YMMV / Persona 5 A To H

Main Page | A-H | I-S | T-Z

A

• Abandon Shipping:
  • Joker/Mishima was very popular around the early Japanese release, but many fans jumped ship when his story arc revealed a far greater number of character flaws that were harder to brush off than they expected and as a result found him very annoying. While he still has his fans, and his Confidant skills are useful and easy enough to level (very few players are likely to reach the end of the game before he finishes his Character Development), you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who wishes he was a Gay Option now.
  • Some players stopped pairing Joker/Futaba romantically when they found out that she's Sojiro's adopted daughter, and instead shipped them as a platonic Like Brother and Sister relationship since Sojiro is Joker's father figure of sorts as well, and now see the former as a type of Squick (although it's still far more popular than Joker/Mishima). This is less of a problem in Japan, where Joker is seen as a caregiver of sorts to Futaba, not a brother figure (thus making the "lover or sister figure" debate a moot point), not to mention Japan does not consider non-blood-related siblings to be incestuous.
• Accidental Innuendo:
  • At the max rank of the Strength Confidant, the player is shown a fully voiced scene in which Justine starts to remember something and seems to have a headache over it. The problem is, while she seems to be wincing in pain trying to remember, her English voice clips instead sound like she's moaning.
  • If you decide to hang out with Makoto or study with her, she'll often say things that could easily be taken the wrong way, such as "Let's do it in the student council room. I'll leave the back entrance open for you," and "Come to the library. I'll drill it into you." Some have joked that her not realizing the implications of her phrasing fits her awkward characterization a little too well to be a complete accident on the localization's part.
  • Pause the scene during the protagonist's love confession with Sumire when her flustering portrait starts blinking... And you will end up with something like this.
  • When merging with Adam Kadmon, Maruki says "I'm all yours... Use me... However you want..." While surrounded by tentacles, no less.
  • After creating the persona Kin-Ki, it will say "Me Kin-Ki" which pretty much explains itself.
  • A visual one: Joker's all-out-attack finishing touch makes it look a lot like he's slipping on some latex gloves in a stereotypical doctor-like fashion. Cue a moderate amount of "Prostate Exam" memes.
• Adorkable:
  • Joker's got the spirit of a troublemaker, can be a bit of a Troll at times, and is given to theatrics, but in his public mild-mannered persona, he can be rather gawkish yet very humble. In between Metaverse escapades, he can spend hours playing retro video games on a crappy secondhand console, eagerly brew coffee, and work out, with his first attempt at using a treadmill ends in an Epic Fail. Case in point.
  • Ryuji tends to get overexcited when talking about upcoming plans for the Phantom Thieves, sometimes way too loudly for his/everyone's own good. Furthermore, for all of his bravado, he gets really nervous during actual sexual encounters. Case in point, the beach trip: Ryuji stares at Ann when she comes out in a two-piece (and even makes an outright 'grabbing' gesture with both hands), but when she laughs it off and even hangs onto his arm, he suddenly gets very quiet and won't look at her directly.
  • Normally Ann is pretty comfortable with sexuality, but it's when she's caught off-guard with it that she turns as red as a tomato. Special mention goes to Yusuke trying to make a nude painting starring her during the Madarame Arc. Additionally, despite actually wanting to be a Heroic Seductress, Ann gets easily flustered if she's actually in a relationship with Joker.
  • Yusuke's obsession with art and his other strange quirks (such as obsession with lobsters and his general obliviousness) help him come off as this.
  • As a recovering shut-in, Futaba is very socially awkward and a bit of a Cloudcuckoolander to the point where it became endearing. She is also a huge fan of video games, and makes a bunch of references to them. She gets especially adorable should the player romance her, as once Joker confesses his love to her, she gets incredibly flustered around him, to the point that she completely shuts down for a good eight to nine text boxes.
  • Haru's introduction as a "rival thief" to the Phantom Thieves is full of it. She actually gets stage fright during her first encounter with them because she hadn't yet thought of a code name for herself and couldn't remember the script she'd prepared with Morgana beforehand. She also gets really giddy and excited when Baton Passing or getting a Baton Pass.
  • We can't forget Makoto, who has plenty of moments despite seeming calm and collected both in and out of the metaverse. From her comically bad attempts at following Joker, to her fear of the dark, to her still having a cartoon character pencil case, adorkability is a primary reason why she's such a popular love interest. If Joker romances her, practically any flirting is guaranteed to reduce her to a stammering mess.
  • Akechi, before his exposure, happens to be obsessed with the Phantom Thieves to a fanboy-ish degree. He also has a tendency to ramble, before apologizing and getting back on topic. In a case of Gameplay and Story Integration, a lot of his animations and mannerisms when he initially joins the Thieves make him come across as something of a showy try-hard, like he really wants to make a good impression on the other Phantom Thieves, and his choice of weapons is among the goofiest of the bunch.
    • While this might be unintentional, when he rejoins during the Third Term events, he tends to scream out of his lungs in the most absurd and ridiculous ways possible, sometimes even going into Irony territory.
  • Like the rest of the attendants, the Twin Wardens have only a basic understanding of how people work and thus are awed by the most mundane things or misinterpreting things. However, they surpass the others in this department (barring perhaps Elizabeth) because of their youth and childish appearance:
    • Royal gives Joker opportunities to take the twins on outings to various locales and their attempts in trying to act so serious juxtaposed with their childish wonder makes them hilariously awkward and endearing. One notable example is when Joker takes them to Big Bang Burger and we see Caroline get excited at the prospect of getting a little toy spaceship in her kiddy meal or learning Justine does not like pickles (and her subsequent embarrassment when Caroline notes it.)
    • This goes further when they are one as Lavenza. As soon as you first meet her at Shujin during the third term, one of your dialogue options to her greetings is to ask her why is she so formal. If you do, she asks you if she should say "wassup" instead, then dozes off almost instantly while sitting on counselor room's sofa. When you go hangout with her in your attic, she got so frustrated by being unable to create an infiltration tool that she threatens to Megidolaon the table. Also just like during Shujin, when she sits on Joker's bed she dozes off almost instantly, but this time she was having nightmares with the Holy Grail and instantly wakes up, before dozing off on Joker's shoulders.
  • Maruki, in Royal. When he introduces himself to the students of Shujin, the microphone malfunctions. When he goes to bow, he accidentally smacks his head against it. A month after he's been hired at school, his attempt at cooking (or rather replicating the "Salt bae" meme) results in the wind just blowing the salt away and thus ruining his chance to appear cool.
• Alternate Self Shipping: In the Japanese fandom, shipping Joker with his civilian identity is common due to the juxtaposition of how different Joker is in his civilian life and as a showy Phantom thief.
• Americans Hate Tingle:
  • Goro Akechi is far more of a Base-Breaking Character in the West than he is in the East; he enjoys far more popularity in Japan and other Asian countries and tends to rank in the top five on popularity polls, as well as being the highest-ranked member of the Phantom Thieves in an official popularity poll covering every playable character in the Persona series from Persona 3 onwards.^note Specifically, he ranked 5th, which puts him behind Persona4, P3P's female protagonist, P4's protagonist, and P3's protagonist. The likeliest factor behind the split, heinous acts aside, is the fact that his backstory as a neglected illegitimate child evokes some potent Values Dissonance (see his entry in the game's own page of that trope); while his anger over his past in Japan is viewed with justification, westerners see it more as Wangst and wonder how sympathetic they are supposed to be for a guy who tried to blow their brains out.
  • While not particularly popular in Japan, The Shinjuku Creatures are outright despised by a fair portion of the game's western LGBT Fanbase, who view their antics (harassing Ryuji and the protagonist) as unfunny, with some outright finding the two offensive. Their unpopularity amongst western LGBT fans would result in them being rewritten for the English release of Persona 5 Royal to downplay their stereotypical behaviour.
• Angst? What Angst?:
  • Despite witnessing her father get brutally murdered, Haru's grief is rather glossed over. She surprisingly manages to bounce back in a couple of days. When the rest of the Thieves try and comfort her, she seems more concerned about the evidence used to frame them. Even in her own Confidant, the focus was more centered around her Arranged Marriage that it was coping with her father's death. In Royal, however, the events in the Third Semester makes it more clear that she was still coping with her father's death and subconsciously still wishes for him to be alive and devoid of his darker ambitions, which is at least something, even though her reaction is incredibly subdued for such a traumatic experience.
  • Strangely, it's the Silent Protagonist that has a case of this. Despite being brutally tortured and forcibly injected with drugs by the Dirty Cops under The Conspiracy's pocket, and narrowly avoiding getting killed by Akechi, he comes back to LeBlanc none the worse for wear. In fact one of the dialogue options you can choose is joking about the whole situation by saying "I mean, I died". On top of this, the whole thing was a gambit set up by Joker himself to escape death row. This becomes Subverted, however, if you pay attention to Joker's new Idle Animation the days after the interrogation, which has him frequently touch his head at the spot where the interrogator stepped on him and how the rest of the Phantom Thieves were spread out to give Joker a berth of space for his comfort and not crowd over him so as to not traumatize him.
  • Downplayed with the Phantom Thieves regarding the moral ambiguity of changing a Palace ruler's heart. Despite initially hesitating to change Kamoshida's heart due to the potential ramifications, they don't seem to have any problems with future targets. However, this could be a case of It Gets Easier and that Kamoshida didn't die (the worst-case scenario proposed) after having his heart changed. Furthermore, their horrified reactions upon watching Okumura's gruesome death after changing his heart made them consider the possibility that they might have caused his death, though they quickly dismiss that line of thought.
• Annoying Video Game Helper:
  • While Persona 5 improved on the volume of navigation lines and made them significantly less repetitive, Morgana still falls into this category for many players — not in his capacity as Dungeon Navigator (although his prejudice for/against certain party members has been noted), but for his ever-present, Jiminy Cricket-style nagging about deadlines and bedtimes. When you're keen to rank up a social link or develop a skill at night, Morgana stopping Joker and telling him to go to sleep can become really annoying. Morgana also puts pressure on you to complete dungeons as quickly as possible, to the point of literally forcing the gang to do something about the Palace if you don't go for four or five days (which is very easy to do during the summer holidays, when pretty much all of your friends want to hang out with you). It's clearly meant to stop you having to constantly check the calendar, but the countdown is right there in the corner of the screen! For players used to the taciturn Persona 4 protagonist and his ability to keep track of his own calendar, it can be grating. Royal fixed this by making Morgana much less likely to stop Joker from going out at night.
  • Downplayed with Futaba. Most of her Confidant abilities are amazing and a great help in bad situations, but their completely luck-based activation can be a bad thing as there's one time you don't want her to buff the party: while multiple characters are Brainwashed. "Here come the buffs!" or especially "Ultra Charge" on Brainwashed party members can easily spell a Game Over if they end up attacking Joker. However, this can get very annoying during Okumura's fight, as she could potentially waste your valuable time giving buffs even if you might want them, as her Moral Support animation takes around 5 seconds.
  • Harisen Recovery can be a very valuable support skill in battle, which your allies (if their Confidant bonds are around the 6-7 range, depending on the ally) will use to recover negative status ailments. However, one instance where you do not want this to happen is during Okumura's battle where his Execurobo's Big Bang Challenge will actually fully heal you when you're hungry (as opposed to potentially wiping out your party). Unfortunately, it's unpredictable and they're likely to accidentally heal your entire party during that instance.
• Anti-Climax Boss: Multiple:
  • Despite being a loathsome villain that the game goes out of its way to make you hate, Kamoshida's boss fight isn't particularly hard. You have a full party of four, with Ann and Morgana capable of healing by default, and Kamoshida can't hit any party member's weakness. Pacing yourself and grinding up enough will yield some useful support spells — at Level 11, Ann gets Tarunda, which lowers an enemy's attack, and Morgana learns the multi-healing spell Media. Joker can also fuse two Personas that resist Physical, allowing him to shrug off most of Kamoshida's attacks. Granted, Kamoshida is only the first major boss battle, but considering all of the build-up he gets, it's a bit of a letdown.
  • Despite Kaneshiro and his Bank being presented as the heist that truly puts the thieves on the map, both his Palace and his boss fight are unimpressive. The bank's layout is non-complex, with the only major bump in the road being a simple ATM PIN puzzle in the Palace's basement. Shadow Kaneshiro himself isn't that powerful either; the only potential threats he can dole out (Fear Gas, which has a chance of inflicting Fear on the entire party, and Piggytron's rollout attack) can be swiftly dealt with: one of Makoto's healing moves cures Fear, and even without her, you will likely have easy access to most healing items at this point in the game. As for the rollout attack, hitting Shadow Kaneshiro once (he rolls on top of Piggytron for the move) will knock him over and stop the attack. Even in Royal, which has Piggytron go first, Kaneshiro's new second phase isn't much harder, with his guards vulnerable to Sleep, making them easy to remove from the equation. After Kaneshiro uses his "Make It Rain" attack, he's pretty much helpless. To make all of this even sadder, Kaneshiro's confession after his change of heart is offscreen.
  • The fight with the boss of the Casino Palace is very straightforward and not very difficult, in spite of being a Disc-One Final Boss. One factor that goes into this is that you aren't allowed to send out a Calling Card and fight the boss until a set date right before the deadline. If you secured a route in the Palace early enough, you have a lot of time to max out Confidants, and grind in Mementos^note Flu season is during this time, so you can take advantage of the Reaper for EXP. Even then, the fight on its own isn't anything that'll have you pulling your hair out. The game outright tells you how to deal with the boss's gimmicks, and none of the attacks are all that dangerous. The worst the boss can do is use stat buffs, but they are easily countered with Dekaja, and in addition to any buffs you can use, Futaba will most likely give your party a buff during this fight. At the end of the fight, the boss does permanently buff itself, but by that point their HP is low enough that you'll be able to take them out before they can do anything, especially if you guessed correctly on the gamble that increases your attack. Even in Royal, the boss isn't much harder; though the roulette wheel now gives them a random elemental attack to potentially hit a weakness, they usually don't do much with it, often only casting Dekaja after a 1 More.
    • It's arguably made even easier in Royal, where the boss is changed so that Roulette time causes it to spam one particular element against a party member that's weak to it, while resisting all but that element's opposite. As long as you have good element coverage with your Personas, and can deflect weaknesses using Tetrakarn and Makarakarn, you should have no trouble.
  • The battle with Black Mask isn't particularly difficult for all of the buildup to it. The first phase is just two Shadows with Desperation cast on them that only use physical attacks. So if Joker has a Null/Repel Physical persona equipped, the enemies can't even damage him. When Black Mask joins the fray, their moves are laughably predictable, since Black Mask targets Joker with Kougaon and Eigaon even if he has Null Bless or Null Curse equipped. Black Mask's second phase is a little harder, but they don't deal much damage without Desperation, which only gets used if they knock down a party member. And out of all the skills to use, Black Mask's ultimate form has Maragion and Maeiga, which deal pitiful damage. They do have a powerful Almighty move, but they use it at extremely low health and it takes a turn to charge, so it's easy to just guard against it, assuming you don't kill Black Mask before they use it in the first place. This is partially justified since the battle with Black Mask takes place immediately after a damage-heavy miniboss fight, which leaves you with very little breathing time.
  • In the Vanilla game, the final Mementos request seems like it's going to be a real tough one, being the only S-Rank mission and at the very bottom of the 66-floor randomly-generated dungeon. Too bad any sort of Attack debuff completely ruins him as he'll spend every turn trying to rebuff his Attack stat. Cue jokes about Mara not being able to raise itself up. He also despite having 99 Strength, only has early level physical abilities like Lunge and Rampage.
  • The boss during January 9 in Royal isn't particularly tough to begin with even though Joker has to fight by himself for the first phase. But should you realize that said boss only uses Physical and Bless skills and lacks protection from either, you equip a persona with Reflect on both and beat the boss without even attacking.
  • The guardian of the last Will Seed in the final Palace in Royal is a single Fafnir, the same as the ones you've already seen throughout the Palace, except with slightly more HP and access to Megidolaon. While Fafnir is a tough Demonic Spider, it's still mostly a normal enemy, so the player should have a plan to defeat it by now.
  • In Royal the final mini-boss in the final Palace before you secure the route to the treasure is Siegfried. He uses physical attacks when he is above half health and electric spells when he is below half health. Siegfried is straightforward with a very limited set of abilities and is treated as just another mini-boss. This is in contrast to the penultimate boss of the vanilla game Michael, who has a full skillset that includes multiple elements and extensive debuffs. Michael also gets his battle theme upgraded from the usual "Keeper of Lust" to "Blooming Villain", the same track as fighting the Palace Rulers. This ends up making Siegfried seem disappointing.
  • The True Final Boss of Royal ends up becoming this if the player expects his phases to escalate. His first two phases are legitimately threatening, and you WILL get stuck like you do against Okumura without a proper tactic against him. His next phase however, is decidedly more straightforward and easier, and the phases after don't even count as a real fight.
• Anvilicious: In Kaneshiro's palace, people are literally represented by walking ATMs, which is already hugely unsubtle. The game still points this out, and explains what this means.
• Applicability: While the game deals primarily with issues surrounding Japan, saving the worst of its criticisms for Japan's culture of apathy for individual problems, many people around the world have found they can relate to the game's themes of systemic corruption, older generations not taking the problems of younger generations seriously, and frustration with the fact that anyone who gets to a certain level of power or fame is essentially above the law.
• Arc Fatigue:
  • The deadline for Futaba's Palace is extremely generous, and her dungeon isn't particularly long or difficult. It also occurs during Summer Vacation, limiting the number of Confidants the player can hang out with during that time.
  • The Hawaii Trip would be fine in isolation, but the fact it comes right on the heels of the aforementioned Futaba's palace and summer vacation can make it feel as though summer vacation is going on even longer and players who want to just hit Mementos and do the Confidants and Requests that have just been unlocked are instead forced to spend still more time on the beach.
  • Okumura's Palace arc, while not a long one in terms of time, is considered to be an absolute slog for players to sit through. The first stretch of the arc in which Morgana leaves the Phantom Thieves is a notable example, as it forces the players to sit through cutscene after cutscene of people passing the Conflict Ball around. Plus, night time activities aren't allowed during the arc for quite a while, meaning that time that could have been invested in grinding or raising Confidant Links gets wasted. As for Okumura's Palace itself, its tedious enemies and puzzles only serve to drag out the arc even more, and Okumura himself, while easy in the base Persona, was made to become one of the worst chokepoints in Royal, especially for new players.
• Award Snub: Royal lost to Final Fantasy VII Remake for Best RPG at The Video Game Awards 2020.
• Awesome Art:
  • The menus and interfaces are incredibly stylish. Some standout moments include a shop menu where the silhouetted shopkeeper shifts around as you browse the menus, and the results screen which shows the final blow in the background while your rewards are tallied up as if they're points on a line.
  • For the new demons added in Royal, Atlus really went out of their way to capture Kaneko's distinct style. While those in the vanilla release could look somewhat janky or rough, the new ones end up looking like they walked straight out of his art, being perhaps the closest they have ever gotten to replicating the style fully in-game.
• Awesome Bosses: The Disc-One Final Boss fight against Samael, or Shadow Shido, in Royal is a brutal, yet incredibly fun Marathon Boss that blows its original counterpart out of the water. For the first three phases, the Walls of Human Sacrifice constantly evolve to make themselves immune to specific attacks, resulting in a constant need to change up fighting styles. Following that, Shido activates Samael form and has no weaknesses, allowing you to go no-holds-barred with your attacks as much as he does, before he removes his Power Limiter and gains access to a whopping 24 attacks. What makes the Royal version infinitely more awesome than the original version, however, is the added final phase when he reaches 1/4 health: Shido becomes a Master of All, removes all your allies from the battlefield, and challenges Joker to a one-on-one Duel to the Death, forcing you to rely on all the Personas you have on hand to save your skin and take him down. It's an unforgiving, yet thrilling sense of revenge against the man who ruined your entire livelihood and has Tokyo under his control.
• Awesome Levels:
  • Futaba's Palace has received this treatment. Not only is this is a Breather Level, but many fans found the Palace interesting due to the Palace ruler not actually being evil, making it a nice contrast to the Phantom Thieves having to change the hearts of Hate Sink villains. Not to mention the Palace starts out as a nice Call-Back to Persona 4, but it subverts people's expectations by not having Shadow Futaba be the boss of the Palace and having Futaba actually accept her Shadow.
  • The sixth Palace has also received this treatment. Unlike most Palaces where the Phantom Thieves have to sneak their way to the Treasure, Shadow Sae forces the Phantom Thieves into playing rigged casino games to reach her treasure. This causes the Phantom Thieves to have to rig the games in their favor to reach the treasure, making the Palace interesting. Not to mention how the Palace was way easier than the previous palace.
  • The new Palace in Royal, Maruki's Palace, is also very well received —- while it is a fairly long dungeon, it's aesthetically pleasing, the build-up to it is fantastic, its soundtrack ("Gentle Madman" for the main Palace, "Out of Kindness" for the Twilight Corridor portion) is serene yet wonderfully melancholic, and it has plenty of challenge to offer players that have spent their time wisely in Mementos. Add in the fact that Maruki himself is a very challenging but fun True Final Boss (on top of the stakes and circumstances of the fight) and you have yourself one of the best final levels in Persona history.

B

• Badass Decay:
  • The Reaper, in previous games a terrifying and powerful Stalked by the Bell Superboss, can be brought down by the common flu if it's going around, at least in the original game. Otherwise, he's just as strong as he is normally. He also speaks like a "beast" type shadow if you try to negotiate with him, despite appearing mostly humanoid, so while he's one of the few to always blatantly refuse to be intimidated by you and his sentiments are still terrifying, his awful grammar takes away from the effect.
  • Despite being fashioned as one of the most fearsome enemies in the vanilla game, Goro Akechi (as Black Mask) in Royal "technically" falls victim to this trope after his Heel–Face Turn. One of his skits in Mementos has him regretting his "Pancakes" comment that resulted in the exposure of his plan to take down the Phantom Thieves and Shido, although he's still quite as bloodthirsty and cunning as ever. The last time you ever see him, at least prior to the post-credits upon certain conditions is when he gets crammed into the Monacopter while being squeezed by Futaba, Haru and Sumire, with Futaba and Haru being two of the people Shido ruined their lives through him.
• Bizarro Episode: Most of the Palaces the Phantom Thieves target manifest as locations one would expect a band of thieves to rob blind (a castle, an art museum, a bank, an ancient tomb, a casino, a luxury cruise ship.) Okumura's Palace? A space station. The Bonus Dungeon from Royal, which is a clinic, doesn't make much sense either, amplifying the weirdness of the 3rd semester.
• Breather Boss:
  • The boss of the Bank Palace, Shadow Kaneshiro, isn't a cakewalk, but he doesn't have any gimmicks backing him up that stop you from dealing damage to him, he doesn't debuff your party, and the normal attacks he uses aren't particularly powerful. His strongest move takes two turns to charge, and the battle gives you multiple different ways to stop it. Towards the end, you can even sacrifice relatively common items to make him skip his turn.
  • The boss of the Space Station Palace in the Vanilla version, Shadow Okumura, especially since his palace bordered on Marathon Level with That One Puzzle right before the boss fight. He's a Flunky Boss who summons mooks that the player has already fought earlier in his palace, with the boss himself hanging out of reach providing support. The mooks all have weaknesses that the player can easily exploit, and once they're all defeated, the boss himself turns out to be a total weakling who goes down with just a regular attack. Averted hard in Royal, as Shadow Okumura becomes That One Boss instead.
  • In Royal, the boss of the Casino Palace, Shadow Niijima becomes this instead, as Okumura can become a major chokepoint if the player is unprepared or does not go after him with an appropriate routine in mind. While she still hits fairly hard, she doesn't have much special gimmicks on her aside that her Roulette determines her affinities and the element of her attacks, making her a more straightforward and easy to deal with boss than Okumura.
  • Black Mask in Shido's Palace might seem intimidating, he is definitely no cakewalk and he can catch you off guard, but his durability is ridiculously low for an actual boss, unlike most other major bosses in the game he has no gimmicks on him at all save for targeting Joker on high odds, and just like typical Guard Captain Shadows he usually takes his turns in a fixed pattern in both forms, making him highly predictable and easy to outmaneuver.
  • The Third Term final boss is definitely no cakewalk; there is no clear explanation on how to get past it anywhere in the battle dialogue, the boss fight has the instrumental version of the boss theme to catch the player off guard, their attacks are generally annoying to deal with and they have a gimmick that prevents them from being properly damaged unless you know what you're doing. However, once you get past this... You are greeted by Maruki and the intimidating Adam Kadmon. Ironically, the second phase is much easier, since it doesn't take much to kill Maruki and he's the only target in Adam Kadmon's first phase. And while the second phase against Adam Kadmon itself looks scary because it's as big as the God of Control and you can't hurt it, neither can Adam Kadmon kill the Phantom Thieves. In any situation Adam Kadmon is about to kill anyone in its second phase, they will always endure the attack at one HP. To make things even better, all of your HP and SP are fully recovered after you defeat Azathoth. After getting through the battles with Maruki, the battles against Adam Kadmon are more like an extended Cutscene Boss than a true boss fight.
• Breather Level:
  • Futaba's Palace is a lot more straightforward (both figuratively and literally) than the other palaces, with relatively easy puzzles, and while it does have two mini-bosses, both come at the very start and end of the palace, and both are against Mot, meaning if you made an effort to discover its weakness the first time, you should have no problem, and while the main boss of the Palace does have two stages, your HP and SP are refilled at the start of phase two, preventing it from being cheap. Combine this with you being given an extremely generous 26 in-game days to complete it rather than the usual 14-16 affair of other Palaces as well as going right in after you send the calling card and not having to wait an extra day, it by far and large solidifies this trope. It's much better in Royal, as the party can simply use the Grappling Hook to land themselves next to the Sphinx's room without scaling the Shadow infested hallway. Preventing it from being a complete cakewalk, however, is the presence of a few enemies who can be rather nasty to players towards the lower or average end of the leveling curve, such as the Anubis, who can use Mudoon for cheap insta-kills.
  • Futaba's Confidant requires the player's Kindness (one of the harder stats to update) to be at level 4, but is otherwise quick to finish due to a lack of holdover periods.
  • While it may take some out of the box thinking to start it, Toranosuke's Confidant is one of the easiest to level up in the game. To begin with, the part-time job at the Beef Bowl Shop only requires permission to go out at night and Rank 2 Proficiency, which, by the time you have the former, you should be reasonably close to attaining as long as you haven't been intentionally neglecting it. Past that, he ranks up each time you see him, independent of having the right Persona Arcana and your choice of responses, and he is also the only non-party Confidant that doesn't have a Mementos request that is required to advance past a specific rank. The ease of his Confidant line may have to do with the fact that, unlike most of the others, it has a deadline (which he will warn you about just in case): November 17th, which is when in-story election campaigning begins (although the last real opportunity is November 13).
  • Like Futaba above, Haru's Confidant requires a high stat check (namely, requiring the player's Proficiency to be maxed out), but is quick to finish due to a lack of holdover periods. Also, much like Toranosuke's Confidant above, there are very few responses that she doesn't like, especially late into her Confidant.
  • In a similar fashion to Toranosuke, Mishima's Confidant levels every time you see him - no matter what you choose to say and regardless of whether or not you have a matching Arcana persona on hand. The fact that he's the Moon to Toranosuke's Sun makes it quite fitting. The only difference is Mishima has no deadline so to speak, but due to his personality a number of players don't get around to finishing his Confidant anyway or only do it for the battle bonuses it gives.
  • Similar to Haru, Maruki's Confidant is available often and has plenty of good conversation options, making him relatively easy to max out despite a month-long holdover period and a November deadline. This is justified, since you need to complete his confidant in order to even access the bonus events and the Return Ending of Royal.
  • The summer holidays can be considered as such from a scheduling standpoint. On days when you actually have control, as you have no school, you can spend a single daytime slot in any day of the week to make more infiltration tools than normal, saving time for Palace preparation. While the final week of the holidays is filled with cutscenes as the gang tries to get Futaba to open up, you retain the ability to do your nighttime activities instead of being forced to sleep like what would normally happen in the earlier parts of the game.

C

• Captain Obvious Reveal:
  • It's frankly difficult not to identify the traitor beforehand. The fact that a traitor in the party sells Joker out, resulting in him being arrested, is spelled out right at the beginning of the game. The identity of said traitor is treated as a huge mystery throughout the story. But by the time it comes to pick out who you believe betrayed you, it's pretty easy to guess that it's Goro Akechi. He wasn't heavily promoted in advertisements but still promoted enough that him joining the team couldn't be the twist, he joins the party in the dungeon where you know you'll be betrayed, not to mention the fact that the characters and audience know the least about him out of the party members. He's also the only team member not in the opening sequence. By process of elimination, it simply has to be Akechi. The fact that the two previous games in the series had similar plot twists only compounds it. This is almost definitely intended given that Akechi shares a last name with Akechi Mitsuhide, a.k.a. the arguably most famous traitor in Japanese history. Unlike the two previous games, the actual twist lies more in the rest of the team figuring this out quickly and concocting a clever plan to stop him from assassinating Joker.
  • In Yusuke's dungeon, it's fairly obvious to figure out that the woman in the paintings throughout it is Yusuke's mother and by extension that Madarame committed Murder by Inaction, especially since Madarame otherwise didn't seem that bad compared to Kamoshida.
  • In Futaba's dungeon, it's not hard to figure out that the boss is Futaba's cognition of her late mother, Wakaba Isshiki, as soon as you see it: throughout the dungeon, you need to recreate several murals as a part of puzzles, many of which depict Futaba's mom. Because of this, it's easy to notice that the Sphinx has the same face and hair as Wakaba on the murals.
  • It's very easy to figure out that Masayoshi Shido is one of the main antagonists. The game basically spells it out for you when Ryuji and Joker encounter Shido at the hotel while going out to eat and Joker suspects that the man holding up the elevator is the one who pushed false charges on him. There's also the fact that Shido has a character portrait during this scene and after Yusuke joins the party, his character portrait is reused when Joker is recalling the situation. By the time Shido begins making his speeches on the TV at Leblanc, many players can be safe to assume that he'll eventually be a target of the Phantom Thieves. And depending on how early you max one of the Confidants, you might see a big hint towards this very early in the story. Ohya's Confidant ends with Shido's name directly implicated in a political scandal involving a mental shutdown. It's not hard to connect the dots after that.
  • One of the hints towards the biggest twist in the game is considerably easier to figure out in the English version than it is in the Japanese version. The fact that Igor is an impostor. Igor's Japanese voice actor passed away, justifying his change of voice. So Japanese fans would be less likely to question the change. Igor's English VA, however, is still alive and available, which makes it a lot more suspicious that he'd now be played not only by a totally different actor, but one that doesn't even attempt to sound the same as the old voice. Naturally, False Igor's deep, menacing voice is because he was a villain all along; the real Igor does have a new voice actor in the English version of the game, but he makes an effort to sound like the original.^SpoilerIn the Japanese version, the real Igor doesn't even have a new voice actor and simply uses recycled dialogue from Persona 3 or Persona 4
  • It's very easy to figure out how Maruki was the instigator of the abnormalities in the Third Term, such as Wakaba reviving, Morgana becoming a human, Shiho hanging out happily with Ann, etc. On top of him being overly sympathetic and easygoing, he also deliberately approaches Phantom Thief members for counseling and seems to be very worried about Yoshizawa as well. Furthermore, Maruki's Confidant uses a non-standard arcana, something typically reserved for plot-relevant characters, so his lack of direct plot involvement up until this point already comes off as suspicious. Sure enough, despite how much the game tries to keep his involvement a secret, everyone can guess it's him and it's really him. The only saving grace is that he is genuinely trying to make a better world, even if he's a pawn at worst.
• Cargo Ship:
  • Akechi and Pancakes, due to him bringing up the topic of "delicious pancakes" to the Phantom Thieves when he first meets them at the TV station which later is revealed be a crucial piece of evidence that outs him as being Black Mask. Hilarious in Hindsight when in Royal, Akechi stated in a Mementos conversation he never wants to hear the word "pancakes" for a long, long, time.
  • Yusuke and any form of Art in general, due to his ambiguous sexuality and obsession over art. Yusuke and Lobsters is also a close contender, stemming from the scene at the beach where he buys a pair because he liked their aesthetics which the fandom naturally spun into "Yusuke is obsessed with lobsters".
• Catharsis Factor: To say it's satisfying seeing bastards like Kamoshida or Shido confess and beg to be punished for their crimes is an understatement, to say the least.
  • Playing this game could also provide this in an out-of-universe way. All of the villains represent or derive from some kind of social ill plaguing not only Japan, but most other countries around the world. These include: a serial sexual predator who gets away with it because everyone around him turns a blind eye due to his position of authority and past achievements, a corporate CEO who reaps immense profits by horribly overworking and otherwise exploiting his employees, and a crooked politician who claims to stand for the masses but is really only looking out for himself and a small number of cronies. Chances are that you've been pissed off or even victimized by at least one of these types of people in real life, and this game gives you the opportunity to not only beat them to a pulp, but make them publicly confess to their crimes in order to wake everyone else up to how evil they really were.
  • Part of what makes Awakenings so gratifying is getting to see people like Kamoshida or Kaneshiro absolutely shit themselves as their former victims turn Super Mode and proceed to unleash an entire can of whoop-ass on them and/or their Mooks.
  • Depending on how you view him, Akechi's epic Villainous Breakdown can be immensely satisfying considering that he spends most of his screentime as an insufferable Smug Snake.
  • Stealing Shido’s heart is probably the most cathartic of them all. After all of the pain he has inflicted on so many people and your party (I.E. Getting Joker put on probation, killing Futaba’s mother and pinning the blame on her, cutting in front of Ryuji at an elevator, etc.), seeing him break down into a sobbing wreck upon stealing his treasure is nothing short of awesome.
• Cheese Strategy:
  • Okumura’s boss battle in Royal can actually be made a lot easier by bumping the difficulty up to Merciless. That may sound counterintuitive, but this trick works because exploiting weaknesses in Merciless mode deals more damage.
  • The Reaper can easily be defeated during Flu Season, as it may be under the effects of despair when encountered. This trick only works in the vanilla edition, as Royal made the Reaper immune to the effects of bad weather.
• Cliché Storm:
  • A very common criticism is that after the first dungeon wraps up, the remainder of the story can be predicted from beginning to end. While many agree it does get better near the endgame, the plot is often considered to be one of the weaker ones in the series.
  • The original game's Final Boss plays out almost identically to that of Persona 4 (the party fights a god born from the collective unconscious who was disguised as someone Beneath Suspicion and secretly behind everything, get wiped out when it looks like they've won, then the power of the Social Links/Confidants allows the protagonist to summon their ultimate Persona and turn the tables with a unique attack), just on a much grander scale. Because of this, some fans prefer the new 3rd Semester final boss in Royal.
• Common Knowledge:
  • It is commonly believed that Kaneshiro is a Yakuza boss. He is never referred to as such, even in the Japanese version. He is actually based on Hangure, less organized, younger crime groups filling the void of the Yakuza.
  • Due to his status as a Base-Breaking Character whose actions are often misinterpreted, Akechi gets a lot of this:
    • It's often claimed that Akechi isn't a Phantom Thief, which was likely started due to his Guest-Star Party Member status in the original game, the overblown hatred towards him from Western fans as well as him often being absent from multiple crossovers including Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, with this claim often being parroted by those familiar with Persona 5 through the latter. This is despite Atlus listing him in popularity polls alongside the Phantom Thieves, as well as promotional material for the game's Updated Re-release outright listing him as a member.
    • A very persistent belief among those who hate Akechi is the apparent idea that the Phantom Thieves (particularly Futaba and Haru) forgave him for killing numerous people, including Futaba's mom and Haru's dad. No such scene actually exists in the final game; the closest Akechi gets to forgiveness is sympathy over his circumstances in life, most of the thieves are clearly uneasy about working with him in the third semester, and Haru outright says she will never forgive him. In fact, when playing Tycoon in the Thieves' Den, Haru and Futaba will never join if Akechi is also playing.
    • One frequent misconception is psychotic breakdowns and mental shutdowns are the same and Akechi killed everyone Shido sent him to, leading to a body count in the hundreds or even thousands. In actuality, though the game doesn't explain it in detail, they are different methods altogether: psychotic breakdowns merely cause the victim to go insane for a short time but otherwise leaves them alive, while mental shutdowns usually (but not always, since the end of Ohya's confidant has her journalist friend surviving one, and the train conductor at the beginning of the game survives as well) result in the victim's death. Thus, while Akechi does have a noticeable body count, it's very unlikely that he killed everyone who suffered from either. ^note At most, the shutdowns can lead to a person's death, as seen with Wakaba throwing herself in front of a moving car and Kobayakawa standing in the middle of the road, where he gets hit by a truck. When Okumura suffered a mental shutdown, he suffered a heart attack caused by the stress of said shutdown.
  • A common misconception among the game's numerous Fanwork-Only Fans is Sojiro's apparent opposition to Joker and Futaba dating, ignoring the fact that he immediately backtracks on this.
  • Fan guides and word of mouth tend to pass around the requirement to unlock the third semester in Royal being maxed out Justice, Faith, and Councillor Confidants. Only the lattermost Confidant is required. The other two will unlock additional content specific to the respective Confidants. They also tend to fail to explain that one of the third-tier Personas requires certain dialogue choices to be picked, assuming that it will unlock the same way as the others.
  • It's often said that Hifumi was supposed to be a Phantom Thief, but this was never the case; rather, her character design was recycled from a scrapped character who was supposed to be a Phantom Thief.
  • Many state that Morgana leaving the Phantom Thieves was because Ryuji called him "useless", even indicating that he can hurl insults, but can't handle being insulted himself. However, Ryuji referred to him as useless quite some time prior to the event with Morgana arguing back, like they're wont to do. Morgana's whole issue leading to the Okumura arc was him feeling like he's losing his place and being overshadowed by Makoto and Futaba (especially Futaba), essentially experiencing depression. Morgana only leaves because the Phantom Thieves are hesitant to go after Okumura. Ryuji doesn't even insult Morgana in the cutscene where he leaves.
  • Many Western fans commonly believe that Ryuji isn't well-loved in the Eastern fanbase because he usually ranks at the bottom in official character surveys conducted in Japan, and Southeast Asia, in addition to his loud, and extroverted personality being perceived as rude, and annoying in these regions. However, popularity polls aren't tiers from beloved to hated. They're all about fans voting for their single favorite character. Therefore, Ryuji scoring at the bottom indicates, that he's the majority's second favorite rather than their personal number one.

• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • In the original version of the game, the most commonly suggested Confidants to max out on a first playthrough for gameplay benefits (excluding your party members) were Hifumi, Kawakami, Mishima, and Chihaya, all because of the incredible good skills and bonuses one gets from their Confidants^{Click here for details}Hifumi's abilities made combat so much easier thanks to Baton passes, ability to swap out party members in battle, and an easier way of escaping battle. Kawakami provided ways to save time by having her cook, clean, or prep tools for you and do various activities in class, on top of later giving you the means of going into Palaces/Mementos and still do night activities. Mishima flat out gives huge EXP bonuses and is easy to max out. Chihaya provides abilities that greatly help on a second playthrough but her abilities also help get other Confidants leveled or help you get more money. With Royal changing up some of the core gameplay elements like Baton pass, Hifumi is often replaced with Maruki due to the new abilities he gives you and you must max his Confidant to gain access to the new scenario, but Hifumi remains a highly ranked character still.
  • The player is given four party slots to work with. The player Can't Drop the Hero with Joker, so that's one. At least one of the other three slots is going to be either Morgana or Makoto, who are the healers of the group. The third is probably going to be Ryuji, since he's the Mighty Glacier of the group with good physical skills, and there aren't many Shadows who use wind-based attacks. That leaves the fourth slot for the player's personal choice of Joker's Love Interest or fulfilling some other role that Joker would have a hard time covering on his own.
  • A common endgame team is Ann, Makoto, and Ryuji for their utility against powerful enemies, especially bosses. Ann can learn two stacking passives to increase her fire damage in addition to a move to increase her next magic attack's damage by more than double, making her a valuable magic attacker; her More Dakka gun attack also strikes a good balance between damage and capacity. Ryuji meanwhile learns some of the best physical skills in the game, can buff the party's attack, and learns a physical equivalent to Ann's magic charging move, making him the most powerful physical attacker besides possibly Joker. Makoto comes with both a defense buff for the party and a spell capable of healing the party to their maximum HP, allowing her to keep the party alive while everyone else focuses on offense.
  • One of the more popular team combinations for the Third Semester in Royal is Makoto, Akechi and Kasumi. Both Akechi and Kasumi are likely to be used because they're introduced near the tail end of the game (meaning there's very little opportunity to use them otherwise) and have a wide array of powerful physical skills and utilities (Akechi can lower particularly troublesome enemies' stats while Kasumi can boost the team's critical hit rate), but are Glass Cannons due to said skills' high HP cost and their relative fragility - Makoto fixes this problem by being able to heal the entire team and boost their defenses when necessary, letting the former two focus on pure offense.
• Complete Monster: While Yaldabaoth may have set the plot in motion, these two villains prove that Humans Are the Real Monsters:
  • Masayoshi Shido is behind the atrocities of the game, profiting off the other villains. Using his abandoned and illegitimate son, Goro Akechi, Shido has him assassinate both his enemies and allies who have outlived their usefulness to work his way up to becoming Prime Minister of Japan. Stealing the research of Wakaba Isshiki before having her killed, Shido also uses his influence to ruin peoples' lives, driving Isshiki's daughter into depression and getting Joker placed on probation for trying to stop Shido from harassing a woman. Using Akechi as a mole within the Phantom Thieves, Shido plans to have them arrested for getting in his way and for the Protagonist to be tortured and murdered. After Akechi is defeated by the Thieves, Shido is revealed to be planning to dispose of his son, and pins his own crimes on him after killing the mentally unstable boy. When defeated, Shido's final action is to destroy his own Palace in an attempt to take the Thieves down with him. While Shido claims to be acting for Japan's greater interests, in reality he values only power and glory for himself.
  • Suguru Kamoshida is a gym coach and a dangerous sexual predator. Protected by the school administration due to his past fame as an Olympic gold medalist, Kamoshida perversely extorts sexual favors from his female students. He also forces his male students into brutal training regimes and often beats them, resulting in students of both genders living in constant fear of him. Seeking to shut down the track team, Kamoshida provokes their star athlete, Ryuji Sakamotom into punching him and breaks the boy's leg in "self-defense". When his "favorite" victim, Ann Takamaki, refuses to sleep with him, Kamoshida rapes her best friend Shiho Suzui in petty vengeance, resulting in Shiho attempting suicide. While only a minor threat in the grand scheme of the plot, Kamoshida's heart is among the most vile stolen by the Phantom Thieves.
• Contested Sequel: The game is praised for its many gameplay improvements, pacing and characters, creative dungeon design, and even its Darker and Edgier tone. Persona 5 is also the single best-selling title in the entire Shin Megami Tensei series, with over two million copies sold. As a result, with it came a huge Newbie Boom that has led to heavy debates about whether or not the game is a worthy successor to Persona 3 and Persona 4.
  • Fans of this game prefer its more polished game mechanics, proper cutscenes, a much larger overworld with more stuff to do, characters and narrative threads that are more relatable, a protagonist that's not just a wooden puppet sitting on the sidelines, better pacing in the main story, actual dungeon designs, and a soundtrack that highlights the best aesthetics of previous games in the franchise. Persona 3 fans, however, claim that its mechanics aren't as polished and that the Character Development works better in the narrative than this game, as well as the final arc having more payoff.
  • Your preference for Persona 4 or Persona 5 will mostly come down to one question: which game suffered more from Hype Backlash? Those who prefer Persona 5 believe the story of Persona 4 suffered from serious pacing issues; comedy scenes that were dragged out, mean-spirited, and superfluous; and characters playing Hot Potato with the Idiot Ball. Those who prefer Persona 4 think the story of Persona 5 was just as bad in these regards, with lore details that aren't fully explored, weird comedic moments that do nothing for the plot, and drama dragging the already long storyline down to a crawl (some of these issues would be addressed in Persona 5 Royal, to varying degrees of success). This rivalry would only heat up even more in 2020 when Persona 4's own, Updated Re-release, Persona 4 Golden, was ported to Steam only a few months after the release of Royal (which took another two years to arrive on Steam).
• Continuity Lock-Out:
  • While the game is mostly standalone with a few nods to previous games in the series, one plot point, the resolution of Futaba's Palace by accepting her Shadow, might fly over the heads of people who haven't played Persona 4, in which a major theme is that a person gains a Persona by meeting and accepting their Shadow.
  • The reveal that Igor is the Greater-Scope Villain in disguise, as well as much of the Foreshadowing leading up to it, loses a lot of its impact if you haven't played any other Persona games beforehand.
• Crack Pairing: Akechi and Haru sometimes get paired together by fans who pair Joker with other characters, in part due to both of them being celebrities and both of them having Archnemesis Dads, even though Akechi murdered Haru's father, resulting in her brief Heroic BSoD, and Haru makes it explicit during the confrontation with Akechi in Shido's Palace that she can't forgive him for it. The fact that she says she still understands him and she'll never forgive Shido even more for actually ordering the murder in the first place (and planned to get rid of Akechi anyway) wouldn't be enough, either.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • This little exchange if you went down the romance route with Kawakami:
    Kawakami: "I'm a teacher… and you're my student."
    Joker: "That's the best part."
  • Literally anything involving the Camp Gay duo that you meet initially in Shinjuku. It may be messed up of Joker and Morgana to leave Ryuji behind, but the anime adaptation really crosses the line when Blooming Villain plays in the background as they show up!
  • The protagonist being beaten up after Valentines Day for two-timing any of the girls he's dated can become this. Two-timing just a few of them leads to an uncomfortable case of Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male (especially given the possibility that he wasn't cheating on any of them that day but just hanging out with Ryuji), but eight or nine of them (or ten in Royal)? Hilarious, and generally considered completely fair.

D

• Demonic Spiders: Bear in mind that there's no need to go out of your way to kill these enemies — if you can knock them down to initiate a Hold Up, you can negotiate to quickly end the battle and minimize losses. Assuming you get to knock them down quickly.
  • Any enemy that's immune to both Physical and Gun skills is this, since you'll essentially be unable to damage it without expending SP. Girimehkala in the Space Station especially stands out, since his only weakness, Bless, is an element that only Joker can use at the time you first encounter him.
  • Speaking of enemies immune to both Physical and Gun skills, Arahabaki also found in the Space Station qualifies. While it is weak to the element used by the newest party member you will have when you encounter them and it's not that high leveled, it knows two moves that more than make up for it: Makarakarn and Abysmal Surge. Makarakarn allows it to repel 1 magic attack, making it temporarily immune to everything except Almighty, which uses large amounts of SP. And then there is Abysmal Surge, which can cause Despair on the whole party, which makes them unable to move AND instantly kills them after 3 turns have passed. If your entire team is suffering Despair, it's game over. And they will spam it if Makarakarn in already in effect.
  • The Archangels in Kamoshida's Palace are your first wake-up call that you don't want to mess with red Shadows. They're at Lv 16, much higher than the player is expected to fight Kamoshida himself at, and can use an insanely powerful Makouha and strong multi-target physical attacks which can cause a Total Party Kill if you let it get a turn. It's weak to lightning and darkness, but they show up late into the dungeon when the player is likely to be running low on SP.
  • Anubis in the Pyramid is about 10 levels higher than Joker by the time you run into him for the first time, and he comes packed with several instakill spells (which he will likely use if you ambush him). He also has no weaknesses, meaning you need to rely on crits to get a Hold Up, and his level advantage means he can generally be expected to survive an Ambush and then retaliate with a vengeance. To top it all off, in the later areas of the stage, you can run into two or three at the same time. Downplayed in Royal where they still have a large amount of health and no weaknesses, but their instakill spells come after a turn of them "tipping their scales" meaning you have enough time to either use a skill like Dormina or Makajama to incapacitate them before they attack, or guard to make sure that the attack will fail to kill you and your team.
  • Dionysus in the final dungeon knows Thermopylae, a full-party Heat Riser that only works when surrounded. It's a Useless Useful Spell in your hands since you generally want to avoid being surrounded, but since a player is likely to be Ambushing almost all enemy encounters at this point in the game, Dionysus will be able to use the move most of the time. And Dionysus has no weaknesses, so they get quite a lot of use out of Thermopylae.
  • Also in the final dungeon, Nebiros. One of the few basic enemies in the game to have Brain Jack, the full-party hitting Brainwash spell. This late into the game, Ann, Makoto, and Morgana will all have full healing spells, and Joker likely will too, meaning Brainwash will lengthen the fight dramatically. And if you've been leveling Futaba's Confidant, Ultra Charge can spell a Game Over if brainwashed characters attack Joker. Nebiros are only weak to Bless, a skill that only Joker has access to, and often show up in groups along with the aforementioned Dionysus. In a dungeon with only two save points, random deaths due to brainwash are very punishing.
  • Following these, any enemy that has zero weaknesses. Not necessarily because of difficulty, but more because of the added effort needed to take them down may force you to use more resources than normal since it limits your options: either try to bolster critical hit chances, hope a Bullet Hail is triggered (which will cut enemy HP to nearly 50%), gamble on insta-kills, maximizing status ailments (to aim for Technicals), or just trying to "brute force" them into submission. This only really gets bad at higher levels, where this can make otherwise quick encounters into grueling battles of attrition if the player isn't ready.
    • Onis in Kaneshiro's Palace are the first such enemies you encounter, on top of resisting Physical and Gun attacks and possessing the hard-hitting Rampage to damage everyone, which is also their only attack besides regular melee attacks, making them a massive chore to take down.
  • The Fafnir in Maruki's Palace are the very definer of this trope, basically combining a lack of weaknesses, elite-tier stats and moves as well as outright repelling Gun and Physical, the only way to ever down any enemy without weaknesses and effectively preventing any form of negotiation bar Down Shot, Position Hack or abusing the buffed Technicals, essentially punishing players who have neglected Technicals this far into the game. Fortunately, they only appear in red Shadows, so it is advised to avoid any red shadows when exploring it. If you can somehow negotiate with them to let them join your side however, they become a highly useful persona due to having the same resistances and useful moves as the enemy variant.
• Designated Hero: Morgana, being a Jerk with a Heart of Gold can come off as this, especially before his character development; he outright claims to only be using the Phantom Thieves, and tends to tease Ryuji a lot, which, while potentially meant as friendly ribbing, comes off as straight up bullying to some.
• Designated Monkey:
  • Ryuji can come off as this. While the treatment he receives from his team mates are most likely meant to be only friendly ribbing, some see this as straight up bullying. Thus the plot of Ryuji not realizing that the comments he makes genuinely upset Morgana to the point that Morgana tries to leave the Phantom Thieves completely and being forced to apologize can be seen as a weird Double Standard considering that Morgana never once gets called out for his treatment of Ryuji. And finally, there is also at the end of Shido's Palace where he gets beaten up by the girls of the team while the boys do nothing to stop them even though he had just saved everyone just moments ago, and they all proceed to leave him out cold on the streets whilst completely forgetting about his near-Heroic Sacrifice (and it's all Played for Laughs).
  • By way of Gameplay and Story Segregation, Mishima can come across as such. Initially, him being a Butt-Monkey is played off as retribution for him leaking the protagonist's background files, even if it was through being blackmailed by Kamoshida into doing so. However, after the Phan-Site gets launched, Mishima is subsequently treated as The Friend Nobody Likes who's little more than a Heroic Wannabe riding the Phantom Thieves' coattails. While this makes sense in the context of his Confidant, which involves him undergoing Character Development to put his selfish desires behind and become a backer of the Phantom Thieves who doesn't need to make a name for himself, the problem is that his Confidant can be completed relatively early on into the story, which makes later outings of him as a Butt-Monkey come across as undeserved when he's already learned to become a better person.
• Diagnosed by the Audience:
  • Futaba definitely has multiple in her sleeve.
    • Though her change of heart helps her overcome this gradually, her auditory and visual hallucinations, paranoia, and suicidal ideation are highly suggestive of PTSD resulting from her mother's death.
    • Many of the traits that make her socially awkward — difficulty with interpersonal interaction (including avoidance, rapid exhaustion, and an emphasis on 'scripts' including lots of catch-phrases and pop-culture references), a tendency to become hyper-fixated, a narrow strait of interests, a tendency to not make eye contact when speaking, attempting to categorize every part of her life by a logical system — look a lot like those associated with autism spectrum disorders. Beyond social awkwardness, she is audibly startled by thunder just before she first encounters the Phantom Thieves in person, suggesting she can't handle unexpected loud sounds, which is also common for autistic people. Erica Lindbeck has gone on record saying that she played Futaba as if she might have been on the spectrum.
    • Even after her change of heart, Futaba continues to display traits typically associated with Agoraphobia, a severe Anxiety-Disorder. Agoraphobia can lead to an individual suffering a panic attack if they are placed in what they perceive as a stressful situation and lead to avoidance behavior. Of course, this would be incredibly difficult to overcome after two years, especially for an autistic girl recovering from PTSD who just had her entire daily routine upended (even if it was at her own request).
  • Yusuke's focus on art is single-minded to the point of excluding nearly everything else in life (he is notably extremely frugal with money in order to buy art supplies), and he sometimes has difficulty immediately understanding and recognizing social rules and cues. In one Royal Mementos skit, he also notes that he tends to only wear clothes he's used to. It should also be noted that he's the first Thief to truly make headway in bonding with Futaba, which could be attributed to him having an easier time understanding a fellow autistic person's quirks. Unlike Futaba, who is almost deliberately characterized as someone on the spectrum, a lot of these aspects of Yusuke are Played for Laughs, following the standard convention of eccentric artists.
  • Sumire has something very wrong with her mind, so much so that she ended up needing a therapist to mentally reprogram her just to get through the day. Even way before she led to her sister's death by accident, she already displayed glaring signs of a major depressive disorder — namely suicidal ideation, quick fatigue, and constant feelings of self-worthlessness. Despite the fact that she recovers somewhat near the end of the game, she's still naturally downcast and withdrawn. Maruki messing with her cognition also gives her something akin to Disassociative Identity Disorder, there being a definite gap between the personalities of Kasumi and Sumire that are constantly affecting each other subconsciously. She also becomes very dependant on Joker's reassurance and judgement very early-on in their friendship, and she gets very anxious at the very idea that she could make a mistake, even with minor things; this, combined with her inheriting Kasumi's superstitions, makes her come across like she could have an anxiety disorder of some kind, such as OCD or General Anxiety.
• Die for Our Ship: There's a fair amount of Joker/Makoto and Joker/Futaba fans who outright despise Akechi due to his fondness for Joker, Joker/Akechi being a very popular pairing in its own right, and Akechi being responsible for the mental shutdown and psychotic breakdown incidents, as well as killing Joker in the bad ending. This results in Akechi having his Ax-Crazy traits ramped up and being turned into a psychopath who outright despises Joker and/or his partner, with his demonized personality used to justify killing him off or portraying his death in Shido's Palace as a good thing.
• Disappointing Last Level: The vanilla endgame runs into this territory in some regards:
  • The seventh dungeon is extremely long, to the point of being draining. The main gimmick of the dungeon is puzzles that involve turning into mice and pressing switches to continue forward, and they become very tedious and easily outstay their welcome. The dungeon also has at least five mini bosses, then a showdown with The Dragon, culminating in a fight with the Big Bad. Unfortunately, the Big Bad boss fight has effectively five phases to go through.
  • The final dungeon is Mementos, though if the player has been making regular trips throughout the game, then it won't be too bad. The Mementos Depths, on the other hand, is full of uninspired and easy yet time-consuming and poorly-justified Hamiltonian Path puzzles with only two save points in the entire area (making death a very steep penalty). The final sequence is just a boss rush of four archangels and then the two phase final boss fight. At this point, from the seventh dungeon and onward, that's around a dozen bosses to fight before reaching the end, with some of them being multiple phases.
• Draco in Leather Pants: The Arc Villain of Royal's Third Semester, Takuto Maruki, gets this reaction from a section of the fanbase who don't understand why the thieves wouldn't want to live in a perfect reality with everything they could ever want, and even go as far as to demonize them for trying to stop him. While he is presented as a sympathetic Anti-Villain, some fans go as far as to ignore his more morally objectionable actions like driving Sumire insane and using her as a meatshield, trying to use her and Akechi as bargaining chips against Joker, or the fact his perfect reality would essentially brainwash everyone (including the aforementioned Akechi and Sumire to an unsettling degree) into acting as he wanted them to with no free will of their own; something no different from what Yaldabaoth or EMMA tried to do.

E

• Ending Fatigue:
  • Some criticize the vanilla ending of the game as such. After seemingly resolving all loose ends with the defeat of Black Mask and the Big Bad, the game suddenly shifts to two final dungeons and a long-drawn battle with The Man Behind the Man. The first such dungeon also has only two save rooms — in the middle, and at the end — and the second dungeon only allows saving at the beginning area, as opposed to after a large Info Dump, though you can quick-travel from the second dungeon's end back to where the Velvet Room is, if you need healing/to save.
  • Also during the final arc of the vanilla game, after the Phantom Thieves are erased from existence, you go around finding your teammates once again, reaffirming their faith in what they do and how they can fix society together, which gets diminished by the fact that you do this for every single teammate individually except Morgana, and each time it's the exact same "character feels down, pick any choice from a couple dialogue trees, and they get back up with determination". The first one feels awesome, but since they're all located right next to each other with no gameplay distractions between them, the impact of these scenes quickly gets undermined by their rapid-fire nature. If you happen to talk to Ann last of the group — which is very likely, since she's the furthest away from your starting point (alongside Haru) — you get this line when she responds to Lavenza calling out to you:
    Ann: What was voice?
• Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: While this doesn't apply to the base game, many fans seem to feel this way about the added Third Semester content in Royal. From a story perspective, Maruki is lauded as one of the game's best villains, Yoshizawa makes for a great narrative addition, and Akechi ends up getting the Character Development many felt as though he lacked in the vanilla game. From a gameplay perspective, on the other hand, most of the Third Semester's content is crammed into a one-and-a-half month timeframe, which is significantly short by the game's standards, allowing for little to no breathing room to collectively finish Yoshizawa's Confidant in addition to other leftover Confidants and complete Maruki's Palace. The fact that Akechi and Yoshizawa's Tier-Three Personas are relegated to being 11th-Hour Superpowers that can only be used against the Final Boss further adds to the fan perception that the Third Semester wasn't well-thought out in terms of proper gameplay integration.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Tae Takemi became an instant hit when she was unveiled as part of the Cooperation cast, simply thanks to her bizarre behavior and excellent design. Once the game was released proper, Takemi continued to garner praise for her sympathetic backstory and for offering one of the steamier Did They or Didn't They? Rank 10 scenes in the franchise.
  • Hifumi Togo has a large fan following, with many people wishing she had been a playable character. It helps that she has one of the most useful Confidant gameplay bonuses, allowing party members to swap out mid-battle.
  • In a game full of Adults Are Useless or Adults are Bastards; Toranosuke Yoshida is a refreshing relief with a heartwarming S.Link story about the difficulties of redemption. He's one of the few adults who admits his wrongdoing after a major scandal (and laments it), and has his own change of heart. Yet despite the past, he strives to better himself and tries to fight for the people. The conclusion of his S.Link is also a wonderful sight to behold and his Confidant abilities are some of the most helpful in the game.
  • Munehisa Iwai won himself many fans due to his interesting backstory, Vitriolic Best Buds dynamic with Joker, and his genuine desire to become a good father for his adopted son.
  • Shinya gets this because of his cute little brother relationship with Joker, his sharp tongue, and for his "Get Smoked" hat.
  • Sojiro is fairly popular, due to having some of Dojima's better qualities as a Parental Substitute without his more controversial decisions.
  • "Floral Pants Man," a nameless character who shows up to cheer for the Phantom Thieves in the final battle if you didn't complete Mishima's confidant.
  • Lala Escargot, the owner of Crossroads. More than a few people have lamented that she wasn't a Confidant, due to her personality, being a good boss who looks out for the MC, as well as being a Gonk person that's not a complete Jerkass like the ones in Persona 4. She placed first in the NPC popularity poll in Japan.
  • Shiho due to her kind nature (being one of the first students to actually talk to Joker like a normal person, as well as being best friends with Ann without bringing up Ann's mixed ancestry), her Woobie status and the impact she has on the story. Many fans hoped Shiho would get her own Confidant role in Royal.
  • Despite being a pretty minor character, Hiraguchi (Sumire's coach) is quite popular with fans due to her attractive design, tough but caring personality that helps add to Sumire's Character Development (which also acts as a subtle but effective contrast to how Maruki tried to help her), and being another example of a helpful adult in a game with very few of them.
• Epileptic Trees:
  • The return of Nyarlathotep is a perennial Epileptic Tree that happens with each new Persona game. But when a new character was revealed to have the Necronomicon as a Persona, that speculation gained a few more teeth. Especially since Word of God referred to Futaba being a character critical to the narrative. He doesn't come back. This theory has gained new fuel with the release of Kasumi's Character Introduction trailer for Persona 5 Royal, which has her fighting against Biyarky, one of Nyarlathotep's servants who hasn't appeared in a MegaTen game since their debut in Persona 2: Eternal Punishment. A later trailer would then also show them fighting Hastur, another Persona 2 exclusive demon. He still doesn't return. While the final boss is Azathoth, the "father" of Nyarlathotep, its existence appears to be metaphorical and has seemingly nothing to do with him.
  • The Arcana of the main cast was, as usual, home to intense speculation from many fans before release.
  • The identity of the traitor was a magnet for fan speculation, with the one most suspected of being Goro Akechi due to how little was revealed of him and one of the revealed shots revealing that, while he appears to be a fanboy of the Phantom Thieves, he finds their methods unacceptable. It turns out to be him after all, despite him being the obvious choice, though it does serve to divert attention from the game's second big bad.
  • Goro Akechi's ultimate fate. Is he dead or still alive? We Never Found the Body, so will he return in a future spinoff? Suffice to say, he's gained quite a lot of debate and speculation in the fanbase. The August 2nd livestream implies that Akechi survives the events of Shido's Palace, however Royal is a little more vague in regards to what actually happens. While Maruki claims that the Akechi that joins the party during the third term events is a cognition made by him and the real Akechi died in Shido's Palace, some people believe that he's lying through his teeth in order to force the protagonist into accepting his reality, as his statement contradicts previous facts. The True Ending for Royal shows a brief glimpse of Akechi (or at least someone resembling him) walking in the background before Joker leaves, adding further confusion. An unused scene was later found and confirming Akechi was meant to be alive due to the scene being meant to be played when the confidants try to free Joker from prison after reality is restored. The fact that Akechi did not disappear after Maruki told Joker that Akechi is Joker's wish on February 2nd, when Futaba and Haru's respective parents, who were brought back to life by Maruki's actualization, disappeared after Futaba and Haru respectively chose to rebel and reject Maruki's reality, gave some proof that Akechi is at least alive in some level.
  • A popular theory for Royal was that Kasumi will have some sort of connection with Akechi, due to their similar personalities and shared speciality in Bless skills, usually tying into the Lotus-Eater Machine theory. It turns out that outside these similarities and Akechi knowing her father due to him being a talk show host, they have no history with each other.
  • Another theory for Royal was that Tokyo is under the effects of a Lotus-Eater Machine. The first promo shots showed that Wakaba Ishiki is alive and Morgana supposedly has a human body. Ryuji's new character introduction for Royal throws a bit of a curveball as well near the end where he's talking to Nakaoka and Takeishi. Nakaoka is shocked to learn that Ryuji has been scouted by a university while the latter mentions that he was the champion of the National Convention, despite the fact that Ryuji's leg was broken by Kamoshida and ended his career. Ann's character trailer adds further fuel to the fire by revealing that Shiho is in Tokyo, very healthy and lacking bandages around her busted leg and seemingly very cheerful.^note The penultimate rank of Ann's Confidant reveals that Shiho's parents have decided to have her transfer schools and has to leave Tokyo Yusuke's trailer only seems to make the theory more credible as he shows Joker the Sayuri at an art museum... and by Sayuri, we mean the genuine article — the self portrait created by Yusuke's mother before she died and not the altered one that was claimed by Madarame as his masterpiece. Haru's trailer all but confirms this could indeed be the case. Why? Kunikazu Okumura is alive.
    • Building off this idea, many began wondering what roles Akechi and Kasumi play in this hypothetical Lotus-Eater Machine.
    • Many believe that Akechi himself is a product of it, being Joker's desire after Akechi's Redemption Equals Death moment. Others believe Royal will let Akechi be Spared by the Adaptation, and that he too is aware something is wrong, based on his questioning Joker if he'll continue to "live in this reality", and that the reason the two are aware of something being off is because they're both the Wild Card.
    • With Kasumi, many wonder if she is the cause of the Lotus-Eater Machine, based on the fact Joker hears her voice in the first trailer say "I'm responsible... for crushing that dream." as he stands amidst a crowd of people frozen in place, implying whatever is going on is her fault. It turns out that the scene itself is a Red Herring and "Kasumi" is not Kasumi, but her introverted and depressed sister Sumire Yoshizawa. And yes, she did crush a dream...she tried to run away from her sister, the real Kasumi out of jealousy for her uncontested gymnastic talent and accidentally got her to become roadkill as Kasumi protected her from being ran over by a car, so the dream of the siblings go to internationals as a duo can no longer be fulfilled.
    • And it turns out that this theory is real, although they all failed to catch the real culprit. It's actually Takuto Maruki being controlled by a rogue persona.
  • Of all things, even the Fictional Game Within a Game, Featherman Seeker, a new minigame added to Royal for the retro game console, brings some to the table. More specifically, the popular theory is that it relates to Akechi's backstory and the lead up to his sacrifice in Shido's Palace.
    • Firstly, Alya, known initially as Osagiri, is believed to be either Shido, Yaldabaoth, or even Wakaba Isshiki of all people, or some sort of mixture of two of them, if not all three. In Wakaba's case, this could either her being forced to do so, or she was Evil All Along (at least a downplayed case). She has the same speech patterns as Wakaba (in the Japanese version), desires an "executive seat" like Shido desires to become Prime Minister of Japan, and gets Gray Pigeon to awaken to his full power as both Shido and Yaldabaoth claim to have. In the case of Yaldabaoth (or Shido), there's also the fact that Osagiri doesn't exist as a separate entity, and Gray Pigeon's mentor is Alya using an incarnation all along, most likely alluding to Yaldabaoth playing mentor while taking the form of "Igor". Just like Yaldabaoth using Joker to remove the Conspiracy that he sets up and conducts, Alya also uses Gray Pidgeon to defeat her own Zylam brethren. Both Osagiri and Alya also act as Meaningful Names; Osagiri is "great thick fog" in Japanese, which might function as a Call-Back to Persona 4 where the Sagiri were the avatars of Izanami; to put in another way in this context, it can mean "great avatar of God," referring to Shido or the false Igor being fronts of Yaldabaoth. Alya is the Arabic name of the Theta Serpentis star, and Yaldabaoth, in traditional Gnosis, is often depicted as a snake with a lion's head. Samael is also often depicted as a snake in Shin Megami Tensei and Shido's Animal Motifs are those of lions, as well as being the Demiurge/Yaldabaoth's right hand.
    • Next, Gray Pigeon is believed to be an allegory for Goro Akechi himself, helped by him wearing a mostly gray outfit in the Featherman DLC. He is trained to fight "Aberrants", which may represent him being trained for Metaverse trips to kill shadows and Shadow Selves, only for them to progress in difficulty when he fights the real deal. It turns out the whole process was to make him into an Aberrant, perhaps symbolic of how Akechi was molded into a serial assassin/instigator for Shido and Yaldabaoth's machinations, and him being an Abberant-killing Aberrant could reflect on how he served to eliminate those Shido/Yaldabaoth no longer found useful.
    • Another significant one is how Alya as "Osagiri" claims that Gray Pigeon has not fully awakened at the end of the second part, and how he manifests to a power that nobody else has at the end. Some believe this is symbolic of either Robin Hood or Loki being an Artificial Persona, or at least artificially awakened similar to Persona 2 and Persona 3, both of which featured unnatural Persona awakenings and their consequences as a plot point.
    • Finally, the final part of the minigame has heavy similarities to Akechi's sacrifice, with both Gray Pigeon and Akechi being told to off their partners (the Feathermen/Phantom Thieves) as a favor to their final enemy (Alya/cognitive Akechi), only for the former two to both sacrifice their lives to save the heroes. Even more, both of their leaders in particular are saddened by the sacrifice, wondering if they'll ever meet their lost friend again. Then there's also Alya being Gray Pigeon's mentor, which just like Yaldabaoth, imprisoned Akechi by sealing his fate to have him and the Phantom Thieves forced to dispatch one and the other as a part of "the game".
  • The registered domain names were a fuel for this in the fandom. Some eventually became actual products for P5R (Persona 5 Royal) and P5S (Persona 5 Strikers). However, a few remained complete mystery (P5B, P5M, P5U) and one was found to be suspended in around 2021 (P5AG), so fans began scrambling over what those initials are referring to, making up titles and genres along the way. With P5T joining in 2023 and being subjected with rumors of being tied to yet another spin-off (and one such rumor said it would not be a Fighting Game), fans got even more heated up in speculation (or made up silly names like Persona 5 Tennis), especially after it was moved into internal servers not long after. P5T was eventually revealed to be a spinoff called Persona 5 Tactica via Content Leak courtesy of accidental early post on Atlus West's Instagram.
  • Some fans have theorized that the main characters have connections with other Persona and even Shin Megami Tensei games, such as Joker being Vincent and Catherine's son, Ryuji being the boy with a yellow shirt and Ann being Eriko Kirishima's daughter.
• Escapist Character: Unjust circumstances notwithstanding, Joker is a pretty awesome dude. He's a calm, cool, collected, magnetic, wisecracking Guile Hero who's always a step ahead of his enemies and prevails over his many trials with sheer style. He is capable of helping the people around him to much better lives, makes many fiercely loyal friends, and can even have a caring, supportive Love Interest by the end of the game. And of course, he even manages to expose and defeat the forces that unjustly framed him. A popularity poll in Southeast Asia named him the most popular character.

F

• Fan Nickname:
  • Joker: Chair-kun, Chairtagonist, Yosh-kun, Potter, Glasses-kun, Tuxedo Mask, Lelouch, Vincent, The Hamburglar, Nasty Crimeboy, Pego ^note A portmanteau of the words "Persona" and "go" (the number five in Japanese)
  • Morgana: Simpgana, The Cat^note After his overbearing lust for Ann and the resulting “cuck the cat” meme, respectively
  • Ann: Junko, Catherine.
  • Ryuji: Naruto, Owain, Broji.
  • Yusuke: Jun, Never Give In-Kun.
  • Makoto: Yas Queen!, Momkoto, Mamakoto, Midkoto^note Originally coined by her detractors describing what they perceive as a mediocre character before being used more generally both as a meme and to distinguish her from Makoto Yuki
  • Futaba: Inkling^note Funny enough, in the Persona 5 Spirit Board in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, the character fought representing her is an Orange Inkling Girl., Futab, Coffee Sis^note Used by fans of the character's friendship route in reference to Sojiro's "coffee dad" moniker
  • Haru: Forehead-chan, Fluff/Floof^note Due to her curly, fluffy hair, Cinnamon Bun^note After her sweet nature and penchant for agriculture
  • Maximum Phantom^note Funny enough, that nickname is also a combination of the names of Spider-Man's Maximum Spider and Albert Wesker's Phantom Dance, which itself was nicknamed Maximum Wesker due to its own resemblance to the aforementioned attack Spidey innovated. for this game's version of the All-Out Attack, for obvious reasons.
  • Akechi: Mike Wazowski,^note Due to him being visible but very obscured on all of the promotional ads for the various costume DLCs. You can see part of his arm and leg usually, but his face and the rest of his body is always covered. Not Ken, Seigi Pancake Lord (or simply just "Pancake" or "Pancake Boy"), Dark Knight for his second boss form, Light Yagami.
  • Kasumi: Ribbon-chan, Poniko^note a combination of the words ponytail and -ko, a common Japanese suffix for female names; not to be confused with the similarly nicknamed Yume Nikki character., Pyrrha, Info-chan, Wahsumi, Sumi^{note (spoilers)}A neutral nickname to get around spoiling her plotline, due to her real identity as Sumire Yoshizawa, the real Kasumi's sister, Kasumire^{note (spoilers)}Another neutral nickname, used to refer to the living sister in general without drawing confusion as to which one they are.
  • Maruki: Snacc Daddy, Salt Bae, The World^note  Mainly because of his attire when he summons Azathoth for the first time. This one in particular is rather amusing considering his dub actor also voiced Josuke Higashikata, the main protagonist of Diamond Is Unbreakable.
  • Kamoshida: Kamoshithead, for obvious reasons. Also Bad Touch Sensei.
  • Char for Masayoshi Shido, for his Shadow's outfit and his voice actor. "Char Armstrong" for his battle form.
  • Sojiro: Brojiro, Sojibro, ^note For both being the first adult Reasonable Authority Figure the protagonist encounters in the story, because he takes the protag under his wing in the cafe, and finally because he plays Shipper on Deck for the protagonist and whoever they choose as his love interest Coffee Dad
  • Kawakami: Kawamommy.
  • Toranosuke Yoshida has been referred to as "Japanese Bernie Sanders".
  • Yabbadabbadoo is a common shorthand for the final boss Yaldabaoth as people struggle the pronounce the name. He is also called Yabbadabbadon't.
  • Joker, Akechi, and Kasumi are often referred to as the "Royal Trio" due to Akechi's increased prominence in Royal and well as Kasumi debuting in the same game, and the fact that all three are the primary playable characters for one day in Royal's third semester.
  • Fans refer to the missed deadline ending for the third semester in Royal as the "Sleeping Beauty ending" due to Joker being put into a literal sleep by Maruki at the ending much like the titular Sleeping Beauty was cursed to die but was softened to sleep for a century by the good fairies.
• Fan-Preferred Couple:
  • Similar to Yosuke and Chie before them, there's a number of fans who felt that Ryuji and Ann had great chemistry, and should've became an actual couple in the game. It was enough to start a rumor shortly after the game's initial release, which stated that if the player didn't romance Ann, she'd hook up with Ryuji. Even Ann's English voice actor thinks they're cute together.
    • Another Ann related pair has fans shipping her with Shiho, which gained steam as a pairing over the years due to their strong friendship and the Pseudo-Romantic Friendship subtext shared between each other. Shiho's words to Ann in her Rank 9 event sounds near similar to Shiho giving a love confession and Ann's wish during the third semester in Royal being a world where Shiho was never ruined by what Kamoshida had done to her and Shiho never moved away from Tokyo because of it supports this.
    • Ryuji's second-biggest shipping partner behind Ann would be Makoto, with many fans believing that their dichotomy of being a dumb guy and smart girl make for incredibly strong chemistry, coupled with the various moments in the game where Ryuji makes self-sacrifices for Makoto's sake. Their shippers only grew larger in numbers after Royal released, due to Makoto being the only girl to share a Showtime attack with Ryuji.
  • As far as same sex pairings go, Joker/Akechi is the undisputed fan-preferred gay ship for fanworks, due to their dynamic and Akechi's canonical affection towards Joker, which gets emphasized in the western release. The pairing receives tons of Fan Art and Doujinshi from fans, and has the most stories out of all of Joker's potential pairings on sites like Archive of Our Own. It even reached a point where official surveys have received comments from fans in both Japan and the west who wished Akechi was a romance option. Royal made the ship even more popular due to a combination of Akechi’s reworked confidant improving his character and how Akechi turned out to be Joker’s wish born out of Joker’s regret of not reaching out and saving Akechi in time during the third semester.
  • In the case of a girl/girl pairing, Makoto/Haru is certainly the most popular. Haru's Affectionate Nickname of "Mako-chan" for her fellow third year (and Makoto's flustered reaction to it) was enough to get shippers on deck, and their various interactions in the games (such as Haru saying she thinks Makoto "looks good in that biker gang outfit") and supplementary material only add fuel to the fire.
  • Yusuke and Futaba are another popular Beta Couple in fan works. Fans frequently interpret their Vitriolic Best Buds relationship as Belligerent Sexual Tension, and think their similar-but-distinct flavors of Cloudcuckoolander pair well together.
• Fan-Preferred Cut Content: Since the game has a lot of Dummied Out content, some of it naturally ends up getting this reaction.
  • Some unused events showed the Phantom Thieves having more hangout events in the late fall or winter. Some fans appreciate how the Slice of Life scenes help show the Phantom Thieves as True Companions, and like how they give more screentime to characters like Haru and Kasumi.
  • Originally, Royal would have had flashbacks in the Will Seed chambers showing a part of the Palace ruler's Start of Darkness, such as a scandal Kamoshida was involved in as an Olympian, or when Madarame let Yusuke's mother die. Some fans like these cut scenes for showing the Palace rulers' backstories in more depth, as opposed to the one-note villains they already were. This concept was instead implemented into Strikers for the Monarchs.
  • Also in Royal, during the third semester Joker's conversations with his fellow Thieves trying to make them realize they are living in an altered reality had cut voiced dialogue for each conversation. Said conversations also involved each companion getting angry at Joker's attempts to convince them that their reality is a lie. Some fans really prefer these versions of the scene as they are more dramatic than the final version where Joker vaguely tries to push them towards remembering. The cut dialogue also makes much more sense in context with the follow up individual apologies each companion gives Joker later on; they all act as though they betrayed Joker by choosing their fantasies over reality. This made much more sense in the context of them actively rejecting what Joker was trying to tell them.
  • The game originally had a "Distrust" mechanic for Confidants that's similar to the possibility of Reversing Social Links in previous games, thereby rendering them unavailable until the player reconciles with the person in question. Some people like the possibility of losing your Confidants' trust and think it would make your decisions with regards to Confidants matter more. However, since Reversing Social Links is a Scrappy Mechanic in many circles, other players are glad that it's completely gone from 5 after being much rarer in 4 (where there were only three instances in which it was possible), and/or believe that it wouldn't make sense for Confidants, which are business relationships as well as friendships.
  • Kasumi was supposedly intended to join the party much earlier than she does in the final version of Royal, as she has an unused animation of her sitting on Joker's bed that can only be seen if the game is hacked to let her be in the party at that point, implying she was meant to join the Thieves during either Futaba's, Okumura's or Sae's Palaces. Fans found this hypothetical scenario preferable to her treatment in the final game, where she's mostly irrelevant to the main story and only properly becomes playable right at the end of the game.
  • In Royal, there is unused but mostly completed data of Akechi having a Mementos Request during the Third semester involving a Diet Member and his illegitimate son. While the story starts out to be a parallel of Joker's situation with the illegitimate son being accused of a crime he did not commit, the ending of the request has The Reveal that the illegitimate son, the victim of this request, isn't innocent and he had been planning to take revenge against his father for killing his mother via his mother committing suicide, putting the story in a Bittersweet Ending and strong parallels to Akechi's situation instead. Fans lament that this was cut out from the final game due to the quest line leaning heavily on Grey-and-Gray Morality unlike the other Mementos Requests in the game, making it an unique contrast and a good way to challenge the other Phantom Thieves of their ideals, and how the quest line story gives some moments for Akechi to shine.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • Thanks to the Dueling Works status, Persona 5 fans and Final Fantasy XV ended up being at each other's throats, though this does mix in a bit with Friendly Rivalry, as liking both games isn't seen as a universal sin. It also helped that there was a large window between the release dates of the games.
    • With the worldwide release of Persona 5 Royal coming at the end of March 2020, the rivalry instead shifted over to Final Fantasy VII Remake due to the later game launching a mere 10 days later and both games being nominated for "Best RPG" at The Game Awards.
  • While the two fandoms are rather friendly, not all fans of Persona 5 and NieR: Automata get along. It all boils down to the fact that both were critically acclaimed JRPGs that came out in 2017 with many gamers already labeling both as "Game of the Year". Which game you like more all comes down to your gaming preferences. Those who just want a fun game with likable characters and a lot of heart and soul into it will most likely enjoy Persona 5 more. However, gamers who value narrative more than gameplay and want emotional catharsis from their games will most likely enjoy Nier: Automata more.
  • A rivalry with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild developed in late 2017, when the two games emerged as leading candidates for Game of the Year at the Golden Joysticks.
  • When NEO: The World Ends with You was first revealed, an offhanded comparison to Persona 5 caused both games' fandoms to tear into each other, with The World Ends with You fans angry over Persona 5 overshadowing the long awaited sequel, while Persona 5 fans were angry over being stereotyped as clueless in regards to other games and real life locations like Shibuya Crossing.
  • A rather nasty one developed with Xenoblade Chronicles 1 in 2020. Initially, it started out in between the releases of Personal 5 Royal and Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition, where fans would be arguing over which game was the better JRPG, though that calmed down for several months. However, after it was revealed that Persona 5 Royal was nominated for Best RPG at the Game Awards while Xenoblade wasn't, tensions immediately flared back up due to the bitterness of Xenoblade fans upset over not receiving recognition, with fans of both sides ragging on the other side. It could also be seen as an extension of the Console Wars, as Persona games mainly favor PlayStation platforms, while Xenoblade is outright owned by Nintendo.
• Fandom-Specific Plot:
  • Considering everything Joker goes through, the idea of exploring his true thoughts beyond the carefree troublemaker he presents himself as is a popular subject for fanworks. Some even go as far as to give him his own Palace!
  • A popular concept for fanfics is to have Joker go back in time via New Game Plus to Set Right What Once Went Wrong. These fics often act as Fix Fics for contentious elements of the story, doing things like saving Akechi from his presumed death and having later members like Haru and Kasumi join the party much earlier.
  • Some fics make Kaneshiro's gang, or even Kaneshiro personally, responsible for Makoto's father's death, in an attempt to give an otherwise Filler Villain more relevance.
  • Confidants and other supporting characters in P5 gaining Personas of their own and joining the Phantom Thieves frequently pops up in fan art and fan fiction. Two of the most popular candidates are Hifumi Togo (the Star Confidant, an ostracized shogi player attending the same school as Yusuke whose design evolved from a scrapped playable character) and Shiho Suzui.
  • Another common occurrence in P5 fiction is that the small, rural town Joker lived in before the events of the game is Inaba, the setting of Persona 4. This was a popular Fanon among fans for years and it was used frequently enough in fanfiction to have it's own tag in AO3 named "Persona 5 Protagonist is from Inaba".
  • Post-canon fanfics where Joker chose to stay in Tokyo instead of returning to his hometown, or later return to Tokyo and leaving his old hometown for good after he's done with high school are common. These often have Joker confronting his parents over his decision to leave and return to Tokyo and make his piece clear due to his growth and time in Tokyo making him feel like a Stranger in a Familiar Land in his hometown. A good number of fics make his parents either neglectful or outright abusive to justify the move. There are also variations of these stories where Joker has Good Parents or flawed but well-meaning parents, but they are rare. For stories where Joker has neglectful or abusive parents, the story will have Joker giving them a "The Reason You Suck" Speech and unfavorably compare them to his Family of Choice in Tokyo. Meanwhile, for stories where Joker has well-meaning, loving parents who try their best, Joker will be portrayed as feeling sorry to leave them for good, but everyone understands that it's what he has to do.
  • Due to the Shinjuku Creatures being so utterly hated by many fans, it's common for many fanwork adaptations of the game to have the infamous cutscene Adapted Out due to how out of place and disliked the scene was. Those that do include it either adapt it as a Take That, Scrappy! moment against the Shinjuku creatures and give them Adaptational Karma, or use it as a fuel for an accusation against Joker for hypocritically leaving Ryuji to his fate, with the latter variant often being included in stories adapting the Okumura Palace where it's Ryuji who leaves instead of Morgana.
    • Sugimura is also a target for Adaptational Karma, involving his Shadow being fought, less often, Mika gets this treatment.
  • Role Swap AU for the Akechi/Joker ship where Akechi becomes the leader of the Phantom thieves and Joker the detective prince and Shido's hitman assassin gather steam due to the two characters being narrative foils and give a look to how the two would be like in the other's shoes.
  • "Arcana Swap" AUs where all of the Phantom Thieves swap Arcanas (and thus, take on each others' roles) are popular to write about. Some authors take it a step further and swap around every single character associated with an Arcana, resulting in wildly different characterizations and interactions compared to canon.
  • Since the release of Royal, there are many fanfic plots that involve Joker preventing Kasumi's death. How this typically plays out is that Joker transfers to Tokyo around a month earlier than he does in the game. Around a week or two after moving into Leblanc, Sojiro sends Joker out on an errand. While he is out, he witnesses Sumire running into traffic with Kasumi chasing after her. Joker prevents Kasumi from going onto the road. While he saves Sumire from getting hit from an oncoming car, with the worst thing that happens to Joker usually being a couple of broken bones.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • Take any fictional (or real) villain from any medium, and you can be sure the Phantom Thieves will be there to change their heart.
  • After Royal, some fans have speculated on what the lives of the previous Persona parties would've been like under the 3rd semester's Lotus-Eater Machine.
  • Given that Joker is a silent protagonist in a game centered around social connections, it's not uncommon for fics to simply replay moments from the game with Joker (usually named Ren or Akira) as a fully-voiced participant. His characterization in these ranges from The Gadfly to Knight in Sour Armor.
• Fanon: Shared with the rest of the franchise.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Discounting the Fandom-Specific Plot that uses the scene they appear in as a plot point for the fanwork, most fans prefer to ignore the existence of the Shinjuku Creatures and opt them out if they are adapting a novelization of the game.
• Fashion-Victim Villain: As Palace rulers possess more severely-twisted desires, their Shadow Selves (and boss transformations) often have ridiculous outfits; showing the disconnect between one's public image and their warped mentality underneath along with how utterly pathetic they are deep down.
  • Shadow Kamoshida sports a fur-lined cape, a crown, a hot-pink speedo, and nothing else.
  • Shadow Madarame wears eye-searingly garish sparkling gold robes which, along with the red lipstick, make him look utterly revolting.
  • Shadow Kaneshiro morphs into a Hitler mustachioed, purple-skinned, human-housefly hybrid - with his Kansai swagger adapted into a bizarre New York gangster.
  • Shadow Okumura's look is a Raygun Gothic knockoff of Darth Vader’s suit; made ludicrous by his blue skin, fishbowl helmet, and a tinny muffled voice.
  • Royal addition: Maruki's white-suited Palace attire is fashionable, but his Boss Battle getup is decidedly not◊. The skin-tight garb includes a buttoned metallic thong, and a shield-shaped mask familiar to fans of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.
• Foe Yay Shipping:
  • Joker and Goro Akechi, obviously. Although it's mostly one-sided on Akechi's part.
    • Word of God states that they were designed to contrast like light and shadow. Akechi's thief outfit has similarities in design to Joker's, as well as opposite colors. Furthermore, their Dancing All Night DLC costumes pair well with each other.
    • After The Reveal, you find out that despite being responsible for the mental shutdown and psychotic breakdown incidents, Akechi has not lied to Joker about his feelings and his past.
    • During the infiltration of Shido's Palace, Akechi tells Joker that he admired Joker's prowess, and wishes he could have met him a few years earlier, before Akechi had gone on his Roaring Rampage of Revenge. Akechi further admits that they could have been good rivals, culminating in another rank up to his confidant link.
    • Not to mention Morgana reveals later that Akechi has a fondness for Joker, which also happened to be the one thing to drive Akechi over the edge as he was in denial over it. This resulted in quite a few fans thinking Akechi also had Tsundere traits.
    • Akechi's feelings for Joker are rather complicated. It is a mixture of jealousy, admiration, and fondness. Sometimes one feeling may override the others, jealousy being the dominant feeling in their last battle.
    • The even bigger reveal at the end is that both Joker and Akechi were chosen by the Big Bad, Yaldabaoth, and given powers, destined to fight against each other.
    • More fuel gets added to the fire in Royal in which during the winter term events, Maruki compares Joker's desire to seeing Akechi alive again to his own feelings towards his ex-girlfriend, and the P5R Official Complete guide mentioning that Akechi doesn't care about anyone other than Joker, even comparing the dynamics between the two and Kasumi as a Love Triangle of sorts. Akechi's navigator lines in the Third Semester lean into this when Joker's been struck with the Rage status; Akechi will comment that he kind of likes seeing him in that state, but it isn't him.
  • Akechi/Haru has cropped up a couple times, even though Akechi killed Haru's father and Haru explicitly refuses to forgive him for it. This is likely a result of both characters being popular celebrities with abusive fathers and a secret love of violence.
• Fountain of Memes:
  • Pretty much everything about Akechi has given way to some form of meme within the fanbase.
  • Morgana for his Memetic Troll status and the fact that many fans have taken to quoting his overworld and battle lines.
• Franchise Original Sin:
  • One of the biggest complaints about the game is that Morgana stops you from going out and doing whatever you want at night, making you go to sleep. Except this is not new for the series, just the first time another character is preventing you from going out. Even in Persona 3 and Persona 4, you are told that you can't go out at night numerous times. But there are two key differences: in those games, the narration usually just tells you that you feel too tired to go out, rather than a character feeling like an annoying, obstructive obstacle to your progress, and the game would generally give you both more advanced warning that your free time would be restricted and shorter periods of consecutive lost time slots less frequently.
  • Ryuji's Butt-Monkey status is the source of heated controversy in the fandom. This type of character was always a staple of the series, but both Junpei and Yosuke's treatment was far less contentious because of the story context surrounding it. Junpei was intentionally written as unlikable initially, but gradually develops into a more thoughtful, mature character, at which point his comic elements are heavily downplayed outside of spinoffs. His early Butt-Monkey moments make his later Character Development all the sweeter. Meanwhile, when Yosuke is the butt of a joke, he's usually done something to deserve it, such as being forcibly entered into a drag pageant after he signed the girls up to a beauty contest without their consent. By contrast Ryuji is one of the catalysts of the Phantom Thieves' formation, remains a likable character through the whole story, and was a victim of physical abuse in his past, making his status a lot harder to swallow for many fans. This is only controversial in the West though; his Butt-Monkey status isn't as disliked in the East, with Japanese fans viewing it as harmless.
  • When the announcement came that the Updated Re-release Persona 5: Royal would be released as a PlayStation 4 exclusive, more than a handful of fans and critics decried what they saw as Atlus' attempt to get people to pay for the same game again on the same console three years after release. What these people tend to forget is that this is, in fact, the second time that Atlus has done something like this. Persona 3 FES, an updated rerelease of Persona 3, was released in Japan in 2007 and 2008 for the US for the PlayStation 2 only a little more than a year after its initial release (or the same year as release in other territories like the EU and Australia), and with less substantial changes than the ones announced for Royal. What changed was the rise of Downloadable Content in The Seventh Generation of Console Video Games, a function the PlayStation 2 lacked. Most fans expected an update in the form of FES or Golden, but assumed it would be an Expansion Pack due to the expanse of technology.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • With NieR: Automata, another highly-anticipated Japanese developed game that's international release was around the same time. When Persona 5 came out internationally many were either finished with or wrapping up Nier: Automata.
  • Where Persona 4 has this with JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable, this game has it with Golden Wind. Not only are they both the fifth numbered installments in their respective series, both Persona 5 and Golden Wind involve a gang of criminals comprised of young outcasts who desire to better society. It also helps that Persona 5's flamboyance and flair for the dramatic, particularly its penchant for the Ass Kicking Pose, mixed with genuinely dark moments is very JoJo-esque.
  • The popularity of the game's disco-flavored acid jazz soundtrack has led to many Persona fans checking out other acts in the acid jazz genre. Jamiroquai, easily the most popular act in the genre, has particularly benefitted from Persona 5's re-popularization of acid jazz, helped by Shoji Meguro explicitly identifying the band as one of the soundtrack's key inspirations.
  • Also one with Pokémon Scarlet and Violet since the release of the remastered port of Royal, thanks to the incorporation of school life into the former and the bonding system reminds the latter of the Confidants. There used to be playful Reddit posts by fans of both that pretend a screenshot of SV is a screenshot of Royal. It also helps that both games feature a team of outcasts with flashy outfits (Team Star for Scarlet/Violet) with said groups having remarkable overlap in their individual characters, including an athlete with a delinquent-like appearance (Ryuji and Mela), a very attractive girl bullied for their looks (Ann and Eri), a flamboyant artist (Yusuke and Atticus), a student council president who "falls in" with their rebellious friends (Makoto and Giacomo), a rich heir with anger issues (Haru and Ortega), and a shut-in serving as the brains (Futaba and Cassiopeia/Penny). The fans also tend to compare Meowscarada, the magician cat mon, with Morgana, the cat creature representing the Magician arcana.
  • People who were fans of Codename: Kids Next Door have also taken a liking to the game, pointing out the similarities with both when it comes to the plot of taking on corrupt adults that want to make lives for the youth as terrible as possible. Villains such as Kamoshida or Kaneshiro wouldn't even seem out of place in a KND episode either (minus the sexual themes), considering their outlandish methods of exploiting and abusing children.
  • The game is also compared favorably to RWBY due to their Darker and Edgier nature, character similarities and allusions, and tackling disturbing themes in real life.
  • Crossovers with Ace Attorney are popular, given how both games wrap flashy anime plots around pointed criticisms of modern Japanese society. Common plots include Phoenix Wright defending Joker against Shido's accusations, and Sae having gone to law school with Mia Fey.

G

• Game-Breaker: See here.
• Genius Bonus:
  • While one might be familiar with Leviathan, the second form of the boss fight with Shadow Niijima as a reference to The Book of Job, one might not be aware of its reference to Leviathan or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common-Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil by Thomas Hobbes, a 17th Century treatise on government (and trope namer for Hobbes Was Right) that, essentially, argued that man was naturally warlike and brutish and could only be contained by a strong government. Considering the line of work that Sae Niijima does and how they view criminals, the reference to the latter seems appropriate.
  • The Mementos overview screen recalls the graphical renditions of Inferno from Dante's The Divine Comedy, a multi-tiered abyss tapering down to the core of the Earth. According to Dante, the door to Inferno is found just below Jerusalem, considered the centre and symbol of human civilisation. Likewise, the entrance to Mementos is in Shibuya, home to the world's busiest pedestrian crossing and one of the busiest railway stations, a symbol of modern civilisation on its own.
  • The lowest point of Mementos Depths resembles a Panopticon, a model for a hypothetical perfect prison first described by Jeremy Bentham in 1791: multiple stacked circular rows of individual cells, all open on the inner side. A warden would then be able to monitor each inmate from a tower at the centre of the building, coinciding to the terror of Tokyo being only upheld by a single teenager with the power to actually kill in the Metaverse, combined with the Holy Grail installing More than Mind Control on the public. Of course, in this case the warden spot is occupied by the Holy Grail.
  • On the contrary side of the Depths of Mementos, we have Maruki's Palace, which upon close attention, has its floors arranged exactly like the Sefirot Tree of Life, starting from an entrance consisting of an extremely long elevator shaft heading straight into the yellow globe structure midway, to the Palace Center being connected right into the Path of Da'at / Heart of Mementos, and the structure leading all the way upwards into coming contact with "God" in the Garden of Eden aka Maruki, respectively representing the Sphere of Malkuth connecting to the other parts of Sefirot, the Sphere of Tifaret being associated with the heart and connecting to Da'at and the sphere of Kether being the topmost sphere of the Tree of Life and the ultimate realization of enlightenment. Last but not least, the facilities are also arranged in a zigzag-upwards fashion, matching the way that the Sefirot is supposed to be navigated.
  • The skull-like Will Seeds the player can collect in Royal resemble real-life snapdragon pods◊, only much larger.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • In contrast to Akechi, Ryuji enjoys significantly more popularity in the West than in the East, where he consistently ranks at the bottom of the party on popularity polls conducted in Japan and Southeast Asia. Western fans tend to sympathize with his ostracization and leg injury, enjoy his Heterosexual Life-Partners dynamic with Joker, and find his Idiot Hero moments either hilarious or not bad enough to detract from his better qualities. He also aligns with Western cultural perceptions of rebels against society. Because of this, Ryuji's Butt-Monkey status throughout the entire game is far more contentious with Western fans, and it's common to see them express outright disgust for his treatment after Shido's Palace. This scene in particular isn't as disliked in the Japanese fanbase, with many viewing it as the Phantom Thieves caring about him.
  • Ann also enjoys considerably more popularity in the West than the East. Her struggles with sexual harassment in the Kamoshida arc resonated with many, especially with the international release coinciding with the #MeToo movement; fans appreciate her as a sweet Nice Girl with a great performance by Erika Harlacher. Like Ryuji, Western fans are far more critical of her Butt-Monkey moments after her initial arc, especially those involving Fanservice since they contradict her arc of embracing her sexuality on her own terms. In Japan, Ann regularly ranks near the bottom of the party on popularity polls, above only Ryuji, while in Southeast Asia she ranks slightly higher above Yusuke, Morgana, Ryuji, and Haru; her character trailer has nearly 100k less views than the other girls of the party.
• Goddamned Bats: In Royal, any enemy with no weaknesses and an immunity to Psy is very annoying to take down quickly, requiring either Psy Break or luck with Sleep or Dizzy for reliable Technical damage. It's even worse if they're also immune to guns or Physical, which were otherwise reliable ways of dealing effective damage. Kali in Shido's Palace fits both these criteria.
• Goddamned Boss:
  • The former noble in Shido's Palace. He's weak against thunder, but that's his only saving grace. The thing that makes his fight such a massive pain is that he almost never attacks directly, and instead spams brainwashing moves to force your party to fight each other. And that's basically what he does for almost every. Single. Turn. Making the fight insanely monotonous. So not only do you have to constantly deal with brainwashed teammates, but you'll probably end up chewing through your stock of status-ailment curing items. By far the worst outcome is if he takes control of Morgana or Makoto, as you'll have undoubtedly unlocked Diarahan (instantly restore the target to full health) on both of them by the time you fight him. If they get taken over, there's a good chance they will use them and instantly heal the boss back to full health.
  • Shadow Youji is fought as a Duel Boss, greatly reducing the action advantage you have on him. He has a simple pattern of spamming Rising Slash, but if he catches on that you have physical immunity, he chooses to rain Megidolas on you. And while he's vulnerable to status ailments, he always recovers from them at a faster-than-normal rate, making it difficult to trivialize the fight. If you're rushing through Sojiro's Confidant on a New Game Plus and engage this boss as early as possible, Joker's lower-than-usual HP and SP can make this boss a tricky stumbling block.
  • Under the wrong luck and circumstances, the battle with the boss of the Star confidant, Shadow Togo, can fall into this. Possessing not only Medium level multi-target spells but also Dyne-level single target spells in every elemental affinity save Bless, unless the player comes into the fight alone with themselves and a carefully crafted persona she will spam each affinity until she finds one that hits the weakness of one of your party members. Once she does that and knocks the party member down, she'll usually follow up with Mamudoon, an all-target Curse spell that insta-kills any party member that it hits. If it happens to hit the protagonist, it's Game Over.
  • Another Mementos target exclusive in Royal that falls under this category is Shadow Minamoto from Royal's new Mementos section. Unlike any other target, this guy transforms into a Yoshitsune. Yes, you read that right. To make things worse, this target has everything that your Yoshitsune most likely has, namely Charge, Heat Riser, Ziodyne and most importantly, Hassou Tobi, and this attack can kill literally anyone without Phys immunity unbuffed. With Charge or Technical by Ziodyne, this is surefire death. To make things worse, he has no weaknesses and blocks Physical and Bless while repelling Electric. While Joker would most obviously have a persona immune to physical at this point, your party members usually don't and Ryuji or Sumire will most definitely get shut down for good. While Joker may have no risk in this fight, expect anyone else to drop like flies when confronting him.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • The propaganda speech that plays on loop in the Cruise Ship Palace cuts out while he's saying "In order to make that natural course of action of reality, I will-". While this is because the audio is reused from an earlier scene in which Shido's speech is interrupted by Ryuji complaining about how loud it is, some players think it symbolizes how empty the political rhetoric and promises are pretty well.
  • In the vanilla game, the developers forgot to make Superboss The Reaper immune to the Despair effects of flu season. As a result, it's trivially easy to enter a battle with the Reaper during Flu Season, wait out three turns, and watch the Reaper die on his own, all for a massive amount of easy experience points. Royal fixed this exploit so it no longer works.
  • In both vanilla and Royal, there is the doubled equipment stat bonus bug. At first glance, a party member equipped with any equipment that gives bonus stat points (like, say, Joker with a Helper Knife, which gives +3 bonus to Magic) displays the change properly. However, in combat, the change is applied twice, making the equipment give more stat bonus than normal (so the Helper Knife example ends up giving +6 Magic).
  • An oddity with safe room recovery allows the player to basically have infinite healing items. Right after using any recovery item in a safe room, Joker has to get into a fight, die, and then respawn in the safe room. The party's HP/SP post-recovery will be retained but the recovery item(s) used will not be deducted.
  • A texture loading oddity between Metatron and the Final Boss occasionally resulted in the former gaining the latter's textures on his model, which go away upon reloading. Amused fans name him using a combination of both names, or Shiny Metatron.

H

• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • One of the nicknames fans gave to Akechi is "Not Ken" due to looking like grown-up Ken. Like Ken, he ends up trying to kill one of the party members (in Akechi's case, the MC). Unlike Ken, Akechi will succeed if you get the Bad Ending.
  • In Persona 4, if you picked to spend time with Kou instead of Daisuke for the Strength Social Link, you learn that he's having a crisis about his (highly traditional) adopted family, wherein his parents, initially unable to have a child, give birth to a daughter not long before the start of the game. Although initially afraid of being rejected by them, he comes to terms with his status, manages to find something to do after graduation, and knows that his family loves him as he does them. Bastard child Akechi, unfortunately, isn't so lucky, having no real home for himself and no one to bond with about it for most of his life.
  • Also from the fourth game, Ai is on the verge of throwing herself off the roof over being rejected by the Strength Social Link, due to how the rejection essentially has convinced her that she's worthless if people don't value her for her beauty. In the fifth game, Shiho actually goes through with it after being raped by Kamoshida, surviving but being injured and hospitalized.
  • When Ryuji asks Makoto if she has anyone whose heart she'd like to change, Makoto coyly says it's a secret. Later on, it's revealed that that Makoto had known all along that her sister had a Palace, and while Makoto had always wanted to change Sae's heart, she'd hoped that they wouldn't have to steal it, so one can imagine she found the question more difficult than she let on at the time.
  • Atlus originally toyed around with the possibly of having Yosuke or Yukiko be the killer in Persona 4. Looks like Atlus revisited the idea of one of your party members being the villain, as Akechi is Black Mask as well as being a member of the Phantom Thieves.
  • From the game itself, after the fourth dungeon, the Phan-site adds a poll where users can vote for who deserves a change of heart. At one point, Akechi's name shows up on the list, just because he disapproved of the Thieves earlier. Turns out the Phan-site posters were Right for the Wrong Reasons. Akechi himself even jokes about being a villain.
  • After the big reveal at the end of the game, the voiced This Is a Work of Fiction at the start of the game takes on a very sinister new meaning, given the voice saying it is Yaldabaoth. In the final part of the game, he erases the Phantom Thieves from existence because the public believes they weren't real. It's possible that by forcing the player to agree the story is a work of fiction and the characters within aren't real, he's making YOU complicit in erasing them.
  • In Royal, Kasumi displays odd quirks or even depressive episodes that she admits that she isn't supposed to have, with a big chunk of those being played for laughs. It turns out that Maruki made this "Kasumi," or Sumire, think that she was Kasumi, causing her to go into cognitive dissonance, which all of these depressive episodes or quirky behavior embody.
  • This game about exposing corrupt people who project respectable veneers and are seen as heroes by many came out in the United States in 2017. Later that year, the entire American celebrity scene was rocked by scandal after scandal as numerous famous and much-lauded people, especially actors and directors, were exposed as sexual predators, costing many people in real life their idols as well.
  • In late 2017, the US Olympic Gymnastic team doctor, Larry Nassar, was convicted of doing exactly what Kamoshida was doing, using his position of power in a high-level sports team to sexually abuse the girls under him. All the while those in charge either were willfully ignorant of the situation or were actively covering it up.
  • In Chapter 4 of the Dengeki comic anthology, one of Akechi's fangirls ask Sae that if she was Akechi's mother. Sae then goes onto LeBlanc with a foul mood. In Royal, we found out that Akechi's mom is a stripper that Shido raped and she birthed Akechi out of wedlock, explained by Akechi to the protagonist in their bathhouse hangout. The fangirls are ignorantly saying Sae was a call-girl; small wonder she's so mad.
  • Joker's VA, Xander Mobus, has mentioned his discomfort with jokes being made of the character going down the Harem Route, and doesn't consider it canon, feeling it makes Joker way too much of a jerk instead of a genuine hero. Dummied Out content in Royal reveals that, in Maruki's dream reality, all of Joker's potential girlfriends mindlessly love him and are shown to be obedient puppets to him. This unused scene portrays Joker as an unrepentant jerk who deep down was fine with manipulating his love interests and his desire to get away scots-free for cheating on them, which is probably why it was nixed from the final product. This makes any jokes about Joker's harem much harsher, and many have expressed serious discomfort over the matter.
  • Kamoshida's crimes are a lot harder to stomach when his English dub voice actor, DC Douglas, had allegations of acting inappropriate around young female fans come to light.
  • This◊ fancomic for Persona 3 has Minato act like a Jerkass to all his friends, preventing him from maxing out any social links, and in Keisuke's case, Minato takes credit for Keisuke's prize-winning painting. In Persona 5, Madarame has been stealing the credit for his students' work for years.
  • In Persona 4, Chie is relieved that you only moved to Inaba because of your parents' work, noting that she thought it was something more serious, as a dig at the Persona 3 protagonist's gloomy backstory.^NoteHis parents died in a car crash. The Persona 5 protagonist gets arrested and put on probation for saving a woman from assault, thereby causing him to be expelled from his previous school and is forced to move to Tokyo to attend Shujin Academy.
  • Kawakami’s Confidant has it being mentioned that she doesn’t get as many calls as other maids due to her being older and therefore perceived as less desirable, even though by all accounts, she qualifies for the Hot Teacher trope. This comment was given a bit of uncomfortable Reality Subtext when Michelle Ruff appeared on Cassandra Lee Morris’ podcast Now You See Me, where she criticized the ageism rampant in the dubbing industry, pointing out how she’s been getting fewer roles nowadays than she did in the 2000s despite her voice still sounding the same. Doubly so when Persona 3 Reload was announced and Ruff ended up losing her longtime role as Yukari due to Sega wanting to go with a “younger/fresher” cast for the remake.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Accepting Ryuji's invitation to hang out with him at the fishing pond on July 3rd is this once you realize from later canonical information that he did it to spend time with Joker on his birthday.
• He Really Can Act:
  • Robbie Daymond, known for playing Nice Guys and teenage heroes, really shows off his voice acting chops as Goro Akechi. Daymond perfectly captures the smooth, focused, and intelligent side of the ace detective while also nailing Akechi's Villainous Breakdown scene, capturing the character's unhinged screaming with chilling effectiveness. This continued in the re-release with Royal, where Daymond switches gears to focus on Akechi's cold, condescending side and crazed bloodlust in battle for the Third Term. Fans have further praised his versatility and some have even wanted to keep Akechi on as the navigator with his Black Comedy commentary and unhinged attitude.
  • Cherami Leigh also faced something of an uphill battle with her casting as Makoto Niijima. Makoto is far from the Plucky Girl characters that Leigh usually finds herself playing, which initially caused some to question the casting, thinking she might be an ill fit. However, come the release of the game, and Leigh's performance was widely accepted.
  • Erika Harlacher should get special mention for her delivery of the following line. And remember that this is someone who's known for voicing Nice Girl characters^note Nevermind that Ann herself is the Phantom Thieves' token nice girl, by the way, mind you:
    Ann: (To Kamoshida) "Shut up. I bet everyone told you the same. But you... you took EVERYTHING from them!!"
  • Billy Kametz as Dr. Takuto Maruki in Royal is a bit different than a lot of his more comedic and over-the-top roles. Maruki carries a sense of gentleness and empathy with a hint of melancholy underneath every time he speaks. As a Confidant, he stands out for conveying the caring and curious nature of the counselor who is trying to help everyone. And then in his stint as the antagonist of the Third Semester, the audience learns how deep-seated his sorrow is and as a result how reluctant he is to hurt the Thieves. This is especially seen in the tapes showing his past. Kametz perfectly navigates and expresses the complex sadness that Maruki feels and delivers one of the most intense and emotional final battle climaxes in the Persona series.
• He's Just Hiding: Fans have applied this to Akechi's "death", due to the sound editing and the event where he seemingly dies happening offscreen, as well as his popularity amongst the fanbase. Royal seemingly reveals that Akechi survived this encounter, only for it to be revealed that this Akechi is a cognition created by Maruki. Allegedly. The protagonist never told Maruki about Akechi (though he did turn Morgana into a human actor that he wanted to look like even though Maruki doesn't have that knowledge as well) and the method that the former uses to revive people means that Akechi wouldn't have remembered encountering his doppelganger in Shido's Palace, except this Akechi does. To add further condition to his final fate, Akechi (or at least someone resembling him) appears in the game's Return Ending. Fans wonder if Atlus deliberately left the scene ambiguous in case they wished to bring them back for future games.
• High-Tier Scrappy:
  • The Strength Confidant, especially its Special Treatment perk, is derided by some for being so absurdly game-breaking it contributes heavily to the game's low difficulty. It lets you pay to fuse Personas higher than Joker's level, and money isn't much of an issue at the point it becomes available. You can theoretically have Personas levelled in the 80s-90's by the time you unlock it, and in Royal it can be unlocked as early as Level 25. This also enables you to get some of the strongest weapon fusions much earlier than you should.
  • Hifumi's confidant abilities are criticized for the fact that they are so essential and yet still locked behind her Confidant. ^note Some of her abilities including allowing the player to swap out party members in combat, escape from battle if surrounded, and even guarantee escape on the first turn of a normal battle. The true kicker here is Hifumi's confidant is not available to the player until around the halfway mark of the game, so by the time you unlock all of the perks that improve the battle format, the game is almost over. Hifumi's confidant is often ranked along with Kawakami's and Yoshida's as offering the best perks for the player, but Hifumi's are such a game changer many were left wishing that she would've been made available earlier in the story.
  • Makoto's Judge of Hell/Judge End gun gets flack in some circles for giving her +10 (11 with the Alarm in Royal) to all stats, turning her from a useful but not broken Jack of All Stats to a Master of All and the undisputed best party member, especially as, due to a bug, equipment stat boosts are applied twice, so it's actually +20 to all stats. Via Special Treatment, this can also be obtained while Joker's level is as low as 25. Some also see this as Makoto receiving developer favoritism, as no-one else gets anything close to this boost from their best weapons. (Akechi and Yoshizawa in Royal get guns with +5 to all stats, that's as close as it gets)
• Hype Backlash:
  • Despite loving the game, some fans don't think the game deserves all the praise it gets, commenting that, while the game had incredible art and music direction and vastly improved gameplay, the story and writing itself took a nosedive after the first boss, with the narrative being much weaker during certain palaces (although even the game's detractors consider Royal's third semester a return to form).
  • Persona 5 caused not only an even bigger Newbie Boom than any previous game in both its and its parent Shin Megami Tensei series, but a Newbie Boom for JRPGs in general. Consequently, this led to an influx of fans, and professional reviewers, who criticise any other JRPG for not being like Persona 5, or accuse any game with vaguely similar elements of being a ripoff. Sometimes this even extends to other genres. Many gamers, even those who like Persona 5, are extremely irritated by this phenomenon.
  • Even though Makoto is consistently one of the most popular characters among Eastern and Western players alike, there's still no shortage of detractors who think she is the most overrated character of the game, emphasizing what they perceive a bland personality due to her outward stoicism in comparison to the other girls, along with her having more amount of screentime than the others (besides Futaba); her arc (since she and Kaneshiro have no familial connection) and confidant (which even her fans concede focuses too much on Eiko) are also criticized as lackluster. It's not helped by the fact that her career choice of being police commissioner is extremely divisive within the fanbase, with some viewing it as contradicting the entire point of the game.
  • Yoshizawa/Violet is very popular and most players agree her arc in Royal's third semester is one of the highlights of the writing, but like Makoto, she has an extremely vocal and zealous "best girl" crowd that turns away some fans, with some believing the hype surrounding her character is overblown considering her relatively short screentime within the grand narrative. But even more so is the fact that some of these fans vocally refuse to buy spinoffs that don't feature her (Persona 5 Strikers and Persona 5 Tactica), which has led others to feel her popularity became a double-edged sword, especially since Strikers is generally considered an excellent game that isn't held back by lacking her.

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