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  • Let us begin with an acknowledgement of Makoto Niijima's sheer stamina. As one of the only two Thieves to have a driving license, and - as it turns out when she eventually has to let Haru take over - the only one of those two who can be trusted not to drive like a maniac, she's the one ferrying them around Japan, and manages to hold out for nearly three weeks. "Queen" indeed.
  • Sophia's first fight. Joker, Ryuji and Morgana have her tag along, but probably don't think she can hold her own. Then they tell her a Shadow is blocking the exit:
    Sophia: Okay. I got it.
    Shadow: Who are you? Intruders?! (blasts fire at her)
    Sophia: (No-Sells it before destroying the Shadow) We are... The Phantom Thieves.
  • The Thieves working in tandem to break through Alice's security in an epic cutscene. Joker also has to take down thousands of Shadows all by himself during there, and "Daredevil" playing simply adds up the hype.
  • The Futaba Cannon returns as the Thieves hijack Shibuya Square to send a calling card to Alice.
  • Ann, and later Yusuke, Haru, Zenkichi, and Sophia convincing the Jail Monarchs to give back the wishes they stole and live in reality. It works and is also heartwarming as well.
  • Yusuke acquiring Natsume's EMMA keyword. Thanks to Zenkichi, the Phantom Thieves manage to get into a sales party for Natsume's book. While there, Natsume, while mingling with the other party guests, makes several comments about his work selling that are all too similar to Madarame's talk of "staging" his plagiarized art and ends up bashing the Sayuri. While the Thieves are all outraged at this, Yusuke just calmly asks to handle getting the keyword by himself. He then butters up Natsume with false praise, successfully tricking him into giving him his keyword. As soon as he gets it, that's when he drops the following bombshell, all in Tranquil Fury mode, before departing with the Thieves, leaving Natsume seething in his own impotent rage.
    Yusuke: The "Sayuri" was painted by my mother.
    Natsume: ......!?
    Yusuke: This may be unprofessional of me, but professionalism be damned... My mother painted the "Sayuri" at the cost of her own life. It is her final masterpiece. The painting was crafted with a love that simply can't be found anywhere else. Don't you dare lump it in with that soulless drivel you cobbled together from authors far more talented than you!
  • Haru turning the "Beauty Thief" name from a joke into a Badass Boast when she declares that the Phantom Thieves will stop Shadow Mariko.
    Noir: Mari-san. Say goodbye to the countless Desires you stole. Because Beauty Thief and the Phantom Thieves... [strikes her Beauty Thief pose] Are about to take them back!
  • In the Okinawa and Osaka Jails, you can ambush Shadows by crashing through glass windows! Not exactly stealthy, but damn if it doesn't look cool.
  • The day Ryuji finally got to say 'fuck'. For context: in the Okinawa Jail, EMMA uses Sophia's voice to call her "a waste" and "worthless," and Ryuji retaliates with a blistering Shut Up, Hannibal! speech armed with a pseudo Cluster F-Bomb before finally finishing with a massive Precision F-Strike. The sheer emotion and pain in his voice leaves everyone present stunned, and although Morgana gently chastises Ryuji for not being classy, he then agrees that it's not time to be classy and declares that the Thieves are going to mess EMMA up for daring to emotionally attack Sophia.
    Ryuji: You piece of- I sat here while you went on and on and on... You got NO right saying that to Sophie! Y'hear me!? You high an'-mighty, garbage-ass, judgy piece o' SHIT can't even show your own face! [...] She's bugged, huh!? She's worthless!? You got all that from five friggin' questions!? We're Sophie's friends, and we KNOW she's awesome! She's friggin' amazing! A million times better than you! SO SHUT THE FUCK UP, IDIOT!
    Morgana: Come on, Skull... phantom thieves are normally supposed to be classier than that... but not THIS time!
    Ryuji and Morgana: WORTHLESS HUNK OF JUNK!
  • Shadow Akane, as the shadow of a mere child, was capable of baiting and trapping all eight combat members within EMMA's clutches all by herself. Futaba only escaped this because she was too weak to run, which can be Awesome in its own regard.
  • Zenkichi, gaining his own Persona, making him the first Persona-using father in franchise history. He also kicks ass, and finally convinces his daughter to let go of her anger.
  • Hell, the entire sequence of events leading up to Zenkichi's awakening is pretty awesome.
    • The night the party arrives in Kyoto, Zenkichi sees a news conference where Akira Konoe (who is being backed by Owada, a past Shido supporter) publicly blames the Phantom Thieves for hacking into EMMA's servers and murdering a company employee, Shuzo Ubukata (the Monarch of the Okinawa Jail who in truth was Driven to Suicide by Konoe himself), and is swearing to arrest them. Zenkichi immediately realizes the danger the Thieves are in, and when they don't reply to his calls/messages, he personally books it to the hotel he set them up in, where he notices his boss Kaburagi and a team of riot officers ready to barge in and forcefully arrest the Thieves. Despite the fact that Kaburagi had earlier told him to "not get too comfy with them", he explicitly defies orders and screams for them to run, which causes him to get arrested.
    • During the interrogation, he resists the officers' violent treatment, without spilling anything on the Thieves' whereabouts, and still manages to roast the officers on how easily their hearts got changed.
    • He is then eventually set free by Sae, who Makoto had contacted earlier. Despite the fact that she (as Makoto describes later) wasn't exactly happy to get involved in this kind of business again, she vows to get the police off the Thieves' and Zenkichi's back (which she succeeds at by the end of the Kyoto arc).
      • Special mention goes to Sae herself in how she does it: she does an Unflinching Walk through the Kyoto interrogation area, outright ignoring the corrupt cops who demand to know who she is and why she's there. By the end, she has total control of the situation and the cops are sniveling, knowing that Zenkichi is allowed his attorney — her.
    • Zenkichi rushes off to his hideout, where he finds Futaba (having been the only one who escaped Shadow Akane's trap). After explaining the circumstances to him, he personally requests to be taken to Akane's Jail, despite the fact that he isn't even a Persona user and Futaba can't protect him because Necronomicon's combat abilities are severely limited at best, in order to talk to his daughter. What follows next is a stealth sequence where you play as Zenkichi, successfully sneaking past all the Shadow guards and reaching the cage where the Thieves have been captured by Shadow Akane.
    • Zenkichi is called out by his daughter's Shadow (who has been corrupted into a pawn of Konoe by EMMA), demanding to know why he refused to arrest Owada, the true culprit behind her mother's hit-and-run. Zenkichi confesses that not only was he taken off the case, but after Owada's secretary left a suicide note falsely confessing to the murder, he was sent a threat letter which stated that if he continued to pursue the case, Akane would die, meaning that he was protecting her the whole time he wasn't pursuing the case. Shadow Akane still claims that he left his values as an officer behind, causing Zenkichi to become dejected, claiming he had no right to lecture Akane; however, the Thieves and his Shadow encourage him to stand up and continue fighting for his daughter's sake.
    • Zenkichi then drops to the ground in pain, while his Shadow encourages him to take action. After pounding the ground with his fist, he declares "Seal the contract." with his mask appearing on his face. He then slowly and bloodily rips off the mask, screaming Valjean's name. Valjean then takes out the nearest group of Shadows, with Zenkichi giving an awesome one-liner as they prepare to face the rest. Of course, being Zenkichi, he then has to ruin the moment by asking what happened to his clothes, but it's still cool.
      Zenkichi: I know what I have to do now... Condemn the evil, and hunt them down!
      • For anyone who played Persona 4, Zenkichi's awakening is awesome on another level. Valjean's first line of dialogue is actually taunting Zenkichi for abandoning his principles. Zenkichi's Shadow was on the cusp of going berserk, like the Shadows in P4 did when they were denied. But when Zenkichi is faced with his repressed feelings and guilt? He immediately accepts his Shadow's accusations, preemptively taming it. All it takes is the Phantom Thieves to remind Zenkichi of his desire to protect Akane for Valjean to immediately start encouraging Zenkichi to stand up, because he had been accepted, and was now ready to return the favor.
  • While touring the Osaka Jail for the first time, Ryuji and Futaba get giddy after seeing mounted railguns lying around and sure enough, you can use the "de-facto sci-fi weapon" to unleash a satisfying Electric attack as much as you like (after it recharges per shot).
  • Konoe's calling card. Feeling that hijacking the airwaves again or using an internet stream wouldn't cut it, and Konoe is too well guarded to send the calling card personally, the Phantom Thieves hijack a blimp to rain calling cards all over the city and broadcast their threat. And for bonus points, it was being used by Madicce for advertisement before.
  • Konoe's Shadow. He first rides a giant Mech in battle, then after totaling it, just when you think you've finished him... he emerges from the flames unscathed with an epic guitar riff and decides to fights you on foot, donning a super sentai outfit while moving around the screen at incredible speeds, all to a kickass new song by Lyn Inaizumi, Counter Strike.
    • For that matter, Konoe himself. Despite it looking like he's just a Shido expy, it turns out he legitimately wants to make the world a better place, as shown by him screwing over Owada and also takes his loss with dignity.
    • Compared to the other Shadow Selves who turned into monsters, Shadow Konoe is the closest to a Badass Normal Shadow in the series who almost never uses magical spells, and yet is one of the most powerful opponents the Phantom Thieves have fought.
    • Konoe killing his horribly abusive father to avenge his mother's murder at the age of eight qualifies as both awesome and Nightmare Fuel. While it ended up as the catalyst to his Start of Darkness and all of his ensuing actions in the present, you have to admit, that vile, disgusting piece of shit completely and utterly deserved to die.
      • Even though he's already dead, the Thieves get the chance to furiously beat down Konoe's father as a Lock Keeper. Ryuji even outright admits that killing it felt extremely cathartic.
        Morgana: Is everyone alright?
        Ryuji: Better than alright! Feels great knowing we put that asswipe in his PLACE!
  • The way that the transition from the boss introduction cutscenes into gameplay (for the first 3 monarchs) line up perfectly with the kick-ass electric guitar drop for the track Blooming Villain, considering you don't skip the cutscene and you let the pre-battle dialogue boxes play out with auto-speed.
    • Also somewhat done for the mech-phase of Konoe's fight, where the battle begins around the time the main part of the Rivers in a Desert remix starts
  • Sophia fighting against her programming and evolving her artificial Pithos into a real Persona, Pandora, after slamming Ichinose's reasoning for making EMMA hard enough to make her flip. Following the battle, she tries to convince her creator, the instigator of the game, to turn over a new leaf, and it works.
    • On that note, serious kudos to Ichinose for being able to create Sophia, an AI so advanced that she was able to use something similar to a Persona, and later awaken to a true Persona all in the frame of about a month, with no prior understanding of the human heart. The Anti-Shadow Suppression Weapons, whose entire purpose was to use Personas and fight Shadows, all needed a Plume of Dusk which is a fragment of Nyx to have a psyche and use Personas, and Ichinose does something similar with nothing except an entity made of code.
  • Considering the kinds of horrible people they represent, beating the crap out of each jail's wardens and knowing that their real life counterparts got their own comeuppance are some of the most cathartic moments in the game.
  • The whole party of 10 finishing the Demiurge in a 10-person All-Out Attack while "You Are Stronger" plays in the background.
  • Getting Susan Bennett, the original voice actress for Apple's SIRI AI, to voice EMMA, is an awesome casting flex, and a highly fitting casting choice.
  • In the end, Kaburagi and Zenkichi take down Owada with a laundry list of crimes, including the death of Aoi without needing the Phantom Thieves to change his heart, not that they could since they had lost their means to enter the Metaverse and were all rendered out of business again, showing that true justice can be dealt by the police if in the right hands.

Alternative Title(s): Persona 5 Scramble The Phantom Strikers

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