Fanfic / Hours 'Verse

It was January 9th, the world was ending, and Minato couldn’t sleep.

The Hours 'Verse is a series of Persona Fix Fics written by TwilightKnight17 beginning from near the end of Persona 3 and covering the events of Persona 4 and Persona 5, while occasionally featuring characters from Persona and Persona 2.

The Hours Verse has since expanded to two timelines:

• The "Hours Main timeline" following the canonical set of games.
• The "Hours Other Side" which served as a continuation fic for the "Innocent Sin" timeline of Persona 2.

Note that there are unmarked spoilers for the canon events of all the Persona games, including the endgames of Persona 3, Persona 4, Persona 5 Royal, and Persona 5 Strikers. You Have Been Warned!

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The Hours 'Verse contains examples of:

• 11th-Hour Ranger:
  • In Heir Apparent, Hamuko joins the Phantom Thieves for the final fight against Maruki. She also offers to recruit Yu, but Akira tells her point-blank that he doesn't trust the Shadow Operatives and is only letting her accompany them because she's right there.
  • In Waking the Dreamer, Kasumi joins forces with Akechi to investigate the newly amoral Phantom Thieves and the supposed utopia they're creating. After she snaps the other members out of Akira's Yaldabaoth-supplied thrall, Kasumi and the Thieves knock some sense into Akira and break his distortion. Kasumi stays to help with the final battle, but she parts ways with them after that, since going from first awakening to fighting a god for control of reality in barely a week is a lot to handle.
• Aborted Arc: Instead of Morgana temporarily leaving the Phantom Thieves, he simply talks out his problems with Akira.
• Accidental Murder: When Akechi shoots Wakaba's Shadow, he expects her to fall ill for a while, recover, and stop messing with Shido. He doesn't take it well when she actually dies.
• Adaptational Angst Downgrade: When Morgana begins to go through his crisis of confidence, Akira successfully talks him through his problems instead of them boiling over and causing a 10-Minute Retirement.
• Adaptational Backstory Change: In Monarch's Cascade, Sumire has some details of her backstory changed. In canon, Maruki brainwashed her into taking her sister's identity before her arrival at Shujin Academy. Here, her family agreed to have her impersonate Kasumi to take advantage of her scholarship to Shujin, and the brainwashing occurred in October when she awakened to her Persona.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • Minato is able to summon Personas in the real world and cast spells on his own due to having the Universe Arcana.
  • Akechi manages to form genuine bonds, resulting in him receiving Mordred, his true Ultimate Persona. He later undergoes training with Minato to harness the full power of the Wild Card.
  • During Mementos' merge with reality late in Butterfly Cascade, various non-Persona users help out with their own skills, including Dojima, Nanako, Shinya, Sojiro, Takemi, and Iwai.
  • Sumire goes from an ordinary Persona wielder to a Wild Card.
  • In Patchwork Hearts, the Phantom Thieves are not struck by the Bag of Spilling like they are in canon.
  • In canon, Futaba and pre-Persona Zenkichi are completely unable to fight Shadows. Here, they manage to physically overpower Akane's Cognitive Mona.
• Adaptational Early Appearance:
  • Minato meets Lavenza and Margaret right after the events of Persona 3. Lavenza also joins her siblings in visiting Yasogami's culture festival in Catch Perfect.
  • Futaba recovers from her change of heart and awakening much sooner and defeats Medjed earlier.
  • In canon Persona 5, you couldn't start the Tower Confidant until September. Here, Akira is already friends with Shinya in August.
  • Akechi joins the Phantom Thieves in Okumura's Palace, due to Akira confronting him about his status as a Persona-user earlier on.
• Adaptational Karma:
  • In canon Royal, Maruki gets off with just a beatdown from the Phantom Thieves. In Heir Apparent, he is arrested by the Shadow Operatives.
  • Downplayed at the end of Patchwork Hearts. In canon Strikers, Ichinose's attempt to turn herself in for the EMMA incident fails because nobody believes her, forcing her to become The Atoner on her own recognizance. In Patchwork Hearts, the Shadow Operatives are able to oversee her rehabilitation on pain of jail time if she steps out of line.
  • In The Other 25th Hours, Maya "Ms. Ideal" Okamura, who murdered Maya Amano and caused the deaths of everyone not in airborne Sumaru City in the process, was revealed to be life-sentenced in Morimoto on Chapter 4.
• Adaptational Late Appearance: In canon, Akira gets his grappling hook in Kamoshida's Palace at the beginning of his supernatural adventures. Here, he gets it in the Sendai Jail during Patchwork Hearts, a year and a half late.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: Instead of believing that the Thieves killed Okumura and turning against them, Class 2-D are still firm believers in them. They ask Ann about Akira when the latter stops attending class after the news about the leader of the Phantom Thieves' suicide, revealing them as Secret Secret-Keepers and justifying their niceness as care and concern for their classmates.
• Adaptational Sexuality: In canon, the male protagonists of Persona 3 and Persona 5 can only end up in romantic relationships with women. In this series, they are both in homosexual relationships - Minato with Ryoji and Akira with Akechi.
• Adaptational Superpower Change: In Monarch's Cascade, Kasumi's Persona is changed from Cendrillon to Helel. Zig-zagged later; when she has her true awakening as Sumire, she receives Cendrillon as in canon. Her awakening to Helel is explained as a result of her maxed Star Arcana bond with the late Kasumi, now having the power of the Wild Card.
• Adaptational Weapon Swap: Downplayed. After the Velvet Room siblings are forced out by Yaldabaoth's take-over, they all take up conventional weapons in addition to their normal skills. Elizabeth chooses battleaxes, Margaret chooses rapiers, and Theodore chooses swords and pistols.
• Adaptational Wimp:
  • Since Minato survives the final battle with Nyx, Aigis never receives the Wild Card.
  • In canon Maruki was capable of using his Persona in the real world right from the word go. Here, he only receives that ability after becoming the God of Control; Sumire was herself up to October and only genuinely thought she was Kasumi after being drawn directly into his Palace.
• Adaptation Deviation:
  • Because Waking the Dreamer was written before the author played Royal, Kasumi's characterization is based on trailers. For example, she doesn't awaken to her Persona until half a year past the confrontation with Yaldabaoth in the fic, when in canon she awakens in early October. She's also actually Kasumi, having been Retconned into the real one when Maruki's non-prescence meant Sumire had no reason to believe she was her dead sister.
  • Unlike canon Strikers, Morgana is not present when Akira and Ryuji fall into their first Jail, on account of his getting a human body in an earlier entry letting him go places without Akira.
  • The hot springs debacle is excised in Patchwork Hearts, with Akechi simply explaining the misunderstanding to the girls who proceed to act like reasonable human beings about it. The whole party proceeds to go co-ed for a bit until the staff catches them and throws them out.
• Adaptation Expansion:
  • Intermezzo delves deeply into Akira and Akechi's backstories, extrapolating on details from canon to build a full backstory for the former, and explaining how Akechi got to the mindset he has for the latter.
  • The trip to Destinyland is fully shown in Butterfly Cascade.
• Adaptation Name Change:
  • After his Heel–Face Turn, Akechi changes his code name from Crow to Ace.
  • Kasumi goes by Angel instead of Violet. After reclaiming her true identity as Sumire and maxing out her Confidant with Akira, she changes it to Violet like in canon.
  • Sophia's codename is changed from the rather on-the-nose Sophie to the more subtle Pixel.
  • The masters of the Jails are renamed from "Monarchs" to "Wardens" to maintain the prison theme. They go back to Monarchs after the Phantom Thieves learn more about them and conclude that they are both rulers of their Jails and trapped by their roles.
• Adapted Out:
  • Due to Minato dodging his canon death, the events of The Answer never happen and Metis never appears.
  • In Waking the Dreamer, Maruki has nothing to do with the Yoshizawa twins, and doesn't appear at all.
  • In Monarch's Cascade, Vanadis is excised, and Sumire skips straight from Cendrillon to Ella.
• Adults Are Useless: Double Subverted. The Shadow Operatives are a group of Kid Heroes All Grown-Up founded to handle meta-space incidents so another generation of Kid Heroes don't have to. However, they frequently find themselves unable to help, whether it be bureaucratic red-tape or loss of access to meta-space blocking their way.
• Affectionate Nickname: Goro refers to Akira as "attic trash". Disscussed in Patchwork Hearts when Sophia questions why Goro calls his boyfriend a "mean thing", and Goro explains that sometimes you can call people you know well enough mean things with affection.
• After the End: The Hours Other Side sub-series is set in the world Nyarlathotep destroyed at the end of Persona 2: Innocent Sin.
• Age Lift: In canon^*assumedly, by their being second-years by the time of their respective games and the main Hours timelines, the protagonists of Persona 3 and Persona 4 were born in 1992 and 1994, respectively. On the Other Side, Makoto, Kotone, and Souji were all born in 2000, a gap of six to eight years. Several other characters on the Other Side also have discrepant ages, and it's eventually explained that they're reincarnations of the Wild Cards from the This Side.
• Allohistorical Allusion: While explaining multiverse theory in My Kingdom for My Heart, Minato correctly speculates that there are timelines out there where Akira didn't take Maruki's deal or Maruki never gained the power of the God of Control in the first place.
• All Therapists Are Muggles: Averted. After her timeline is destroyed, Hamuko goes to Maki for therapy sessions. She also talks to Maya about it, due to her having faced a similar experience. Later as part of his rehabilitation deal, Akechi also visits Maki.
• All Your Base Are Belong to Us: Chapter 10 of Intermezzo shows how Yaldabaoth took over the Velvet Room. He imprisions Igor, drives out Margaret, Elizabeth, and Theo, and captures Nameless, Belladonna, and Lavenza, splitting the latter into two amnesiac halves to obscure her memories; then forbids entry for anyone other than his Trickster and his opponent, at least until the Big Damn Heroes break in to reclaim it late in Butterfly Cascade.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: An In-Universe example of this happens with Akira dating Akechi. While the rest of the Thieves believe that he is only doing it to get information out of him, Ann can tell that Akira actually has feelings for him.
• Ambiguous Syntax: In As the Bells Toll, Minato states "Ryoji's Death". His poor wording causes the Phantom Thieves to think he's dying, when in reality he's the Anthropomorphic Personification of Death.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: In Stars Shine Brighter without Sunlight, after 29 chapters focusing on events on the Other Side, Chapter 30 shows Tatsuya and Jun's last day on This Side.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: When the Phantom Thieves confront Akechi in Mementos, Akira gives him one of these to prove he wasn't lying about caring about him, and it causes Akechi to break down and form the Theatre of Fraud.
• Antagonist in Mourning: In Sunset, Nyarlathotep grieves Tatsuya in the wake of the latter's death, and Thanatos and Keres show up at his funeral in human disguises to pay their respects. Later, Nyarlathotep also grieves when Jun passes, getting drunk off of wine from the cellars of destroyed Paris and picking fights with several of the Children of Nyx.
  Keres: He’s made Oizys and the Fates cry, and he got into a shouting match with Momus. Not that Momus didn’t deserve it, but I do not want this to escalate further.
• Apocalypse How:
  • The Fall, as the destruction of all humankind, is a Class 3a apocalypse. After the Investigation Team dies in the TV World in Hamuko's timeline, Izanami begins spreading her fog, causing panic and turning people into Shadows. The ensuing chaos results in humanity's despair making Erebus too strong for Hamuko's Great Seal to handle, breaking it and causing Nyx to bring about the Fall.
  • The prophecy for The End of the World as We Know It causing the Earth to stop spinning at the end of Persona 2: Innocent Sin is a Class 5 apocalypse, and the Other Side is what's left: the only living beings to survive were the ones in Sumaru City when Xibalba took off, and now Earth is inhabited by the Children of Nyx and other demons.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: Goro is rather skeptical when Minato informs him about multiverse theory while explaining the events of Persona 2 in My Kingdom for My Heart.
  Minato: I'm engaged to Death Incarnate in a world where a single person can currently rewrite reality however he wants.
  Goro: ......touché.
• Armor-Piercing Question: In Stars Shine Brighter without Sunlight, the cadet trio are questioning Goro about Ren's recent actions and demand to search his phone. Goro shuts them down by asking "Do you have a warrant to search my property?" and goes on to lecture them on going behind Anna's back and abusing their authority as part of the Defensive Line.
• Ascended Extra: While still having no substantial relevance to the story, the boy who sits behind Akira in class has been given a name and some actual lines, including being one of class members who ask Ann about Akira after his staged suicide.
• Author Appeal:
  • Ryoji and Akechi are love interests for the male protagonists, due to the author's preferences.
  • Akira gets a job at the flower shop due to it being the author's favorite job.
  • The Phantom Thieves goof off in the Palaces in ways that the author wishes were possible in the game, such as swimming in the Pooled Funds in Kaneshiro's Palace.
• Badass Normal:
  • Dojima, Nanako, Shinya, Sojiro, Takemi, and Iwai all put up a good showing against the Shadows during the final battle of Butterfly Cascade despite not having Personas.
  • Zenkichi manages to overpower and destroy Akane's Cognitive Mona with his police training and only a little supernatural support from Futaba.
• Beach Episode: As the Bells Toll opens with the Phantom Thieves taking a Shadow Operatives-sponsored trip to Yakushima. It's alluded to in Alternate Timeline Patchwork Hearts, but they end up too busy on their change-of-heart roadtrip to go.
  Goro: Arisato-san mentioned taking all of us on a trip at some point. Apparently Kirijo-san has a mansion on an island, with a private beach?
  Akira: ...please be nice to Kirijo-san so we can go to the private island mansion.
• Be Careful What You Wish For:
  • Hamuko wishes she wasn't separated from Minato. She gets her wish when her entire timeline is destroyed and only she and Shinjiro survive.
  • In The Other 25th Hours, which takes place on Innocent Sin's Other Side, Nanjo succeeds in becoming the world's #1 man. spoiler: Too bad the world is now a pile of rubble and one surviving city.
  • Ren believes his argument with Tatsuya is this, having told him to "go back to That Side" the night before he and Jun disappear. Discussed by several characters, despite Ren's outburst being entirely unrelated to the going-ons of That Side.
• Big Brother Instinct: Yu cares for Nanako a lot, and when she gets thrown into the TV World he does everything he can to rescue her, leading to him overworking his teammates and having to be physically dragged away and lectured by Minato.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • Minato and Ryoji save Yu from the Reaper in Yukiko's dungeon.
  • Just as Namatame is about to escape in his truck, Minato stops him by freezing the road.
  • Theodore saves Hamuko and Shinjiro from the destruction of their timeline by bringing them to the Velvet Room.
  • When Yaldabaoth reveals itself and attempts to murder Akira after he refuses its deal, Minato, Ryoji, Elizabeth, Theodore, and Margaret all show up to save him.
  • In Chapter 17 of As the Bells Toll, Philemon takes advantage of the move Nyarlathotep owed him to force him out of Minato's body.
• Big Good: As the heads of the companies contributing the most resources to the Shadow Operatives, who are dedicated to fighting threats in meta-space, Kei Nanjo and Mitsuru Kirijo share this role. Philemon also serves as this, as the creator and master of the Velvet Room, but his decisions are often contentious and most of the Wild Cards have a tenuous relationship with him.
• Breather Episode:
  • Chapter 28 of Butterfly Cascade. Akira finds Akechi stressing over Okumura's death, so they, Yusuke, and Futuba visit the planetarium and buy glow-in-the-dark star stickers to put up in Akira's attic.
  • Also in Butterfly Cascade, chapter 48. Akira and Akechi go on a date to Akihabara in disguises so the famous Akechi and the supposedly-dead Akira don't get recognised, and Akira gets the second Jack Frost doll he needs for his present to Caroline and Justine.
• Brick Joke: In The Other 25th Hours, Ren complains that "every moron trying to pick up a girl claims he's a 'Leo, just like Apollo'" at Club Zodiac. Later, in Stars Shine Brighter Without Sunlight, a boy from Kasugayama tries that very pickup line on Mai and gets tripped by Ren and Morgana for his efforts.
• Broken Masquerade: Discussed when the Phantom Thieves take Zenkichi into the Metaverse for the first time; they note that they have been spoiled dealing with adults who have backgrounds in cognitive psience or are already Persona-users, and Zenkichi is the first fully-fledged Muggle to be drawn into their adventures. Naturally, his reaction borders on Go Mad from the Revelation, all Played for Laughs.
  Zenkichi: But this is impossible. There’s no way tha— What are you all wearing? What is happening?! Did he grow cat ears?!?
  Sophia: It’s okay, Gramps! It is only natural to be alarmed at something so new and strange.
  Zenkichi, borderline hysterically: Oh my god who are you?!
• Broken Pedestal: Akechi spent his childhood creating an image of Shido as a heroic figure who will finally give him the love he never knew. Naturally, the truth is... less than pleasant.
• Brought Down to Normal: Elizabeth, Theodore, and Margaret become this after being cut off from the Velvet Room and their guests' Compendiums due to Yaldabaoth's takeover. However, they are still physically stronger and more resilient than normal humans, and picking up conventional weapons eventually graduates them to Brought Down to Badass.
• Butterfly of Doom: In Hamuko's timeline, the Investigation Team was killed in the fight with Adachi. With no one to stop Izanami, she causes enough despair to cause Erebus to break the Great Seal, allowing Nyx to bring about the Fall. Later while talking about the various Alternate Timelines, Philemon implies the divergence was even earlier: Hamuko not reaching out to and acting as mentor for her version of Yu like her brother did with his caused the two timelines to drift from each other far enough that Chronos couldn't or wouldn't sustain the different versions.
• Bystander Syndrome: Once Yaldabaoth merges reality with Mementos, the people's apathy becomes so bad that the Shadow Operatives are able to openly carry weapons in broad daylight without fear of repercussion.
• Call-Forward:
  • When Yu and Naoto visit the Velvet Room and learn about the Sea of Souls, Naoto speculates that there could be other areas in the Collective Unconscious formed by the perceptions of humanity. Later, on one of her trips to the Sea of Souls, Elizabeth comes across Mikuratana-no-Kami, the unfinished Midnight Stage, and Mementos in an early stage.
  • Izanami says that Mankind's wish for the easy way is just part of a bigger problem – specifically, their refusal to think and their desire to have someone else decide everything for them.
  • At one point Yu thinks that someone with Sho's personality and Minato's power would be terrifying.
• Calling the Old Man Out: Akira blows up at his parents after they call him in the aftermath of Shido's Palace, accusing them of never worrying about him during his tumultuous year.
• Calling Your Attacks: In a common fanon divergence from the source material, spell casting is often accompanied by the name of the spell. Fusion spells in particular are always called by name, such as Igor casting Grand Cross using the memories of the Masked Circle, or the Wild Cards casting Ain Soph Aur at the climax of My Kingdom for My Heart. Discussed by the cadets in The Other 25th Hours, where they try to pick a name for their all-out-attack.
  Souji: We should call our team attack something. Anna and Tatsuya call their fusion spells new names. We don’t have fusion spells, but we have… whatever that was.
  Kotone: A shakedown!
  Makoto: Uh, no. No one asked you to name it.
• Canon Welding:
  • Wakaba Isshiki brings up SEBEC and their experiments when describing her research to Mitsuru and Kei, and believes that Maki's world and Magatsu-Inaba may have been proto-Palaces.
  • Tatsuya Suou was the previous Trickster before Akira, explaining many of the similarities between what Akira and Akechi went through and what Tatsuya and Jun went through. At Philemon's request, he passes on the Misericorde, his Reforged Blade, to Akira.
  • Hikari Tamura is one of the Monarchs encountered during the events of Patchwork Hearts, having an Original Generation Jail that brings half the Thieves to Sumaru City.
  • Stars Shine Brighter without Sunlight reveals Nyarlathotep is responsible for orchestrating Maruki's possession by Azathoth in order to draw Tatsuya out of the Other Side with the ultimate goal of overrunning it with Shadows and finishing what he started in 1999.
• Cavalry Refusal: When everything goes to shit late in Butterfly Cascade, Mitsuru contacts all of the older Persona users requesting backup. Yuka refuses to answer the call as she lives up north and decides she'd rather stay with her kids, Mark and Rise can't answer the call because they're overseas, and Brown and Reiji don't respond at all.
• Charm Person: A cognition of Akira in Akechi's Palace is able to brainwash anyone he touches, based on Akechi percieving Akira as someone who wins over everyone he comes across.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Igor presents Yu with the Orb of Sight after defeating Izanami. Yu later uses it to figure out that Yaldabaoth is impersonating Igor during Butterfly Cascade.
  • Akira gets two Jack Frost plushies for the twins. Lavenza later comes up with the idea to use them to pass notes between him and Akechi.
• Children Forced to Kill: Sojiro is horrified to learn that Wakaba's murderer was a fifteen-year old child.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: As a child, Akira would often stand up for people getting picked on, getting himself into trouble. And then, of course, he crossed Shido...
• Clark Kenting: Akechi at first doesn't believe that Akira could be Joker, due to his quiet demeanor and glasses. He stops believing this after seeing Akira give Joker's sinister smirk.
• Combination Attack: In My Kingdom For My Heart, the Wild Cards finish off Adam Beliyya’al with an ultimate fusion attack they call Ain Soph Aur, powered by Akira's inheritance of Mementos' power. Some day or so later in Stars Shine Brighter Without Sunlight, Ren leads the Other Side's Wild Cards in the same spell to push back Nyx and end the Endless Midnight, powered by its casting in the other timeline.
• Commonality Connection: Akechi bonds with Ken over their similarities, being members of the Justice Arcana who threw away a good portion of their lives seeking revenge against the men responsible for the deaths of their mothers.
• Composite Character:
  • The Reaper turns out to be Tatsuya Sudou, forever corrupted into Nyarlathotep's servant.
  • The Other Side's Goro Niijima takes on several traits from the Thieves, from a shitty Disappeared Dad who he hates and a mother he cares a lot about, to getting in trouble for punching a sleazy teacher and knowing how to change a heart. He even has Arsène!
• Cosmic Plaything: Discussed in Patchwork Hearts when the Metaverse and reality merge for the third time and only the Phantom Thieves can stop it.
  Yusuke: I suppose at this point, our karma has run deep down the drain.
  Haru: The gods probably hate us at this point.
• Crisis Crossover: The series brings all of the main games, including 1 and 2, into one big storyline.
• Cutting Off the Branches:
  • Hamuko's timeline was destroyed so that she and Shinjiro could be in Minato's, as they had both died there.
  • Discussed by Philemon in the epilogue of Stars Shine Brighter without Sunlight, mentioning other outcomes that had been erased like Hamuko's timeline and the Accomplice Ending of Persona 4.
• Dating Catwoman: Conversed in My Kingdom for My Heart when the group watches Featherman during some downtime; Tatsuya wonders aloud about humanity's fascination with the hero and villain falling in love, and Maya rebuts that his own romance with Jun counts as this trope.
  Maya: This coming from the man who’s married to Black Condor, one half of the most famous hero/villain ship in all of Featherman!
  Tatsuya: That is not the same thing. Black Condor started out as a hero, and was manipulated and brainwashed into working for Lord Zero! He’s a victim, not a villain!
• Death by Adaptation:
  • Everyone from Hamuko's timeline aside from herself and Shinjiro die, due to Nyx bringing about the Fall after Izanami starts spreading her fog outside of Inaba.
  • While his fate past his arrest is never elaborated on in the original game, in Butterfly Cascade Shido explicitly receives the death penalty for his crimes.
  • Late in My Kingdom for My Heart, Maruki is killed as a result of Azathoth's possession.
• Deducing the Secret Identity: After the Casino Palace, Ann finds out that her entire class had figured out that she, Akira, and Ryuji are members of the Phantom Thieves, given that Akira takes Morgana everywhere with him, he makes lockpicks in class, and he suddenly started missing school after the leader of the Phantom Thieves supposedly committed suicide.
• Demoted to Extra: The Velvet Room attendants are this during the Arena games, being forced to watch from the sidelines thanks to Igor grounding them all and saying that Theodore saving Hamuko and Shinjiro in Catch Perfect is more than enough intervention for now.
• Deus Exit Machina:
  • The Shadow Operatives repeatedly suffer plot contrivances to keep them out of the main games' stories, from Yaldabaoth's hijacking of the Velvet Room keeping them from accessing meta-space, to the police coming after the Kirijo Group on suspicion of aiding and abetting the Phantom Thieves. Duly mocked on an occasion it happens in Monarch's Cascade:
    It's once again time for my favorite game: Holding Off The Shadow Ops So the Plot Can Happen
  • Akechi and Sumire are removed from the Phantom Thieves' lineup for part of Patchwork Hearts because they aren't with them when Zenkichi first appears and Akira wants to keep the two Thieves the police don't know about in his back pocket as a trump card. Downplayed with the Jail they take down seperately with the help of Minato and Ryoji, and later fully subverted with them rejoining the team in Kyoto.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?:
  • Minato takes Philemon to task for sitting on his ass and leaving the heroes in the lurch whenever things went bad when he crashes Minato and Ryoji's wedding in As The Bells Toll. Later, Minato and Ryoji punch him as Messiah when Philemon tries to congratulate the Wild Cards on beating Nyarlathotep.
  • Every single one of Tatsuya and Philemon's conversations eventually ends up this way, with insults and drinks frequently flung across Alaya Shrine.
    The can harmlessly bounced off the door before spraying its contents all over the ground.
    Philemon: It's good to see you, too.
    Tatsuya: One day I’ll get you.
• Did You Just Scam Cthulhu?: In Patchwork Hearts, Akira recounts how he pranked Minato and Ryoji back in Facing the Sun, before trailing off in bemusement by the realisation that pranking Minato means he pranked the most powerful Wild Card on the planet. It doesn't help when Sumire tells him that not many people can truthfully boast that they managed to get one over on the living manifestation of death itself.
• Disney Death: Akechi is presumed dead after Shido's Palace, but he escapes to the Velvet Room and reunites with Akira during the apocalypse.
• Distant Finale: Sunset is set nearly two decades after the main series, and shows the evolution of Ren's third-tier Persona, Suou family antics with Ren and Goro's daughter, Hikari, and gives Tatsuya a send-off with all the grieving that comes with it.
• Divine Intervention: Deconstructed. While the older Persona users and the Velvet Room attendants lend their assistance where they can, it's often brought up that doing so goes against their purpose of helping their guests grow and mature on their own. This goes even further in As the Bells Toll when Philemon warns the heroes that the Velvet Room attendants being so close to humans is threatening to break the stalemate between himself and the Crawling Chaos.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • After encountering an early Mementos, Elizabeth thinks that the distortions won't be much of a problem and that Igor can handle it. Persona 5 has him ousted from his own Velvet Room, replaced by an imposter, and one of his attendants split into two amnesiac halves.
  • When Wakaba hears about how the people involved in the SEBEC incident and the Inaba murders were children, she says that she doesn't want Futaba to be caught up in anything like that. Unfortunately, her death will be the very thing to pull Futaba into this mess.
  • At one point, the Phantom Thieves consider the possibility that Haru is the traitor. However, the reader who has known all along it's Akechi, laughs (or screams) along with him at their stupidity.
  • During the third semester in Monarch's Cascade, Minato and Hamuko elect not to inform Akechi that something weird is going on with Mitsuru's father seemingly coming Back from the Dead and Shinjiro getting a college partnership for his restaurant. The audience is aware that Akechi is in Tokyo and already has a better understanding of the situation than they do. Subverted by the reveal that the Akechi in Tokyo is a cognitive duplicate, and the real Akechi was still in Iwatodai.
• The Dreaded: On the Other Side, the Children of Nyx are completely terrified of Tatsuya. Once he finally returns from his forced jaunt to This Side, the entire group gives up on causing armageddon and retreats on the spot.
• Early-Bird Cameo:
  • In chapter 6 of Facing the Sun, a young Akira pulls a prank on Minato and Ryoji. He's later properly introduced in Intermezzo.
  • The Other Side's Tatsuya appears in Butterfly Cascade to give Minato his original sword Misericorde, reforged into a dagger to pass onto Akira. He shows up again to give support to Minato after Philemon crashes his wedding and indicates that the Velvet siblings are getting too involved in human affairs, although that second appearance gets darkly subverted when it's revealed that it's actually Nyarlathotep in the guise of Tatsuya trying to manipulate him. Later, the series expands to include events from the Other Side timeline, featuring Tatsuya prominently in The Other 25th Hours and My Kingdom for My Heart.
• Easily Forgiven: Akechi ends up on good terms with the Phantom Thieves and Sojiro rather quickly after his Heel–Face Turn, given the similarities between his own circumstances and the Theives', his age, and Shido's corruptive influence on him.
• Epileptic Trees: In-Universe. When Minato meets his sister Hamuko from another timeline, they can only speculate on how she survived casting the Great Seal. Ryoji theorizes that they might have only needed one Seal since the collective unconscious spans all worlds, or perhaps some of the power of Minato's Seal bled over and empowered Hamuko's.
• Et Tu, Brute?:
  • Akechi eats a reversed Confidant with Sojiro when the latter finds out the truth about his past, particularly that he was the one who killed Wakaba.
  • Downplayed when Maruki admits that he knew all along Akira was a Phantom Thief. Akira's trust in him is damaged by the fact that he not only kept that from him but exploited the knowledge for his own benefit, but it isn't enough to destroy their friendship.
• Evil All Along: The person assumed to be the Other Side's Tatsuya in As the Bells Toll turns out to be this, as he's actually Nyarlathotep impersonating him, with the goal of manipulating Minato.
• Evil Counterpart: The Reaper is one to Igor. Whereas Philemon left Igor and the Velvet Room on This Side to watch over and help the Wild Cards in his absence, Nyarlathotep created and sent the Reaper to hunt them down and kill them.
• Foreshadowing:
  • When Mitsuru is watching TV in Catch Perfect, one of the programs mentions the latest deaths in the Inaba serial murder case, an instance of Five-Second Foreshadowing to the deaths of Hamuko's Investigation Team. After that reveal, Hamuko notes that's been foggy lately, foreshadowing Izanami spreading her fog unimpeded and subsequently bringing about The End of the World as We Know It.
  • In Chapter 28 of Butterfly Cascade, Akechi tells Akira that "all the world's a stage". Later, Akechi's Palace turns out to be a theatre, with Robin Hood quoting this exchange back at Akira.
  • Despite what Minato assumes of him, the narration in As The Bells Toll never once calls the Other Side's Tatsuya by name; a big hint towards the fact that he's actually Nyarlathotep trying to manipulate him.
• For Science!: Wakaba Isshiki wants to poke around in meta-space and is far too excited about the potential results of her experiments; Mitsuru and Kei are more concerned about not just the potential dangers, but the ones they've experienced first-hand. She backs off slightly when Kei shuts down her requests to talk to the people involved in the SEBEC and Inaba incidents with the fact that most of those people were or are minors, thinking of her own daughter.
• Framing the Guilty Party: The Cognitive Akechi in Shido's Palace reveals that Shido intended for Akechi to take the entire blame for the psychotic breakdowns.
• Fusion Dance:
  • In As The Bells Toll, the cognitive effects of the Deepscape and Minato and Ryoji casting Miracle together give the Wild Cards enough power to fuse with their Personas for the climax of the battle.
  • In The Other 25th Hours, all of the Thanatos Defensive Line are able to fuse with their Personas to battle Thanatos and Keres.
  • In the final battle of Heir Apparent, not only does Maruki fuse with Adam Kadmon as in canon, but the Phantom Thieves fuse with their Personas as well.
• Gag Nose: Igor's too-long nose, and – despite Tatsuya's efforts at intervention – Jose's too-small nose.
  Tatsuya: And don’t give that poor doll a long nose. You have no idea how much it freaked everyone out the first time they entered the Velvet Room and they saw Igor!
  Philemon: …Smaller nose it is, then.
• Gambit Roulette: It's pointed out that the Phantom Thieves' original plan to outwit the Conspiracy was astoundingly stupid, as it hinged completely on not only whether Sae would cooperate with them, but a whole gauntlet of other timing factors totally out of their control. It becomes a lot less stupid once the assassin turns face and helps them out.
• Gender Flip: On the Other Side, Yu's reincarnation Souji still lives with his mother's sibling and his six-year old cousin. This time, however, he lives with his maternal aunt and her son Noriaki Tanimoto.
• Get Out!:
  • Sojiro wastes no time booting Hamuko and Fuuka out of Leblanc when they come poking around for information about the Phantom Thieves. Patchwork Hearts reveals Hamuko is still banned even after Strikers blows over.
  • When Akira discovers that Maruki is holding the real Akechi prisoner in his Palace, he hands over the calling card in a frothing rage before telling him to get out of his house.
• Girls Love Stuffed Animals: A subplot has Akira trying to get two Jack Frost plushies for Caroline and Justine. Lavenza is seen carrying them around for a while post-climax of Butterfly Cascade, until she uses them to help Akira and Goro pass notes to each other.
• God's Hands Are Tied: Philemon is bound to the rules of his and Nyarlathotep's game, meaning he can't directly interfere with the Wild Cards of This Side lest Nyarlathotep retaliate. This very rule causes all the trouble in As The Bells Toll: Philemon crashing Minato and Ryoji's wedding to lecture the Velvet attendants allows Nyarlathotep to talk to Minato, which he uses to advance a move of his own and take Minato's Shadow.
• The Gods Must Be Lazy: The fact that Philemon isn't allowed to interfere lest the stalemate between him and Nyarlathotep break causes a great deal of contention between the Wild Cards and him; Minato tears into him for trying to impose restrictions on the Velvet attendents despite the fact he left them stranded outside the Room for three years, and later punches him after that very visit leads to all the trouble in the latter half of As The Bells Toll.
  Hamuko: One day I want to talk to Philemon and smack him, because all this angst could have been avoided.
  Maya: You wouldn’t be the first Wild Card to hit him.
• Gondor Calls for Aid: When the world starts ending late into Butterfly Cascade, Mitsuru calls in the older Persona users.
• Good Costume Switch: After Akechi's Heel–Face Turn, his thief outfit changes to a fusion of his old ones; it has the prince-ly shape and gold accents of his Crow outfit, and the coloration and belts of his Black Mask one. An image of it can be found here.
• Graceful Loser: In Patchwork Hearts, Akane's Cognitive Joker responds to its defeat by praising Akira for a good match and asking him to help its master.
• Headbutting Heroes: The Phantom Thieves spend a good portion of Butterfly Cascade believing the Shadow Operatives to be government crooks just like Shido and his goons. Even after everything settles down, there is still a lot of mistrust and hostility towards the older Persona users.
• Head-in-the-Sand Management: Mitsuru sees no reason to involve the Shadow Operatives with the Inaba murders, despite knowing that the culprit behind them is a Persona user.
• Heartbroken Badass: Akira is this after Akechi is presumed dead following Shido's Palace.
• Heel–Face Brainwashing: Defied when Akira chooses not to steal Akechi's treasure, as doing so could result in him being driven to suicide from the guilt of his actions.
• Heel–Face Turn:
  • Goro Akechi is ultimately redeemed and convinced to steal Shido's heart instead of murdering him outright.
  • Downplayed by the SIU Director, who agrees to testify against Shido in exchange for a lighter sentence.
• He Knows Too Much: Sojiro decides not to investigate further into Wakaba's apparent suicide for (justified) fear of this happening to him.
• Here We Go Again!: By the time of Patchwork Hearts, the Phantom Thieves come off as being just plain done with having to deal with maniacs with god-complexes trying to merge the Metaverse and reality to remove free will.
• The Hero Dies: Sunset focuses on the death of Tatsuya Suou, the hero of Persona 2 and the Other Side arc.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Akechi sacrifices himself to ensure that the Phantom Thieves can escape from Shido's Palace. Fortunately, he survives.
• Hero of Another Story:
  • Akechi, Sumire, and Minato get their own Jail to explore separate from the core Phantom Thieves.
  • The Shadow Operatives are quietly picking off Jails in the background while the Phantom Thieves do their thing.
• Hero-Worshipper: Akechi is a fan of both Naoto Shirogane (the first Detective Prince) and Yukari Takeba (an actress on Featherman). When he meets them at Iwatodai, much squeeing ensues.
• Honey Trap: Morgana assumes and tells the rest of the Phantom Thieves that Akira is getting close to Akechi to lower his guard and string him along for information. Akira himself is horrified at the implication.
• Humanity Ensues: At the end of Butterfly Cascade, Igor finally grants Morgana his wish to become a proper human.
• Hypocrite Has a Point: Despite Yaldabaoth abusing his power to rig events in his own favor, he does have a point when he says that the attendants of the Velvet Room are biased towards their guests.
• I Choose to Stay:
  • Yu decides to finish his third year of high school in Inaba.
  • Akira decides to finish his third year of high school in Tokyo.
• Idiot Ball: Quoth Dojima:
  Dojima: I love my nephew, but announcing he's a Shadow Operative and expecting Kurusu-kun not to bolt was kinda stupid.
• I Have Your Wife: In Monarch's Cascade, it's revealed that the Akechi that has accompanied Akira throughout the fic is actually a cognition created from his memories since Maruki's powers only extend to Tokyo and the real Akechi is outside the city. The real Akechi accidentally wanders into Maruki's Palace and is captured, and despite Maruki trying not to frame it that way he still makes it clear that he can't guarantee his safety if the Palace comes down with him in it.
• I Just Want to Be Loved: Akechi's Shadow takes the form of his child self, and deep down he just wants friends and a family.
• I Know Mortal Kombat: Shinya's experience playing video games allows him to keep decent pace with the Shadow Operatives when Shadows start invading the real world at the end of Butterfly Cascade.
• Incompetence, Inc.: The Phantom Thieves have this opinion of the Shadow Operatives at best; they didn't show up until the eleventh hour and accomplished nothing of import when they did, souring the opinions of Ryuji, Futaba, and especially Akira.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Anna's reaction after narrowly preventing the end of the world at Nyx's hands in Stars Shine Brighter without Sunlight.
• I Never Told You My Name: Yu realizes that the gas-station attendant had called him by his name, despite him not having told it to her. He has forgotten this by the next morning.
• In Love with the Mark: Akechi struggles with his feelings for Akira and his need to complete his plan.
• In-Series Nickname:
  • Futaba often calls Akira "Kira".
  • On the Other Side, people often call Ren "Renren".
• In Spite of a Nail:
  • Persona 4: Dancing All Night is not covered by the series because the only real difference is that the Shadow Operatives are present when everything goes tits up.
  • Similarly, the Arena games are abridged to only a post-events chapter, since the only difference is the presence of four extra Shadow Operatives.
  • Despite Akechi not shooting Okumura's shadow, the Conspiracy still has him killed during his press conference and the Thieves framed for his murder.
  • In The Other 25th Hours, it's shown that despite nearly all of humanity being destroyed in Innocent Sin, the survivors still have their subconscious wish for death, meaning Nyx is still a problem. Since Tatsuya isn't strong enough to seal her away, all the heroes can do is beat her back on a monthly basis.
• Interface Spoiler: The author's notes on Catch Perfect contain spoilers for the events of Persona 5.
• Irony: Akechi's Heel–Face Turn is born from the choice to abandon his desire to kill Shido in favor of making him pay for his crimes the right way. When all is said and done, Shido gets the death penalty anyway.
• It's All My Fault:
  • Subverted. When Minato learns how Hamuko saved her Shinjiro, he briefly considers the possibility that he could have done the same, but quickly realizes that he couldn't have pulled it off because Shinjiro never would have opened up to him.
  • Played straight when Nanako dies, with Minato regretting being unable to save her.
  • In My Kingdom for My Heart, Goro blames himself for Akira falling under Maruki's sway because he lashed out at him for taking the deal.
• It's Personal: Discussed. After Akechi hears the stories of how the Phantom Thieves joined the group, he asks if they only went after their targets because they went after them personally. They say that it's the other way around; they were already looking into the targets when they were threatened.
• It Works Better with Bullets: Uniquely inverted. Futaba tells Zenkichi that he can unload his sidearm, as due to the cognitive properties of the Metaverse he can still fire it as long as his enemies believe it's loaded.
• I've Come Too Far: Akechi's mentality as he gets further and further involved with Shido.
• Jerkass Has a Point: After Philemon says his piece at the wedding in As the Bells Toll, Sho calls him "kind of a bitch" and asks who the hell he is to crash the party and tell them they screwed up reality.
• Just Think of the Potential!: Wakaba's opinion on meta-space. In contrast, Mitsuru and Kei are both keenly aware of the potential dangers.
• Killed Offscreen: Naoya Toudou is one of the casualties of the end of the world in The Other 25th Hours. Masao Inaba and Yuka Ayase die offscreen perhaps even more subtly than Yuya's pre-incarnation: Sumaru City's expansions are named Inaba and Ayase, and Yuya meets two kids named Masao Katashi and Yuuka Nonaka.
• Knight of Cerebus: While the first half of Intermezzo is relatively lighthearted, after Yaldabaoth takes over the Velvet Room it becomes much darker.
• Lawful Good: In-Universe, Minato describes Yu as this alignment in The Fate We Choose For Ourselves; he would drag the runaway Akira and Goro back to Mitsuru kicking and screaming if he had to.
• Leave No Witnesses: Even though Akechi fails to kill Okumura, the conspiracy still has him killed via poison. Turns out that a conspiracy that powerful has more than one way to kill someone, especially if they've become an even bigger liability.
• Lethal Chef: Downplayed by Akira. If he follows a recipe, he's brilliant. The one time he tried to freestyle, Sojiro banned him from the kitchen for two days.
• Let's You and Him Fight: After Philemon warns the heroes that their continued friendship with the Velvet siblings may cause an imbalance in the stalemate between him and Nyarlathotep in As the Bells Toll, the stress causes a fight to break out between Junpei and Ryuji.
• Like Brother and Sister:
  • Akira and Futaba develop this type of relationship.
  • On the Other Side, Makoto and Kotone have a sibling-like relationship. Fitting, considering they are reincarnations of siblings.
• Locked Out of the Loop: The Shadow Operatives, the Investigation Team, and the Velvet Room attendants get hit hard with this after Yaldabaoth takes over the Velvet Room. Belladonna and Nameless are the only ones who know the truth, but are being forced to lie to the others in order to protect Caroline and Justine.
• Love Hotel: Unlike in canon, the Inaba kids don't stay at the love hotel during their field trip to Tatsumi Port Island due to Minato and Ryoji deliberately trashing the rooms. Instead, they stay at the dorms.
• Lunacy: Facing the Sun reveals that Minato and Ryoji have a lot of energy during full moons, which manifests in them having rather noisy intercourse, much to the annoyance of the others in the dorm.
• Luxury Prison Suite: Akechi's imprisonment by the Shadow Operatives. Justified since their primary goal is to rehabilitate him.
• The Man Behind the Man: Azathoth is much more dangerous in this story, and is actively corrupting Maruki towards its own ends.
• Manipulative Bastard: As to be expected, Nyarlathotep continues to be one of these. He disguises himself as Tatsuya Suou to exploit Minato's frustrations with Philemon, to the point that Orpheus reverts back into a shadow, allowing him to give him Apathy Syndrome and take over his body.
• Meaningful Name: Akechi changes his codename to "Ace" after his Heel–Face Turn, due to it being both the highest and the lowest card in the deck.
• Mental World:
  • The SIU Director's Palace is revealed to be a circus with himself as the ringmaster. He sees the forged evidence which he had used to further his career as safety nets holding him up and also sees Sae as an animal tamer.
  • After being confronted by the Thieves, Akechi breaks down and forms his own Palace of sorts: the Theater of Fraud.
• Mentor Archetype: Minato (and to a lesser extent Ryoji) acts as this for Yu during the events of Persona 4.
• Merging the Branches: According to the series timeline, both the Snow Queen and SEBEC routes of Persona 1 occurred.
• Metaphorically True: During Shido's trial, Akira testifies that they fought Black Mask in Shido's Palace, he was caught in an explosion while trying to escape, and they Never Found the Body. All technically true, but omitting the key facts that Akechi survived and ultimately escaped to reality.
• Missed Him by That Much: Hamuko spots Akira at the train station, but before she can talk to him he switches to another train.
• Mood Whiplash: Right after Hamuko finds out that her timeline has been destroyed, the focus switches to Yu and Minato talking about Elizabeth and escalators. Then they walk in on the former scene.
• More than Mind Control: Discussed. Even though Nyarlathotep is a dangerous influence, he never actually possesses anybody, instead choosing to manipulate them. Usually by disguising himself as someone else.
• The Multiverse: The multiverse comes into play with Hamuko's timeline, two branches for the events of Royal, a pre-Royal spinoff with an extra two hypothetical bad endings, a One-Shot Fic for What If? Akira and Goro ran from the Shadow Operatives on Christmas Eve, and the fleshing out of the Other Side from Persona 2, all summarized here. Philemon says every choice made by Persona-users can alter the course of the world, but almost all alternate timelines come to an end and are cast off into the Abyss of Time, listing Hamuko's timeline and the Accomplice Ending of Persona 4 as examples.
• Must Make Amends: After Akira's (faked) suicide, Mitsuru feels bad that they haven't been able stop things from getting that bad.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Akechi freaks when he realizes that killing a person's Shadow kills them in real life, as Wakaba found out the hard way.
• My Greatest Failure: The Shadow Operatives consider theirs to be being unable to locate the Phantom Thieves before Akira commits suicide in the police's custody. Subverted in that he's not actually dead, which they later find out.
• Mythology Gag:
  • On one of their dates Akira and Akechi wear their Dancing All Night DLC outfits.
  • During the period of time where Akira has to fake his own death, he briefly uses the name "Ren" as an alias. Ren Amamiya is his Canon Name in Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight and Persona 5: The Animation.
• Named by the Adaptation:
  • All of the protagonists, of course. The heroes of Persona 1, 3, and 5 use their names from the manga adaptations; the hero of Persona 4 uses his name from the anime; the female hero of Persona 3 Portable uses a common fan name. In The Other 25th Hours, on the other hand, the reincarnations of the heroes of 3 and 5 use their anime names, the hero of 4 uses his manga name, and the female hero of Portable uses her stage adaption name.
  • The boy who sits behind Akira in class has been given the name Midori Senaka.
  • Hikari from Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth appears in Patchwork Hearts, and is given the surname Tamura.
• Nay-Theist: Tatsuya's relationship with Philemon can charitably be described as "strained" due to the personal tragedies caused by his involvement in his divine games with Nyarlathotep.
• Neutral Good: In-Universe, Minato describes himself and Ryoji as this alignment in The Fate We Choose For Ourselves; they just want to see the runaway Akira and Goro safe, comfortable, and happy.
• Never My Fault: Akechi takes on this mentality when causing the mental shutdowns and psychotic breakdowns, which manifests in his Black Mask outfit. He blames Shido for everything and can call up this mindset at will.
• Never the Selves Shall Meet: Nobody ever meets their alternate selves from Hamuko's timeline. The only survivors after its destruction are Hamuko and Shinjiro, both of whom died in Minato's timeline.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: The Phantom Thieves make sure to rub it in how many of Shido's acts of petty cruelty led to his own downfall.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Theodore gets grounded for saving Hamuko and Shinjiro.
• Nothing Is Scarier: All we see of Lavenza being split into the twins is her being dragged offscreen by the Archangels and the sounds of her screams.
• Not Me This Time: Despite Okumura still being killed by the Conspiracy, Akechi was not the one who did the actual deed. Because of this, he does not appear amongst the cognitions of the mental shutdown victims.
• "Not So Different" Remark: After hearing Shido's plan for ruining the Thieves' reputation, Akechi notices how similar it is to his own plan. He quickly denies this to himself, saying that he and Shido are nothing alike.
• Novelization: As stated in the tags, this series is not one of these, as the author only focuses on the events that differ from Canon, skipping over the ones that don't.
• Official Couple: This series has several:
  • Minato Arisato/Ryoji Mochizuki. Ryoji proposes in chapter 19 of Butterfly Cascade, and they get married in chapter 7 of As the Bell Tolls.
  • Hamuko Arisato/Shinjiro Aragaki. They get married offscreen between chapters 17 and 18 of Intermezzo.
  • Akira Kurusu/Goro Akechi.
  • According to Maya, Tatsuya and Jun ended up together.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Yukari and Junpei manage to clear a Jail in Nagoya offscreen with no one the wiser.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Minato isn't going to let Mitsuru forget that she dismissed the events in Inaba as just a small-town murder case.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted.
  • The original antagonist in Patchwork Hearts, Fujiwara Niko, coincidentally shares her given name with Niko, the birth name of Rei from Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth.
  • The hero of Persona 5 shares his given name Akira with The Heavy of Persona 5 Strikers. The Phantom Thieves comment on this while traversing the latter's Jail.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Minato is terrified at the sight of Elizabeth crying after the Velvet Room was taken over.
• Original Generation: As The Bells Toll and the works set on the Other Side extend Ryoji's supernatural side of the family to include much of Nyx and Erebus's Greek mythological family. Of particular note are Keres, who helps Ryoji and the Wild Cards rescue Minato from the Deepscape on This Side and acts as Thanatos' second-in-command on the Other Side, and Oizys, who makes some trouble with Momus on the aforementioned rescue trip on This Side and is Makoto's demon not-girlfriend on the Other Side.
• Papa Wolf: After the interrogation, Sojiro becomes a lot more protective of Akira.
• Parental Substitute:
  • By the time November rolls around, Akira considers Sojiro more of a father than his own biological parents.
  • By the end of As the Bells Toll, Akechi considers Minato and Ryoji to be more his parents than Shido ever was. (Admittedly, that's a very low bar to clear, but they pull it off with aplomb.)
• Parents as People: Tatsuya struggles to be a good father to Ren, especially considering his own overprotective nature and Ren's problems stepping out of his shadow.
• Passing the Torch: Sunset focuses on Tatsuya retiring from his position as part of the Demon Defense Force and passing the duty of protecting Sumaru City to his apprentices and son.
• Perfect Poison: Not only does the poison used to kill Okumura instead of a mental shutdown kill him almost instantly, its symptoms are almost exactly the same.
• Perspective Flip: The Other 25th Hours features Tatsuya's cameo in Butterfly Cascade, retold from his perspective.
• Pet the Dog: In Sunset, when Tatsuya dies, Nyarlathotep visits the bereaved Jun and has an earnest heart-to-heart where he notes that they will eventually reunite in the afterlife.
• Point of Divergence: The car crash that killed Minato's parents. In his timeline, it also killed his sister Hamuko, leading to the canon series. In another timeline, it killed him instead, leading Hamuko to become the leader of S.E.E.S. However, it also results in the deaths of the Investigation Team, leading to the total destruction of the world, with the only survivors being Hamuko and Shinjiro.
• Police Are Useless:
  • Subverted during Akira's final interrogation. The first two cops are jerkasses who treat him like the scum of the earth and send him into an anxiety attack without a shred of remorse. Fortunately, Dojima and Katsuya are far nicer (and more competent).
  • Sojiro's narration indicates that even after everything that has happened, the police are still more interested in making Akira look like the bad guy than actually finding the truth.
• Pooled Funds: The Thieves decide to swim around in the bills in Kaneshiro's bank.
• Poor Communication Kills: The Shadow Operatives are the first ones to cotton on to the fact that Igor is an imposter, but between Sojiro and Akira's distrust of them, they are unable to warn the Phantom Thieves before the final heist in Mementos.
• Porn Without Plot: Thief's Treasure is just Akira and Akechi having sex on Valentine's Day.
• The Power of Love: How Minato manages to bring back Ryoji and survive becoming the Great Seal.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Used as the justification for why Shido didn't have Maruki killed. Maruki had no resources with which to pursue the research of cognitive psience, so cutting off his funding at the knees would have quietly and efficiently neutralized him as a threat while murdering him outright would have brought unnecessary attention.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner:
  Yaldabaoth: You dare rob the people's wishes?!
  Akira: You made me a thief.
• Promoted to Love Interest: Ryoji Mochizuki and Goro Akechi.
• Pull the Thread:
  • Minato and co. realize something is very wrong with the Velvet Room when Justine doesn't recognize the previous guests or her own sisters and is able to be tricked into thinking that Hamuko is Margaret.
  • Double-subverted by Akechi. He makes the same pancakes slip as in canon, but when confronted directly by Akira, he manages to provide a plausible explanation as to how he could have accessed the Metaverse. The true slip-up occurs later on when he claims to have first accessed the Metaverse in mid-July when he made the pancakes comment in early June.
  • In My Kingdom for My Heart, the Wild Cards apply this to Akira's Confidants who have been affected by Maruki's reality. For example, when Hamuko presses Shadow Mishima on his relationship with Akira, he remembers that Akira got on Kamoshida's bad side very quickly despite Maruki's assertion that Kamoshida was fired a year before Akira came to Shujin.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: After defeating Shadow Shido, Akechi has some choice words for him.
  You. Are. An. Idiot.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: When Philemon crashes Minato and Ryoji's wedding in As the Bells Toll, Minato rips him a new one.
  Philemon: [to the Velvet siblings] You have performed your duties admirably and without falter. But to treat your guests as family, to participate in things such as this... You are not human. It was never intended for any of you to live as if you were.
  Minato: What right do you have to say that? You've done nothing for us. All you did was give us powers and expect us to figure things out. We did everything on our own, and you're showing up now to tell us that our bonds and our choices were wrong? Look at what happened. The Velvet Room is meant to be your proxy, but you didn't even step in when it was compromised. They had to live with us for three years, while the Phantom Thieves got even less help than we did! This is the same reason that Kurusu-kun was angry with us; showing up in the aftermath and judging us when we had to make do with the help we had.
• Red Herring: Played with. Haru is more seriously played up as a possible identity of Black Mask to the Phantom Thieves, but the audience has known all along it's Akechi.
• Reincarnation: After the deaths of the children who would have become the heroes of the later games in the Innocent Sin timeline, Philemon reincarnated them all. Nanjo's son Yuya also turns out to be a reincarnation of Naoya Toudou, Goro Akechi's reincarnation Goro Niijima is introduced in Stars Shine Brighter without Sunlight, and supplemental materials imply Ren's friend Mai is a reincarnation of Sumire Yoshizawa.
• Reincarnation-Identifying Trait: All of the reincarnated Wild Cards on the Other Side share some physical or visual traits with their counterparts on This Side.
• Reforged Blade: In The Other 25th Hours, Tatsuya breaks the Misericorde fighting the Reaper for the first time, and when he gets it fixed it's much shorter than Tatsuya prefers to fight with. However, this makes it perfect for the dagger-wielding Akira, and Tatsuya passes it down to his successor as Trickster.
• Reformed, but Rejected: Downplayed. No matter how reformed Akechi is, he still abused the Metaverse to commit fraud and murder, and Mitsuru arrests him in order to ensure nobody else follows his lead. Even then, the purpose of his incarceration is primarily rehabilitation rather than punishment.
• Relationship Upgrade: In Chapter 25 of Butterfly Cascade Akira and Akechi become a couple.
• Relationship Values:
  • As is par for the course with any Wild Card, Goro Akechi also has his own set of confidants. These consist of Akira Kurusu (The Fool), Sae Niijima (The Chariot) and Sojiro Sakura (The Hierophant); Monarch's Cascade adds Kasumi Yoshizawa (Faith). After he comes to Iwatodai to serve out his house arrest, he adds Ryoji Mochizuki (Death), Koromaru (Strength), Ken Amada (Justice), Minato Arisato (The Universe), and Lavenza (The Star).
  • Sumire has her own set of confidants, including Akira, Morgana, Goro, her father Shinichi, her coach Hiraguchi, and in the Star position, Kasumi (maxed out).
• Resigned to the Call: By the time Patchwork Hearts rolls around, Akira has pretty much accepted that he's going to be constantly dragged into supernatural malarkey.
• Retcon: According to Guardians of Memory, Lisa and Eikichi of This Side didn't regain their memories of the events of Innocent Sin. This is inconsistent with events as depicted later in the series, which all make it clear that Lisa and Eikichi did regain their memories.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: In My Kingdom for My Heart, only the Wild Cards and supernatural beings such as the Velvet siblings realize that reality has been rewritten in Maruki's image.
• Sadistic Choice: Discussed in The Other 25th Hours, as the reason why Tatsuya heavily resists Ren getting a Persona and joining the battle against the demons. He knows that if it came down to having to choose between his other charges and Ren or even the world and Ren, he'd pick Ren every time, and he can't afford that.
• Secretly Selfish:
  • Minato's Shadow admits that if he had to choose between saving the Investigation Team or saving Ryoji, he would choose Ryoji.
  • Akira internally acknowledges that he was being selfish when he proposed the idea of letting Akechi join them in Okumura's Palace.
• Secret-Keeper: After the events of Akane's Jail, Akane Hasegawa is allowed to learn the identities of the Phantom Thieves.
• Secret Secret-Keeper:
  • Ann learns that all of Class 2-D knew about her, Akira and Ryuji being Phantom Thieves, but kept their secret for them.
  • In chapter 58, it's revealed that Shiho and Ryuji's mother both figured out the identities of the Phantom Thieves. Ryuji and Ann decide not to tell Ryuji's mother about the details, but Shiho does get to learn.
• Seen It All: By the time of Patchwork Hearts, the Phantom Thieves have been through too much to see an AI Demiurge set to remove human free will as anything but "same shit, different day".
• Shame If Something Happened: After Yaldabaoth takes over the Velvet Room, he points out to Belladonna and Nameless that since the Velvet Room only needs one attendant, he could kill one of the twins, preventing Lavenza from ever regaining her true form. In order to prevent this, they go along with his demands.
• Shirtless Scene: During the first act of the Theater of Fraud, one of Akechi's cognitions of Akira is dressed in Joker's outfit but without the vest. When the other Thieves question this, Crow says that they've probably had similar thoughts at some point. The only ones who don't react to this are Morgana and Yusuke.
• Shoot the Dog: In My Kingdom for My Heart, Tatsuya's suggested solution to the problems plaguing the heroes is to kill Maruki in cold blood. Goro supports the idea, Sumire and Yu are aghast, and Jun, Maya, Minato, and Hamuko want to at least attempt diplomacy but are willing to resort to force if necessary.
• Shout-Out:
  • In Chapter 7 of Butterfly Cascade, the Thieves marathon various Ghibli movies.
  • In Chapter 16 of Butterfly Cascade, Ann and Ryuji talk about a place called "Shadow Ramen" in Dogenzaka. It is mentioned again at the beginning of Patchwork Hearts when Akira first downloads EMMA and asks for a good ramen joint.
  • In Chapter 26 of Butterfly Cascade, Futaba compares the animatronics at Splash Mountain with those from "One Week at Bonnie's".
  • The hands coming down from the ceiling in Act 2 of the Theater of Fraud are based on the Wallmasters from The Legend of Zelda.
  • Act 3 of the Theater of Fraud is based on Silent Hill 4.
  • In Chapter 47 of Butterfly Cascade, Ryoji, Elizabeth, and Theodore are seen playing Luigi Kart. Later on in Chapter 57, Akechi plays the game with Ken.
  • In Chapter 23 of Monarch's Cascade, the heroes compare the danger Maruki's powers pose to "LowerStory", particularly how a player could get the happiest ending and then change it to a horrific Downer Ending simply out of curiosity.
  • In Chapter 6 of Heir Apparent, Haru and Morgana celebrate Akira's release by playing Shadowy Spirits together to see how much they die.
  • In Stars Shine Brighter without Sunlight, Kozue keeps Ren's Soul of the Kingdom 2 save file, and gifts him Soul of the Kingdom 3 on the condition that he plays the rest of the (very expansive) series.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Robin Hood gives Akechi idealistic opinions on situations, whereas Loki embodies a more cynical worldview.
• Sole Survivor: Only Hamuko and Shinjiro survive the destruction of her timeline.
• Spared by the Adaptation:
  • Minato and Ryoji survive the events of Persona 3. Hamuko and Shinjiro are a weird version; they are dead in the main timeline, but survived in an alternate timeline where Minato died in the car crash that took out canon Hamuko. They eventually move to the main timeline after their version of the Investigation Team is killed and Izanami causes the Fall.
  • Subverted with Okumura. After his Shadow is defeated, Akechi misses his chance to shoot it. So the Conspiracy ends up poisoning him instead.
  • Instead of being killed via mental shutdown, the SIU Director simply goes into hiding at Akechi's behest.
  • While his fate in canon is ambiguous, here Akechi survives Shido's Palace. Although he has a close call with death shortly afterwards, he ultimately makes it back to the Velvet Room in one piece.
  • Waking the Dreamers was written before the author played Royal. After playing it, the author went back and declared the Kasumi the story follows is the original Kasumi, not Sumire.
• Speaks Fluent Animal: Sae and Sojiro are briefly brought into the Metaverse so Morgana can try to heal off some of the drugs the Dirty Cops injected Akira with, and gain the ability to understand Morgana as a result.
• Start of Darkness: Intermezzo shows Akechi's.
• Story Branching: Monarch's Cascade has two story routes.
  • Heir Apparent: Akira rejects Maruki's deal. This is the true ending, which leads into Strikers.
  • My Kingdom for My Heart: Akira accepts Maruki's deal.
• Story-Breaker Power: The author keeps the Shadow Operatives from meeting the Phantom Thieves too soon for this very reason.
• Surprise Party: At one point, the Shadow Operatives ask Igor to keep Minato and Hamuko busy while they prepare a surprise birthday party for them.
• Suspicious Video-Game Generosity: The Investigation Team comes across a floor with lots of chests and few enemies in Yukiko's castle. Sure enough, the Reaper soon shows up.
• Sweet and Sour Grapes: Akechi abandons his desire to murder Shido, yet the latter's actions ultimately lead to him being handed the death penalty in a legitimate court of law.
• Tagalong Kid: Shinya and Nanako separately join the heroes fighting the apocalypse in Butterfly Cascade. Both times, their presence is justified by Ken's membership in S.E.E.S. at the age of eleven.
• Tampering with Food and Drink: The Conspiracy poisons Okumura's water during his press conference.
• There Are No Therapists: Averted. Maki Sonomura has become a therapist since the SEBEC incident, and offers her services to other Persona users as necessary.
• This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself: Igor informs the Shadow Operatives that the Phantom Thieves must finish the fight with Yaldabaoth on their own. However, they are allowed to maintain order on the ground.
• Title Drop: Done as a milestone celebration. The series' millionth word is hours, highlighted in bold.
• Token Adult: Dojima is the only adult in the Investigation Team's inner circle, while Sojiro and Sae play this role to the Phantom Thieves. Dojima downplays this with the Shadow Operatives; while they are all in their mid-twenties, he is still a generation older than any of them.
• Total Party Kill: In Hamuko's timeline, the Investigation Team is annihilated during the fight against Adachi, ultimately causing the end of the world.
• Trauma Button:
  • Akechi freaks out when he accidentally breaks a mug at Leblanc, as he was often beaten for such slip-ups during his childhood.
  • Youji Isshiki smashes Akira's when he drunkenly falls over and threatens to sue Akira for assault, just like Shido. It doesn't help that Hanae Oda threatened to accuse him of stalking only a few hours prior.
  • Ann is shocked to learn that Akechi plans to commit suicide after overthrowing Shido, due to it reminding her of what happened to Shiho.
  • Several of the Phantom Thieves freak out when Junpei draws an Evoker on himself during a fight with Ryuji, being inadvertently reminded of their previous issues with suicide.
  • Akechi gets another freak out when Nyarlathotep possessing Minato calls him a worthless loser and claims to have never loved him, deliberately rubbing salt into his abandonment issues.
  • After his experience getting drugged and tortured by the police, Akira is triggered by needles and attempts to use physical force to get him to cooperate. When he is hospitalized due to injuries sustained during As the Bells Toll, he has several panic attacks and repeatedly threatens and attacks the oblivious nurses.
• True Love's Kiss: Late in Maruki's Palace, Akira finds the unconscious Goro captured. Realizing that he's in a world made of belief and that the man whose heart he's in believes in happy endings, he successfully wakes him up with a kiss.
• Twist Ending: The Other 25th Hours unexpectedly ends with Tatsuya and Jun being drawn back to This Side as a result of Maruki granting Maya's wish to see them again, tying directly into My Kingdom for My Heart.
• Unexplained Recovery: Averted. Nanako recovers from dying due to Marie drawing the fog from the TV world out of her and absorbing it into herself.
• Unfazed Everyman: By the time As the Bells Toll rolls around, Sojiro has pretty much given up on common sense and learned to roll with the punches where meta-space malarkey is involved.
• The Unfettered: Yu acts this way when Nanako is thrown into the TV world, desperate to get her out.
• The Unmasqued World: On the Other Side, the existence of demons, Shadows, and Personas is public knowledge. It is kind of hard to hide armageddon, after all.
• Unrelated in the Adaptation: In the main timeline, the male and female heroes of Persona 3 are twin siblings. In The Other 25th Hours, they aren't related.
• Unreliable Narrator: According to the author, Akira's parents do love him more than his narration indicates.
• Unskilled, but Strong: After awakening to his Persona, Zenkichi is the least experienced Persona-user among the cast by a wide margain. However, he starts out with Megidola in his arsenal, making him quite the powerhouse.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Minato is rather unfazed by the powers he gained from having the Universe arcana. Mitsuru even lampshades this.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Played with; Takuto Maruki's attempt to grant Maya's subconscious wish in My Kingdom For My Heart unwittingly causes all of the trouble in Stars Shine Brighter without Sunlight, but Philemon notes that Maruki was possessed at the time by Azathoth, Nyarlathotep's father, and he really doubts that was a coincidence.
• Villain Has a Point:
  • Adachi tells the Investigation Team that blindly following the rules is a bad idea, a theme that features heavily in the story of the Phantom Thieves when the people responsible for enforcing said rules turn out to be impotent or outright corrupt.
  • Igor admits that Nyarlathotep was correct when he said that the masses will always desire a leader that decides everything for them.
  • Yaldabaoth isn't quite wrong when he points out that the Velvet Room attendants try to rig events in favor of humanity, and that he's simply doing the opposite.
• Villainous Breakdown:
  • Akechi slowly loses his composure during his fight with the Phantom Thieves. Akira confessing his feelings to him pushes him over the edge, causing him to break down and form a Palace.
  • After the final battle of Stars Shine Brighter without Sunlight, Philemon expresses annoyance that Nyarlathotep, a "several-millennia-old deity, spawned from the deepest recesses of the collective unconscious", is throwing a tantrum like a toddler.
  • In Sunset, Nyarlathotep throws a giant fit when he learns Tatsuya is retiring.
• Villain Protagonist: Since half of Butterfly Cascade is told from his point of view, Goro Akechi is definitely one of these. He later drops the 'villain' part.
• Violence is the Only Option: Averted in Shido's Palace. With the aid of the redeemed Akechi, the Phantom Thieves are able to get four of the five recommendation letters without a fight.
• Was It All a Lie?:
  • Akechi asks this when he finds out that the Phantom Thieves knew everything about him all along.
  • Inverted when Akira asks the Phantom Thieves if they really thought that he would manipulate Akechi's feelings that way.
• We Can Rule Together: Shido's shadow offers Akechi a place alongside him after his defeat.
• Weirdness Censor: Ryoji mentions that nobody noticed anything suspicious about him because he was Nyx's harbinger and the Death Arcana Shadow.
• Wham Episode:
  • Chapter 29 of Catch Perfect. As a result of Yu's death in Hamuko's timeline, there is nobody to stop Izanami from consuming the world with her fog. Hamuko's timeline is wiped out, with only Hamuko and Shinjiro surviving.
  • Chapter 35 of Butterfly Cascade. After being called out as a traitor by the Thieves, fighting them in Mementos, and hearing Akira's Anguished Declaration of Love, Akechi breaks down and forms a Palace.
• Wham Line: In Chapter 27 of Catch Perfect, Hamuko decides to get in touch with her version of the Investigation Team like Minato did with his. She calls up Dojima on the phone...
  Dojima: My nephew is dead.
• What If?: The Fate We Choose For Ourselves explores what would have happened if Akira and Goro ran away after the climax of Butterfly Cascade.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Minato chews out Yu for overworking his team during the Heaven dungeon.
  • Yosuke, Kanji, and Naoto get called out for wanting Namatame to be killed or letting it almost happen.
  • The Phantom Thieves call out Akira for not telling them that he actually had feelings for Akechi.
  • Akira calls out the Phantom Thieves for thinking that him dating Akechi was just so he could emotionally manipulate him.
• The Window or the Stairs: Monarch's Cascade ends with Akira torn between fighting Maruki and accepting his deal. Taking the "hard" path and fighting Maruki leads to him being dealt with in four chapters flat and a fairly simple Earn Your Happy Ending. Taking the "easy" path and giving in leads to Akira's relationship with Goro imploding and a much more drawn-out struggle against the benevolent god.
• Workaholic: In Banishing Ghosts, Goro admits that he can't think of a single day that Shido wasn't working, scheming, or networking with his associates.
• World's Strongest Man: As the sole wielder of the Universe Arcana, Minato has reached a level of power beyond that of any ordinary Wild Card. He is unambiguously the most powerful human character in the series.
• Written-In Absence: All of the playable characters up to Persona 5 show up for the final battle against Yaldabaoth. The exceptions are Yuka, who pulls a Cavalry Refusal; Hidehiko, who the heroes cannot contact; and Masao and Rise, who are both abroad.
• Year X: Averted; the events of Persona 5 explicitly take place in 2016.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: When Zenkichi calls himself the worst father ever, Goro flatly tells him never to say that again. Among the Phantom Thieves, he doesn't even crack the bottom five when faced with Akira (emotionally neglectful), Ryuji (abusive), Yusuke (exploitative), Haru (exploitative), or Goro (pure evil).
• You Are Too Late: When they learn that Joker has been arrested, the Shadow Operatives begin making plans to get him in their custody as soon as possible. Unfortunately for them, he commits suicide before that happens. Or so they think.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: The SIU Director, as in canon. A recently-redeemed Akechi tells him that now is a good time to haul his ass into hiding.
• You Lose at Zero Trust: Akechi's confidant with Sojiro gets reset to rank 1 after he learns that Akechi was responsible for the mental shutdowns.