History WMG / DanganronpaV3KillingHarmony

[[WMG: Nearly Everything Said At The End Was a Lie]]

This contains spoilers for the ending, so read at your own risk… [[spoiler: But the Mastermind was lying about the cast being fake Ultimates, Danganronpa being a fictional series and even being the Mastermind. [[https://www.reddit.com/r/danganronpa/comments/f0tmnk/my_thoughts_on_v3s_ending_and_what_i_believe_is/ This thread]] I started on Reddit goes into detail, but I’d like to add onto it here because the trope pages for the character profiles seem to agree that the Mastermind was telling the truth, while there’s actually a few glaring things to indicate that’s not the case… Note, some of what I say here is somewhat different from the Reddit thread, as I’ve been replaying through the game again and re-watching things, so this version is more updated than the thread. This is a long read, but if you believe that Tsumugi was telling the truth, I have things that I think might persuade you that that isn’t the case… Tl;dr at the bottom. (As an aside, first time editing a page of TV Tropes, it won't spoiler the entire thing, would appreciate it if someone would fix this, I can' tell what the issue is...)\\\

This contains spoilers for the ending, so read at your own risk… [[spoiler: But the Mastermind was lying about the cast being fake Ultimates, Danganronpa being a fictional series and even being the Mastermind. [[https://www.reddit.com/r/danganronpa/comments/f0tmnk/my_thoughts_on_v3s_ending_and_what_i_believe_is/ This thread]] I started on Reddit goes into detail, but I’d like to add onto it here because the trope pages seem to agree that the Mastermind was telling the truth, while there’s actually a few glaring things to indicate that’s not the case… Note, some of what I say here is somewhat different, as I’ve been replaying through the game again and re-watching things, so this version is more updated than the thread. This is a long read, but if you believe that Tsumugi was telling the truth, I have things that I think might persuade you that that isn’t the case… Tl;dr at the bottom. (As an aside, first time editing a page of TV Tropes, it won't spoiler the entire thing, would appreciate it if someone would fix this, I can' tell what the issue is...)\\\

Were the character’s backstories all fictional? Well... There’s a lot of things pointing to the characters we see in the game being their true selves (in addition to what the Monokubs state), besides the planet being uninhabitable part of course. Gonta claims he’s from a respectable family… The [[https://i.imgur.com/MhU9uhM.png visual dictionary]] for V3 states that the clothes we see him in in the Prologue before they get their Ultimate Clothes looks like something from a “respectable family.” Shuichi (the Ultimate Detective) heard of Ryoma killing mafia with a steel ball, which makes sense for a detective to have heard of a criminal organization being destroyed. Kaede mentions that her friends used Miu’s “eye drop contact lenses” invention, but never heard of Miu herself (the product can be well known, but the inventor might be unknown). These little details make me think that the characters we see in V3 are their “true selves” and their backstories are really what happened. Along with the fact that Shuichi and Kaede both have the same names in the Prologue, and the Japanese audio of the final trial strongly sounds like the "real" Shuichi is saying his name is "S-(Static) S-(Static)", making me believe Shuichi Saihara is his true name. The “regular students” we see in the flashbacks are almost certainly memory wiped Ultimates.\\\

Were the character’s backstories all fictional? Well... There’s a lot of things pointing to the characters we see in the game being their true selves (in addition to what the Monokubs state), besides the planet being uninhabitable part of course. Gonta claims he’s from a respectable family… The [[https://i.imgur.com/MhU9uhM.png visual dictionary]] for V3 states that the clothes we see him in in the Prologue before they get their Ultimate Clothes looks like something from a “respectable family.” Shuichi (the Ultimate Detective) heard of Ryoma killing mafia with a steel ball, which makes sense for a detective to have heard of a criminal organization being destroyed. Kaede mentions that her friends used Miu’s “eye drop contact lenses” invention, but never heard of Miu herself (the product can be well known, but the inventor might be unknown). These little details make me think that the characters we see in V3 are their “true selves” and their backstories are really what happened. The “regular students” we see in the flashbacks are almost certainly memory wiped Ultimates.\\\

The first part of the Prologue wasn’t them being accepted into the Killing Game. The Monokubs more or less outright say, “This isn’t in the script.” The students were supposed to have their Ultimate Talents, the Exisals weren’t supposed to show up at that point in time, and… This directly contradicts the “flashback” in the final trial where it was all just revealed to be an audition. So which was it? Were the students happy to get onto the show, or were the Monokubs lying for no reason in particular to people that were about to get their memories erased? That “happy reaction” we see is being told to us by a psychopath who has been lying the entire game… And speaking of Tsumugi, if this were them being accepted into the show like she claimed, there was no reasoning behind her putting on a scared front (she has noticeably different screams before and after getting her Ultimate Clothes when seeing the Exisals for the first time), not being in her Ultimate Clothes (the rest were “contestants” so… Why wouldn’t the employee just show up dressed for the part? This makes no sense...) and not bothering to tell the Monokubs, “You’re way off script! The Exisals aren’t supposed to show up yet!” The Monokubs outright say, “You guys weren’t supposed to be like this by the time you woke up.” Based on all of this… The “you got into the show” part wasn’t them being accepted into the show, as the Monokubs were clearly already “on script” and reading their lines before the show even started… And then turn around and basically say, “Just kidding! We knew you weren’t in your roles yet… Ignore everything else we said to signal we thought you were in your roles… That was a joke? You could tell…?” Even Tsumugi was asking questions, almost as though she were genuinely confused as well when this was all part of a “You got into the show!” bit…\\\

The flashback about being accepted into the killing game also directly contradicts what happened in the Prologue. Tsumugi tells the survivors, “You were so happy to get accepted in!” Except… This makes no sense and honestly comes across as pointlessly contrived, as though this “fictional” set up makes no sense. For one, the V3 characters we see in the beginning of the Prologue are their “true selves” but Tsumugi says the Flashback Lights also helped them remember their “true selves” so… Which one of these two are their true personalities? Even then, it’s unclear if the “bloodthirsty” Shuichi is his true personality, the meek Shuichi we see in the Prologue is the true personality, or the one we play as in the majority of the game is the one that’s remembering… This seems needlessly convoluted, and almost like it’s something being made up on the spot… Note, Tsumugi’s saying this AFTER the characters just got hit with brain altering flashlights that can change someone’s personality… That casts serious doubt on how genuine the “happy reactions” were to them getting into their favorite show was (especially with how the Monokubs outright say that everything before the Flashback Lights appear wasn’t supposed to happen to begin with).\\\

Rantaro almost certainly wasn’t in any previous Killing Games. Yes, that video was compelling… But there’s a slight issue there. The Ultimate Clothes we see reflect the talents of the Ultimate wearing them (Shuichi looks like a detective, Kaede’s musical notes related clothing, Himiko looking like a witch…), but the Rantaro we see in the video is wearing the exact same Ultimate Clothes that we see him in in the game. So… Rantaro was the Ultimate Survivor twice in a row…? This leads down an endless series of rabbit holes, so I’ll discard this theory. Because of this… I believe this is genuinely his first Killing Game, and being exposed to the Flashback Light gave him false memories and he made that video while being brainwashed. There’s also the fact that if this were the truth, and Danganronpa is a fictional series, none of the “huge fans” didn’t recognize Rantaro immediately as being a previous character on the show. There’s also the implication that the audition tapes we see were recorded inside the school (Tsumugi’s Ultimate Lab has a floor panel that pretty closely resembles the floor of what we see from the audition tapes…), and going with this and the above… They were tapes the characters recorded while brainwashed into thinking they got into their favorite show, which doesn’t exist.\\\

With all of this in mind… The reveals from the final trial don’t make too much sense, and it almost seems like things that were revealed don’t make much sense.\\\

TL;DR: There’s tons of evidence that V3 takes place in the same continuity as the rest of the series, the characters are all really Ultimates, V3!Monokuma is likely an AI like Shirokuma and Kurokuma (which fits with the technology being the same) and Tsumugi is almost certainly brainwashed into believing she’s the Mastermind when she isn’t based on how she acts. ]]

This contains spoilers for the ending, so read at your own risk… [[spoiler: But the Mastermind was lying about the cast being fake Ultimates, Danganronpa being a fictional series and even being the Mastermind. This thread I started on Reddit goes into detail, but I’d like to add onto it here because the trope pages seem to agree that the Mastermind was telling the truth, while there’s actually a few glaring things to indicate that’s not the case… Note, some of what I say here is somewhat different, as I’ve been replaying through the game again and re-watching things, so this version is more updated than the thread. This is a long read, but if you believe that Tsumugi was telling the truth, I have things that I think might persuade you that that isn’t the case… Tl;dr at the bottom. (As an aside, first time editing a page of TV Tropes, it won't spoiler the entire thing, would appreciate it if someone would fix this, I can' tell what the issue is...)\\\

Were the character’s backstories all fictional? Well... There’s a lot of things pointing to the characters we see in the game being their true selves (in addition to what the Monokubs state), besides the planet being uninhabitable part of course. Gonta claims he’s from a respectable family… The visual dictionary for V3 states that the clothes we see him in in the Prologue before they get their Ultimate Clothes looks like something from a “respectable family.” Shuichi (the Ultimate Detective) heard of Ryoma killing mafia with a steel ball, which makes sense for a detective to have heard of a criminal organization being destroyed. Kaede mentions that her friends used Miu’s “eye drop contact lenses” invention, but never heard of Miu herself (the product can be well known, but the inventor might be unknown). These little details make me think that the characters we see in V3 are their “true selves” and their backstories are really what happened. The “regular students” we see in the flashbacks are almost certainly memory wiped Ultimates.\\\

Building off of the last one, but deserving its own paragraph. Of special note is Keebo and if he was just created to be a character on Danganronpa… There’s a lot of evidence that he wasn’t created to be the Audience Surrogate. For one, he’s first seen wearing regular clothing, instead of just showing up in his Ultimate Robot attire (why bother putting him in regular clothing, then changing his clothes, then erasing his memories instead of just having him come with those clothes from the beginning?). Two, his antenna… It’s usually pointing up or at a 45 degree angle, but in the Prologue, he’s wearing a hat that would be flattening it. Three, the visual dictionary confirms he was trying to hide his metal body with the “normal” clothing we see in the beginning of the game… Based on all of this, I’d have to say he really is the Ultimate Robot and trying to blend in as a regular human being after having his memories tampered with, but was repurposed into being the Audience Surrogate (the antenna was likely placed on his body when everyone got their Ultimate Clothes).\\\

The big one… The Mastermind probably isn’t who she thinks she is. Yes, Tsumugi is supposedly the Mastermind… Except, no, there’s actually a lot of clues hinting that she’s not aware of everything that happened in the Prologue as well. First, the Normal!Tsumugi we see in the Prologue screams much more genuinely (“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”) while Ultimate!Tsumugi’s screams seem less genuine (“Kyaaaaa!”) when they both see the Exisals for the first time… If this were an act, why would she choose to scream differently? During the Prologue, she at no point tells the Monokubs, “You’re off script! The Exisals aren’t supposed to come in yet!” when she supposedly wrote the script? Why wasn’t she already dressed for her part as the Ultimate Cosplayer, and instead came to work dressed as a regular student and chose to act the part of one for no reason? Why was she asking questions like the other students when there was supposedly no reason for her to hide her true self at that point in time? And if she’s such a huge fan of Danganronpa and wrote out everything… Why did she make such basic mistakes in regards to the lore of the series...? Her being the Mastermind at that point in time makes no sense, especially the issues with her pretending to be a regular high school student one minute then going all Team Danganronpa the next to tell everyone, “Yeah, you got into the show.” With this in mind, and factoring in that she only began acting as a Team Danganronpa employee AFTER getting hit with the Flashback Lights, her role as the Mastermind was something fabricated as well. She probably really is the Ultimate Cosplayer (much like Shuichi is the Ultimate Detective), but she’s just been brainwashed into thinking she’s a member of a team that isn’t real and to be part of a TV Show that doesn’t exist. “But Tsumugi wrote out all of the plotlines!” Keep in mind that it’s heavily implied Tsumugi was looking into the (memory altering) Flashback Lights too throughout the game with the rest of the cast, so her “writing out the plots” could very well be her just being brainwashed into thinking that’s what actually happened.\\\

The main reason everyone realizes something's off about their memories related to Hope's Peak is that they don't match up with a book on the subject. But if Hope's Peak never existed to begin with, why would those inconsistencies exist? Combine that with the contradiction of Tsumugi's cospox triggering when dressed as the "fictional" Kaede and it seems likely that Hope's Peak happened after all. Team Danganronpa was simply attempting to cover up the real events by turning them into fiction, thereby taking full control of the battle between hope and despair.

[[WMG: Nearly Everything the Mastermind Said At The End Was a Lie]]

It will turn out she lied ''to herself'' well enough that she [[TomatoInTheMirror doesn't consciously know]] she's the second-in-command. She was sent into the Gifted Inmates as a personal agent of Monokuma to ensure they never tried to escape or to ensure only people the Mastermind wanted to survive did. However, the best lies contain an element of truth, and so fake Kaede is how Kaede [[BeingEvilSucks actually wants to be]]; she's such a good actor because she isn't really acting, he ''evil'' face [[JerkassFacade is the act]]. It will be revealed she loathes herself, which is the basis for MultipleEndings: in the Good Ending path, after her true persona awakes, she realizes she [[BecomingTheMask likes her friends]] and decides that she doesn't ''[[HeelFaceTurn want]]'' to go back to the backstabbing spy she was and helps with uncovering the Mastermind (because you just know they're paranoid enough to not actually tell her who they are) before [[TheAtoner moving on from her past]]. Bad ending, though, she just isn't close enough to the other Inmates to feel brave enough to go on her own, [[DownerEnding killing them]] and slinking back into her old role as Monokuma's spy, [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone now with even more self-hate,]]] and miserable forever.

He actually was in charge, or at least very important, in the order...but he's actually an AffablyEvil NobleDemon who discovered they were planning something that horrified him. So he manipulated part of his organization into a civil war to stop them, killing many of their members. His CardCarryingVillain habits are the result of him going [[HeroicBSOD mad with guilt]]; he tries to insinuate he's not trustworthy, [[JerkassFacade because he doesn't think he is, and he wants people to stay safe from vengeful survivors]].

The idea: [Danganronpa has ended. College students are full of despair after this, wanting their television show to return. The narration never mentions this because everyone wants to suppress the memory of the show ending.] There are three protagonists here, the main one being an exact representation of a college student, and the other two being their only friends. No one in the cast has an Ultimate talent due to them being college students who were entertained by a reality show (that they don't mention the direct name of and implicate minimally, as they act like it doesn't matter in the Killing Game they've been set in), Kaede Akamatsu has a gothic twin sister with similarities to Chiaki Nanami, and one of Rantaro's siblings has an involvement here, and the format of Daily Life, Deadly Life, Class Trial is still the same. This subtly reveals that Tsumugi was apparently telling the truth about how everything is a reality show based off the Killing School Life, the Killing School Trip, and the "Final" Killing Game, but also shows that the students were also based off characters of the real world. The mastermind is either a Future Foundation member, or the three survivors of the Killing School Semester: Shuichi Saihara, Maki Harukawa and Himiko Yumeno. The mascot in question isn't Monokuma, but the animal represented is similar to Monokuma, like...a cat. We've already had a rabbit (Usami), cats are interpreted to be just as adorable as rabbits, but cats are domesticated and dominant, like Shuichi is now. The mascot subtly switches between the three personalities of Shuichi, Maki, and Himiko, all of them being ambiguous under the guise of Monocat.

Kokichi is the only victim who chose to die and browbeat Kaito into helping him, with his explicit intention to throw the Mastermind off and make an unsolvable murder. And even this worked to Tsumugi's advantage as Kokichi was the last remaining person, besides Shuichi, who could have exposed her as the Mastermind.

-

They're obviously a team of 5, that much is clear. But as for their roles, other than Monotarou, we know nothing. My personal guess at their roles are as follows:
* BigBad: Monotarou, forming a BigBadDuumvirate with Monokuma. Either this, or he's TheDragon to Monokuma. I believe this because his bio indicates he's TheLeader, however he also shares a lot of traits with [[VideoGame/AbsoluteDespairGirls Masaru Daimon]], so it's possible that this will end up being subverted.

* TheDarkChick: Monofanii. Do I really need to elaborate on this?
* TheBrute: Monodam is shown on all fours in the official art, leading me to believe he may act like a Beast Monokuma from ''VideoGame/AbsoluteDespairGirls''.
* This leaves Monokid as TheDragon to Monotarou... which I can't really support at all, other than it's where he fits.
I can't wait to see how wrong my guesses were when an english translation for the game is released!

It will take place before or concurrently with ''V3'', and like ''VideoGame/AbsoluteDespairGirls'', there will be other family members of killing game participants who are opposed to the killing game and want to save their relatives (whether they actually volunteered was ambiguous, seeing as Kaede and Shuichi both remembered being kidnapped). The other protagonist could be Korekiyo's sister, who is actually alive and was never in an incestuous relationship with him.

[[WMG: The ending of NDRV3 leads to an in-universe BaseBreaker as divisive as the real world's.]]

[[WMG: The Monokumars as a FiveBadBand]]

There are a lot of versions of this theory drifting around, but the simplest explanation is that Tsumugi was a psychotic fangirl who, in a desperate attempt to emulate the game she witnessed in ''Danganronpa 1'', kidnapped 16 random students and forced them to participate in a killing game of her own. The game will also explain how she got the resources to do this, possibly as a result of ties to Junko (remember, that second AI from ''Ultra Despair Girls'' hasn't shown up yet...), and show Shuichi and the other survivors interacting with actual Hope's Peak Era characters.
* But why would she lie? And who were the people talking through keebo?

* Although I understand that the authenticity of the audition tapes and the cospox can be a point of contention, I'm more certain that Hope's Peak Academy/the Dangan Ronpa franchise is indeed fictional. Otherwise, the cutscene of the Makoto from the outside world would have been completely meaningless on a literary standpoint.

During the intro sequence in the demo, every character's shadow has glowing magenta eyes, [[RedEyesTakeWarning similar to the color of blood]] in the previous games. The first game's plot twist involved [[LaserGuidedAmnesia memory suppression]] being used used to trick a group of TrueCompanions to kill each other for a goal that didn't exist. The second game uses the same trick as the first, and also reveals to the cast that each and every one of them was a group of [[AmnesiacDissonance demented terrorists]] that are guilty of bringing about TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt. Following SerialEscalation further, the twist this time will be that each of them is guilty of crimes on the scale of terrorism (and were NotBrainwashed, as opposed to what Danganronpa3 revealed) and they were given amnesia and put into the Gifted Inmates academy as a form of capital punishment.

This is a prison school, and thanks to Anime/Danganronpa3, we know that there's a group of small children who were killed by [[BrainwashedAndCrazy Chisa Yukizome.]] Obviously, Chisa was never arrested for it, so she must have pinned the blame on ''someone.'' Who better than the class's teacher, and Ultimate Nursery School teacher, Maki Harukawa?

** Considering that they make Juzo Sakakura, one of the important characters in DanganRonpa3, into a homosexual in a non-stereotypical way, more LGBT themes may not be out of the blue.

[[WMG: Every student has a DarkAndTroubledPast, on a similar scale to the cast of SuperDanganRonpa2]]

** But why would she lie? And who were the people talking through keebo?

The previews have suggested that the game will open with a surprising twist. Perhaps the twist is that the protagonist is not actually Kaede Akamatsu, but another girl impersonating her. You find the real Kaede's dead body at the very beginning of the game, and the protagonist is forced to assume her identity(perhaps she's lost her memory, like Rantaro claims is the case for himself).