account, but he ends up getting killed when she leaves.
  • If you take too much time to kill Okumura or reach him, he will detonate the spaceport and run, killing all of the Thieves in an explosion.
  • A similar version of this happens if you miss the Shido's Palace deadline. Akechi comes to Leblanc and arrests you. What makes this ending interesting, however, is that this will happen even if you've already fought Akechi and he sacrifices himself to defend the Thieves from his cognitive double, and the filter on the ending is hazy, similar to the other failed dungeon endings, leading to more theories about what really happened after Akechi's boss fight.
  • Another variant of the aforementioned deadline Game Overs occur if you miss the Maruki's Palace deadline in Royal. During a dream you will wake up in the nightmare version of the Shujin Academy Counselling Room where Maruki berates you for not giving him a proper response for his offer to change the current reality to humanity's favor. As a result, he uses his persona to make you asleep for an eternity until you can decide for him. You wake up in Le Blanc, with your phone's battery long ran out and the attic filled with cobwebs, yet you can't think about anything at all, so you decided to go to sleep again, with the blue butterfly representing Lavenza failing to reach you.
  • The first Bad Ending involves Joker selling out his teammates or Confidants out to Sae at the end of the interrogation. He fails to put his Faking the Dead plot in motion and is Killed Off for Real. He's then doomed to spend the rest of his life trapped in the Velvet Room, with Igor telling him that "ruin will be coming momentarily". This is a proper ending with a credits sequence, and the game ends for good when it's over.
  • The second method of getting a Bad Ending is during the Final Boss fight with Yaldabaoth, if you opt to leave his Holy Grail form alone, he cuts a deal with the protagonist: in exchange for letting him live, he grants the Thieves eternal access to the Metaverse with the intention of seeing where society goes from there. This kicks off one final Bad Ending where the Thieves are in control over both Tokyo and its people, with all of them blindly believing in the Thieves. There's the implication that the other Thieves eventually give in to abusing their powers, making them no different from the targets they took out. Like the other bad ending, this ending too is accompanied by a credits roll and the game ending for good.
  • In Royal, there is a third method of getting a bad ending. When Joker and Akechi confront Maruki in his palace on the 9th of Janurary, he will ask you to let him fully rewrite reality to end all suffering. A similar and much more inconspicuous offer happens at February 2 after he claims that Akechi is an illusion manifested from Joker, in which he can choose to live in Maruki's reality. If Joker accepts any of these offers... All hell breaks loose. He returns to Leblanc where all of his friends celebrate Setsubun at full content, but without the will to rebel and without any potential for personal growth. Morgana is now a human and Sumire has been completely overwritten by her Kasumi overlay, while Sojiro dials Joker's parents to let him stay in Leblanc before he graduates. During Makoto and Haru's graduation ceremony, Futaba and Morgana will be transferring to Shujin and Akechi has became a freelance cameraman, while a man that is obviously Maruki comes in and gives them a group photoshoot. All of Joker's friends make bright smiles while Joker himself just stands on the back with a face fitting of an axe murderer before he sensed that he did something wrong. The credits just features the former Phantom Thieves' inner desires all fulfilled and the gang having fun in Leblanc... while Akechi and Joker stare at you before Mementos bleeds into the world. However, this is actually not considered a bad ending by the writers: Nothing unambiguously bad actually happens, leaving it up to the player to decide if they think it's an acceptable choice or not.
• Non-Uniform Uniform:
  • Just like every other installment, your companions all tend to wear their uniforms in non-traditional ways.
  • Averted for once with Joker, the protagonist. Unlike previous protagonists, he wears his uniform just like the average student does, though this is understandable as he is doing his best not to stand out in a crowd due to his criminal record.
• No Stat Atrophy: Once a social stat goes up, it never goes down, even if it's never used again.
• Not Himself: Shadows in the Metaverse, are enslaved and distorted into doing the bidding of the Palace masters. Joker can snap them out of it via Negotiation, at which point they will remember their true nature as originating from the sea of souls and offer themselves to him as masks to wear. The exception are the Guard Captains that defend the Palaces, who remain firmly loyal to their defeat.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Yohei views the Phantom Thieves as kindred spirits due to them sharing his goal of wiping out the evils of society, even though their methods are very different.
• Notice This: Quest Givers have a red speech bubble with an exclamation mark over their head. NPCs with general dialogue have a black speech bubble or 3 white sound lines popping out from around their heads. Available Confidants have a speech bubble with a card over their heads.

O

• Obvious Rule Patch:
  • In the initial release of Royal, Shido's last phase isolates the Protagonist for a one-on-one showdown, during which he exclusively uses severe-tier magic. However, this opens him up to having them bounced back in his face by spamming Magic Ointments, or even just bringing a Persona into the fight that repels every element he uses. An unspecified patch after the game was released gave him Megidolaon in case the player tries this, which is the typical go to solution for bonus bosses in the series.
  • Guns were buffed in Royal by making them refill on ammo after each battle. To balance this, not only do much fewer enemies have Gun weaknesses compared to the original game (along with some gaining immunities to it that they didn't have before), the guns themselves now only have a single clip and Down Shot can only be used once per Metaverse visit (although this can be upgraded to three uses per visit).
  • Unfortunately, in Royal, The Reaper got its flu shot, and is no longer affected by the Flu Season's Despair-inducing effects, effectively rendering farming the massive EXP and small fortune in yen that it drops via this method completely null and void.
• Odd Friendship: Some of the optional hangout events pair two characters together and show they'd actually get along pretty well, though if they do speak again it's generally offscreen. Futaba and Iwai, for example, bond over mutual appreciation for model guns.
• Oddly Small Organization: If you ask the Newspaper Club Member at Shujin Academy about her club, she'll mention that she is the only member left.
• Off with His Head!: You fuse Personas together in this game by lopping their heads off with guillotines.
• Old Media Are Evil: News media is heavily critiqued in Persona 5. It's clear from early on that powerful individuals do not want the Phantom Thieves seen in a positive light and pressure most large news groups to vilify them.
• Old Save Bonus: Having a save file for the original Persona 5 and checking the box in Joker's bedroom in Royal grants you 50000 yen, three Bead Chains (which heal the entire team for full HP) and three Revival Beads (which revive an ally for 50% HP).
• Once More, with Clarity:
  • The opening casino escape sequence, with proper story context, is eventually replayed when that portion of the story is hit. The second time around, the characters speaking are identified with their names (instead of just "Girl's voice" or "Boy's voice"), their portraits are in full view, the Personas Joker has at the time are used instead of just the shadowy Arsène, and there's an additional cutscene of Arsène speaking to Joker and warning of the upcoming potential for a bad ending if proper choices aren't taken.
  • Immediately after said casino sequence is another bout of this, with a long string of flashbacks properly explaining Joker's fuzzy memories during the interrogation and why there was a massive police force waiting for the Phantom Thieves.
• Once per Episode: Once again, traits and events recur from previous installments.
  • The holder of the Magician arcana is once again unlucky in love (Morgana is infatuated with Ann, but if she even noticed, she acts as though she didn't).
  • There is a character who fights with their hands and feet and aspires to one day be a police officer (Makoto, following in the steps of her father).
  • The first male party member that joins your party is a bit of an idiot and gets made fun of by other members of the party (Ryuji of course).
  • The student council president who is very intelligent and has great grades, but is pretty clueless in normal social interactions (Makoto again).
  • The non-human ally who serves as the game's mascot (Morgana, replacing Teddie).
  • The ally of the team who turns out to have been a traitor all along (Akechi, although unlike Adachi and Ikutski, his betrayal is pretty heavily telegraphed).
  • One of the girls will be a poor chef (Royal specifically), and although it isn't totally inedible, Kasumi gives Joker a lunch that was apparently smothered in curry flavoring, giving it a very strong and not-quite-natural taste. (Although this Kasumi is actually Sumire, who was a good cook while the original Kasumi was not; it's implied that Sumire was trying to mimic her sister's poor cooking skills but not quite succeeding.)
  • The Velvet Room attendant will ask the protagonist to show them around the human world while misunderstanding everyday things they come across (Caroline and Justine ask Joker to take them places in return for giving him skill cards).
  • The protagonist can end up in a relationship with their homeroom teacher (though this time the teacher is fully aware that it's her student she's getting involved with, compared to 3 where the teacher doesn't find out til the very end and is horrified due to it being an online relationship).
• One-Hit Kill: The Hama and Mudo skill lines return, which have a 20-80% baseline percentage chance, depending on the skill, to instantly kill an enemy. This is modified by both skills and resistances and do not work on bosses.
• One Last Job: The Phantom Thieves go through three of these in sequence near the end of the game. First, they're blackmailed by Akechi into changing Sae Nijima's heart, and making it their last mission before disbanding their little group in exchange for his help in keeping their involvement quiet. However, the Phantom Thieves figure out that Akechi is planning to betray and kill them, so they make a plan to throw their enemies off their trail before pulling off a final final mission against the architect of the entire evil conspiracy. However, even once they succeed with that, the Greater-Scope Villain finally reveals themselves, and the Thieves make it their final, final, final mission to defeat them and save the world. And in Royal? They have to pull off a fourth final mission in the third trimester.
• One-Steve Limit: One of the reasons why the demon names for the Palace rulers don't always match with the Seven Princes of Hell according to Peter Binsfield. Beelzebub, Satan and Lucifer are already available as Personas, so the bosses respectively representing Gluttony, Wrath and Pride are Bael^note Though Bael and Beelzebub might share a common inspiration in the Semitic god Ba'al, the Sphinx and Samael. Likewise, Belphegor is free to be a Persona since the Palace representing Sloth aka Mementos, the Palace of the masses, doesn't have an individual ruler.
• Out-Gambitted: After figuring out what was going on in the Casino Palace, the rest of the Phantom Thieves knew that Black Mask was going to try to kill Joker, though they weren't quite sure why yet. Black Mask believes that they've managed to bait the Phantom Thieves into giving up Joker, get him into police custody, and make it look like Joker committed suicide during questioning rather than pay for his crimes in jail. However, knowing Black Mask was going to try something, the Phantom Thieves came up with a plan. The Thieves used the fact that a Palace's distortions only affect one area to make Black Mask think he was in the real world while secretly transferring him to the Metaverse, making Black Mask kill a cognitive version of Joker rather than the real one. Then, they used spyware on Black Mask's phone to spy on him reporting his "success" to the Big Bad, all while the real Joker sat safe and sound in the real police custody, with Black Mask none the wiser. And, thanks to Sae Niijima being convinced by Joker to help the Phantom Thieves, Joker was able to exit police custody without being spotted. After all this, a television interview makes Black Mask realize that they've been tricked, and he admits to being impressed at the Phantom Thieves pulling it off. What makes it even more impressive is that Joker had been drugged by corrupt police earlier, and didn't remember there even was a gambit until the last minute.
• Out-of-Genre Experience: In Royal, there is a Dream Sequence at the beginning of the new arc on the night of New Years Eve that seems like it could become a Nightmare Sequence at any time, feeling more out of a survival horror game than a lighthearted Urban Fantasy RPG. Joker finds himself in Maruki's office at Shujin in his Velvet Room prisoner outfit, a voice over the intercom dismisses class, then repeats again, slower, pitched down and with an echo. After the bell rings, Joker wanders around the darkly lit Shujin Academy very slowly, following a blue butterfly. While he walks, he hears the voices of his friends who attend the school. Any attempt to stray from following the butterfly will lead to a Fade to White and put Joker back onto the path to the butterfly. Once he gets to the exit, a voice on the intercom will ask him where he's going, and Joker insists on leaving, which wakes him up to the real world. This segment is one of the only times in the entire game where there is no music playing in the background. It is the scene that marks the Genre Shift from the vanilla game content's Conspiracy Thriller to the new arc's Psychological Horror bent, and opens with an appropriately creepy scene. If the player misses the deadline to Maruki's Palace, Joker goes to sleep and returns to Maruki's office like in this dream, but it quickly becomes a nightmare with Maruki showing up with Azathoth's tentacles to put Joker to sleep forever, making it the game's most horror-themed Non-Standard Game Over.
• Overly Generous Time Limit: The boss battle against Okumura has a time limit of thirty minutes, but should only take about twenty, even if you watch every mid-battle cutscene. When the last Giant Mook goes down, Okumura doesn't even attack, meaning the only way to lose at that point is to let the timer run out. Zig-zagged in Royal, as if you are underleveled or just don't know how to kill each robot within two turns it will make you run out of time very easily since he will regenerate all robots if they are not killed within those two turns. If you know how to do it, ^hint If you pay very close attention, one of the Robots usually has a defense buff, so make sure you remove that first. Then abuse the Baton Pass system to hit the Robot's Weaknesses with items or skills that hit their weaknesses one by one before having the final character land a decisive blow on them. The robots are also not resistant to gun and can be affected by Mute, Dizzy, Panic, Freeze or Shock in Royal, so one might also try to aim for technical damage it's perfectly reasonable.

P

• Painful Persona: All the party members forced themselves to behave a certain way for the sake of society's expectations, or because someone in power made them. They're clearly not happy with the state of their lives but feel It Can't Be Helped. Their Shadows represent their repressed desire for rebellion, and when they emerge once their abusers go a step too far, the party members accept them near instantly, throwing off the yoke of society's expectations. A few members of the Phantom Thieves stand out:
  • It's implied that the protagonist's mild-mannered, glasses-wearing Everyman persona is faked for the sake of not standing out, since the one time he followed his sense of justice and protected a woman being assaulted, the Corrupt Politician responsible framed him for assault and had him placed on probation. He acts much flashier in his Phantom Thief persona in the Mental World, and it's likely this is closer to his real self.
  • Makoto Niijima's parents died when she was young, leaving her older sister the sole breadwinner of the family. So she has immense pressure to get a college recommendation and provide for the family, which leads to her becoming an Extreme Doormat to the school's incompetent and corrupt principal. It's clear she doesn't enjoy her "honor student" persona, and the other students see her as an Academic Alpha Bitch and hate her for it. When she finally snaps during her Persona's awakening, it's clear she's been wanting to let off steam for a long time.
    Makoto: Don't get all cocky just because I normally behave myself. I am DONE playing nice!
• Le Parkour: Dungeon traversal now has you jump between chandeliers, leap out windows, launch yourself over Bottomless Pits, and leap and dash between various forms of cover.
• Peninsula of Power Leveling:
  • The area right outside the original final boss' arena contains several respawning Shadow groups that provide abnormally high experience and cash rewards, conveniently located right next to a safe spot to save. This is not the case in terms of area outside of the Royal final boss' arena because it's simply a barren area with only a few difficult to reach Shadows.
  • In Royal, the entirety of Mementos becomes this. Ryuji's insta-kill ability combined with high bonuses in EXP (you can have 200% EXP around half-way through the game) and a Mementos anomaly which only spawns strong phantoms on a floor? You will easily get five level-ups on every character before the Reaper even appears.
  • The later areas of Da'at in Royal have much stronger versions of low-level Personas to provide experience for parties with levels in the mid to high 90s.
• Permanently Missable Content: Considering a large part of the game involves time management, these naturally arise from certain events that involve deadlines.
  • One of the main plot points is once a Palace's treasure is stolen, the palace will vanish forever. Any treasures either laying in objects around the Palace or in locked chests will be lost once the Palace is completed. This includes Will Seeds in Royal, and Morgana will specifically warn you if you haven't collected all three of a Palace's Will Seeds.
  • The Golden Beam gun for Akechi cannot be obtained if you don't buy it in Niijima's Palace. The Lumina Saber and Sirius cannot be bought from Iwai's shop after Akechi permanently leaves the party either. In the case of the latter two weapons, their permanently missable status is averted in Royal, where they become available for purchase again after Akechi rejoins the Phantom Thieves, although there's no real reason to as Akechi's starting weapons when he rejoins render them obsolete.
  • Most of your Confidants involve someone antagonizing the Confidant in question to the point that the thieves need to take out the aggressors' Shadows in Mementos, usually around the Rank 7 mark. Take too long to take out the targets, and you're screwed out of hitting Max Rank, which means losing out on a number of Personas (either from hitting max rank in general, or because some of them are required for fusing even stronger Personas). The same goes for not bothering to work on your own party members, which in turn means losing their Ultimate Personas (which all come with a skill that greatly boosts their dodge rate against the weakness of each party member). It's worse for Futaba, as not only do you need high Kindness to start her Confidant, but she's the only party member that actually has an antagonist that you need to defeat in Mementos to continue. The only exceptions are those who rank up automatically (Igor, Morgana, Sae and, in the original game, Akechi), Caroline and Justine (who go up a rank when you fuse a requested Persona with a specific skill), and Yoshida (has no opponent at all).
  • Even taking out the Rank 7 gate, several Confidants can still be missed if ignored for too long:
    • Toranosuke Yoshida, the politician and Sun Confidant, is locked out after November 15 due to the upcoming in-game election where he needs to focus on his campaign. He will at least send you a text over a week in advance if you haven't hit Max rank with him at that point.
    • Sadayo Kawakami, your homeroom teacher and the Temperance Confidant, is normally available through calling the pay phone in Leblanc. However, her confidant has several scenes that take place at school and are required to start the confidant or progress to the next rank. This means you will no longer be able to progress her confidant beyond those points after the Casino Palace deadline, as Joker is faking his death and can't go to school. Unlike with Yoshida, there's no warning from Kawakami if you're cutting close to her cutoff period.
    • The Strength Confidant's progress is identical to the Empress Social Link from Persona 4: your rank increases when you bring a specific Persona with a specific skill to Caroline and Justine. The player can either do it in increments (ideally doing the final request by the time you access the sixth Palace, as it requires fusing a Persona that's Level 53 at base) or, with enough Level Grinding, all at once. The confidant itself, however, is written around Caroline and Justine's amnesia and obliviousness to their overall purpose as Velvet Room attendants. It's revealed during the final stretch of the game that they're really two halves of a single attendant, Lavenza, and in order to stop the Big Bad, they fuse themselves back together. Since the confidant is written around Caroline and Justine, and not Lavenza herself, if you've completely held off their requests by the time of the final day, then you cannot proceed any higher into the Confidant at all. In Royal, Caroline and Justine also have hangout events that award you with a skill card after each date, but if you don't complete them by December 22, you will not get the final hangout event with Lavenza, where she awards you the skill card Enduring Soul.
    • In Royal, the Councillor Confidant cannot be completed if you failed to reach rank 9 before November 18. Failing to complete the Councillor Confidant before that deadline will lock you into the ending path of the original game and be unable to access the third-term events. For the Councillor Confidant, at least, you are given plenty of warning — Kawakami tells you twice (one announced during class, and the other personally). On the other hand, you actually have to do this to unlock all the Thieves Den content, since the original game's ending cutscenes are only unlocked by going down that route.
    • Along with the Councillor Confidant in Royal, in order to complete the Justice and Faith Confidants, the Justice Confidant needs to be at rank 8 before November 18, while the Faith Confidant needs to be at rank 5 before December 22. Missing a deadline will not allow you to continue the respective Confidant, which means losing out on battle perks, especially Sumire's Show Time attack with Joker and both Sumire and Akechi's 3rd tier Personas. What's trickier about Akechi's 3rd tier Persona, Hereward, is that it's unlocked by certain dialogue options during rank 7 and 8 of the Justice Confidant as well as remembering to keep your promise the night after defeating him in Shido's Palace. Picking any other choice, even if the Confidant is maxed out, will not unlock this.
  • Because the protagonist has to fake his death until his final exams, any facilities (such as the library) and items (such as some SP-recovery items) from Shujin Academy cannot be accessed after the Casino Palace. You can still do your Shujin-based Confidants (Ryuji, Makoto and Haru) however.
  • While most of the Hangout Spots are opened through story events or by ranking up Confidants, some are only accessible either by reading a book or partaking on events set on one specific day. Skipping random events and not bothering to find the books means you can go the entire game without some of the more vital spots to work on stats or shop, with the Fishing Pond and the Meiji Shrine being two big examples.
  • There is also no hint that you can access Tanaka's black market website by buying the laptop from the second hand shop and fixing it with a repair kit from a shop in Akihabara.
  • The theater in Yongen-jaya is shut down at the beginning of the game; you can reopen it via Mementos by taking out the Shadow of the developer that's strong-arming the building's owners. Naturally, holding off on this request means that it never re-opens.
  • The text messages get deleted past a certain threshold. This includes a text by Mishima that activates the Mementos request, "One Who Bullies Bullies." If you don't read it, the mission will never activate, screwing you out of 100% Completion (Since clearing the request unlocks Black Frost's fusion). What makes it particularly infuriating is that it's the only Mishima mission text that isn't read automatically and that the NPCs involved with the quest in question will still hang out in front of the school, but you can never do anything about it. Royal fixes this, since Joker automatically opens the text conversations first thing in the morning.
  • In Royal, it's entirely possible to never unlock the Jazz Jin due to it only being unlocked through Akechi's confidant; if Akechi isn't at Rank 4 by November 18, the event can't be pursued. This means missing out on the chance to get several powerful Jazz Jin-exclusive moves (such as Charge or Concentrate) on your party.
  • A minor case with Sumire in the Thieves Den. Due to story events, she puts her hair down and starts wearing glasses as part of her civilian outfit, which transfers over to her appearances in the Den when she joins the thieves. However, maxing out her Confidant causes her to revert back to her original appearance: once this is done, there's no way to get her to wear her hair down again in the Den. Since the Den runs on a completely different save system from the main game, she will wear her original outfit even if the data where the link was maxed out was deleted.
  • Several of the room decorations can only be obtained by agreeing to hangouts on specific dates (the Kumade and Giant Spatula are only given during a hangout with Haru on 11/6) or by going on romantic dates with specific confidants (the Night Pennant is only obtainable by dating Kawakami). Missing the events or staying platonic with the confidant in question results in the decorations being permanently unobtainable for that file.
• Personal Hate Before Common Goals: The traitor who betrays the Phantom Thieves isn't technically opposed to what the Phantom Thieves are doing. In fact, when the traitor is finally fought, both the traitor and the thieves are after Masayoshi Shido. The problem is that that the traitor has a personal reason to be after the target and has no interest in allowing anyone else to interfere, even if it would benefit Shido. But maybe even more so, because the traitor suffers of an inferiority complex in respect to the Phantom Thieves, that makes them hate them too much. Even after the traitor agrees that they are on the right.
• Pet the Dog: Despite the bad reputation the Phantom Thieves still have from Okumura's death, the Conspiracy covering up Shido's change of heart and the general public still seeing him as a decent person despite him admitting to most of his crimes on live camera, at least one student still happily supports the Thieves as shown by a comment written in Japanese congratulating them on a crude drawing of Shido made after this, which mostly features other comments making fun of him and not the Thieves.
• Phantom Thief: Played with. The Phantom Thieves of Hearts are an interesting twist on this trope. Going by appearances, they seem to fit the classic Phantom Thief archetype; all members are either a Gentleman Thief or Classy Cat-Burglar, use stealth in their heists, and even send a calling card to their victim before the "crime". What differentiates them from the archetype is that they're less thieves and more Internal Reformists; going into an Eldritch Location known as the Metaverse, they can sweep into a target's subconscious and effectively trigger a forced Heel-Face Turn by stealing the manifestations of evil people's desires. In doing so, people normally untouchable by the law are brought to justice, making them a mix between Internal Reformists and Cowboy Cops.
• Phoney Call: The player can do the calling to help out in a couple of Confidant situations:
  • When a man starts to harass Sojiro at the cafe, the player can call his phone, allowing Sojiro to pretend it's from the probation officer and scare the man off.
  • Iwai directs you to give him a call at his prompting at the diner; he pretends it's a customer with a problem so he has an excuse to leave the conversation.
• Player Nudge:
  • If you don't realize you can attack Shadow Kaneshiro to stop Piggytron's rolling attack, Morgana will point it out the second time he uses the attack.
  • If you make any dialogue choices that leads to a bad ending (selling out your friends to Sae, cutting a deal with Yaldabaoth or accepting Maruki's reality as the only reality), someone will ask you if you are sure this is what you want to do.
  • In one of the bad ending sequences, Joker's thoughts will mention forgetting "something important" right before Akechi shoots him.
  • In Royal, the game subtly nudges you to complete Maruki's confidant a few times, as it is required to get the Royal-exclusive third semester. When he's introduced, the game gives a very specific date on when he'll leave Shujin (November 18) as to encourage you to complete it before then, and both Morgana and Kawakami suggest that Joker visit him a couple times throughout the game.
• Plot Tunnel: Royal starts the third semester with one, with the first free day in January being the 13th. Over the course of this, you're forced into Maruki's Palace three times, twice with a less-than-complete party - once with Kasumi and Akechi since every other Phantom Thief has had their greatest wish granted by Maruki, once with just Akechi after the revelation that "Kasumi" is actually Sumire leads to her being taken hostage by Maruki, and once with the whole gang. You have no access to the Velvet Room until the third visit, and between the first two Palace visits, you're forced to talk to each Phantom Thief, one a day, to snap them out of Maruki's dream world, without even fast travel to jump you to where they are.
• Point of No Return:
  • Played with. (Effectively the "Nasty" type, but with an escape clause.) Upon reaching a dungeon's "treasure", you get the option of sending a Calling Card to the target. Once you do so, you're locked in: you're forced into the dungeon the next day and won't be able to leave until the boss is defeated. However, you are given the option to go back to the previous morning before sending the card should you lose against the boss, in case you jumped into it before you were ready (and so preventing Unwinnable situations); as further mercy, if your heist occurs less than a week before the deadline, losing to the boss gives you the option to go back to 7 days left. Also, once you beat the boss, you won't be able to explore the dungeon again.
  • On the path to the Good Ending is a Tough type. You'll be stuck in Mementos until you reach the end, and you can only exit the dungeon to directly travel to certain shops to restock, but Caroline can provide free heals at the entrance. When you do return to the real world, it's The Very Definitely Final Dungeon, and you can't go shop anymore, but Lavenza still provides healing.
    • With a Polite sub-example- before you enter the Prison of Regression from the final floor of Mementos, Futaba will comment that the door to the prison only opens from the outside. However, you can still freely leave to go shopping until you enter the shrine at the bottom of the depths.
  • A Polite type happens before the game fully hands control over to the player for Shido's palace arc- Morgana warns you that the few weeks before the deadline will probably be your last opportunity to build your social stats and hang out with your confidants.
• Police Are Useless: Zigzagged. It's initially exaggerated in this game as compared with Persona 4 to emphasize the hopelessness of society. They are generally either too inept or corrupt to actually bother stopping crime or protecting the public, since Shido brought and blackmailed the police force in serving his interests. In fact, just like the rest of the public, they are more interested in witch-hunting you and the rest of the Phantom Thieves than to go after Shido and his cohorts (whom they are actually protecting or enabling). Part of the reason the Phantom Thieves become so popular among the public is them being able to do what the police have repeatedly failed or didn't bother doing. However, in the case of Kaneshiro, later dialogue makes it clear that the police did know about him, but lacked the evidence to do anything about it, which is something that the Phantom Thieves don't need to worry about. Turns out it's implied that they are all seemingly mind-controlled by Yaldabaoth, as it did not take long for them to put Shido under law once the God of Control is defeated.
• Police Brutality: The protagonist is beaten and drugged by police at the beginning of the game, after he is caught at the end of a heist. Notably, a police detective will threaten to break one of your legs if you refuse to sign a False Confession.
• Poor Communication Kills:
  • During the group's second trip to Kamoshida's Palace, Ryuji initially fails to communicate to Morgana that he wants to save the volleyball players who are being tortured. As a result, Morgana fails to tell Ryuji that they're cognitive beings who only exist in the Metaverse until Ryuji has gone all the way to the dungeon and tried to free them.
  • Played for Drama when it comes to the real Kasumi in Royal. While she did absolutely mean it when it comes to taking care of her sister Sumire, this resulted in Sumire being severely crippled by an inferiority complex and suicidal depression, something that actually kickstarted the traffic accident that led to Kasumi's death. Had Kasumi tried to understand why her sister was so depressed instead of flaunting her own success as the elder sister in a misguided attempt at a pep talk, she might not have died.
• Portal Picture: In the Art Gallery dungeon, the party can hop into paintings to use them to sneak around foes.
• Post-Modern Magik: The heroes use a phone app called "Meta-Nav" ("Isekainavi", or "Otherworld Navi(gation)" in Japanese) to access the Metaverse and the Palaces.
• Posthumous Villain Victory: Played with. Akechi's only goal in life is to get revenge on Shido for abandoning him as his bastard son. In Shido's Palace, after his defeat at the hands of the Phantom Thieves, Akechi is confronted by his cognitive double, who reveals he was being manipulated by Shido as his hit man and will now be killed for having outlived his usefulness. However, Akechi manages to separate himself and the double from the Thieves and makes Joker promise to take Shido's Heart in his stead before possibly dying at his copy's hands. The heist is successful and thanks to Joker's testimony, Shido is tried and presumably imprisoned, fulfilling Akechi's wish, albeit less gruesomely.
• Powerful, but Inaccurate: Lucky Punch and Miracle Punch (as well as Diego's Miracle Rush in Royal) have an increased chance to inflict a damaging Critical Hit, but also have a much higher chance of missing completely.
• Power Glows: Persona are now covered in a glowing blue aura of flames when summoned.
• The Power of Friendship: P5 has the "Confidant" system, where every character you get to know over your year in Tokyo gives you cheaper rates at shops, new items, or new abilities in battle, along with the standard ability from previous Persona games to fuse stronger Guardian Entities.
• Power of the God Hand: God's Hand is back once again, but this time, it's not a giant golden fist falling from the sky... it's a rocket-propelled giant golden fist that zooms around the battlefield, and then drops on top of an enemy.
• The Power of Love: Subverted when Joker makes coffee for his friends. The two options presented are "Make it like Sojiro told you to", and "Make it with Love". Choosing the former will result in your friend complimenting your coffee, while choosing the latter will result in them being dissatisfied with the coffee.
• Power Up Let Down: The Eternal Lockpick in vanilla P5. You will only be able to craft it around endgame, will likely need to deliberately grind a bit to get all the components needed for it, and there won't be much time to use it. And worst of all, it does not carry over to NG+. Royal mitigates this by making the Eternal Pick carry over to NG+, so you at least don't need to worry about lockpicks for future playthroughs.
  • There are two very lategame spells related to Bless and Curse respectively: Divine Judgement and Demonic Decree. Both spells belong to demons you won't be high enough level to fuse until the very end of the vanilla campaign likely, if even then. One would think they must be very powerful. And theoretically they are, they cut an enemy's current health in half. Only problem is that, as one might expect, the spell doesn't work on bosses or minibosses. Which leaves only regular enemies; however for most enemies, by endgame you should be powerful enough to kill most enemies in a single turn, which largely just leaves the glowing Boss in Mook's Clothing enemies to use it on. Which is a bit disappointing for such a late game spell.
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: When using DLC Persona, the protagonist will occasionally drop lines from those games before using a signature Special Attack. For instance, the Protagonist will drop a line from Persona 4: Arena Ultimax right before using Tsukuyomi's Abyssal Wings skill.
  Protagonist: It's Sho-time!
• Precision F-Strike: F-bombs are rather rare in this game, making the times someone goes that far rather impactful.
  • Ryuji gets one or two. In the original game, after you complete the first mural in Futaba's Palace, he notes that what was just described was "a fuckin' sick thing to do to a kid" (it's changed to "the shittiest thing" in Royal). Then, after Sojiro learns that you and Futaba are Phantom Thieves, he texts a "You gotta be fucking kidding!"
  • When the Phantom Thieves track down Makoto after she willingly lets herself be taken to Kaneshiro, one of the mobsters yells, "Who the fuck are you?"
  • In Ryuji's Rank 3 event, Nakaoka tells Ryuji that he "had to go and fuck all of that up" when recounting how the track team was disbanded as a result of Ryuji punching Kamoshida.
  • In her Rank 5 event, Ohya recounts how her partner was falsely accused of murder and claims "it's pretty damn fucked up to make allegations like that without any evidence!"
  • Iwai's Confidant has several, befitting an ex-yakuza.
    • During the event that leads to Tsuda's Mementos request, Tsuda refers to the triads who stiffed him as "those Hong Kong motherfuckers" and tells Iwai that "nobody gives a fuck about your goddamn code of honor anymore".
    • During his Rank 9 event, Iwai calls Masa a "motherfucker" after he kidnaps Kaoru. Masa later tells Iwai to "fuck off" after he demands Kaoru's release. Then, Tsuda gets to tell Masa he's "really fucked up this time" during his Big Damn Heroes moment.
• Pre-existing Encounters: Enemies now have dungeon specific forms, like knights, security guards and police officers, who wander the maps. Battle starts when you attack them or they attack you. However, in keeping with the game's Phantom Thief themes, you now sneak up and Back Stab enemies to get an advantage in battle, instead of just hitting them.
• Press X to Die: During Shadow Sae's boss battle, you will be warned that you cannot harm her (including attacks, debuffs, and inflicting status effects) while the roulette wheel is spinning. If you do, she'll counter by reducing your HP to one regardless of your evasion or resistances. Best make sure the boss doesn't have the next turn if you decide to do this.
• Previous Player-Character Cameo: Royal adds, as part of DLC, a gameplay mode called "Challenge Battle", which offers the player a chance to fight against the protagonists of either Persona 3 or Persona 4.
• Product Placement:
  • The Shibuya station has ads for the real-life store chain HMV.
  • Futaba wears a pair of AKG headphones in her street clothes. While the logo isn't visible, the initials are.
  • You can purchase Jagariko from the Triple Seven Convenience Store, with its description calling it "a popular Japanese snack". Characters will also occasionally be seen eating Jagariko when hanging out with Joker.
  • There's a good amount of product placement from Atlus' parent company, Sega Sammy Holdings; there's a non-enterable Club Sega visible in Akihabara, Joker and Makoto can watch the Live-Action Adaptation film of the first Yakuza game under its original Japanese title of Like a Dragon, and one of the new minigames in Royal is a DARTSLIVE3 machine.
  • Much like in real life, there's Pasela Resorts, a karaoke and cafe bar, on Central Street. Pasela Resorts was where some of the Persona 5 cafe collaborations were held.
• Prolonged Prologue: While you do get opportunities to save at the end of each day, the first in-game week involves the protagonist getting used to the setting, establishing the initial party members and awakening their Personas, setting up the conflict with the Starter Villain, and multiple compulsory trips into the first Palace for combat and navigation tutorials. After all the facilities are in place, the player finally gets free rein to choose how to spend their day.
• Propping Up Their Patsy: After the Phantom Thieves are framed for murdering Kunikazu Okumura, Akechi joins the group, claiming he wants to help them find the real culprit before the cops arrest a scapegoat. However, Akechi is actually an assassin for Shido, responsible for killing Okumura along with numerous other targets, and him joining the Thieves was all part of an elaborate scheme to murder Joker. Thankfully, it fails: turns out the Phantom Thieves were suspicious of him from the start due to how he over-played his hand and set up their own scheme to counter his.
• Protagonist-Centered Morality: Due to how their heists result in what basically amounts to Brainwashing for the Greater Good, this gets discussed at several points throughout the story.
• Public Domain Character: Always the case with Demons and Personas in the Shin Megami Tensei series. Whereas 3 and 4 used Classical Mythology (usually Greek) and Japanese Mythology for its Personas, 5 uses Lovable Rogues and famous thieves from contemporary folklore that match the party's own personalities:
  • The main character's initial Persona is Arsène - as in, Arsène Lupin, the archetypal Phantom Thief. Arsène the Persona dresses similarly to famous depictions of the original thief, with a top hat and other formal wear.
  • Morgana's Persona is Zorro, a pulp hero and cunning outlaw who defends commoners and other innocents from an oppressive government. The fact Zorro has the Animal Motif of a fox and Morgana is a cat is probably a joke.
  • Ryuji's Persona is Captain Kidd, as in Captain William Kidd, a Scottish sailor once tasked with hunting pirates who soon turned to piracy himself and stole from his former corrupt employers. This mirror's Ryuji's former attempts to be an overall good student until Kamoshida ruined his reputation and his ability to run in the track team, and in turn embracing his reputation as a delinquent.
  • Ann has Carmen, the star of a French opera of the same name and a gypsy woman loved by men for her exotic features and hedonism. Ann is a quarter-white girl who is the subject of some nasty rumors at the school regarding her ethnicity.
  • Yusuke's Persona is Goemon, as in Ishikawa Goemon, a Japanese thief who stole from nobles and gave his spoils to the peasantry. This coincides with Yusuke stealing the heart of his former mentor, an affluent yet corrupt plagiarist, and doing the same for the Phantom Thieves' other targets.
  • Futaba's Necronomicon takes the form of a person and livestock abducting UFO, reflecting both her fascination with programming and feelings of alienation from the rest of society.
  • Makoto has Johanna the Latin variant for the name of Pope Joan who defied social conventions to become pope. She takes the form of a motorcycle to reflect Makoto’s suppressed rebellious side.
  • Haru has Milady named for Milady de Winter from The Three Musketeers, both being women of affluence who betray family members to further their own plans for their lives. Milady the Persona is well-known as an example of Silk Hiding Steel, hiding missiles and all manner of artillery including a tri-barrel cannon under her 17th-Century hoop dress.
  • Akechi has Robin Hood, representing his desire to help people and find the truth. This is only a half-truth, however, as his true Persona is Loki, representing his questionable allegiance towards both Shido and the Phantom Thieves, as well as his hatred of the society that dealt him such a shitty childhood.
• Pull the Thread: During the third semester when all your friends’ desires have been granted. When you visit each of them, You point out the inconsistencies in the reality as compared to their memories forcing them to realize something’s wrong.
• Pun: Late in the game, Lavenza tells the protagonist "You must release your teammates, with whom you've shared your conviction." "Conviction" can mean either "core belief" or "guilty verdict" in this context, since the protagonist has shared both with the other Phantom Thieves.
• Punny Name:
  • The Protagonists attend Shujin High School. Shujin in this game is written with the kanji for "utmost excellence" but it is also homophonous for 'prisoner', making it sound like "Prisoner High School".
  • The Gay Bar in Shinjuku is named "Crossroads" (as in Wholesome Crossdresser) in the English version and "Nyukama" (a combination of "newcomer" and "okama", a Japanese term for gay men) in the Japanese version.
  • In the Japanese version, the Saw parody Pach-Saw is called "Zaw"; it sounds similar to the Japanese word for elephant: "zou".
• Purposely Overpowered: If you want to play a game that will challenge you, it's recommend that you do not use the DLC personas that come with Royal. Not only do you have many of these incredibly powerful personas available to be summoned from the start for zero cost, they also replace the normal fusion methods that existed in the base game. As an example, one of the first you're likely to stumble across is Orpheus, a persona that learns the mid tier AOE fire spell Maragion and the full party defense buff Marakukaja at level twelve and fourteen respectively. This is a good thirty levels ahead of schedule. On top of that, it comes with a unique skill that works as combined 50% party heal and Dragon Hustle, Chie's unique skill from the previous game that buffs all party stats for three turns. Even his trait gives four revives in a single battle.
• Puzzle Boss: The Azazel Boss Battle has the Shadow hidden behind four paintings. The eyes and nose absorb magic attacks, and the mouth absorbs physical damage, forcing you to hit each with the right attack to get to Azazel himself.

Q

• Quirky Doctor: Tae Takemi runs a back alley clinic in Tokyo, dresses like a goth, and has a very morbid sense of humor. In spite of these idiosyncrasies, she is actually one of the most brilliant doctors in the country, and as you forge a bond with her, she'll provide you access to her own homemade medicine, all of which are very beneficial during your ventures into the Metaverse.

R

• Rainbow Speak: Key names and terms are indicated in red in things such as tutorial screens and story recaps.
• Rain of Blood: After The Holy Grail fuses Mementos with the real world, red rain starts falling on Tokyo, even flooding the streets. It's unclear whether it is actually blood, but it certainly gives that impression.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Many of the villains are sexual predators or criminals of some sort:
  • Kamoshida sexually harasses the female members of the volleyball team, tries to blackmail Ann into sleeping with him, and is implied to rape Shiho after Ann's refusal.
  • Kaneshiro is a sex trafficker who tries to blackmail Makoto into prostitution, while his Shadow reveals he intends to make Sae his "personal slave".
  • Sugimura, Haru's evil arranged fiance, is lecherous and possessive of her.
  • Tsukasa, Eiko's boyfriend and the Arc Villain of Makoto's Confidant, tries to rope Eiko into the sex trade.
  • Shido was attempting to rape a random woman before Joker intervened, and dialogue from Akechi's Confidant in Royal suggests that Akechi was a Child by Rape.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: A singular In-Universe example. On 11/15 in Royal, Joker's World History teacher comments on the lack of reruns of historical dramas on TV, and suspects that's because many of such stories have rebellious main characters like noble thieves going against shady authority figures, which could be seen as a show of support for the Phantom Thieves and thus something TV networks would rather not get into. Especially after the Phantom Thieves were framed for Kunikazu Okumura's murder.
  • On a meta level, the reason Hoshino scrapped the game's original idea of backpacking around the world was because of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, and his desire to write social commentary on what he saw as the government's complete mismanagement of the disaster and society's desire for change.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Despite there being no shortage of corrupt adults who end up getting their hearts stolen, there are exceptions to the rule:
  • Sojiro, despite his initially cold and distrustful attitude toward the protagonist, cares more for him than he initially lets on, and keeps his and Futaba's involvement in the Phantom Thieves a secret.
  • Sae, the prosecutor who interrogates the protagonist, disapproves of the police's more extreme methods, is willing to listen to him, and ultimately plays a major role in saving his life and helping the Thieves against the conspiracy.
  • Takakura, a high-ranking executive in Okumura Foods who helps manage the company after Kunikazu dies. While Haru has heard some unsettling rumors about him, and distrusts him after he tries to convince her to hand over her shares to him, he turns out to be a Nice Guy who's willing to listen to her, consider her feelings and even help her get out of her Arranged Marriage once he learns that she actually wasn't OK with it.
  • Late in Sojiro's Confidant, Futaba's uncle attempts to extort money from Sojiro by claiming that he was abusing Futaba and that he was assaulted by the protagonist. When a pair of social workers show up to investigate his claims, the lead visitor doesn't start with the assumption that the accused are guilty (as is usually the case in such incidents in fiction), but instead asks questions about Sojiro's parenting to the protagonist and Futaba, as well as what happened between the uncle and the protagonist, before coming to the conclusion that the report was obviously false and wishing the group a good day. He even reins in his clearly-not-as-experienced partner, pointing out that the case is clear-cut when the newer guy questions his methods, and citing his experience with such cases.
  • During Yusuke's Confidant, he and the protagonist go to a Catholic church. Yusuke proceeds to ask the protagonist to imitate Jesus Christ in the cross. In CHURCH. The priest walks up to them, politely asks what they're doing and, when Yusuke explains that he wanted to inspire himself on Jesus's suffering, the priest gently expands into its meaning in an earnest attempt to help Yusuke with his doubts and politely asks them to stop imitating the passion of the Christ, rather than, say, kicking them out. That same priest is the one that lets Hifumi play shogi there.
  • Hiraguchi, who's Kasumi and Sumire's gymnastic's coach, is generally described as tough but fair. She puts her students through rather harsh training regimens, but also is able to give them good advice on how to grow. During the ending, if Sumire's Confidant was maxed out, she'll ask for time off from practice to campaign for Joker's release. Hiraguchi refuses, and instead makes a deal with her- if Sumire continues to apply herself to practice, Hiraguchi will contact her associates for help, something she believes is more effective than anything Sumire could manage on her own.
• "The Reason I Suck" Speech: When the Phantom Thieves steal the Treasure from their targets and force them to undergo a change of heart, they deliver a public speech confessing their crimes and admitting to being awful people.
• Recurring Element: Multiple elements from Persona 3 and 4 return:
  • A primary Color Motif throughout the UI and other art. For this game, it's a vivid red.
  • The protagonist arrives in town by taking a train.
  • The Velvet Room has a new silver-haired, gold-eyed female attendant - though there's two of them now. Though it'd be more appropriate to say "two halves of one."
  • The game opens with the protagonist signing a contract that says they take responsibility for their actions (in this case a police confession) and seeing an otherworldly blue butterfly in their dreams.
  • The protagonist gets into trouble with a teacher after he transfers to a new school.
  • The protagonist is given a key to the Velvet Room, only this time he's given it as Lavenza's max Confidant gift because of Yaldabaoth hijacking the Velvet Room.
  • The boys come up with a plan to hit on girls only to fail miserably.
  • The normally serious-looking girl of the group is absolutely terrified of ghosts.
  • Going all the way back to Persona 2, gossip and rumors play a major role in the development of the plot (this time harnessed via the Phan-site), and there is An Aesop about how fickle and unreliable public opinion is.
  • Peer pressure leads to disaster or near disaster. For example, this is how Kamoshida gets away with blatantly abusing pupils, and how The Conspiracy leads the Phantom Thieves into a trap through pressure from the general public.
  • The Lovers Arcana of the team is involved in showbiz.
• Recurring Riff:
  • Bars from the opening theme, "Wake Up, Get Up, Get Out There", reappear in the heroes' Phantom Thief theme, "Life Will Change". In Royal, "Life Will Change"'s guitar riff is remixed for "I Believe", the final heist theme.
  • Parts of "Swear to My Bones", the max rank Confidant theme for the Phantom Thieves, reappear in the Final Boss themes "Yaldabaoth" and "Our Beginning", and the Closing Credits theme "The Stars and Us".
  • In Royal, the main chorus riff of opening theme "Colors Flying High" reappears in the title screen as "Royal Days", as the daytime theme for the dream world in the third semester as "So Happy World", and in the first new credits theme as "Royal Days - Another Version".
• Recruit Teenagers with Attitude: In proud Persona tradition, the protagonists are all teens (aside from Morgana). Of course, this is because they're all teens who have suffered injustice at the hands of corrupt adults.
• Recycled Soundtrack: The movies that Joker can watch all use pieces of music that have been used in past Atlus works.
  • From Persona 4:
    • "Admission Impossible", the heist movie, reuses the "ZONE TIME" remix from Persona 4: Dancing All Night.
    • The romantic movie "Love, Possibly" uses "Traumerei" from the Persona 4 Reincarnation remix album.
    • The action movie "Like a Dragon" uses the Sauna theme from Kanji Tatsumi's dungeon.
  • "Pach-Saw" reuses Xibalba's theme from Persona 2: Innocent Sin.
  • Some of the movies borrow from Catherine's soundtrack:
    • "The Cake Knight Rises" uses the song "Pandemonium".
    • "Mes Miserables" reuses "Loser's Future".
    • "Tanktop Millionare" reuses "Jouji Washington".
• Red and Black and Evil All Over:
  • The Persona game starring Anti-Hero Phantom Thieves also has a predominantly red and black color scheme for menus, costumes, and area designs.
  • This is also the color scheme for Mementos, getting more pronounced as you go deeper, until finally reaching its peak with Mementos Depths.
• Red Herring:
  • Joker's criminal record becomes gossip at the school quickly, with no initial explanation for how. The story initially baits the player into suspecting Kawakami, as she is shown being frustrated that she has to take you in, while the only other teacher we meet, Kamoshida, seems friendly and reasonable. Eventually it's revealed to be the other way around, as Kamoshida leaked it and had Mishima tell people.
  • One of the first ones in-game belongs to Yusuke, as he is first seen stalking Ann throughout the Shibuya train station, resorts to blackmail when the Phantom Thieves intrudes his room and acting very over-protective towards Madarame. It turns out that he only has very severe Stockholm syndrome issues, and he's a loyal ally from the start to end.
  • The game tries to do one with Makoto, implying she might be a major villain. She's trying to frame the Phantom Thieves for capture and is seen acting suspicious throughout June to July, most notably following Joker all over Tokyo during a certain time. However, she's no villain to begin with. Downplayed in Royal, which adds several new cutscenes that feature her earlier in the game than she was introduced in the original and show her normal, more mellow and socially awkward personality.
  • The game drops what appear to be hints of something sinister about Morgana throughout, though they're so blatant as to be almost too obvious to count as this. You get multiple chances to call him suspicious, he has dreams about being born with yellow shadow eyes, and even at one point asks "There's no way I'd turn out to be bad at the end, right?" Naturally, he doesn't.
  • There's even hints of Futaba being a major antagonist, based on the fact that she has a Palace and she's one of the major in-game targets. She also makes a deal with the Phantom Thieves that is complete with what amounts to be an arrest threat, and in the deadline game over, it's also heavily implied that Joker thinks that Futaba did what she exactly said at the end of the deal; she sold him out and reported him and Sojiro to the authorities during the "Medjed Cleanse". As it turns out, not only her Shadow is actually an ally and the stage boss is the Sphinx cognition of Wakaba, she's completely loyal and her dismissive and trollish attitude is a result of her mental issues. Additionally, Futaba is already an ally during the time of the interrogation where the game actually took place, and her "selling him out" is merely a false recollection.
  • Think the blue butterfly the Protagonist saw at the beginning of the game is Philemon? It is actually Lavenza, the true form of Caroline and Justine. When Yaldabaoth took over the Velvet Room, and Lavenza was separated into the twins, part of her consciousness remained and took the form a butterfly. That said, Philemon is most likely still keeping an eye on Joker from behind the scenes like he did with the protagonists of the previous two games.
  • After recovering the original untouched "Sayuri" painting, Yusuke reveals that his mother's name wasn't actually Sayuri.
  • The Royal expansion tones this up to eleven.
    • During the first few days of the game, Sojiro tells you about a 15-year-old girl who died in a traffic accident a month prior to the protagonist's arrival in Tokyo. You might be convinced that Kasumi is the victim, only to be relieved that her sister was the victim instead and not her...Only for Maruki to actually reveal to you, Kasumi, and Akechi at the third semester events that the person died during that car crash was indeed Kasumi herself and her sister was the one who survived, and the "Kasumi" in front of you was merely a result of Maruki's powers overlaid on the younger and less-talented sister. While you may think that this is based on the Mental Shutdown cases because it was spoke by Sojiro right after the train crash, it actually has no relation at all and Kasumi merely sacrificed herself to prevent her sister from a potentially-lethal traffic accident for an inferiority complex towards her.
    • Pre-release material hints and emphasizes a lot about Kasumi opposing the Phantom Thieves because she didn't want people to over-rely on them for help. This can easily lead you into thinking that she's the traitor or even an Arc Villain. She isn't and doesn't, and she only mentions that once to Akechi during a relatively friendly chat and uses that as her excuse to not directly join in combat before Yaldabaoth's fall. Even if Kasumi was exposed as actually Sumire, the statement turns out to be totally ironic and she was the very one who relied on Maruki to fix her issues by turning her into Kasumi. Oddly enough, the real Kasumi is implied to have this mindset, but she never followed it to Sumire when she was still alive. Instead, she just took care of her in a seemingly condescending way that fueled her suicidal depression.
    • Then there's also Kasumi's father. He is the director of the talk show where Akechi is first met, which might actually lead people into thinking that he is a member of the Conspiracy. It turns out that he's a genuinely Nice Guy.
    • Maruki's Rank 8 event introduces an old colleague named Shibusawa who very conspicuously has a Character Portrait, giving the implication that he's going to become very important down the line. He's not; he ultimately proves to be a periphery figure in Maruki's backstory and has an utterly negligible role in the story overall.
    • The appearance of Biyarky and Hastur in Maruki's palace might make you believe that he's being manipulated by Nyarlathotep...And then his Persona is revealed to be Azathoth, and you might actually get convinced that Nyarlathotep might have had a hand in it, due to Tatsuya's Scenario mentioning Lovecraft creatures always serve another Lovecraft entity...However, Azathoth and its true form, Adam Kadmon, are just a Persona gifted with cognitive reality manipulation powers and sought to make Maruki's wish a reality.
    • Maruki's palace is first seen in October, well before the third semester. Due to the melancholic theming, location within a stadium and Kasumi's strong presence and ambiguous relationship with the Phantom Thieves, one would be forgiven for thinking that the palace belonged to her, something that Akechi lampshades.
• Reduced-Downtime Features: In earlier Persona games, the player would have to open up a menu after battles and then select items or a particular spellcaster and manually choose to heal up to an acceptable point. This game simplifies that to a simple button press which will automatically select a character with healing spells who isn't currently in the frontlines and use some of their MP to heal the party up to maximum.
• Refusal of the Call: The Protagonist attempts to delete the Metaverse Navigator app for a good three days before actually using it to willingly enter the Metaverse. Though it's justified in that he doesn't know it's bringing him a Call to Adventure when he does it and thinks that the app is just some piece of recurring malware.
• Relationship Values: The "Confidant" feature works similar to the Social Link system in 3 and 4, giving bonus actions to your party members as you increase the rank. However, the non-party member Confidants also give bonuses, like granting additional Exp, or allowing you to fuse higher level personas, in addition to strengthening fused Personas of that arcana.
• Relax-o-Vision: When Okumura has a Mental Shutdown on live television: the conference frantically cuts to a still image drawn in crayon of a cute puppy romping in a field as jingly music plays in the background. It's...not funny at all.
• Relieved Failure: Hifumi Togo's defeat in her Confidant story is revealed because of her mother rigging shogi matches from behind the scenes. After the Phantom Thieves defeat her Shadow, Hifumi lost her first match. And while news of her defeat reaches to those who follow Hifumi's shogi career, she decide to take it as a good thing in order to be a shogi player on her own terms.
• Replay Mode: The theater in the Thieves' Den in Royal lets you pay a special currency to unlock cutscenes you've personally encountered in-game. Besides cutscenes, there's also bonus materials such as the game's trailers, the opening and ending of the Persona 5 anime, and recordings of Persona concerts.
• Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: After the Phantom Thieves's Gambit Roulette paid off which resulted in the authorities thinking that Joker is dead, they later reveal to the public in a very spectacular display that their leader isn't dead and to deliver Shido's calling card.
• Required Party Member: Done in a unique way during the first boss fight. At one point, you are able to send one of your party members to knock Kamoshida's crown off of his head to severely weaken him. If you try to send Ann, she will automatically fail due to Kamoshida's perverse fixation on her, so she must be placed in the main party to keep him from noticing when one of the boys quietly disappears from the fight.
• Resurrection Gambit: Shido pulls this to try to prevent his heart being stolen, as his death would forcibly collapse his Palace, killing anyone caught inside. Despite taking the pill that would temporarily kill him without hesitation, the Phantom Thieves are a step ahead, and manage to steal his treasure and survive, though not without a close call.
• Retgone: When Yaldabaoth starts overlaying his Palace onto the real world, the Phantom Thieves start disappearing since nobody believes that they exist, and the other world runs on Clap Your Hands If You Believe, which means that they really don't exist. The Thieves only barely manage to hang onto existence.
• The Reveal:
  • The Phantom Thieves were well aware of Akechi's ulterior motives from the day they met, and they had been taking the necessary steps to get him off their backs from that very moment onwards.
  • The traitor is Goro Akechi, who is actually A) Masayoshi Shido's bastard son, and B) a Wild Card just like the protagonist.
  • Igor, who has been helping you since the very beginning of the story, is a fake. He's actually Yaldabaoth, the Gnostic Demiurge and the real Big Bad of the game.
  • In Royal, on Maruki's last day at Shujin, he reveals that he's known all along who the Phantom Thieves are; Maruki saw them emerge from Kamoshida's Palace after Ann awoke her Persona, since he was leaving the school after an interview with Kobayakawa, and started putting the dots together after Kamoshida's change of heart and the group began approaching him.
  • Morgana was never human; he's a manifestation of humanity's hopes. Before Igor lost control of the Velvet Room, he created Morgana as a failsafe to find Joker and help guide him into the heart of Mementos to stop Yaldabaoth.
  • In Royal, the new character Kasumi is also a fake. The real Kasumi has been Dead All Along and this is just a cognition using her younger sister Sumire as a vessel; Sumire told Maruki that she has to live as her elder sister out of survivor's guilt and wasn't in her right mind, so he did so by warping her cognition, not wanting her to suffer.
• Reveling in the New Form: A variant. When the characters awaken to their Personas, they definitely seem to enjoy it. Eventually Played for Horror with Akechi, where the definition of "enjoying" is a Psychotic Smirk, Evil Laugh, and attempted murder of the Phantom Thieves.
• Revenge by Proxy: Futaba's uncle always felt like The Unfavorite compared to her mother and began abusing Futaba after she died as a way of getting back at her.
• Revisiting the Roots: This game has many, many similarities with older Persona games, and even the main series.
  • The enemies are once again demons, which was last seen in Persona 2, and are featured in all other Megaten games. The game still refers to them as shadows though.
    • In addition, demon negotiation happens exactly as in the main games; you can negotiate with demons to recruit them and be instantly able to use it and fuse it with other demons. This is unlike Persona (gave you a token card that could only be used for Fusion), Persona 2 (gave you a bunch of tarot cards from their respective arcana to summon whatever you want, no fusion whatsoever) or Persona 3 and 4 (getting new Personas is a game of chance and fusion).
  • The game happens in Tokyo, just like all main SMT games. Previous Persona titles were all in fictional locations.
  • You and your party members can use both melee weapons and guns. That was last seen in Persona 1, and is also featured in all mainline games except Nocturne.^note In that game, the Demi-fiend uses his fists and doesn't use a gun.
  • The Final Boss is pretty much another version of YHVH.
    • In Royal, the initial form of the new final boss and several enemies in their Palace are taken from the Cthulhu Mythos, which was a major influence in Persona 1 and 2.
  • The initial form of Futaba's persona, Necronomicon, also came from the Cthulhu Mythos. The Third Tier form of this persona, Al Azif is the Necronomicon's original name.
  • Unlike Persona 3 and 4 - and very much like the previous and mainline games - the human villains are major and influential political figures.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: Choosing to sell out the rest of the Phantom Thieves in the interrogation room leads to not only Joker getting Killed Off for Real, but results in one of the game's bad endings.
• Rewatch Bonus:
  • Revisiting the game after beating it, the sight of the early-game cutscene where Akechi looks at his smartphone as Sae approaches him takes on a much darker context, when you consider that A) People whose Shadows have been crippled or killed go blank-eyed and unresponsive and ooze black goo from their mouths, B) the Metaverse Navigator app can be accessed by a Wild Card or Persona user as part of Yaldabaoth's Game, and C) Akechi is the Black Mask responsible for the murders in both worlds.
  • When Ryuji calls Yusuke "Inari" in the opening sequence he isn't using his code name, but the joke name Futaba gave him.
  • Early on, when the player meets Igor, hearing him with a drastically different and deeper voice, as well as hearing him say "Welcome to MY Velvet Room" as if it is his to own rather than the guest's subconscious, it is the first telling sign that something is wrong with Igor from the very start.
  • Before the Okumura heist, Igor will tell you not to get caught off guard or you will be swept under your feet in one of his typical Velvet Room meetings. Then the approval rate of the Phantom Thieves increases by two-fold right after. Sure enough, everyone within the Phantom Thieves were indeed caught off guard, allowing The Conspiracy to frame them for Okumura and Kobayakawa's murder (it actually was Akechi who killed them under Shido's orders) to advance their next plan. At the Velvet Room meeting that night, Igor warns you that a contigency is preventing your "rehabilitation" and unexpected situations are expected during a game. Then again, right after he's finished talking the approval rate for the Phantom Thieves decreases from 93% to 0% within several days, with the negative comments rolling in the day after the first drop. It's later revealed that Shido and his IT President crony hijacked public opinion with the media... but it isn't the full truth. What actually happens seems to be "Igor"-Yaldabaoth manipulating public cognition to advance his "game".
  • The drunken Shido mentions "steering the country" in the early flashback while attempting to harass the woman. This line comes back much later in giving hints to his Palace.
  • The beginning has Morgana mention Mementos and finding secrets in the depths. The depths of Mementos is the final dungeon and reveals Mona's origins.
  • Early on, an unknown man harasses Sojiro in Leblanc and the conversation mentions "her". Later, the "her" is revealed to be Futaba and that man is Futaba's biological uncle.
  • Prior to their first visit to the Metaverse you'll notice that the Protagonist accidentally activated the Meta-Nav when they first meet Ryuji. As well as Ryuji unknowingly entering Kamoshida's keywords.
  • After taking down the third mini-boss in Shido's Palace, we get a scene of Akechi doing an interview, but inwardly has some very different thoughts than what he's saying out loud: namely that with the help of the Metaverse Navigator and the Persona bestowed upon him "by the gods", he managed to dispose of those who've gotten in his way. Only on a second playthrough does it make sense because it's the literal truth: Akechi was chosen by the false Igor, AKA Yaldabaoth, to deliberately incite chaos and distortion throughout the world, with the Protagonist chosen to oppose him as part of the whole 'game'.
  • If you check the Thieves Den decor for Shadow Futaba, it's in the "Metaverse" tab (Where Metaverse-related objects are placed within) instead of the "Enemy" tab (Where major Palace bosses are placed within), indicating that she isn't the boss of her Palace.
  • In the Royal expansion, nearly every encounter with Kasumi hints that the one you encountered is not her but Sumire made to think like her, and it becomes clear once you clear the Third Semester events once.
  • At the second day of Royal when the mental shutdown-based traffic accident occurs, Sojiro has extra dialogue about a 15-year old girl who died in a traffic accident a few weeks before. Way later on in the game (and during the bonus scenario of January), it's revealed that the girl is the real Kasumi Yoshizawa who saved her younger sister Sumire from traffic by taking her place, and the "Kasumi" you met all the time was Sumire who believed that she was Kasumi.
  • In Royal, in a "blink and you'll miss it" moment very early on in the game, after Ann awakens to her Persona and the group returns from the Metaverse, they seem to materialize out of nowhere in the alley across the school. While Dr. Maruki hasn't been introduced at that point in the game, he can be clearly seen walking by at that time, which is how he figures out the true identity of the Phantom Thieves, but keeps it to himself until the end of his Confidant.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: In Royal, your party remembers the timeline in which everyone was living in Dr. Maruki's idealized reality and how they changed his heart. For everyone else, although that time isn't reverted, events are said to have played out as they would have had the altered reality never happened, and so their memories reflect the events that would lead them to the point in life that they're at now.
• Road Trip Plot: The original ending where Joker's probation has ended and he has to go home is this. His friends get ahold of a Citroën H Van (the van Morgana took the form of) to take him there. Due to Morgana stealing a spark plug from two mysterious people who are apparently meant to take him suspect once more over a new Metaverse incident, the former Phantom Thieves are free to get Joker back home.
• Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies:
  • Some bosses in Royal will end the fight instantly with a stronger-than-usual Megidolaon if you take too much turns trying to finish them. Caroline and Justine will end the fight against them instantly using an all-out attack if they downed too many party members or the party takes too much turns to bring their HP down certain thresholds. Lavenza will end the fight instantly by splitting into the Twins to All-Out Attack if you fail certain extremely fickle requirements in her battle.
  • A non-gameplay example occurs during the 24th of December where the Holy Grail enacts the final stage of his "game". He merges Mementos with reality and brainwashes the public into thinking the Thieves do not exist, and one by one, the Phantom Thieves literally vanish in agony. He does this just to toy with you one final bit and nothing else.
• Romance Sidequest: You can enter into a relationship with the majority of the female confidants in the game through their Level-Up at Intimacy 5 side-stories, assuming they like you enough from your interactions and you express an interest in the later stages of their questline.
• Rouge Angles of Satin: An example of this with the Japanese language happens during one of the game's anime cutscenes which has Shido's surname spelled in kanji as 獅堂 (lion institute) instead of 獅童 (lion child), which is the canonical spelling of his surname. This spelling mistake has no effect on the pronunciation of his surname.
• Rousseau Was Right: Subtly. While the likes of, say, Shido or Kamoshida aren't exactly the most sympathetic characters, it is clear that it's the society around them that warped them into what they are. A Palace's Treasure is literally the distortion of who they would otherwise be, so they weren't always this way. That being said, while they do sincerely attempt to make amends, no one is really sympathetic in universe either.
• R-Rated Opening: The game wastes no time in letting players know it's Darker and Edgier, with the protagonist suffering violent Police Brutality (also involving drugs) in the prologue, and the Starter Villain of the game proper being a sexual predator teacher, who goes as far as to drive one of his victims to attempt suicide.
• Rule of Symbolism:
  • As a rule, Palaces are not subtle about the psychology of their rulers.
    • Kamoshida's Palace is an extravagant castle where all males are beaten and treated as worthless slaves, while all the girls throw themselves at him, wearing whatever skimpy things he likes. And fittingly enough, the Elite Mook contained within the large tower takes the form of Mara.
    • Madarame's Palace is a museum containing all of "his" art, with many paintings of pupils (read: property) and landscapes seen throughout, with quite a bit of gold-plating as well.
    • Kaneshiro's Palace is one gigantic, flying bank that's out of reach of anyone besides his customers (who are nothing more than walking ATM machines), devouring money to fill its empty spaces, and once someone has been squeezed dry they are thrown away and discarded.
    • Futaba's Palace is an Egyptian pyramid, much like those used to entomb Pharaohs, reflecting the feeling of being doomed to die. Yet despite the real Futaba having asked for the Phantom Thieves help, the Palace still opposes the Phantom Thieves at every turn, out of control of even her Shadow.
    • Okumura's Palace is a space-themed factory, driving all robot workers to death and using worthless ones as fuel, but it is only a stepping stone toward greater ambitions.
    • Sae's Palace is a casino that's rigged to win by any/all means necessary, with the only way to win being to disable/use the cheating systems for themselves, with this practice even featured during her boss fight. It's a pretty explicit metaphor for the Japanese legal system.
    • Shido's Palace is a ship afloat in a sea that's sunken Tokyo, run by the elite who exploits the weak for all they're worth, with himself as the only one capable of 'steering' the country. All passengers wear masks as well, showing that he isn't deceived by outward appearances, and that he trusts no one whether they work for him or not.
    • Mementos Depths is a prison where everyone is chained down, their free will surrendered to a false god who is the indirect source of all cognitive distortions in this game.
    • The Qlipthoth World has the TV screens of Shibuya becoming the TV screens of Mementos' entrance, with features from the Depths of Mementos such as the massive skeletons seen in the Depths and the Shrine of the Grail overlaying on top of the surface world.
    • Maruki's Palace is a cross between a research laboratory and a paradise where patients seeking for eternal happiness go to his clinic and willingly degrade themselves into empty husks enjoying life in the Garden of Eden.
  • The party's Personas are pretty symbolic as well, being based on fictional/mythological figures of note. Their Starter Personas represent the team's rebellious inner selves, the people they would like to be, while their Ultimate Personas represent thieves who stood up to even the highest powers if it would help others.
• Running Gag:
  • Morgana getting thrown by party members.
  • With the exceptions of Morgana, Haru and Akechi, whenever one of the Phantom Thieves awakens to their powers for the first time, after things calm down from the awe-inspiring demonstration of their powers (see the Awesome page for details), they'll quickly realize that their clothes changed and comically react to their new outfits.
• Running Gagged: For the third Persona game in a row there's an Operation Babe Hunt. It initially plays out exactly like it's done in the past with the guys consistently getting shut down and it getting Played for Laughs. When they return to the girls they see them getting hit on by a couple of skeevy guys, similar to how they were just acting. Seeing this happen to their friends makes them admit the ugly side of their actions.
• Russian Roulette: The "Russian Takoyaki" that Haru gets at the Culture Festival is a relatively harmless food variant with one of them being incredibly spicy. However, the spicy one is a very distinct bright red. You can select to eat the spicy one anyway as a dare and the Protagonist will go into a "Let's just get this over with." action. Akechi shows up and ends up eating it whole, despite being warned, and ends up regretting it.

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