Due to wiki policy, moments pages contain unmarked spoilers. You Have Been Warned.
Fridge Brilliance
- Given his panache for less-than-legal showmanship and outwitting his opponents in style, Lelouch having Arsène Lupin as his initial Persona is a match made in heaven.
- Shadow Shirley's berserk form in the fourth Palace is based on the bondage-inspired design of the Demon/Persona Angel as she appears in Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne and later games of the Persona franchise. This makes a lot of sense if you consider the angelic imagery associated with her in Code Geass, and Lust being her Deadly Sin and the motif of her Palace. This, however, crosses to Genius Bonus if you're familiar with the games' strong Gnostic influences and realize why the tale of the Grigori from the Book of Enoch — Angels from the Ninth Order who were supposed to watch over humans and ended up falling in love/lust with them instead — fits someone in her situation like a glove.
- Kallen's Character Development is remarkably similar to the canonical one, but due to Lelouch's not following that of his canon self, the end result is reversed. Anime finale spoilers: By the end of the series, Lelouch is committed to his Thanatos Gambit and knowing that Kallen would willingly die by his side if he returns her feelings even a little, he presented himself to her as an utterly unfeeling and traitorous Evil Overlord, thus manipulating her to pick her convictions over her feelings for him. In this story, however, their Will They or Won't They? actually led to a bona fide Relationship Upgrade, and finding her feelings reciprocated, soon enough Kallen's priorities in life changed accordingly to the point she realized that if she were forced to choose between him and La Résistance's cause, she is going to pick him. Interestingly, the character herself is both appalled and accepting of the woman she's growing into, but Shirley being roughly in the same situation as her concerning Lelouch make matters a great deal more complicated.
- Something similar happens with Shirley, whose Character Arc goes more or less the same as canon, but a different Lelouch and set of circumstances completely alters its outcome. In canon, Shirley goes through a difficult time trying and failing to reconcile her feelings for him and the fact Lelouch is Zero and thus involved in the death of her father, but he makes her forget everything with his Geass when she was just starting to come to terms with it. Then comes R2 where her Laser-Guided Amnesia becomes accidentally undone, showing that Shirley would have ultimately decided that she loves him regardless of everything, but then Diabolus ex Machina rears its ugly head and only tragedy comes out of it. In this story, Lelouch decides against deleting her memories when he got the chance (by destroying Treasure, which is the Cognitive embodiment of her memories of him), allowing Shirley to face her demons in the form of her Shadow the first time around, and win that confrontation by truly accepting that her love for Lelouch is truly unconditional no matter what kind of woman that fact makes her. The only reason Shirley doesn't end with the relationship she could have had in canon had she not run into Rolo at the worst possible time is because he's already together with someone else (or rather she does, just not right away).
- The Lovers Arcana card in the Tarot of Marseilles — that is, the deck used as the basis for the cards' illustrations in Persona 5 — depicts a man as the focus of the affection of two women, thus making quite fitting for Shirley Fenette to be Lelouch's Confidant of the Lovers Arcana.
- As in Persona 5, Lelouch's initial Persona is Arsene, who's weak to both Ice- and Bless-type attacks. Now, which Persona-users wield those elements? Euphemia and Shirley, respectively, and he indeed does have a soft spot for each of them.
- Ryuji can ignore his Career-Ending Injury in the Metaverse thanks to the Magic Enhancement all Persona Users get. The same principle allows Nunnally to walk on her own two legs despite her disability in the real world.
- In the Persona game series, any sufficiently well-known character from myth or history can serve as a basis for someone's Persona, as long as said character leaves a sufficiently large mark in the collective unconscious. This means that historical characters that only exist in Code Geass' Alternate History are completely valid options in this particular Crossover, as it is the case with Nunnally/Nemo's Persona — Elizabeth the Third, the Last Queen of the British Islands.
- If you think about it, it makes a lot of sense for the proposal of an Arranged Marriage between Chinese Empress Tianzi and Crown Prince Odysseus eu Britannia to happen a lot earlier than in the series. Without his Geass, Lelouch doesn't start his own group in La Résistance. Without the canonical Black Knights' success casting doubt over Britannia's hold on Area 11, the Chinese Federation doesn't dare "lend" troops to Atsushi Sawazaki, The Remnant of the last Japanese government. Without the incident at Kyushu, the diplomatic relationships between the two global superpowers are favorable enough for Prince Schneizel to make his Altar Diplomacy move ahead of the canonical timeline. End result: the Black Knights want to prevent this just like in canon, but as an entirely different kind of organization with fewer resources and people to get it done.
- When Lelouch Itemizes Queen's Necklace into the eponymous accessory in Chapter 51, he dismisses the idea of gifting it to a teammate because the piece of jewelry is so expensive-looking that any of his female friends would think he has other intentions toward her, and if a girl wears the diamond necklace in public, it's bound to make people assume whoever gave her such a gift is actually staking a claim. Later on, in the same chapter, Lelouch has a dream where Leila/Bishop asks him if she can wear the necklace but puts it on before he can answer. Then the dream versions of Kallen and Shirley ask him when will be their turn to wear it. Freud would have had a field day with that one.
- There's something oddly fitting about the Irregulars' Sensor Character having Saint Lucy
, patron saint of the blind, as her Persona when you consider that their leader is Nunnally. - For a bit of fun comparison, Shirley isn't the only person who knows Lelouch and finds his Magnificent Bastard side to be even better than his regular side. Nunnally does as well. If you don't need any more Incest Subtext...
- Want even more Incest Subtext: try Kallen's reaction to Leila's Persona upgrade, and then remember that this was the third maximized confident set with that sort of reaction. The second was Nunnally, and the fact that Tsu had a few choice quips about it.
- In Chapter 54, Nunnally/Nemo makes a very good point about how Persona Users have a lot in common with Magical Girls that serves as a good-natured Take That! to Persona 5. After all, Persona Users do have magical abilities powered by their emotions and The Power of Friendship, fight against monsters born from the evil in people' hearts within a magical realm connected but distinct from the normal world where normal people can't enter, they have that Wake Up, Go to School & Save the World thing going, magically change clothes for the supernatural half of their lives, the vast majority of people they know to have awakened to that sort of power are girls, and Arthur is very much like a Magical Girl's Mentor Mascot. Heck, the Irregulars play the genre even straighter than the Black Knights as an all-girl Magical Girl team with a Pseudo-Romantic Friendship between their leader and her twin-tailed blonde Lancer.
- By Chapter 58, all the girls Lelouch has shown obvious attraction to (and vice versa) have one thing in common with him and among themselves: they all have lost loved ones to Britannia. It's possible and even likely that being able to truly empathize with each other was a big factor in their friendships becoming something more — in this case, a Polyamory centered on him.
- The conveniently helpful actions of the "Emerald-masked Woman" during the Masquerade Ball make a lot more sense after Chapter 59. The Glinda Knights were trying to steal Gao Hai's Treasure just like the Black Knights, and like them, they needed to get past the Barriers by changing his Cognition about the impregnability of his inner sanctum. Marrybell likely played along with the masked gambler Lelouch was portraying himself as because breaking into the embassy's restricted areas under a harmless-looking excuse served the Glinda Knights' purposes just fine for exactly the same reasons Lelouch was talking the Emerald-masked Woman into following him there. In other words, the two half-siblings had the same objective for each of their Black-Tie Infiltration and were trying to manipulate the other party into helping them with it.
