History YMMV / Persona4

* {{Fanon}}:
** Being a HeroicMime, TheProtagonist's personality is ultimately determined by the player, but some personality traits have become recurring in fanfiction, such as him being a BadassBookworm, a DeadpanSnarker (His dialogue options tend to head towards OnlySaneMan most of the time, but sometimes head towards this), a NiceGuy and the OnlySaneMan (Literal non-example, he's the only member of the party whose persona does not stem from having resolved his own mental issues since he hasn't got any. If you pay attention, most of his dialogue choices tend to edge towards this as well.) Many of these traits would become canon after future games established the anime's Yu Narukami as "canon".
** There are exactly two moments when Naoto's [[BuxomBeautyStandard large bust size]] is brought into question; one vague hospital scene where she's embarrassed to have her measurements read by Rise who's impressed and shocked, and again during the HotSpringsEpisode where all of the girls comment on her bust size being [[HiddenBuxom bigger than they expected now that they see her out of her clothes]]. {{Fanon}} decided to take this ball and run with it straight outta the stadium, and the grand bulk of her fanart depicts her with downright tremendous assets, easily surpassing D-cups. Meanwhile in {{Canon}}, the hot springs character cut-out and the anime of the game show only a slight elevation, nothing more than a modest B-cup. However, the Hot Springs cutscene added in ''Golden'' actually shows [[{{Fanservice}} all four girls in nothing more than]] their [[ModestyTowel towels]], and makes it explicitly clear this is the case, with Naoto being the largest of the group and roughly a large C-cup.

* UnintentionalPeriodPiece: Released in 2008 and taking place [[NextSundayAD in 2011]] Japan, ''Persona 4'' is a rare example of a JRPG in an entirely modern setting, can sometimes fall into this. Granted, Inaba is a backwater town that is several years behind the times, in stark contrast to [[VideoGame/Persona3 Tatsumi Port Island]] and [[VideoGame/Persona5 Tokyo]]:
** Television, and the influence it can have on the populace, serves as one of the underlying themes of the plot. With the rise of the Internet and smartphones only a few years later -- just around the time the game actually takes place -- as the main source of entertainment and news for many people in first-world countries, ''especially'' for those at the high school age all of the main characters are at, this may seem slightly outdated. It's very noticeable that the Internet is pretty much never mentioned by anyone, and there's nary a computer to be found in the game world. One that's even remarked upon in-game is the rise of HD [=TVs=] when most of the characters are still using old standard-definition sets, a few lamenting that they'll eventually have to upgrade. A wall of fancy widescreens sits in the electronics section of local department store Junes, a contrast to the old sets the characters own. Funnily enough, the game itself was released on a [[UsefulNotes/PlayStation2 mostly SD console]] a couple years after its [[UsefulNotes/PlayStation3 HD successor]] had already come out. Kanji's family upgrading to an HD TV is actually a minor plot point in the [[VideoGame/Persona4Arena sequel]], which was released in 2012 and takes place in the same year.
** On a similar note, a major subplot in the game, as well as a major factor in a number of other subplots and social links, is the opening of a department store chain, the aforementioned Junes, in town and its various effects on the local economy. In 2008, this was a hot topic, even in the US with the rise of "big box retailers" and "Megastores" like Wal-Mart, Target, and others. A decade later, while the Big Box and Megastore age has not died completely, online retail through sites such as Amazon, Ebay, Alibaba, etc. has taken a huge chunk in the business of physical stores, to the point that larger chains such as Macy's, JC Penney's, K-Mart, Sears, and Toys R Us have either closed a huge number of stores or been forced into bankruptcy.
** The characters all rock simple flip-open cellphones, used solely for calling and texting. This is more of a US dating - though the US adopted smartphones quickly after the iPhone debut a year before the game released, Japan's adoption rate was far slower, and many Japanese citizens were still using flip phones well into the mid 2010s. Notably, [[Anime/Persona4TheAnimation the 2011 anime adaptation]] of the game retcons this a little, as some characters now use smartphones and there's even a song on the OST that makes an iPhone joke:
--->''"[=iBreak=]! Just might be the new app on your smartphone."''
** Kanji's [[AmbiguouslyGay possible homosexuality]] is a major facet of his character, and his personal dungeon is a bathhouse with deliberately exaggerated HardGay overtones. While a hot button issue and the source of much social commentary and humor (which the game provides both of) at the time, only a few years later the idea of major and entirely-sympathetic gay characters in fiction would barely raise an eyebrow.

* WTHCastingAgency:
** The casting of Tracey Rooney, a screen actor who never did VA work before (or since) as Chie Satonaka. While her take has its fans, many fans found her deeper, calmer take to be a poor fit for Chie's energetic, tomboyish characterization and prefer Creator/ErinFitzgerald's take for sounding higher-pitched and more energetic.
** Two of the reasons why the game is considered an example of SuperlativeDubbing are Rise and Teddie's Japanese voices. Some felt Rie Kugimiya's voice for Rise was too high pitched, which made her sound annoying when she acted as MissionControl. For Teddie, some felt Kappei Yamaguchi's voice was too screechy.

** Margaret's Social Link (The Empress) requires you to fuse Personas with specific abilities. Prepare to sink a ''lot'' of spending money into the Compendium, looking up the correct Arcana combinations, praying that the resulting Persona inherits the right moves, etc. After first getting the Personas in question, however, the whole thing can be done in a day on subsequent playthroughs. Thankfully it comes with an inherent AntiFrustrationFeature in the "reshuffle" mechanic; deselecting and then reselecting the same Personas will cause the potential skills of the fusion to be reset, so a player doesn't need to constantly repurchase the base Personas required. Unfortunately, [[GuideDangIt not only is this little fact never mentioned in-game]], one ''still'' has to trust to the RandomNumberGod, and many of the requested moves have low inheritance values (Matador with Mahama is particularly guilty of this). This was fixed in ''The Golden'', where [[AntiFrustrationFeature Inherited Skills for fusions are manually selected]], and it's easy enough to "cheat" by using a Skill Card to give the Persona the required skill without bothering with giving it to the components.

** Believe it or not, Nanako can fall under this. Her social link progresses from Rank 6 to Rank 7 after ''three'' holdover visits (ahead of everyone else in the game), and that's with a Justice Persona equipped. The amount of effort needed to get this kid to talk is astounding, since you need a maxed out Expression stat to complete the link. What's worse is [[spoiler:you have to complete the Link before she gets kidnapped, or it's [[PermanentlyMissableContent lost]].]]
** Similar to Nanako, Dojima's Social Link often requires holdover visits, even when you make all the right choices ''and'' have a Hierophant persona. [[spoiler:You also have to complete the link before Nanako's kidnapping, since Dojima's hospitalized for the rest of 2011 after crashing his car while trying to save her]].
** The Hermit social link. It involves many quests that take several days to finish, and some of them require you to spend time. The last quest requires you to fish up the two rarest fish in the game, which requires bait that's fairly rare and doesn't become available until you get to the point at which you have to fish them up.

** Similar to Temperance, Naoki's Social Link (Hanged Man) doesn't start right off and requires ''three'' holdover visits before the first rank. This can be a pain in the early game where you are pretty much forced to rank up as many Social Links as possible before the fog sets. Thankfully, his Social Link progresses relatively fast.

** Adachi's Social Link in ''Golden'' is extremely irregular and the game doesn't bother to tell you that. First of all, he can be encountered only on specific days of specific months, and only if no one is in the Midnight Channel. Rank 1,2 and 6 are available only during the day, Rank 3,4 and 5 only during the night. And if you don't get at least Rank 6 before November 1st, the Social Link won't progress. The remaining Ranks are story events if you follow the True ending, BUT! There is one GuideDangIt moment that comes when you have to decide to confront Adachi. Choose to go alone or else the Link will be locked again.

** As far as the requests go, "Find Me Something To Wear" is an enormous pain. You have to track down and kill at least eight Power Tower enemies in the Secret Base in order to get the Power Stones they drop, but Power Towers are the rarest enemy in that dungeon so finding that many is likely to take hours even though they tend to spawn in groups of two to three. What's worse, if you're also working on the request "Find Fine Coal", their item drop changes to Fine Coal until you complete that request, which means that you've got to go searching for them on two separated days.

** All-out attacks. Enough parodies of it exist that [[http://danbooru.donmai.us/post/index?tags=all-out_attack&page=1 Danbooru has a tag for it]] that spans 4 pages.

** The results of Popularity Polls taken by Japanese audiences can seem confusing to Western audiences. In the West, tough ActionGirl Chie and [[BoisterousBruiser boisterous]] yet [[RealMenWearPink sensitive]] Kanji are some of the most popular party members, while [[ButtMonkey Yosuke]] is more divisive. In Japan, it's the opposite, where Yosuke's loyalty to his family and business is seen as far more endearing, while his casual sexism and homophobia is not seen as a problem. Japanese culture typically looks down on those considered too loud, energetic, or disruptive, things that describe Chie and Kanji to a T. We would eventually see this dissonance crop up yet again with Ryuji Sakamoto in ''VideoGame/Persona5''.

** Teddie. Some find him to be an amusing PluckyComicRelief character who has a great and funny dynamic with the rest of the team as well as interesting character development. Others can't [[JustForPun bear]] his puns (or ending his sentences with 'kuma' in the Japanese version), his period as the game's MissionControl, perverted antics, and find his blatant attempt to be a marketable mascot character annoying.

** The PC version of ''Golden'' further improves the graphics from the Vita version thanks to the ability to select from a variety of resolutions and texture filtering options. It also has arbitrary frame rate support, which is a pleasant surprise from a port of an older game made by Japanese studio without much experience porting to the PC. There are some other improvements as well, such as dual audio support and the ability to customize the difficulty from the start, which in the Vita version was restricted to NewGamePlus. A later patch made the port even ''more'' polished, fixing issues like stuttering cutscenes and random crashes. The 2023 MultiPlatform release, added further refinements (which were also brought to the PC version via an update) such as the ability to rewatch social link events in your bedroom. It also performs very well, running at 60 FPS even on the UsefulNotes/NintendoSwitch.

* ToyShip: Errand Boy and Spacey Girl.

** Rise, on her own merits, is generally a well-liked character, but the fanbase is split down the middle on whether or not they like her extreme attraction to the protagonist. Those who like it cite that she's a genuine sweetheart when romancing her and makes for great girlfriend material, whereas those who don't like it see her as being too much of a ClingyJealousGirl who's unnecessarily rude to whoever the protagonist is dating besides her, and find her to be a little forced romance-wise before Marie took her role in the UpdatedRerelease. Generally, whether or not a player likes Rise's clinginess depends on whether or not they plan to romance her to begin with. Those who do find her endearing, whereas those who don't find her somewhat selfish.

** Ryotaro Dojima. While generally liked as a realistic depiction of a struggling single father, it's often debated whether he's actually good at being one - seeing how he genuinely cares for Nanako and tries his best to provide for her, yet also ends up being extremely negligent towards her due to workaholic tendencies.

** The rest of the Investigation Team may not be as bad as Yosuke and Chie in the JerkAss department, but they still have their moments, like Yu and Kanji coercing the girls into competing in the beauty pageant, the infamous Amagi Inn scene, and the times they took swipes at Kashiwagi and Hanako for their looks (though the latter case is more forgivable given that Kashiwagi and Hanako aren't exactly pleasant people themselves). Another point against them is their tendency to make short-sighted decisions that end up causing more problems.

* ShipToShipCombat: ''Hooooo boy.'' Yu has camps for ''all four'' of his female allies, with the bigger contenders being Yukiko and Naoto, in addition to a large division of shippers pairing him with [[{{HoYay}} Yosuke]]. Naoto is the most controversial for a slew of reasons that can be found all over this page, further compounded by the fact that Kanji canonically has a crush on her, naturally leading to Kanji/Naoto going up against Yu/Naoto. Yu/Rise also has their fair share of shippers. As for Chie, she and Yu are part of the ThreeAmigos who founded the Investigation Team, although as with Yu/Naoto, Yu/Chie has issues with Yosuke/Chie and Yu/Yosuke. And with ''Golden'' adding Marie, and with Marie being favored by Atlus in general in the story (she's now DLC for the sequel to ''VideoGame/Persona4Arena'' and is bumped up to {{Deuteragonist}} for ''Anime/Persona4TheGoldenAnimation'') and, through rumors, many believing she's pushed as a LoveInterest (a [[CommonKnowledge very common misconception]] is that she'll ''always'' kiss Yu and love him, even if you don't pursue her romantically), a whole new can of worms has opened up. It's not helped that Marie is extremely divisive in the West. Granted, the anime and spin-offs [[CuttingOffTheBranches don't make any of the pairings canon]], and are implied only through small bits of dialogue, but even the small moments of ShipTease Yu has with the girls do not help matters.

** If anything, cast changes in later versions and adaptations have proven ''controversial'' because of this - while Creator/ErinFitzgerald's Chie is more consistent than Rooney's, some fans feel Rooney's Chie had more charm. And the less said of the debate between Wittenberg's Teddie and Creator/SamRiegel's, the better, perhaps (however, it is agreed that the difference between them isn't substantial or bad). And while Creator/MatthewMercer has done his best to fill in for Baker after Baker became so well known and busy, they're still massive shoes to fill. Also, Creator/AshlyBurch's performance for Rise in ''VideoGame/Persona4DancingAllNight'' was criticized for having Rise's lines come across as a DullSurprise and poorly delivered, and many fans considered Creator/LauraBailey's performance significantly superior.

* FandomEnragingMisconception: Due to the Shadows being so overly dramatic to purposely misrepresent the person's concerns/fears, it's common to see people mistake the Shadows' point as being the truth, even though the game makes it clear otherwise this is not true. Combine this with ValuesDissonance because of it being through a Japanese cultural lense (and thus Westernizers would miss the context), and it becomes moreso. Both Naoto and Kanji are the most common ones to have this issue, given their Shadows respectively showcase trans and gay imagery despite both being a fundamental commentary on [[StayInTheKitchen workplace sexism]] and [[TestosteronePoisoning toxic masculinity]] instead.

** Taro Namatame is meant to be viewed as a WellIntentionedExtremist who's simply trying to save people from the Killer, but going about it all wrong. The problem is, not only are his methods hard to stomach, as he would rather take matters into his own hands and throw people into the TV World in the same method as the Killer instead of trying to seek out anybody who has knowledge of the Midnight Channel, but [[spoiler:he's also directly responsible for [[DeathOfAChild Nanako's death]], even if it was involuntary and it's possible for her to [[DisneyDeath get better]], making him just as guilty of manslaughter as the true Killer]]. Despite his wrongdoings, the Investigation Team are rather quick to [[EasilyForgiven let Namatame off the hook]] once they're done questioning him, with [[StrawmanHasAPoint only Yosuke showing the proper amount of anger]] to be had with him. It also doesn't help that, prior to the events of the story, Namatame's EstablishingCharacterMoment has him cheating on his wife with Mayumi Yamamo, which comes across as an attempt to make Namatame a SympatheticAdulterer.

** Television, and the influence it can have on the populace, serves as one of the underlying themes of the plot. With the rise of the Internet and smartphones only a few years later - just around the time the game actually takes place - as the main source of entertainment and news for many people in first-world countries, ''especially'' for those at the high school age all of the main characters are at, this may seem slightly outdated. It's very noticeable that the Internet is pretty much never mentioned by anyone, and there's nary a computer to be found in the game world. One that's even remarked upon in-game is the rise of HD [=TVs=] when most of the characters are still using old standard-definition sets, a few lamenting that they'll eventually have to upgrade. A wall of fancy widescreens sits in the electronics section of local department store Junes, a contrast to the old sets the characters own. Funnily enough, the game itself was released on a [[UsefulNotes/PlayStation2 mostly SD console]] a couple years after its [[UsefulNotes/PlayStation3 HD successor]] had already come out. Kanji's family upgrading to an HD TV is actually a minor plot point in the [[VideoGame/Persona4Arena sequel]], which was released in 2012 and takes place in the same year.

* UnintentionallySympathetic: Dojima in the early game. While it doesn't demonize him, his and Nanako's Social Links, plus some scenes throughout the game, tend to paint his tendency to focus on his work more than Nanako rather negatively as he sometimes has to cancel trips and break promises. The problem is, putting aside his partially intentional neglect due to the difficulties of trying to help Nanako when he isn't sure if he can, he is still a police officer and is charged with investigating a Serial Murder case that, unbeknownst to him, has supernatural elements muddling the issue and making it much harder to properly deal with. During Golden Week, he misses his planned outing with the protagonist and Nanako because he had to cover for one of his colleagues. Even if he’s guilty of intentionally putting his work over Nanako, that doesn’t change the fact that his job is very important and, as the only one in the Dojima household with a full-time paying job[[note]] Yu's only got part-time jobs and he [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome can't exactly give him the money he gets from the TV world without having having to explain where it came from]][[/note]], he can’t risk anything that could get him fired like skipping a day just because of a family outing, which would be much worse for him and Nanako in the long run.
** Dojima cancelling the Golden Week trip can loop back around into being unsympathetic when it's implied through dialogue that the co-worker he's covering for is faking being ill so he can take Golden Week off; Dojima complains about how his co-worker has been ill the whole week and how unusual that is, but otherwise doesn't pursue that. If that's the case, then Dojima's essentially cancelled his own plans so his co-worker can go on unscheduled leave, with Dojima being so used to doing things like this that he doesn't question it too much; it could even be that co-workers, knowing Dojima's such a workaholic, feel that they can pull stunts like this, knowing that Dojima will cover the workload.
* UnintentionallyUnsympathetic:
** Chie often acts like an unrepentant JerkAss to Yosuke (and on some occasions, the Protagonist) regardless of whether he deserves it or not, but the game always seems to want you to side with her. She assaults Yosuke for minor infractions (like for breaking her DVD that he promised he'd pay her back for beforehand). She often extorts him as a way to pay her off for her DVD, even though what she gets off of him paid her back many times over. She even uses Yosuke's money without permission to buy Teddie an expensive outfit and got defensive when Yosuke [[InformedWrongness rightfully called her out on it]]. Despite her behavior, [[KarmaHoudini she always gets away with it]] because the scenes are intended to be PlayedForLaughs, which is why she's such a BaseBreakingCharacter.
** On the opposite end, Yosuke is meant to serve as the BromanticFoil / PluckyComicRelief that is a staple in anime and Japanese media. The nature of his jokes, from his constant paranoia due to Kanji's ambiguous Homosexuality, to the casual sexism he has a tendency to display to his female friends, can make much of his jokes come off as rather mean-spirited. While Yosuke is often intentionally [[LaserGuidedKarma made the butt of the demeaning jokes]] to balance the scale, the frequency of this happening throughout the story is what led to him being such a divisive character.

** Ms. Kashiwagi is widely derided among the students as ugly, when she looks like [[https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/megamitensei/images/b/b6/Noriko.png/revision/latest?cb=20161225083048 this]] (though more likely they're talking about her desperate attempts to "regain her youth").

** Any Shadow with the word "Basalt" in its name. They resist (and later outright ''nullify'') physical attacks, have unpredictable weaknesses, and while they don't have many skills, their regular attack hits like a ton of [[StealthPun rocks.]] Oh, and there's one type of them that '''[[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard resists Almighty.]]''' You will, more often than not, drain half your collective SP getting everyone's health back up after fighting a group of Basalts. It's worth noting that the All-Out Attack is of Almighty affinity. [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard Yes, they resist the All-Out Attack]]. ''Golden'' made several varieties take normal damage to both Physical and Almighty to make them a bit less headache-inducing.

*** As the years go on and newer players with changing standards get into the game, they tend to find Yosuke's somewhat homophobic treatment of Kanji less and less acceptable. It's not hard to see players who found him unsalvagable as a character following the Camping Trip in particular.

** Dojima is, for the most part, a fairly good detective for a case in which the standard rules don't apply, quite trusting of the protagonists despite his concerns about Yu getting involved in the investigation, and tries to raise Nanako well in spite of his issues and his workload. Sadly, all this tends to be overshadowed by his actions on [[WhamEpisode November 5th]], where he ends up [[IdiotBall completely dropping the ball purely so the plot can move forward]] and [[ConflictBall completely refusing to believe you about the Midnight Channel even if you've maxed out his Social Link]]; this leads to some fans treating him like a total chump even though his biggest "crime" was making a mistake in the heat of the moment, dire consequences notwitstanding.

** Yosuke making the incredibly boneheaded move to bring real weapons to a ''public café'' and wave them around like an imbecile, despite the fact there have been two murders and a kidnapping recently and a larger than usual police presence in the area. Even his staunchest fans see this as pretty big screw up.
** Yosuke's HaveIMentionedIAmHeterosexualToday moments, which are actually few and far between, have gotten flanderized by the fandom to the point where ''he'' is the character with the TransparentCloset. His [[HoYay close relationship]] with the protagonist plays a part in it too, as does the DummiedOut dialog that suggests he may have been intended to be a GayOption at one point.

* MemeticTroll: Yukiko Amagi. Usually a DitzyGenius YamatoNadeshiko, the time she has Kanji get gag glasses not once but twice, and the event at the Amagi Inn where she messed up the schedules of the boys by accident and makes their stay at her inn just [[PlayedForLaughs hilariously unpleasant]] has made people think she's a rather sneaky lovable {{Troll}}.

** [[spoiler:Nanako's resurrection. There really wasn't much explanation for it aside from the fact that you didn't kill Namatame]].

* FairForItsDay: Some of the jokes and tone addressed towards Kanji and even his very dungeon can come across as homophobic nowadays, but at the time, the game was rather progressive with its treatment of his sexuality. While it is never stated what it is, the game doesn't really shame him for being confused or curious about it, or even for being willing to explore it, and states that there wouldn't be anything wrong if he wasn't straight. The fact that Kanji was also a main character is also pretty unusual, as these kinds of traits and jokes would usually be pushed on someone more secondary.