Tear Jerker / Persona 5

... That's right... I killed Mom. I don't deserve to be alive... This place is a tomb... I'll die here... No...! Someone help me...

— Futaba Sakura

Warning: Spoilers Off applies to Moments pages.

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General

• The opening segment of the game. There lays the protagonist, pinned to the ground by countless police, still wearing a bitter look of defiance on his face. One of the cops gloats by telling him that he was sold out by one of his own teammates. That alone drains his will to fight as he's finally cuffed. Granted, it ends up being subverted because it's actually him realizing that's the cue for the next stage of the Thieves' grand plan and he needs to continue keeping up appearances, but new viewers won't know that.
• The protagonist in this game contrasts a lot with the ones in the previous two games. The previous two player characters could get involved in clubs and make several friends at school who weren't part of the party, generally having a fulfilling school life on top of their extracurricular heroics. The P5 MC not only doesn't get involved in any clubs, but also only has one friend at Shujin besides the Phantom Thieves and Mishima (who operates the Phan-Site)- and the protagonist can only befriend Kawakami after inadvertently learning her secret.
• Tokyo in this game can be seen as very oppressive where the people in power are corrupt, many ordinary individuals ignore the problems around them and may even support this kind of action. Anyone that tries to do anything about it is met with criticism by the general public either due to the futility of the attempt or because they would shake up the status quo too much. If they're unlucky enough, they may even be met with an arrest or worse.

Story

• The sheer level of ostracism and seething contempt the protagonist endures, especially from adults, throughout the game. It doesn't matter what he achieves, what his grades are, or how nice a person he is, to them he will always just be "that punk who assaulted one of the country's most "beloved" politicians (read:an utterly depraved asshole who shouldn't even be anywhere near a ballot box)". The protagonist's mistreatment at the hands of NPCs hits way too close to home for too many players.
• At the end of Futaba's dungeon, where you fight her interpretation of her mother's feelings (who blamed Futaba for her death), after you defeat the boss, her mother's real feelings appear before her one last time, and they share a heartwarming talk and a tearful goodbye, declaring their love to each other.
• Horrifying as it might be, the Phan-site comments at the second half of the game are really sad. All of it. Oh and it's all heavily implied to be non-organic and Yaldabaoth is exerting his More than Mind Control on ever-intensifying levels just to feed on your suffering. There's no wonder that the public just acted completely insane and it shows even across the internet.
  • Ironically, the comments during the height of the Phantom Thieves' popularity can be heartbreaking. Seeing people comment in ways that make it clear that they only care about the spectacle of the thieves and not their goals, some even calling for them to kill... and then Akechi kills Okumura and it all starts spiraling down. What's worse is that the group, Ryuji and Ann especially, get caught up in the fame of being Phantom Thieves and decide on Okumura partially due to the density of fan requests. It can be tragic to see what was started as a means to strike back at a corrupt society start to become just as bad.
  • After Igor finishes speaking to you that night in the Velvet Room, the popularity of the Phantom Thieves begin to plummet, and the anonymous comments under the ratings bar during each transition scene turn as toxic as online comments get. It's a rather uneasy transition from the growing support from before. At its worst, some of these comments get outright deleted, implying they're so bad that Mishima has to intervene.
  • It gets worse after Shido's change of heart, as instead of being elated at learning the truth the Phan-Site's users hit the Despair Event Horizon due to one of the few hopes for the future they had being torn away from them. The people of Tokyo couldn't be a starker contrast to Persona 4's idea of how people would react to "the truth."
    "i shoulda known better..."
    "I feel like an empty husk"
    "why'd we even bother"
• When Sojiro continues to press Futaba to tell him why she has a Phantom Thieves calling card, the poor girl is panicking so much, she just breaks down and starts crying. Those who have crippling social anxiety to the point they shut down when under pressure like Futaba can certainly relate to the poor girl's situation.
  • Even Sojiro's reaction there is heartbreaking. He just sounds so utterly betrayed, especially since the Thieves have been framed for murder (and had a quarter-million-dollar bounty put on their heads) at that point and that a card in Futaba's possession means that either she had her heart stolen, and hid that fact to protect the Thieves, or is an ally of them and was holding onto that for safekeeping. Either way, the man is very upset and scared, and obviously panicking a little. Thankfully, it's smoothed over when Joker comes clean and Sojiro realizes from knowing Joker that the Thieves would never kill someone intentionally, and they're responsible for saving Futaba from her suicidal impulses.
• Ryuji's apparent Heroic Sacrifice after beating Shido's Palace. After worrying about his broken leg for so long and resolving to train and get back in shape, he puts it to good use and sprints to a mechanism that frees a lifeboat, saving everyone in the party. Unfortunately, before he can join them, a massive explosion overtakes the ship, apparently killing him. Everyone is weighed down heavily when they get back to the real world, and Ann in particular is completely inconsolable. He shows up fine a few minutes later, completely unaware it looked like he died, and gets his ass kicked after laughing at Ann for crying, but it's incredibly painful while it lasts.
• During the game's final act, you will hear that the Depths of Mementos has a "Quarantine Cell" only reserved for "the most dangerous criminal". And it turns out that this cell was actually the Velvet Room and the place where the Eldritch Abomination who put you in this ordeal was keeping tabs on the protagonist, and said protagonist was the most dangerous criminal imprisoned in that cell, having to be kept apart from all of society. In other words, the Eldritch Abomination behind all of this is making the public act against you no matter what because he brainwashed them into thinking that you are really some dangerous criminal that must be exterminated at all costs. And to make it worse, it might not have even been the intention, just a side effect to try and control the one piece that could have ruined his plans. An 'unjust game' indeed.
• Watching the Phantom Thieves disappear one by one in Yaldabaoth's world because nobody believes the Phantom Thieves truly exist. All it took for the general public to no longer believe the Phantom Thieves existed was just a few research papers explaining how their targets had changes of heart (although admittedly it's implied Yaldabaoth was exerting full-scale More than Mind Control at that point). It gets even worse when we're shown the Phan-site tracker plummet down to 0%.
  • It can't be understated just how intense this scene is. The group isn't just dying, they are slowly watching themselves and each other fade out of existence without any way of stopping it. The Phantom Thieves that have faced death up until now with a great degree of courage are now completely breaking down on both an emotional and physical level, the thought of triumphing over their foe not even close to their mind. Their responses range from such pleasant actions as screaming in agony all the way to shocked denial, the raw emotion being hammered in with every shot. The facial expressions and voice acting on display in this scene are absolutely chilling, as is the sentiment that this is all because no one even believes they exist.
  • And when we see the Phantom Thieves are alright in the Velvet Room, all of them are so traumatized by what happened that their rebellious spirit is thoroughly beaten out of them, sitting in their cells and wondering if they were wrong to try and make a difference, effectively being no different from the rest of the inmates under Yaldabaoth's control. It's sad to see how beat they sound. Thankfully, Joker comes and reignites their rebellious spirit.
• Accepting Yaldabaoth's deal in the second bad ending and what this what this really means for Joker. By this point in the game Joker has been framed for a crime he never committed, having his life ruined with a false accusation, betrayed by a friend he thought he could trust, drugged and tortured by the police in the name of their justice, and even after definitively proving Shido's guilt and crimes the public still largely supported Shido over the truth. The Phantom Thieves' solution is to try to destroy the source of the public's apathy but even then the public largely rejects the Phantom Thieves, being comfortable living in a lie and opts to erase the Phantom Thieves from existence as to not disturb their status quo. And after going through all of that, when offered a deal by Yaldabaoth in this ending, Joker gives up because he's completely lost all faith in humanity.
• Morgana's Disney Death, with him seemingly disappearing together with the other world in the true ending. The Thieves desperately beg him to stay as he slowly Disappears into Light. Thankfully, he returns.
• After the final battle, Sae talks with the protagonist. In order to keep Shido in prison and ensure that those in power don't try to get the Thieves arrested, the Protagonist has to turn themselves in as the leader of the Thieves in order to give testimony. However, due to the Protagonist's prior record and the very fact that the Supernatural means literally nothing to earthly affairs, he'll definitely be punished and sent to juvenile hall. Learning that after everything you've done to save the world, that No Good Deed Goes Unpunished once again is heartbreaking. It all ends well when Sae and the Phantom Thieves find the woman the Protagonist protected from Shido and get her help in expunging most of his record, but it's still tragic while it lasts.
  • Afterwards, you can go on a Christmas date with your Love Interest. However, despite it being heartwarming, it's all underscored by the idea that it could be the last time they could ever be alone together for a long time. A similar treatment applies during your party with Sojiro and Futaba if you remain single.
• Like in Persona 4 Golden, you are punished for dating multiple girls, this time by them finding out about your infidelity. All of them show up at the cafe the day after Valentine's Day and are (rightfully) pissed at you, except for Futaba who is absolutely heartbroken that you cheated on her and when she begins to describe the present she made you for Valentine's Day, she's openly trying to stop herself from crying. Well done, You Bastard!. Haru's reaction to being cheated on is just as awful; she displays Tranquil Fury, of course, but she calms down enough to flash a Psychotic Smirk and realizes that the guy she was dating was just as much of a cheating jerk as her horrible fiancé was, as she happily joins the rest in kicking your unfaithful ass.
• Hifumi's Valentine's Date, should the protagonist have been faithful, still is rather bittersweet. She takes the news that the protagonist is moving back home in the Spring remarkably worse than the other Love Interests. By the end of the date, she's trying her best not to cry.
• Just before the Protagonist leaves to go home, he has one last talk with Sojiro. When he leaves, you can see Sojiro removing his glasses to wipe tears from his eyes.

Gameplay

• A gameplay-related example. If you try and negotiate with a Shadow whose Persona you once had but have since fused away or dismissed, it'll call you out for abandoning it. It'll definitely hurt the first time you see it, doubly so if it's a Persona you used for a long time.
  • Relatedly, fighting some Shadows can be upsetting if they get scared, appeal for their lives, and you decide to keep fighting them, or as their health gets low and they visibly start giving up, knowing they're about to die. Barong is one example, moving and acting almost like a happy little dog as it attacks you, only to end up losing all cheer, staring sadly at the floor, and waiting for death. Even though they'd happily kill you otherwise, the game really likes to make you feel like a jerk for beating on Shadows.
  • Even more heartbreaking is the sight of a lot of these Persona's utterly dejected looks when they're about to be sacrificed. Luckily, Arsène is one of the few to avert this, keeping his composure and looking badass.
  • This all gets even worse in light of the reveal later in the game; Fusion was almost certainly not supposed to look like this, and it's because of Yaldabaoth's interference that it is.
• The ending you get if you fail to complete Kaneshiro's palace in time is terrifying and sad. the protagonist misremembers the context of his arrest, believing instead that he was taken in for questioning after Makoto was found at an "establishment for illegal services" in a drug-induced stupor. Even though it could never have happened (as with the other endings associated with failing to complete a palace), it's a plausible scenario if you really didn't steal the bastard's heart in-time.
• One YouTuber noticed that, in the hideout during the Shido arc, Joker will frequently touch his head as if it still hurts from being stepped on, suggesting that he unsurprisingly came out injured. In addition, the rest of the Thieves are keeping a reasonable distance to avoid crowding him, as if they're being careful to avoid pressing a Trauma Button. At this point, the poor boy is not okay, his friends (in particular, his girlfriend, if you're romancing a Thief) know he's not okay, and given the horrible, traumatic experience he just went through, how can he be?

The Phantom Thieves

• Oh no. Pick a Phantom Thief, and you'll probably want to give them a hug. To put one of the earliest examples, when the gang are celebrating taking down Kamoshida, and despite starting off in high spirits, they're soon aware that every adult at the buffet is looking down on them, or treating them like a nuisance. And no matter where they go, it seems they just don't belong anywhere.
• Picture this. You're an average kid in your hometown walking back home early in the evening. Everything is fine, until you hear two people screaming at each other; one of them sounds particularly distressed. You run to see what's going on, and find a drunken man attempting to force himself on a woman and make her get in his car. You step in between them and push the man away from her, maybe a little too forcefully, and he cuts his forehead. The next thing you know, the police are on the scene and the woman you protected is telling them that you attacked the man unprovoked.^*  What's worse is that the man turned out to have some dirt on the woman; the bitch sold you out to save her own skin. And just like that, you're expelled from your school, taken to court, and sentenced to a year of probation, all because you pissed off the most corrupt politician in the country. These are the protagonist's circumstances and the ones that kick-start the entire plot of the game. Oh and it seems like you're being considered as some sort of depraved criminal everywhere you go. At your new school, your world-weary homeroom teacher openly considers you to be a burden, your criminal record somehow got leaked before you can even attend your first class, and rumors are spreading like wildfire. It's made very clear by that point you are Public Enemy #1, and seemingly everyone bar twenty-or-so people who open up to you later on would love nothing more than to see you expelled and sent to juvenile hall or prison. Even without that business with Kamoshida's Palace and the Metaverse, it's a highly demoralizing start to a tenure there.
  • Even worse is that this disdain from the other students never actually lets up, at all; they only settle down significantly. Months after you start school, you can still sometimes hear people whispering in the halls about how dangerous they think you are, and even around November time your classmates are still surprised when you answer any questions correctly. As a case of Gameplay and Story Integration, studying in the library prior to Kamoshida's confession can also increase Guts purely due to how much courage it takes the protagonist to focus on his studying while everyone else in the library takes the time to loudly talk shit about you, knowing that you can hear what they're saying. This is despite the protagonist is really just a ordinary, hard-working, and generally harmless student who just happened to get indicted in a false crime he didn't commit. The rumors and scorn never go away; the only way to really deal with it is to simply get used to it.
  • One more very important detail that isn't disclosed until the endgame is that all of the horrible things that happened to you was orchestrated by an evil "God" to pull you under his service to dismantle said politician, who he himself set up to become a godlike figure as a mockery against humanity. After you demolish him, he plans to take you down by making the public think that you don't exist, all to prove that Humans Are Flawed and he is the only God fit to rule over them. In other words, your life was ruined because some evil "God" wanted someone he could use to mock humanity with, and he just happened to choose you.
• Morgana's growing self-esteem issues and fears about what he really is. He's normally so smug and self-assured that seeing him getting increasingly lost and afraid, wanting to stay important to his only friends, can be pretty upsetting. At the same time, a series of small incidents also happen that wouldn't have been bad by themselves but strike at the worst time and add to his feelings of unimportance (like having to stay home while the others go out to eat or on school trips overseas, or the food he'd looked forward to and asked Joker to bring him getting eaten before Joker could bring it home). The worst part is how the player can see Morgana's distress from a mile away, but no one In-Universe does and even though he occasionally starts trying to reach out to Joker, there's no option to talk them out with him before things come to a head and he (temporarily) leaves the team.
  • After Morgana leaves, just spending the next few days without him feels emptier on Joker's end. Throughout the game, he was always there to comment to Joker about the rumors going on, questions asked in class, telling Joker to go to bed and so forth. Now? Joker's completely on his own going to school, like he was when he first started going to Shujin Academy. Having Joker without Morgana just feels wrong, somehow. "Confession/Secret" playing on the train to school doesn't help matters.
• While Ryuji may seem like a rowdy delinquent when you first meet him, he has a very good reason for being that way. When he was a former track star, Shujin's PE teacher, Kamoshida, intentionally tried to provoke him by spreading rumors about his home life, specifically about his his dad. When Ryuji finally hit his Rage Breaking Point and punched him, Kamoshida broke his leg claiming self-defense, and subsequently disbanded the track club. Ryuji's former teammates blamed him entirely for the incident, and after the fact, when he was labeled a delinquent by the rest of the school, and he decided that if people thought he was nothing but a troublemaker, then he might as well be one. All of this left him friendless until the protagonist enrolls at Shujin. But even then, he's still left with irreparable damage to his leg that impairs his ability to run too quick.
• Ann, despite whose issues are not the most jarring amongst the Phantom Thieves and had a fully functional, yet distant-by-occupation family, is bullied and slut-shamed by her peers for the sole reason that she was the subject of Kamoshida's unwanted sexual advances because he was attracted by her looks. When she refuses him, he sets his sights on her best friend Shiho instead, and it's heavily implied that he rapes her out of frustration. This drives Shiho to attempt suicide while the whole school, including Ann, watches. Shiho ultimately survives, but it leaves a huge mark on Ann, and avenging Shiho becomes her motivation for joining the Thieves in the first place.
• When his mother died, Yusuke was adopted by his mentor, Madarame, but he turns out to be an abusive con-man who forces Yusuke to live in poverty, keeps him in a state of semi-starvation, and ruthlessly plagiarizes his work for profit. In heart-breakingly realistic form, Yusuke himself can't fathom the idea that he's an abuse victim, and initially lashes out at the Thieves when they attempt to help. Shadow Madarame later gloats to him that his mother was a former pupil of his, and that he chose to let her die during a seizure rather than seek medical attention for her so he could claim her masterwork, "Sayuri", as his own, removing any of Yusuke's doubts that Madarame is irredeemable.
  • After awakening his Persona, Yusuke admits that he had known for a while that Madarame was up to something sketchy with "Sayuri", even if he didn't know what, and that the plagiarism was an Open Secret, but he hadn't wanted to admit that the only person he had left in the world was using him and countless other students for his own gain until he came face to face with Madarame's Shadow.
  • Despite the horrible treatment Yusuke faced under Madarame, Yusuke's confidant shows that the starving artist still can't bring himself to completely hate his former mentor, being unable to forget whatever happy times he had living in the atelier with Madarame and the other students — something that also ties in with him previously being unable to see himself as an abuse victim. Despite everything Madarame did to him, Yusuke still decides that Madarame wasn't completely evil because he reasons that being taken in purely on the off-chance that he would grow up to have artistic talent doesn't make much logical sense. In the main story, he acknowledges during Okumura's Palace that he understands the mental and emotional abuse that Okumura's employees go through — in which they would do anything to help and serve their boss, seeming to be almost proud of their status as disposable robots — because he went through it himself. Even sadder, Yusuke very well could have been right, as suggested by an old friend of Madarame recounted a period where the man was panicking and frantically trying to get a very young Yusuke to a hospital when he grew ill, well before any artistic talents could be feasibly discerned. It's likely that he did actually care for Yusuke at some point, which only twists the knife further due to how it all turned out: His distorted vanity and desires won out over any love he had for Yusuke and even he was victimized.
  • "Sayuri" is Madarame's nickname for the painting depicting (the sadly unnamed) Ms. Kitagawa holding a baby Yusuke as a present to her son so he wouldn't forget what she looked like, and instead became the foundation of Madarame's corruption, given it's actually Madarame's Treasure.
• Makoto's father was the only parent who was available to take care of her and her older sister because her mom died when she was young, and the sisters didn't hold him in a high regard because he was always busy. They soon find out that they will regret this decision. He was killed by a hit-and-run when on duty three years prior, so Sae is forced to take care of her while getting a job at court where she had no choice but to rig evidence just to not sully the court. Makoto is now the Student Council President of Shujin, but she obviously doesn't enjoy this job since she's constantly pressured by adults in this high-risk position to be the exemplary Student Council President yet can do absolutely nothing because of Kobayakawa's apathetic and callous enablement of all the horrible things that happen in the school, including Kamoshida's abusive and sexual predatory actions against his students, which led to her fellow students believing that she was just some glorified Teacher's Pet, which is somewhat correct. As she becomes aware of her own lack of focus and begins questioning the importance of academic success, Sae increasingly treats her like a liability, so when Principal Kobayakawa forces her to investigate both the Phantom Thieves and Kaneshiro, a criminal mafia boss and con-man who used one of his students as a drug smuggler, she recklessly endangers herself by confronting him directly to prove her "usefulness", and is nearly blackmailed into sexual slavery.
  • Not to mention that Makoto is being put under pressure by the Principal of Shujin Academy; he's expecting her to solve issues that should really be taken to the authorities, not put on the shoulders of a teenage girl who already has enough responsibilities weighing her down. She's even coerced into it because the Principal mentions her link to Sae, and Makoto would clearly do anything for her big sister.
  • Watching Sae lash out at Makoto and basically call her a parasite responsible for ruining her life. To call Makoto crestfallen would be an understatement.
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech she got from Akechi and Sae as well as the Phantom Thieves berating her for being "useless" is what spurs her to make the decision to tail Kaneshiro. Makoto is desperate to prove to someone, anyone, that she has value as a person.
    Sae: Right now, you're useless to me. All you do is eat away at my life.
  • And then Ann gave her the same speech Sae told her last night. Of course, the Phantom Thieves rightfully pointed out that she can't do anything Metaverse-related at that time but it's still an emotional low blow for her.
    Ann: So you’re here to check up on us? You may be the student council president, but when it comes to what we do, you’re useless.
    Yusuke: To be frank, yes.
    Ann: Just stay on your high horse and watch. Or do you wanna eavesdrop, since you’re so good at it?
• Futaba is easily one of the saddest characters in the entire game. Her mother Wakaba was killed in one of Shido's most depraved actions, where he killed her through Akechi (an asset that he doesn't even care by the slightest bit), who killed her Shadow Self and caused her to undergo a Mental Shutdown in front of her daughter for the sake of stealing her research so he could find more ways to kill people he doesn't like. He then ordered his men to read a forged suicide note aloud right in front of the poor girl (who was 13 at that time) and her relatives claiming that her mom hated her and committed suicide regretting giving birth to her...for no apparent reason other than he could. Futaba's social anxiety is already bad enough, but this completely and utterly horrible act from a group of depraved madmen worsened it with a case of post-traumatic stress disorder that gives her auditory and visual hallucinations of Wakaba's family and Wakaba herself blaming her for her death, and keeps her from leaving her own house. Her self-blame is so extreme that it manifests itself as the boss of her palace, a monstrous half-sphinx version of Wakaba who screams that Futaba never should have been born.
  • While most people's issues are minor enough that they have no Palace of their own and their Shadow Selves reside in Mementos, Futaba has a Palace. Only extremely distorted desires can create a Palace, like an abusive teacher who sees an entire school as his castle, a plagiarist who thinks his house is a museum, or a crime boss who views all of Shibuya as his personal bank. That's right — Futaba hates herself so much, seeing her room as a tomb to die in, that it created a Palace on the same level as those. That should say something.
  • When investigating Futaba, Makoto is terrified by how dark Sojiro's house is and latches onto the protagonist's legs while afraid. Futaba then comes out and is instantly just as frightened as Makoto because she and the protagonist were standing next to her and she flees into her room instantly. It's Played for Laughs, but when you consider that was Futaba's agoraphobia acting up on screen it's actually sad. Also, while in-game you only see Futaba running into her room instantly after she pops up behind Makoto, in the anime Futaba and Makoto freak out and scream loudly at each other.
  • The safe rooms in her Palace flickers out to become her room. Safe rooms are considered places where a person's cognition is weakest and has the least influence, and that's the space she has locked herself in, which speaks volumes on how crippling her anxiety is.
  • Futaba's auditory hallucinations aren't subtitled at all, but once you get a good listen and piece together what they are through context clues, they're horrifying. While not confirmed, it's implied that they're things that were shouted at her by her relatives after Shido's cronies read her mother's fake suicide note. Hearing various voices scream things like "Murderer!", "You killed her!" and demand she say something despite being a child in shock over her mother dying right in front of her shows you just what kind of people Futaba was forced to live with.
    Sojiro: She went through such horrible things. Those heartless adults just yelled at the poor girl...
  • Futaba's backstory snowballs into something so much worse in Sojiro's Confidant side story. Believing her to be responsible for her mother's death, Wakaba's family completely rejected her, and her uncle, who acted as her legal guardian began abusing her. At the peak of the abuse, Futaba was forced to sleep on the floor and was forbidden from bathing, so Sojiro intervened and all but bought Futaba off of him to remove her from the situation. When the uncle begins visiting Leblanc to extort money from Sojiro, Futaba walks in on one occasion. She outright whimpers in fear. It's so bad that when you go change said uncle's heart, Futaba only brings you into Mementos because she doesn't want the other Phantom Thieves to know what he did to her.
  • Even way before her mother was assassinated, Futaba was already bullied and ostracized by students for her higher intelligence. It's a double whammy of trauma. And there's this implication/fan theory where Futaba is autistic (and she most certainly acts as such); if she is autistic, the utterly horrible things Shido did to Futaba just because he could would have been enough to drive the poor girl into a meltdown.
  • And then Futaba finally met her mother's killer in person, and the killer was none other than Masayoshi Shido. Yes, the man who was responsible for putting Joker to probation and disposed of Haru's dad in the same way as he did with Wakaba. Obviously Futaba would get mad at him, but when she confronted him for her mother's death, what was his response? She was an inevitable sacrifice that he couldn't care less with. It doesn't even matter when her relatives turned on her, she became a suicidal Hikkikomori with glaring signs of PTSD and Sojiro has to pay debt to her relatives to raise her and can get himself ruined as well. It was of no relevance to the monster that is Masayoshi Shido. Small wonder when Shido starts confessing on live TV, Futaba began to sob in tears of joy.
• Haru is just a Lonely Rich Kid stuck in an Arranged Marriage designed to be a stepping stone for her father, Kunikazu Okumura, to enter the political world, but from the first time we see her her fiance in-action, it becomes clear how viscerally horrifying her situation really is. The first time we ever see him, he grabs Haru's arm, tries to coerce her into having sex with him, and kicks Morgana into a wall after he tries to intervene. Later on, the version of him we see in Okumura's palace makes similarly disturbing comments about sexually assaulting her. Her father is the one who approved the match for the sake of power, despite knowing exactly what sort of person his future son-in-law is. In other words, Haru could have potentially been strong-armed into a marriage with a sexually-entitled rapist without the agency to do anything about it for the sake of her father becoming the next Prime Minister...a privilege that he also doesn't live to get.
  • Much like Yukiko before her, it becomes apparent that Haru has a crush on the Protagonist during her Confidant before actually confessing her feelings. When she finally does confess and if the protagonist turns her down, she has a hard time hiding her sadness.
  • Oh and we find out Mr. Okumura didn't necessarily not care about Haru. He pretty much does care about her well, but his political ambitions are so immense that not only he's willing to pawn his daughter to some sleazy scumbag over it, but it also got him killed by Shido, again because he's standing in the bastard's way. He could return to being a decent father if he didn't just die right there, so she's broken when he undergoes a Mental Shutdown in front of her on a stream she's watching. When Haru confronts Shadow Shido about her father's death and he makes absolutely insane statements implying that he believes that could kill anyone as he pleases without consequences, there is no wonder she starts tearing in joy when the Phantom Thieves collectively get their well-deserved vengeance on Shido and he finally confesses on screen.

Goro Akechi

• Akechi's whole situation in general. Saying his whole life has been one long Trauma Conga Line wouldn't be an exaggeration. At first it looks like he's had an absolutely charmed life, but in his confidant link, he tells you that he's actually an illegitimate child who was abandoned by his father before he was even born, we find out said father was actually the same corrupt asshole who ruined your life, ruined Futaba's life For the Evulz, and broke Haru down by killing her dad, and it goes worse from there. It's also heavily implied that his mother was shamed into committing suicide for having given birth out of wedlock; subsequently, he became a ward of the court, and was passed around to various foster homes throughout his childhood. His narcissism and insecurity are honestly no wonder.
• Akechi was given the power of the Wild Card by Yaldabaoth, but because he had no bonds unlike The Protagonist, Akechi used his power for the selfish goal of revenge on his father Masayoshi Shido, but instead he ends up manipulated by the corrupt asshole using praise into doing his circle's dirty work. Not only he can't have more than two personas because he has no one to make friends with, he ends up becoming the worst fiend of Tokyo because without him Shido's rabble of idiots won't even be able to touch a ballot box. The worst part is, as the story goes along, he does appear to start to show remorse for his actions. Despite being an utterly depraved mass murderer with some of the highest bodycounts possible for a human in the Persona series and is responsible for untold amounts of death and destruction, it's really not hard to feel sorry for him.
• Shido says he started working for him two years ago. That means Akechi became an assassin right when he was starting high school.
• The entirety of the Climax Boss fight against him is as scary as it's just...sad. Morgana pointed out to them that despite everything, Akechi does genuinely like the friendship he's built with the protagonist, and he squanders it because for all he knew, he went too far and too depraved, and he just can't fathom why the protagonist can bond with people while he's just a mass murderer.
  Morgana: Just then, when you were with [the protagonist], you were laughing. That was your true self, right? You genuinely do like [him], right?
  • On top of that, Akechi's reaction to being offered redemption is to go absolutely apeshit furious and attempt to murder the Phantom Thieves because of a combination of jealousy, anger, and the realization that every single one of his atrocities in the pursuit of justice were completely avoidable. Given the way he talks, it seems like he was starting to Go Mad from the Revelation even before he unleashes his insane Black Mask combat instincts.
  • Just as when the Thieves are about to recruit Akechi back to fight his dad, a Cognitive Self version of how Shido views Akechi appears. What ensues is a brutal Breaking Speech to the real Akechi, with Cognitive Akechi revealing that Shido never viewed him as anything more than an expendable puppet and is planning to kill him later anyway. The Cognitive Akechi then proceeds to drive home his crippling desire to be loved, stating that despite wanting revenge on Shido, he desperately wanted his father to recognize him as well.
  • During the aftermath, Haru mentions that while she can't forgive Akechi for killing her father, she does sympathize with him. Considering how she also had to go against her father because his power fetish had gone too far, it's likely she saw a bit of herself in him. Even Yusuke admits that he could've ended up like Akechi if he hadn't met the rest of the party.
• The public starting to support the Phantom Thieves is mostly a gratifying time for you and your friends, but on the flipside opinion sours on Akechi and he becomes quite unpopular. He may be against the Phantom Thieves and kind of a passive-aggressive snot besides, but it's easy to feel sorry for the detective's fall from grace and feeling he's not accepted anywhere, rather like Joker.
• Akechi seemingly sacrificing himself to save the rest of the Phantom Thieves from his Cognitive Self and the horde of Shadows it brings by locking himself inside the engine room in a last attempt at redemption, entrusting the Thieves to carry out his last wish of bringing Shido down. Nobody knows what happens of him next; he just vanishes and is never heard of again. As if that wasn't enough, the Justice Confidant link hits rank 10 during this scene.
• This line he said to Joker is a Harsher in Hindsight moment once you know the full story.
  Akechi: (to Joker) I wish I could've met you a few years earlier...
• The Proof of Justice OVA rectifies the emptiness of his ambiguous ending slightly, being an entire episode devoted to Joker mourning him, and it's as tragic as it sounds. Joker finds the words 'Proof of Justice' in an old crossword in Akechi's handwriting, and revisits all the places they used to go in an effort to decipher the meaning. He remembers Akechi saying wanted to have met him a few years earlier, and admits at the jazz club that they were friends. Eventually, he learns Proof of Justice is a toy ray gun, and upon viewing it in a store window, starts shaking with grief. The final twist of the knife is when Joker sees a young boy receiving the toy and imagines Akechi having been a child like that who believed in justice, which only serves to remind the audience as to where that kid wound up and how far gone he was by the time he met Joker.
• Whenever you get a new party member you are allowed to check out a new book from the library that is about the new team member's Persona, and when you finish the book you get a boost to one of your attributes. When Akechi joins you don't get the option to check out a Robin Hood book, giving you Foreshadowing that he's the traitor. However, Dummied Out data reveals that a Robin Hood book was planned (although it was Dummied Out because of a programming oversight), and that reading it boosted your kindness. However, the book was later added in Royal, and cue this quote:
  This Robin character was the leader of a group of outlaws ... He's kind of like you.
• The only thing worse than how Akechi's death is never confirmed is the fact that nobody besides the main characters even acknowledge it. The famous Detective Prince suddenly disappears without a trace one day, but none of Tokyo's citizens ever mention him after it happens and only talk about Shido and the downfall of society. For all Akechi's twisted efforts to make himself a public icon that people would admire and respect, they seemingly forgot about him almost immediately.
• Could there be any chance that Akechi joined the party as an attempt at his redemption? Sadly, the answer is no. Lavenza states explicitly that Joker and Akechi are destined to be in opposition to each other due to the Holy Grail's manipulation. In short, either Joker or Akechi had to die in the game of a megalomaniacal psychopath with delusions of godhood.

Confidants

• The introduction of Ms. Kawakami as a confidant is almost entirely Played for Laughs, as three horny teenagers decide to hire a maid and it turns out to be her. But as early as the second confidant rank it becomes painfully apparent that she is completely overworked. Not helping is the degrading vibe that surrounds the whole maid thing. It wouldn't be so bad if Ms. Kawakami showed that she liked her job, but it's obvious she doesn't. And like many confidant/social link levels, it gets worse before it gets better.
  • Later into the confidant, she reveals that the reason she's so overworked is because the parents of a former student who died under her care have been guilt tripping her into giving them "apology" money. A few ranks afterward, she ends up in the hospital due to being overworked to sickness, and while visiting her, her blackmailers show up in order to shake her down in person. In the end, despite the Protagonist's attempts to defend her, Ms. Kawakami resigns herself to promising to make the next payment.
• Sojiro's rank 9 Confidant is a much happier kind of Tear Jerker. Joker and Futaba were a little bit late in changing her uncle's heart, and social services shows up at Leblanc. It initially seems like a nightmare scenario (Joker being accused of violence again, and Sojiro being accused of abusing Futaba)... however, the lead investigator is a very reasonable sort, and is absolutely willing to listen to Joker and Futaba refute the claims. This caps off with Futaba openly stating she's happy living with her dad... calling Sojiro dad for the first time. As Sojiro tries to avoid dropping dead from joy, the interview closes on a huge positive note, with the investigator noting that he'll recommend to the court that further follow-ups for both kids aren't necessary. After the investigators leave, Sojiro is struggling to maintain his composure and notes that it's not just Futaba who's a great kid - there's someone else living under this roof who's important too. Needless to say, this is all very likely to wring the tears out of anyone who's had to deal with child services before, is the moment Joker, Sojiro and Futaba really become a family for real, and doubles as one of the game's absolute crowning moments of heartwarming.
  • There's also a moment between sad and joyful tears a bit earlier: when Futaba talks about how Wakaba viewed Sojiro, the way Futaba talks about how often and passionately Wakaba mentioned him makes it pretty clear that Wakaba actually did have a thing for Sojiro (to the point where even Futaba could see it), and the only reason that Sojiro isn't Futaba's full-blown stepfather-through-marriage is that Wakaba was just never given the time to pursue it. It's pretty clear that, for all intents and purposes, Futaba considers Sojiro her dad because her mother cared about him that much, and that's more than enough by itself for Futaba.
• While most of the Confidants' lives change for the better after you steal the hearts of the people who are causing them trouble, Hifumi is the exception. When you confront her mother's Shadow, Mitsuyo boasts about how, in order to ensure Hifumi's success, she went so far as to rig most of Hifumi's matches, unbeknownst to her daughter, and when word gets out, Hifumi is demonized for seemingly taking advantage of her mother's misdeeds when in reality she had no idea. At Hifumi's next match, it seems like Hifumi might prove she actually does have talent, but while she does surprise those watching by showing some talent, her opponent is still an expert and she ends up getting trounced so badly that she has to resign. By the end of the match, she's depressed and no longer considers herself worthy to be your teacher.
• Sae's reaction to hearing that Makoto might be one of the Phantom Thieves, meaning that she might have to arrest her own sister. She's initially very upset and refuses to believe that the idea that Makoto's linked to them is anything other than the protagonist playing mind games with her, and her response to being asked if she never noticed indicates that she regrets how much they've drifted apart. When the story comes full circle and Sae lists all the Phantom Thieves except Morgana and Akechi, she reads them all off with her usual stoic expression, but when she reads Makoto's last (she does them in order, but skips from Yusuke to Futaba) shifts to her "sad" sprite, in a halting voice. While Makoto and Sae have had their conflicts (see the above instance of Sae lashing out at Makoto), Sae does care about Makoto, and it's clear that she'd be heartbroken if anything happened to her sister.

Other Characters

• Poor Shiho. She may be a side character, but just imagine her situation. One of your teachers, an authority figure you should be able to trust, is a sexual predator who has been targeting your best friend, and when she denies his advances, he targets you instead. And then it gets so bad you think that the only way out of this is to kill yourself.
  • Not to mention that, upon eavesdropping on a conversation she has with Ann, she was one of the few people in the beginning who actually felt sorry for the Protagonist and his situation.
  • She reveals in Ann's Rank 9 event, where she takes a trip back to the roof she threw herself off of, that she was hearing voices that were telling her to commit suicide. It sounds like she was starting to go through what Futaba was going through. Suffering auditory hallucinations.
  • Her situation was bad from the outset, even before the heavily-implied rape. Like the rest of the volleyball team, being beaten by Kamoshida was a regular occurrence for her, to the point of a visible bruise over one eye and a swollen leg, and like the rest of the team, the game implies he threatened her into keeping quiet about his brutal treatment, blowing it off as 'just practice' due to competing on a national level.
  • The player can listen in on some girls talking about Shiho, who notice that she seems upset after one-on-one sessions with Kamoshida. Rather than sympathize with her, the girls are offended that she'd be sad despite having the "privilege" of spending time with Kamoshida. It's a small but poignant case of how not many students at Shujin have much concern for their schoolmates.
  • The manga makes Shiho's botched suicide even worse. She actually hears Ann calling out for her and softly murmurs Ann's name, perhaps realizing how badly her suicide might hurt her friend, but is so broken by what Kamoshida did to her that all she can do is say "I'm sorry" before she jumps anyway.
• When you're infiltrating Madarame's Palace and interact with the distorted paintings, all of the party members will sadly note on how it's a depiction of another pupil that Madarame has used and thrown away. However, if you look at the paintings while Yusuke is in your party, he'll have a sad note on most of the paintings, who the people were and even on his own painting. It truly puts into perspective how many lives Yusuke has seen ruined by his teacher, which he notes them all with a sad look on his face. The most jarring is when he sees his own painting in Madarame's gallery and his comments on it.
  Yusuke: Is this...me...?
  Ann: Fox...
  Yusuke: So this is how Madarame views me...? How preposterous...
  • Related to this are the fates of Natsuhiko Nakanohara - your first Mementos target - and the other students who you personally encounter. By the time Madarame was done with them, most of them ended up homeless, morosely insisting that they were promising artists once, while Nakanohara is stuck in an office job that he has no real interest in. All these people had their futures stolen from them, something that Madarame's shadow actually boasts about because of how easy it was to get away with. It's also unknown whether Madarame's arrest and public confession actually helps any of them in a material fashion.
• Shadow Madarame of all people gets one after his defeat when, in the midst of his collapsing palace, he reaches out to Yusuke one last time in what surprisingly isn't a trick. And if you progress Yusuke's confidant far enough, you'll find out the real Madarame cared for Yusuke at one point. It gives the impression that deep down, beneath even the cruel and ruthless con-man he hid inside himself, he actually did love Yusuke like family.
  Shadow Madarame: Hey, Yusuke... what should I do?
  Yusuke: Put an end to all this and use your own artwork for once.
  Shadow Madarame: (desperately while sobbing) No wait, please! Yusuke! Yusukeee!
• When going through Okumura's palace, we learn that he had a cognition of Haru's Fiance, but not his own daughter. Haru is saddened to learn this, and the obvious implication is that he doesn't care enough about her for one to appear. There is one other idea, and it's probably worse. You only appear in your thief clothes if the Palace Ruler views you as a threat. Haru, who while she didn't develop enough of a Persona to form it, still managed to get the clothes signifying her potential. Connect the dots, and we see that yes, while Okumura didn't consider Haru worth thinking about, he does view her as a threat if she goes against his wishes. Which is precisely what she's doing!
• Okumura's cognition of Haru's fiance, by the way, is just as sleazy and repugnant as the real thing. Imagine being betrothed to someone that horrible, on your parent's wishes, and then you find out your parent knows exactly how awful they are.
• Okumura's death. Made worse because not only he is much more of an Anti-Villain than the other targets thus far, but he dies on live television via Body Horror for attempting to reveal other members of The Conspiracy, all while poor Haru watches.
• Okumura's treasure is simple toy model kit that he wanted when he was a child, but could never have due to the poor financial situation his family was in. That was what drove his greed so wild.

Miscellaneous

• Many people gloss over another point. Imagine having your identity stolen, your assistant torn apart and forced to work against their goals, and the person you were tasked to help being led astray and unable to do anything about it. That's Igor's point of view in a nutshell.
• When looked at in detail, "Beneath the Mask" is actually quite a depressing song. It seems like it's being sung from Joker's perspective, basically saying he's unable to live his life without the ability to hide his true self.
• This one line spoken by Joker in the manga anthology can hit a little too close to home for some.
  Joker: Give them one reason to distrust you, and it's all over. That's how it is, especially with adults.
• One Yongen-jaya mother and daughter have an ongoing plot-line throughout the game that's fairly sad. Their family dog, Kotaro, is suffering from some incurable ailment (possibly related to his mind) and he'll have to be euthanized soon. The daughter has to come to terms with her dog's inevitable death, something that pet owners can certainly identify with.

Royal

General gameplay

• In the modified version of the Shadow Kamoshida boss fight, he will summon a cognitive Shiho wearing a playboy bunny outfit, indicating that just like with Ann, Kamoshida didn't treat her as anything other than a slut. Now this is the kicker: Morgana will tell you to kill her because it's a cognition, and indeed you can! You can even get 1 More from downing her from any attack, as she's weak to everything. The only saving grace is that if you don't want to "kill" Shiho, attacking Kamoshida himself for around 300 damage will let you pass without having to hit it at all.
• Royal introduces a few new Mementos targets to its roster. The earliest of these new ones is a woman named Ryoko Aino who's been kidnapping cats and keeping them in her apartment while calling them all "Snowball" no matter what color their fur is. Going into Mementos to steal her heart will reveal the reason why she started doing this. She had a white-furred kitten she named Snowball who ended up being run over by a truck and dying right in front of her. To say the very least, this incident caused something in her to snap and her mind has been stuck on trying to "save all the 'snowballs' (cats)" from that point on. It's sad even if you're not a pet owner. The worst part is that she's one of the few you have to talk into giving up once her health gets low and the final thing you have to tell her is the awful truth of the matter.
  Joker: Snowflake is gone.
• In Royal the Will Seed chambers make noises about the Palace Ruler's distortions. This naturally includes Futaba's and good god, listen closely and the stuff she echoes is just heartbreaking. These are almost all scenes of her having hallucinations about her mother.
  Futaba: "Mom... *sob*... I'm so sorry... I shouldn't be here... I... I'm so sorry... Help me...! ... Wh... why? No... I don't wanna hear it! This wouldn't have happened if I hadn't existed... It's all my fault... I'm such a bad person... Just stop... It's so dark...I'm so scared..."
• The modified Wakaba Sphinx boss fight will present you a choice if you agree with the sphinx about Futaba deserving to be born or not. If you do agree, Futaba will become depressed and it will take triple the time as usual for her to restore the ballista. (It takes three turns for her to do it if you disagree with the Sphinx; should you agree, it takes nine turns.)
• The modified Okumura boss fight will have a cognitive Haru as a robotic assistant. It turns out that Okumura just considers his own daughter a stepping stone to his utopia. When there is nothing left, he turns her into a robot that self-destructs after a turn. This means that he's willing to sacrifice her as well. This definitely explains why Morgana warned Haru that she might be better off not knowing what form her cognitive self took in a meeting conversation about Okumura's palace. And then we saw the Okumura revived by Maruki, and he's a kind and clumsy businessman with no interest in politics or big ventures. This and Haru's general reaction to her father's death really makes you wonder if Okumura really did care for her, but this was increasingly drowned in an overambitious profit rush that led to his death.

Kasumi

• Kasumi, at first, seemed like a totally blessed person living a charmed life. Unfortunately, she is anything but. In fact, this is arguably one of the most tragic backstories, or depending on your view, the most tragic backstory possible in any of the Phantom Thieves, if not one of the most tragic of any character in ALL of the Persona games. To say that the rest of the Thieves outright pale in front of the circumstances surrounding her would not be an overstatement. She had a twin sister, whom she promised to go to the gymnastic internationals with together. Key word here being had. Her sister died only recently, having been killed in a car accident a month before Joker arrived at Leblanc. Yet, if this would be it, so would this entry go to a full stop; to say that this is scraping the surface would be an understatement. The dead sister actually isn't her twin sister, that's Kasumi herself, and her twin sister, Sumire is "Kasumi", or more accurately, thought that she's Kasumi. Sumire only "became Kasumi" thanks to Maruki subconsciously unleashing his powers to make her think that she's Kasumi, and this can relapse at any time, which Maruki does admit. The reason why this happened is also nothing short of Successful Sibling Syndrome gone horribly wrong; even Makoto and Sae's conflict is nothing compared to this, because at least the Nijima sisters slowly but gradually see eye to eye with each other once their respective issues have been ironed out. Unfortunately, the Yoshizawa twins don't have the same opportunity as them. Sumire was on good terms with Kasumi, but had grown envious of her due to her unrivaled talent, and Sumire almost accidentally threw herself into traffic without looking while running away from her; she was only alive because Kasumi took her place in becoming roadkill. She did indeed steal Kasumi's dream by that sacrifice, which eventually twists even further into literally wanting to become her... all to avoid facing the fact that her twin sister died for her and to gain some sense of confidence.
• Just what kind of person was Sumire actually? You will be surprised. She is actually a Shrinking Violet that has absolutely no self-confidence or any self-esteem/ego, in addition to being deep in suicidal depression, which is only made worse when Kasumi died. In short, she's not mentally stable in any way, shape, or form, having been suffering from a combination of jealousy, delusional thoughts and suicidal depression. It's also quite sobering how her self-esteem is below subterranean levels; enough to think that Kasumi's talent renders her a completely worthless human being, to the point that she didn't value her own life even before her actions led to Kasumi's death. Kasumi helping her for most of her life unwittingly engineered everything up to that point, because she couldn't read how Sumire actually felt.
• When Sumire was "Kasumi", it appears that people never treated her as Kasumi to begin with, they just treat her as if she Came Back Wrong; or bluntly put, they think of her as an insane person. It's just lucky that the Kasumi filter allows her to be unaffected by this somehow. Small wonder she snaps so hard when the cognitive overlay wears off, enough to pull a Face–Heel Turn, desperately not wanting to go back to her good-for-nothing self. Whether Maruki was the distorted "savior" he is now or not, it's only a matter of time once the cognitive manipulation wears off around her, and she will most likely do what she wanted to do all along for real.
• The berserk Sumire boss encounter is another morbidly portrayed version of Gameplay and Story Integration like with the Cognitive Shiho prior. While she hits around as hard as most late game mid-bosses, unlike Akechi in the cruise ship, she goes down after around 3 to 4 attacks proper, and some of the stronger enemies you encounter can actually take a lot more than this. Furthermore, if Joker has a Persona with Null/Repel Phys and Bless, she will do nothing to him and automatically kill herself trying to kill him if either element is repelled. This is because Maruki was using her to attack you when she isn't even in a proper mental condition to fight, and it shows, which she displayed when fighting the two Belial a week prior. No wonder Akechi told you to deal with her alone, because he will most obviously kill her with his feral combat instincts before she can even react. And he is noted to be a seasoned Persona user who can hold all of the members of the Thieves (with the group having to use their full force just to take him down) by himself. Him passing the task to Joker is gravely justified, because even he doesn't want needless casualty on their way to getting out of the idealized, fake world.
• There is another Harsher in Hindsight event that isn't far out from the imagination, related to the point above. When "Kasumi" (Sumire) went to Shujin, everyone was happy because they thought the Japan-famous gymnast has transferred to their school, while she's actually Dead All Along and everyone knows it; they just pretend as if they didn't know out of respect for Kasumi's death being recent. What they confirm later on is that obviously that's not Kasumi, but Sumire going around calling herself "Kasumi", which shows, because the sisters have subtle but obviously different facial features and hair color. Therefore, the students around Shujin most probably aren't being scornful of Kasumi's talent. They are being scornful because this batshit crazy girl is going around impersonating her dead sister and managed to get a scholarship out of nowhere while the "real talented people" like the volleyball and track team athletes under Kamoshida's thrall have to live through hell.
• If you haven't got the idea how bad Kasumi's death impacted Sumire, pay attention to the scene where she is speaking to Maruki in his clinic during one of the Maruki's Palace flashbacks. When she's telling Maruki how she can't get through without Kasumi's help, her portrait is not the usual sad portrait she uses. There are tears in her eyes as she talks about how she lost her purpose.
• There's also an unused portrait of Sumire hurt that is probably supposed to be used in the same scene as the one above and boy... it's heartbreaking◊. ^note When Sumire is in counselling with Maruki (which is the only normal cutscene where she's been seen wearing this jersey), she never uses this "hurt" portrait.
• All of this talk paints a much, more Harsher in Hindsight atmosphere to her "fake" confidant hangouts and her fake awakening. When she was "Kasumi", her cognition is those of Kasumi's, but her physical properties are all Sumire's. In other hand, when she had depressive fits, prepared weird food for Joker, choosing joke glasses for her father with Joker and missing balls in the batting cages, she's suffering from cognitive dissonance. It's pretty clear that Sumire doesn't feel comfortable in her daily routines because she's been made to think that she's the near-perfect Kasumi, who obviously isn't used to failing almost everything that she does quite effortlessly in the past. It turned out for the worst when her head teacher and Vice Principal tried to revoke her scholarship (surprisingly, for a good reason this time) and she's trying desperately to uphold the expectations people put on her, because she didn't feel like Kasumi at all. She's fruitlessly trying to uphold an identity that she clearly isn't. In other words, she actually Came Back Wrong... and it shows.
  • Each of the members of the Phantom Thieves of Hearts are outcasts in their own way, but "Kasumi"/Sumire's reason for being an outcast is probably the worst, because unlike the members of the Thieves, she isn't aware of it due to the cognitive manipulation, since she wouldn't have any idea that the students didn't see her as an outcast for her talent, they see her as an outcast because the school gave a scholarship to someone that clearly isn't in her right mind. And even if she winds up being aware, she's most certainly not in the right mental state to deal with such brutal realities, and the backlash borders on Surprisingly Realistic Outcome. The students may be right to question the circumstances that lead to her getting the scholarship, but damn. For a good idea on how bad her situation is, just compare it to the following Thieves who are also outcasts:
    • Ryuji, a fellow athlete like Sumire, manages to pick himself up from his fall after he's expelled from the track team and got his leg broken for good measure, while being aware that it will never be the same again after Kamoshida ruined his prospects, so he tries his best to make the best of his situation. Yet, this will not happen to Sumire because she isn't a part of any sports team, so Kamoshida literally wouldn't have an excuse to go after her, which makes her lucky. But on the other hand, their differences of personality, especially when they deal with their problems and how they they view themselves, it's clear that Sumire is on the short end of the stick. Ryuji might have endured an abusive father, suffers a crippled leg and ruined reputation that left him questioning his worth, but it's clear that he's mentally strong enough to deal with his problems about his self-esteem, unlike her.
    • To Ann, her desire to protect Shiho from harm forces her to give in to Kamoshida's advances, causing her to be branded as a slut because she responded to all of his non-sexual advances just so Shiho could become a regular on the volleyball team. And when she decides to stand up against Kamoshida, he preys on Shiho, which resulted in her Attempted Suicide, which is the final straw for Ann to become a Phantom Thief and avenge herself and Shiho. Just like Ryuji, Sumire isn't a part of the Volleyball Team and she's been protected under media ties, so this won't happen to her. Thanks to her True Companions however, Ann manages to endure the bad reputation even if Kamoshida's out of the picture, and her friends accept her for who she is enough to be comfortable by being herself. Sumire, before The Reveal, gets her solace by her friendship with Joker (with the Thieves being only aware of her presence during the Nijima heist), but the truth isn't out yet, and even he is suspicious about the inconsistencies around her. While Ann quits fooling herself into thinking that nothing is wrong and she must do something about it, Sumire fools herself by impersonating someone that she isn't.
    • To Makoto, who like "Kasumi" was put under undue pressure to live up to others' expectations, even putting their lives on the line for it, but the former manages to stop caring about what others think of her, starts believing in herself, and resolves to lead her own life as she sees fit while getting accepted into college by her own merit instead of a recommendation. Sumire? She's been working herself to the bone in hopes of upholding an identity that she clearly isn't, unlike Makoto who really has a name and status to be burdened with due to others' expectations.
    • Not to mention Futaba, who is clearly suffering from PTSD ever since her mother died and its cruel aftermath, and before that tragedy, facing isolation due to her genius intellect, manages to find herself right back on track thanks to the efforts of her Shadow Self and the Thieves' intervention. Unlike Futaba, who's mom is killed by Shido through Akechi to satisfy his quest for power and is thus no fault of hers, Sumire did directly lead to her sister's death by suddenly running off into traffic without looking.
• What's the difference between the Thieves and Sumire? Each of them has other people as their oppressors and can manage to cope up with their situation without running away from it, making the best out of their current situation. Sumire's oppressor? Herself. And because of that, she is not willing to confront the problem head-on. Which makes her real Awakening more awesome than usual, since it requires the potential Persona user to accept themselves, which given Sumire's circumstances, will be immensely hard for her to do.
• All of the reasons above make cheating on Sumire even more of a Harsher in Hindsight event even when compared to the other girls, considering that Joker came to be the person that she respects the most and all she got in return is a stab in the back. Her reaction basically sums up as denial and heartbreak, complete with a straight "You're terrible, senpai!" response before beating Joker up. If Joker has to stoop this low, he might very will be emotionally predatory.
• Picture yourself as Sumire's father. You are a talk show host with a fully functional family with a pair of daughters who was significantly more blessed in family life than any other Phantom Thief out there. Even better, your elder daughter was the very definition of The Ace who won one gymnast competition after another and was about to go to Shujin, get a scholarship, and go to internationals with the younger one pretty much following right behind her. However, because the sisters sorely lacked in deep communication, your younger daughter had something very wrong fester in her mind which convinced her that she was much farther behind and even worthless in comparison. This was enough to get her absentmindedly throwing herself into traffic because of her Innocently Insensitive remarks and what seems to be Condescending Compassion (but isn't), and she only survived because your elder daughter took her place to be instantly killed by the traffic. Not only that, your remaining daughter was now so screwed up to the point that you have to bring her to a therapist, who proceeds to change her cognition because she somehow reminded him of his lost ex-fiance; not that he knowingly did it, anyway. The next thing is your remaining daughter started thinking as if she were her elder sister who died in her place and the therapist probably told you that he made a mistake and your daughter may relapse over time; it's only a matter of when. All the while she enrolls to Shujin, still treating herself as if she was her deceased elder sister. The school still gave her a scholarship, with all of the stress that comes with it, disregarding her very real issues that the school knows about. Months later, all of Shujin's students think of her as a delusional girl who got special treatment under virtue that she was delusional while they have to suffer under Kamoshida's tyranny. To put the nail in the coffin, the same therapist whom she met before went to Shujin and was desperately trying to cover everything up when the school was revoking her special treatment to prevent a train wreck in the making. The poor man has no idea what is going on and probably would have had to see his remaining daughter slip back into depression had she not met Joker.
• In a scene leading up to the reveal of the truth behind Sumire, you see Shinichi sitting beside Kasumi's corpse, telling her that her mother, her grandmother, and possibly Sumire are coming to see her, right before completely breaking down in tears. It is completely and utterly heartbreaking to watch...
• A Fridge Brilliance point can be spotted during Sumire and Joker's ShowTime. During the animation where Sumire starts making a move, one can see the real Kasumi in her gymnast outfit reaching out to her from her pupils/soul, as they dance and perform the finishing grace on the enemy. This means that even during battle, Sumire is still thinking about her dead sister.

Goro Akechi

• Believe it or not, they made the already Tear Jerker story of Akechi even worse here.
• Akechi's Confidant reveals a new detail that wasn't present in the original; his mother was a prostitute. On top of all the stigma that comes from being a bastard child, he's also a Son of a Whore. Akechi even notes that his birth was a mistake. Small wonder why he's desperate enough to resort to murder just to have Shido gone.
  • Even beforehand, he mentions that with a toy raygun, he would pretend to be a hero as a child, and doesn't deny that he wanted to be like a real one. We all knew that he wanted desperately to be acknowledged, to be loved, and Shido's "handling" of him preyed upon his desperation to the point that it became warped (even as he plotted revenge against Shido), but this really drives home the sentiment that Akechi wasn't too different from the other Phantom Thieves in the end. He just didn't get the help he needed in time.
  • In the final rank of his Confidant, instead of saying "not bad" against his cognitive double like in the original, he says a regretful sounding "I..." instead.
• Akechi is one of the first people to realize things are not what they seem because he finds it too hard to believe he's been given everything he wanted in life. This all means he's such a bitter shell of a man that he automatically assumes any good thing that happens to him is fake.
• If Joker accepts any of Maruki's deals to stay in the new reality, Akechi's Et Tu, Brute? sounds so heartbreaking. That Joker, the one who rebelled against all odds and Akechi's first friend, is willing to give up so easily. Whether is disappointment or shock, the whole thing is so gut wrenching to hear, with the immediate scene showing Akechi as a brainwashed puppet driving the pain even further.
• One of the jazz bar conversations with Akechi reveals that a girl confessed her love for Akechi personally. Yet Akechi turned her down because he had "other matters to attend to". Considering his life is based on vengeance against Shido, Akechi is trying to detach himself from the world so that his plan will not hurt the ones that do love him.
  • If you went to the jazz bar on 3/19 after maxing out Akechi's confidant, the barkeep will invite Joker to come again with his friend, Akechi. Why does he think Joker is friends with Akechi? Joker is among the few people that Akechi invited to drink with him at the bar. Despite their past and rivalry, Joker is the closest and truest friend Akechi ever got to know in his life.
  • To make things worse, you find the glove Akechi threw at you in your pocket and remember your promise that you most likely can't keep now. Ouch.
• Throughout the game the Phantom Thieves take photos of each other goofing around or just enjoying each other's company in-between their Metaverse excursions (which can be found in the Thieves' Den gallery after the fact). But while everyone else is accounted for, Akechi isn't present in any of them. This is justified, considering that they knew he was a traitor throughout his first tenure with them and Maruki's actions didn't give any chance for down-time during his second, but it's still heartbreaking to realize that there are no pictures taken of him during the time he spent with the group. Even Sumire gets a few photos taken throughout the third semester, and her tenure was even shorter than Akechi's. The glove he gave to Joker is the only memento of his time with them that the Phantom Thieves ever get.
• Akechi's final days with the Phantom Thieves are a series of heartbreaks. Akechi and Maruki reveal that if Maruki's Lotus-Eater Machine is undone, Akechi's fate will revert to its proper state when the correct reality is reinstated. Yet Akechi rejects Maruki's reality; the guy who's been manipulated for most of his life refuses to have anything less than total control over it. While his fate remains unknown in the correct reality, he still fights just as hard with the group he once opposed just to prove he has some semblance of control over his life. While this does double as an awesome moment for Akechi, it's hard to not to feel sorry for the guy, as even in the case that he might be alive, he will still need to suffer what is most likely life behind bars, assuming that he'll have a life at all once the proper reality is restored. And yet... Akechi still wants to fight together with his only friend in the entire world, even if it means never seeing the outside world ever again, or even worse, throwing his life away. Merely because Joker genuinely treated him like a human being, and not a tool or a monster.
  • During the final battle, the Phantom Thieves all announce how they're not going to lose to Maruki and will defend their ability to choose how they'll live their lives. Akechi, on the other hand, has made it clear he's accepted the fact that he may disappear. He's not fighting for his right to live free, he's fighting so he can finally die. It's also pretty sad that no one notes his absence afterwards and he's not even mentioned in Strikers or Tactica.^note He appears in the DLC and is playable in battle in Tactica, but the game takes place right after the third semester arc before Strikers meaning he's gone for good in the actual story.

Third Semester

• The first week of January is one unbroken string of Player Punch tear jerkers. To recap, Joker is the only member of the Thieves who realizes that reality has changed. He has to spend an entire week tracking down all of his friends — the people you have put hours of work into supporting, comforting, and growing with — and telling each of them, one by one, that their happiness is fake. Joker has to tell Futaba, Makoto, and Haru that their happy family lives are lies, Yusuke that his sensei betrayed him, Ryuji that he quit the track team in disgrace, Ann that her best friend attempted suicide and moved away, and Morgana that he's not really human. And he has to do it alone, without even Morgana to help this time. By the third or fourth party member you ran into living out their ideal reality, you're likely to be wondering whether to just let Maruki win. And you have to do all seven.
  • There's also an added layer of sadness when it comes to Ryuji. When Joker approaches him alongside his track teammates, Ryuji is still friendly with him... but then wonders when they ever became friends to begin with. While this helps him to recover his memories, the fact that Ryuji lost his best friend in his ideal reality without even knowing it hurts to see.
• The reason why Maruki became the Big Bad of the third semester is tragic. His ex-girlfriend Rumi fell into catatonic depression as her parents were murdered and being attacked by the murderer, which caused him to obtain a Persona that can manipulate cognition and he uses it to cure her depression, only for it to wipe out Rumi's memories of him as well. He then decides to publish a cognitive psience essay only to be rejected because it was unproven, and then because of it, Shido seized his research and halted his Oodaiba Research Lab dream. Yaldabaoth's endgame merely acted as the accidental kickstarter that fuels his power to the point that during the Day of Reckoning he becomes insane and his person awakens into a world-stagnating "hope of mankind". While his endgame will result in the same stagnation as Yaldabaoth's, or more accurately, Nyx Avatar's endgame, his motivations aren't that selfish and he genuinely wants to help people out as he did before his Sanity Slippage.
• Even his boss fight underscores this; his theme is "Throw Away Your Mask", perhaps the most Sad Battle Music ever done in the Persona series, emphasizing that even in the depths of his madness, Maruki is a fundamentally good person who regards all of his rivals as his friends and really doesn't want to be here, hurting them.
• The voices overheard in Maruki's Will Seed chambers make his sympathetic motivations all the more painful to reject. They can almost be heard as Maruki pleading with Joker to abandon the fight and help him, desperately trying to bring Joker to his point of view and help him "save" everyone.

  Maruki: "Why... Why can't we come to an agreement?... What can I do to make you understand?... This harsh world is going to be fixed, and everyone will finally be happy... What's wrong with an alternate reality if everyone gets what they desire from it?... Just a bit more and everything will be okay... Rumi, I... I'll never let a tragedy like that happen ever again... I'm so close... Just a little further... I will lead them all... No matter what I have to deal with, I will reach my goal..."

• When Lavenza explains Maruki, she tells the party that he didn't have much control over his Persona's powers before the fusion of reality and Metaverse awakened its true potential. He was only able to use it subconsciously on Rumi and Sumire. What do those two have in common? They lost their beloved caretakers to what can sum up as merely tragic instances. This implies that when he changed Sumire's cognition, he was being triggered by being reminded of how Rumi's parents got tragically murdered during that day and ended up having something very wrong with her mind much like Sumire. He didn't want to see Sumire ended up rendering herself catatonic like Rumi deep down and thus the unthinkable happened.
• Like Yaldabaoth, the player can get an alternate ending if they cut a deal with Maruki, and unlike the sinister downfall that is Yaldabaoth's deal, it is one to get the happy-sad tears rolling. This is the Persona 3 sort of bad ending where it would probably serve as a Golden Ending in any other context. Ryuji and his track teammates celebrate a victory, "Human" Morgana goes shopping with Ann and carrying her bags, Ann reads a magazine with Shiho about Shiho being a volleyball ace, Yusuke and a fully-redeemed Madarame work together on a new painting, Makoto has dinner with Sae and an unseen man, later revealed to be their father, Futaba (wearing the uniform of Shujin Academy) walks happily with her mother while Sojiro looks on fondly, Haru and her father celebrate the opening of a new Big Bang Burger, Joker and Akechi play a round of chess and Sumire is now Kasumi and can officially continue her sister's legacy. Sure, they're happy forever, but everything these characters went through is gone, all of their Character Development is gone, Maruki is essentially forgotten from existence and becomes nothing short of a nameless man, and Sumire is Killed Off for Real courtesy of her old self being wiped out. It really hurts seeing all of them relinquishing everything they've became after all the hell they've been put through by their own insecurities and/or other, awful human beings. The worst thing is that it's heavily implied that unlike the other characters, Joker has Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory, which would likely hurt even more for him as he seemingly remembers what he did while the rest of his former friends likely won't remember him anymore. The final shot is all the Phantom Thieves, celebrating at LeBlanc... and Joker and Akechi at the bar, each giving the player (yes, the player) a knowing look. It's essentially the Fall, but instead of everyone living for a few months of blissful ignorance before the end, everyone lives forever in eternal happiness leaving behind all the hardships and growth that once defined them.
• There's one consequence left behind when Futaba is snapped out of Maruki's spell; she has to come to terms with her mother's death and say goodbye to her all over again, once she realizes Maruki will bring forth the end of everything as we know it in exchange for bringing her mom back. It's one of the cruelest dilemmas out there; a second chance to be with someone you love, but the end result of letting that happen amounts to sacrificing everything else you genuinely cared for to an eternal Modern Stasis. She has to choose one or the other, yet, she chose the hard way out. Futaba really laments and talks about the difficulty and the pain of the (well-justified) decision.
  Futaba: I know this isn't real. I figured that out a while ago. But I thought... if I got to see my mom again, then it was okay... I know I mean, I know now that this is all in my head. But I wanted to talk with her more. Go on shopping trips and stuff. I dunno, I just... I wish I had more time with her.
• The wish that Maruki had granted for Joker turned out to be saving Akechi, which is enough to make Joker momentarily reconsider changing Maruki's heart, as it would mean that Akechi would no longer be there. Akechi's fate is again left ambiguous; Maruki claims that he's actually a fake manifested by the protagonist's wishes (It's also possible that he's lying to him so he would accept his reality again, given that Akechi warns the protagonist of a trap set by Maruki when he reaches Eden.) Moreover, Akechi knew about he was probably a fake all along, only lacking evidence to make a decisive conclusion. Even so, he is determined to destroy the false reality. If Joker chooses to object, Akechi will tell him to stop pitying him, as he does not want Joker to stop fighting against Maruki just because he might disappear. In fact, you can see someone who looks a lot like him in the ending if you complete his Confidant.
• The Post-Final Boss fight against Maruki himself. It's not the epic battle against the berserk Ruler of the Dreamlands. It's not the fight against the Primordial Man, the embodiment of humanity's light and wisdom. It's not even the Phantom Thief Joker fighting. It's two friends punching each other in a struggle to communicate. It's Maruki venting all the regrets and laments. It's Joker taking it in because he knows Maruki's pain and wants to help him.
  • Maruki just screaming in unadulterated emotional agony as he can fight no more, before taking a shuddering breath and collapses. He just quietly admits defeat afterwards. Cue his Palace shaking, as the crystal platform he and Joker are on begins cracking... under Maruki. As Maruki closes his eyes, it seems to shatter, the implication being that he was intent on sending himself to the abyss. While Joker manages to save him, Maruki can do nothing but gently beg Joker to just drop him. Seeing him so broken like this is painful, especially given he just wanted to end peoples' suffering. Joker's expression is this too; he's desperately trying to pull Maruki up despite having so little strength, because he cares that much about him.
• Maruki is genuinely affable (not even evil) during the Third Term events, but peering beyond his façade reveals how utterly broken he is, perfectly incarnating the sin of Sorrow. By desiring to make humankind perfectly happy he has willingly doomed himself to misery, starting from when he made Rumi forget him for her own happiness. There is also a generous dose of Dramatic Irony in the mix, because it's his painful memory of Rumi that has driven his actions, essentially running on the Misery Builds Character trope he wants to prevent for everyone else. When he is finally defeated and loses his powers, he is immediately Driven to Suicide by his despair as he feels that there's nothing more he can do.
• The special request interaction with Lavenza in the third semester where you can take her back to Joker's room in Leblanc to hang out is mostly as comical and whimsical as the ones with Justine and Caroline previously. However there's a scene where she has a nap on Joker's bed and begins talking in her sleep, which starts out sounding funny until you realize from her words that she's reliving the event of Yaldabaoth ripping her apart. She acts dismissive about it later and this was played for Black Comedy, but it's still rather heart-breaking that even a near-omnipotent being can suffer from nightmares too.
  Lavenza: "Take that- Huh? It didn't work!? W-Wait! You can't... Ahhh! No... I-I'm being split again! Ahhhhh!"
• Ryuji calling the rest of the Phantom Thieves to Leblanc to tell them that he's going to be moving away shortly after Joker returns home, because he needs to move closer to a facility where he'll be able to rehab his leg; which is then capitulated by Ann informing the group that she's going to be studying abroad, and Morgana announcing that he'll leaving with Joker. It quickly dawns on the group that it's going to be a long time before most of them will be together in the same place again.

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