Fridge Brilliance / Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony

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General

• Many fans complained about many of the characters looking nothing like students. Different from other installments, though, the plot states that there isn't a school for the talented like Hope's Peak, so it makes sense that they aren't ready for school since they weren't going to one, to begin with, different than Hajime and Makoto, who are both shown getting ready for their first day at Hope's Peak in their respective games. Also Invoked Cast of Snowflakes.
  • And note that the characters are shown in normal school uniforms in the prologue, before being given their unique clothes by the Monokubs.
• Some of the likes and dislikes of the students can make sense:
  • Shuichi dislikes gossip. As a detective, he probably should dislike a possible spread of misinformation as it could screw up a detective case.
  • Tsumugi hates people who cut in line. As an Otaku, she probably attends a bunch of anime conventions which are known for having huge standing lines before their entrances.
    • Additionally, the vast majority of her lines consist of shout-outs to a variety of video games, anime, and manga. As an otaku, her identity involves little more than fiction to an obsessive point, and would even die rather than live in a world without Danganronpa.
  • Himiko likes cramped spaces and hates the sea. This is probably a statement to her lazy and not outgoing personality. It could also be seen as a reference as to how many magic tricks involve hiding in tight spaces.
  • Kaito likes ornamental plants and dislikes the occult. Researchers have already tested a decent variety of potted plants to see if they can survive in space stations. And Kaito is a man of science; he would look down upon pseudoscience. It is also revealed in Chapter 3 that he is terrified of ghosts.
  • Korekiyo dislikes air conditioning. Given his final motive, it's possible that air conditioning reminds him of hospitals, and thus his dead sister.
    • ...Or it could be the fact that he is an admitted BDSM observer. The type of rope he uses (straw rope, to be exact) can become easily uncomfortable if in the wrong temperature/environment.
  • Angie dislikes humidity. Considering she hails from a tropical island, it's no wonder she dislikes it.
    • Another reason might be because humidity can easily ruin several works of art.
  • K1-B0 dislikes vending machines. Seems rather random but most vending machines sells drinks. And he may be waterproof on the outside but if he were to drink something, no doubt his insides would fry. Small wonder he doesn't like them.
    • Alternatively, he might find the concept of them discriminatory to robots, as they solely exist to dispense products to humans. Not just the idea of robots typically being unable to avail of said products, but the "servitude" of the machines under human command.
  • Miu liking children's television makes absolutely no sense considering her extremely vulgar personality...but it actually makes some strange sort of sense if you consider how much screwed in the head Miu is.
    • Otherwise, she just didn't have any time to watch them as a child. It's unknown how long her coma is, so maybe it lasted for years.
  • In the English version, Shuichi is voiced by Grant George, who previously voiced Leon Kuwata, the one known for being a Sacrificial Lamb and setting the tone of the series. It becomes very fitting that the person who ultimately puts an end the Killing Game was none other than the one who set its start.
• In a roundabout way, some of the formula common in the previous games are subverted. For one, Ryoma who followed the comical design character wasn't a closet pervert and is instead, a Comically Serious when the previous ones are perverts. And the Token Mini-Moe this time around survived the killing game.
  • Similar to this, the dark-skinned girl actually dies in this game, unlike Akane and Aoi. In addition, The Big Guy was actually executed instead of being murdered.
  • A few more subversions. The one that held the title of Super High School Level ??? didn't have much importance compared to the previous two who had (Kirigiri is the detective, Hinata is originally a reserve course student). And several characters with traits common in the previous games are either victims or culprits this time around. (Iruma, having a similarity to Souda, and Angie, as pointed above.)
  • A couple more subversions- Some of the chapters didn't have things that the previous chapters have. For example, the victim in Chapter One didn't die from being stabbed to death. The victim in Chapter Two didn't die through a blow to the head. Chapter Four didn't have somebody make a Heroic Sacrifice. In addition, somebody other than the mastermind dies in the final chapter.
  • There is also a subversion of the main trio of the game. Usually, it contains the main character, a heroine, and The Rival character with the heroine being the Implied Love Interest of the main character. However, in this game, Kokichi was not even part of the main trio of the game and Maki was in love with Kaito (who was the other Deuteragonist in the game) and not Shuichi.
  • Korekiyo also subverts the formula by having the serial killer of the group decide to contribute to the game. Genocide Jack never killed anyone in the game because her methods of killing her exclusively male victims are the same in every one of her cases, using her custom-made scissors to kill and crucify her victims, which the state of Chihiro's corpse didn't include. Sparkling Justice's identity was presented in the game as Peko until the difference in nationality was exposed: Sparkling Justice is Spanish, Peko is Japanese. Korekiyo was dedicated to a deceased character's will and was adamant about giving her "friends" of the same gender, nearing to 100 until his exorcism-execution.
• Kokichi states that he still doesn't lose his memories in the game. While it is ambiguous to see if he is being truly honest or not given how he is a Consummate Liar, it takes his comments that he stated from the demo if he is actually honest. He stated that he is a supreme leader only to state afterwards that he is a liar and that he might not be one after all. Kokichi himself is a lie therefore he isn't a supreme leader.
• Gonta's backstory involves him having been raised by wolves. But haven't wolves been extinct in Japan for over 100 years? It could count as Foreshadowing that he wasn't actually Raised by Wolves and instead, he was raised by dinosaurmen.
• It makes sense for Shuichi to be the main protagonist of this story given the theme. Both the main two protagonists of the HPA Saga were known in some form as the Ultimate Hope. With the HPA Saga being about Hope and Despair, this game is more about truth and lies. A detective is supposed to figure out who is lying and who is telling the truth so the Ultimate Detective is a good candidate to be the main protagonist of a game about truths and lies.
• Some of the characters' Color Motifs make sense:
  • Shuichi's color is blue, typically associated with being cool-headed and rational, fitting for a detective, and in context of the series, means "truth" to contrast Kaede's pink, which is associated with murderers and liars.
  • Kaito's color is purple, which can seem ironic for somebody who is deeply afraid of the occult, as it's a color often associated with the supernatural. On the other hand, he also bonds well with Shuichi, who's color is blue, and Maki, who is red, which makes sense since he's the combination of the two.
  • Kokichi's color is dark purple. Given his talent as the Ultimate Supreme Leader as well as him being a very intelligent Magnificent Bastard, Purple Is Powerful could come into play here. Also, due to him being a Token Evil Teammate, it makes sense for him to have a darker version of that color.
  • Angie's color is yellow. Due to her having a Genki Girl personality and she attempts to comfort those traumatized by the deaths, it makes sense for why her Color Motif is a color that is associated with cheeriness and warmness.
  • Maki's color is red. Due to red being a color to warn danger, it could be Foreshadowing for her true talent. Given her rose motif, it also fits with her "arc" with Kaito, as red roses are one of the most "romantic" types.
  • Gonta's color is brown. With brown giving off a feeling of strength and dependability, it makes for why the strongest student in the game who also happens to be a Gentle Giant to have that color motif.
  • Korekiyo's color is olive, which goes from dark green to an almost sickly brown. Considering how old most of the material he works with is it makes sense his colors are similarly "aged". Not to mention how well a "rotting" color pallet suits someone as rotten enough to have the blood of nearly 100 women on his hands, which is helped by his blood like red accents.
  • Miu's color is bright pink; in Japan, the color pink is sometimes used as an indicator of adult content, such as with "pink films".
    • Also noted in Kaede's earlier entry, pink represents lies. Miu has a brash, loudmouthed personality as a transparent cover for her timid, cowardly persona. Not to mention, Miu mentions that she cannot bring herself to trust the other students to work with them against Monokuma and sets off to graduate the killing game herself by rigging the Virtual World.
• A common complaint towards Tsumugi is that she was Out of Focus for much of the game despite being the mastermind. However, this makes sense. After all, why would the mastermind want to draw attention to herself?
  • This is especially true given how she murdered Rantaro. While everyone else accepted that Kaede did it, she would still want to lie low. Not only to avoid slipping up and Saying Too Much around Shuichi, but also to avoid running afoul of Kokichi and his Living Lie Detector skills.
• Unlike Makoto and Hajime, Shuichi's low self-esteem stemmed from his talent than the lack thereof, but while Makoto and Hajime are granted the Ultimate Hope title at the end of their respective games (bonus points for Reserve Course student Hajime becoming literally superhuman), Shuichi's talent is a fabrication — he doesn't even have one in the first place.
• The First Blood perk wasn't just a way to get the killing game started, it was a trap for whoever took it. The perk promises an instant graduation and freedom for the first person to kill someone else, but there is nowhere for them to actually go. None of them can leave the show due to everyone's real personalities being gone, so the only option would be to leave the Academy. However, all that lies beyond the walls is an inhospitable wasteland that would kill them the moment they left. It would be just like Monokuma to create a Hope Spot for a potential killer, then yank it away. As for all the remaining students, they would not be told of what really happened to the killer, and assume they escaped to the outside world. This sense of injustice would only increase their desire to keep going and escape so they can bring the killer to justice, which is just what Monokuma, Tsumugi, and Team Danganronpa want.
• Speaking of the First Blood perk, Kaede ultimately broke the game by refusing to take it. After all, if she had, she'd have escaped... but because no one would have investigated Rantaro's death, it would have been impossible for Shuichi to prove later on that the Mastermind actually took the killshot, and thus they'd have never confronted Tsumugi, learned the truth of Danganronpa, or been able to Take a Third Option.
• The Ultimate Talent Development Plan bonus mode notably omits characters from Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls, much to the chagrin of their fans. But it makes sense; UTDP is about developing the talents of Ultimate Students and the Reserve Course student Hajime Hinata. None of the characters that were introduced in Ultra Despair Girls have Ultimate-level talents, with the exception of the Warriors of Hope, all of whom would've been much too young to attend high school at the same time as the characters from the three visual novel titles.
  • Similarly, most of the cast of Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School (with the exception of Ryota Mitarai and the Class 76 trio) would have long graduated and therefore wouldn't be attending Hope's Peak Academy at the same time as the aforementioned students and instead take mentor roles in the Future Course. But while the Class 76 trio are implied to have still been expelled even in this timeline, Mitarai's absence as a student remains unexplained. Even the Ultimate Imposter retains Byakuya's likeness instead of switching to Mitarai's like in the anime.
• The characters that have designs or symbols on their UI make sense on their roles in the game.
  • Himiko Yumeno has Magic Circles on her UI, symbolizing her fabricated talent as the Ultimate Magician.
  • Maki Harukawa's UI symbol is a Rose, the flower that represents Love and Beauty, referring to her feelings for Kaito Momota. Though it also symbolizes Death, referring to her job as an assassin.
  • Ki-bo's UI may look like a motherboard. But in reality, it's actually a cross◊, which is probably a hint to his death at the end of the game. Unlike the dead characters, who have their crosses in the horizontal X position, his was different. In real life, Ki-bo's cross is called "The Celtic Cross"◊ because of the circle in the middle. Ki-bo's sacrifice has a similar scenario to the Christian Religion on the story of Jesus Christ and how he died on the cross as a form of execution.
• Throughout the board game bonus mode, Kokichi knows a lot about the other students such as there being two Junkos in the school, the Byakuya Togami imposter, and Celeste's real name. Given his extreme intelligence and how he is cynical and untrustworthy towards other people, he probably did some research towards the other students to let him know who is more trustworthy thus finding out about that information.
• Kirumi was once asked to annihilate a rival nation but rejected the request because it would be impossible. It's extremely impressive that a maid would be asked to carry out a monumental task such as that, but it makes more sense when remembering that she had become the prime minister.
• Kokichi is a huge Troll in which he often states stuff to only say he is lying afterwards, faked his own death, and sometimes let out his "horror sprites" before his breakdown in Chapter Five just to scare the shit out of people. It makes sense given how he is actually a leader for a group of clowns.
• As for the setting of this game taking place in a prison school, the cast has a huge Morality Kitchen Sink as there is many morally ambitiously characters such as Angie, Ouma, Maki, and Miu. With a vast majority of the cast not having a clear cut white morality, it makes sense for this season of Team Danganronpa to take place in a prison.
• It makes sense for why Kokichi's skill is called "Gentle Lies" given how a major theme in this game is Awful Truth and how people call to tell some gentle lies to avoid the Awful Truth. His character trailer even has him state that half of his lies are made out of kindness.
• The way Kaede's ahoge is drawn, it kind of makes her head look a little like a musical note.
• Shuichi's cap, before it's taken off, hides his ahoge. Every Danganronpa protagonist has an ahoge.
  • And on the note of ahoges, Rantaro also has one, befitting his role in the previous killing game.
    • He actually has two ahoges which can foreshadow him surviving two killing games, though that's most likely unintentional.
• Why is Miu so concerned with making inventions that allow people to do stuff while they are asleep? Because, in her free time events, it is revealed that she used to be in a coma, unable to do anything but sleep.
• During one Shuichi's free time advents with Miu, she will show off several of her inventions to Shuichi, including a "Hookup Counter" a machine that somehow counts up the number of times that somebody had sex after scanning them. When she uses it on Shuichi, she doesn't tell Shuichi the results, and instead just laughs at the reading before moving on to the next invention, much to Shuichi's confusion. The reason why Miu didn't give Shuichi the results was because Shuichi many have hooked up several times with the other students during the Love Hotel advents at different points in the game, so a scripted number could not be given.
  • Leaning towards both an in-game and Fridge Horror example relating to Miu's Hookup Counter is when she used the scanner on Mikan Tsumiki in the Ultimate Talent Development Plan bonus mode. After looking at the reading, Miu responds by saying "Hmmm... W-Wow... I see..." with an embarrassed look on her face. Given Mikan's Dark and Troubled Past, that a pretty messed up implication...
• One of the reasons why Kokichi might have seen it necessary to have Miu killed off instead of non-lethally subdued is because he needed her to keep quiet about him using her inventions to pose as the mastermind. It's implied in the flashback with Kokichi and Miu, that Kokichi was going to let her in on his plan had she been willing to fight Monokuma. However, since Miu refused to help Kokichi beyond supplying him with her creations, Miu would have likely revealed that Kokichi's remote is her invention, rendering his original plan moot. There is also the danger of Miu using the remote herself when the Exisal's hanger became available for the student to access.
• Some people complain why Kokichi didn't just tell anybody that Miu was planning to murder him. But think about it. He has no concrete proof that Miu is planning to commit a murder, and he's not necessarily trusted by anyone. Most likely, they'd just think that he was trying to screw with them again. Kokichi had no real allies, so manipulating Gonta was truly his only option to escape death.
• A bit of Fridge Horror in there, but Kokichi's (apparently) hypocritical statement of hating liars takes a new meaning when you find out that he faked liking the Killing Game and being the Mastermind so that he could trick the real one.
• It is mentioned that Korekiyo takes longer than the girls to get ready in the morning due to how elaborate his outfit is. It's then revealed that he's wearing more makeup than any of the girls. Putting all that on, on top of his outfit, would chew up a lot of time.
• It's not hard to see why the students immediately latch onto Kokichi being framed as a remnant of despair and believe he's the mastermind in Chapter 5, even though the Flashback light never explicitly spells it out to them. Besides the obvious in how he shows it off, he has a lot in common with Junko herself. Besides their manipulative, lying tendencies, both tend to perform extremely drastic mood swings for entertainment value (even though Kokichi doesn't entirely change personalities), often talk about boredom like it's the bane of their existence and talk about doing horrible things for the sake of making it "fun" (though Kokichi is most likely lying about doing stuff For the Evulz), and both have a quirk that involves completely and utterly deadpanning at something (Kokichi goes deadpan when he's not lying, Junko does it when she comes across something she can't predict and has to analyze it). In effect, Kokichi's pre-built personality already made him a mini-Junko, he just never realized it. In fact, it's entirely possible that Team Danganronpa intentionally crafted his personality like this so that they'd have a savvy Junko Expy, as her in-universe popularity as a character would probably mirror her out of universe popularity as the villain.
• The Chapter 3 murders each serve as a clever Mythology Gag that alludes to the series' first cases, which Monokuma lampshades in the trial. The circumstances surrounding the murder of the first Chapter 3 victim include a reference to Case 1 of the first game (the gold leaf katana). The circumstances surrounding the murder of the second Chapter 3 victim appear to mirror Case 1 of the second game (a floorboard trick done in the pitch-black darkness). The murder of the third 'victim', Kokichi, was a lie. It is revealed in the final trial that what was accepted to have happened in Rantaro's case, which is the first case of the third game, was all a lie, showing that the extrapolation holds up.
• In the fifth trial, Monokuma intervenes in the middle of the trial asking about who is inside the Exisal. While he doesn't normally do that as he just let the students figure things out on their own, and only answer certain questions that the students might have that pertains to the murder case, it makes sense in this trial. He does not know the culprit, and he knows how bad it would look if he did not give the correct ruling. The students were about to jump to conclusions and vote for Kokichi. That is something that Monokuma does not want to happen, as he made sure that the other students talk things over, and consider all of the possibilities and facts before they vote.
• While the game already mentioned plenty of reasons why Tsumugi wanted Kokichi dead, another reason could be that Kokichi is a Living Lie Detector, and could have easily seen pass through Tsumugi's bullshit and her lies. Kokichi may have called her on that, and thus the students may have not fallen into despair and then overcome it like she wanted them to. In addition, Kokichi's final free time event hints on how to win Danganronpa (by not playing in it at all) making it far more likely for him to realize that the other students should not vote.
• Why doesn't Korekiyo, a Serial Killer, commit murder during Chapter 1 when he could get off without a class trial and no murder occurring would mean everyone dying? Because if everyone died, his sister would have six new "friends" (all the girls but Miu and Maki,) and this would meet his 100-victim goal, so he could die in peace to be with her.
  • Because he wants to make sure they're good enough for his sister. Chapter 1 was not soon enough to determine that. It was only after two chapters of consideration that he determined that everybody but Miu and Maki would be good enough.
  • That makes a better argument for why he should have killed at least one girl to get out scot-free, and the premise has one obvious flaw. One chapter was enough time to determine this for some of the girls, like Kaede's free times with him proves in no uncertain terms, but obviously wouldn't have been enough for all of them, like Maki who stays more closed off during this period. It does, however, make a case for why he doesn't specifically go after Tsumugi when he notes she isolates herself by going to the bathroom, which would have let him make at least one friend, get out alive without facing a trial, and then continue as needed to finish his set of 100. (As he wouldn't know killing her specifically would also likely end the game.) Depending on how close he is to 100 he could just be hoping that enough of this group of 8 girls would be "friend" material even though he'll also die in the process since he does at least know they are all remarkably talented in their respective fields.
  • Alternatively he may be banking on Exact Words and hopes he isn't being considered as someone "forced" to play the killing game as he can find enjoyment in this situation by observing others and has no actual issues with killing people.
• It's actually fairly reasonable (by Danganronpa standards) for Korekiyo to be such a successful killer:
  • The hardest serial killers to catch tend to be people who regularly travel long distances, such as long-haul truckers, because it's hard to connect the killings, they rarely kill people they know personally, and the killer tends to be long gone before the investigation can conclude. As the Ultimate Anthropologist, Korekiyo would spend most of his time traveling the world to observe different cultures. It'd definitely be hard to track down someone who might kill someone in the Phillipines, then in Peru, then in Lebanon.
  • Also due to his job as an anthropologist, Korekiyo would spend a lot of time in remote and isolated locations without the resources to investigate fully.
  • It's normal for an anthropologist to carefully observe and interview people as part of their studies, so Korekiyo would have a perfect excuse to examine people he thought would make great friends for his sister.
  • Unlike Genocide Jack, Korekiyo has no obvious Calling Cards that he sticks to absolutely; he just cares that the victim is dead enough to say hi to his sister. This, along with the above points, makes Korekiyo's crime scenes difficult to identify as being the work of a serial killer (something he even uses as a defense in his trial, by saying that just because they knew he killed one victim, there was nothing in the scene suggesting he killed the other; he was wrong, but only due to missing a spot cleaning up after Angie), and when a serial killer isn't obviously at play, police tend to investigate friends and family first, giving him more time to escape.
• You know about how characters during Argument Armament (barring K1-B0) are slowly stripped of their clothes until they're basically naked? If you wonder about that, remember that Shuichi is heavily implied to be a Covert Pervert.
  • Even more than that, Shuichi is also heavily implied to swing it both ways.
• Kaito's sudden admission that he's the killer when Shuichi starts to lie for him at the end of the fifth trial might seem a bit strange, being counterproductive to the entire plan. It makes sense when you consider his worsening state of health. Had he continued to keep up the charade for longer, he would've died from his illness in the Exisal, at which point it would become incredibly obvious on who to vote for. The most he could do was acknowledge Shuichi's deductive skills in his last moments, and bid everyone farewell.

Murders and executions

• As usual, the executions are conducted relating to the culprit's talent or things that they treasured:
  • Kaede's execution, "Der Flohwalzer":
    • The piano song she was playing? "The Flea Waltz", a piano song for beginners. And it's played so badly that the Monokuma audience starts pelting tomatoes at her. Combined with the ironic humiliation of a master pianist failing a beginner's song, it's a subtle foreshadowing for how the cast's Ultimate talents are fake.
    • Kaede was hanged to death, which is not only a common method of execution but also a common method of killing oneself. By not taking advantage of the First Blood Perk and encouraging Shuichi to reveal the details of her crime to everyone, Kaede effectively let herself die.
    • Although "The Flea Waltz" mostly uses the black keys of the piano, all of the keys that are pressed during the execution are white. This could be foreshadowing that she isn't the Blackened.
  • Kirumi's execution, "Strand of Agony":
    • At the start of the execution, a lot of people chase Kirumi as they hold protest signs at her. Kirumi's talent involves taking care of other people and right before she ended up dying, those people became mad at her, thus failing at her own talent. It could be interpreted that Kirumi's citizens are upset at her for not protecting them from the calamity rampaging around the world.
    • Despite their minimum detail, said people appear to be actually human and not robots specifically made for the execution, like the ones used in "One Woman Army" and "Gundham Tanaka Stampede" from Goodbye Despair and "Wild West Insecticide" later here. This may hint towards the main twist of the game, as the people could've been hired as extras by Team Danganronpa.
    • Her bio states that she is "a professional who does a perfect job". She has a keen mind and talented in various ways, reportedly able to carry out any job. Monokuma tested that out by having her go through a death trap to see how "talented" she is, only to die in the end.
    • Right before her execution, Kirumi attempted to run away and escape her execution. During her execution, a Hope Spot was created making her think that she can escape only for her to not be able to escape her fate.
    • Her execution has a lot of allusions to the short story "The Spider's Thread". To summarize, a criminal in Hell is offered a spider's thread by Buddha as a way to escape. The criminal began to climb the thread, and as soon as he's high enough, saw many others climbing the thread themselves. He shouts that the thread is his alone, tries to kick the others out, only for the thread to break, causing everyone to fall. Does this sound familiar?
    • There's also the fact that she calls the academy a "hellhole".
    • The light in the ceiling was fake — so was everything else in this game, as well as the outside world Kirumi fought so hard to try and reach.
    • While disposing of Ryoma's corpse, Kirumi slides down a ropeway, gets a part of her clothing (gloves) torn due to and drops Ryoma's body from a height (into Himiko's piranha tank. The execution parallels this with Kirumi climbing up a rope, 'getting her clothes torn and dropping from a height (to her death).
  • Korekiyo's execution, "Cultural Melting Pot":
    • The execution has many allusions to Japanese culture, which matches with his title as Cultural Anthropologist, but the last part of his execution makes his a Karmic Death. His sister and Monokuma pelt his spirit with salt, which is a purification ritual in the Shinto religion. Considering his unclean motive, it's a very fitting end.
    • Additionally he wanted to reunite with his sister as a ghost, so he could be with the person he loved while continuing to watch over his "friends". Monokuma makes it look like this might actually happen, only to exorcise his spirit while the ghost of his sister shows how she really feels and helps banish him so he can't do either.
    • Korekiyo is boiled alive in a cauldron, which is one of the most commonly known punishments for sinners in hell. Fitting for a Serial Killer with a nearly three-digit body count!
    • During his execution, Korekiyo is hung from a rope and spun around, parallelling him spinning an effigy hung from a rope in order to cover up his murder of Angie. What's more, he later gets his spirit pelted with salt, having earlier used a salt circle in his set up for murdering Tenko.
    • Finally, during the Voting Time, it was shown that one less vote was put in most likely from Kiyo himself. Monokuma had it clear that everyone must vote for someone or they will die as well. With Kiyo not voting at all and Monokuma and Kiyo's sister's ghost pouring salt on Kiyo's spirit, Kiyo was effectively killed twice.
  • Gonta's execution, "Wild West Insecticide":
    • If one takes a look at the wasps that used in Gonta's execution, it would appear that they are a bit robotic. The reason Gonta lost his memory regarding the killing was due to a "computer bug" as it were when he put the cables connecting him to the virtual world in backwards.
    • During that execution, Gonta got poisoned and he was killed by animals (insects). This is similar to how the past two Chapter 4 killers died, as Sakura poisoned herself and Gundham got run over by a bunch of animals.
    • Notice how he was tied up to a wooden post during his execution, unable to escape. Sakura and Gundham both ended up facing their deaths with digity since they intended to perform a Heroic Sacrifice to save the other students. However, Gonta intended to kill all of the other students and do the opposite effect of what Gundham and Sakura did as he was not planning on being executed instead of the other students. So, Gonta was in a position to be unable to escape from execution due to his failure in killing all of the other students.
    • The Wild West theme of the execution makes sense, given Gonta's lack of understanding of the virtual world, as the Wild West has no computer technology. If he understood how the cables work and plugged them correctly in, he might have been able to actually remember what went on in the virtual world, and fight back Kokichi's arguments against him, thus escaping execution.
    • More simply, Gonta is a Wild Child who lived in the untamed wilderness for most of his life. He may have lived in the forest instead of the desert, but the general notion of an area that hasn't been completely settled by humans is still there.
    • Gonta being executed Wild West shootout style makes even more sense when you realize that gentlemen in early modern Europe settled conflicts with duels. Monokuma was just mocking the blackened's ambitions in their execution per usual.
    • Given Gonta's sheer adoration for insects, what makes this execution especially evil is the fact that his expertise in entomology could mean that he was aware that his punishment involved the additional death of hundreds of bees that die after stinging. The giant mantis-like insect at the end did not get off scot-free either, as it was incinerated along with Gonta, meaning that the last thing he potentially saw (assuming he did not die instantly after getting impaled) was an insect being slowly burned to ashes. Being unfamiliar with technology, Gonta could have easily interpreted his situation as the demise of real bugs rather than robotic ones.
    • Gonta is killed by a parasitic insect, fitting for someone who only became the blackened due to Kokichi's parasitic relationship with him.
    • A fair chunk of Gonta's screentime is stolen by Monophanie and Monotaro to the extent of him seeming like a side character in his own execution - which seems unfair until you realise Gonta actually was a side character in his own trial due to forgetting what happened in the Virtual World and not being able to defend himself.
    • Why do two Monokubs get killed here instead of one? Because two people (well, two versions of the same person) are executed: the flesh-and-blood Gonta and the AI Gonta.
  • Kaito's execution, "Blast Off! Second Ignition":
    • The start of the execution is similar to Jin Kirigiri's execution in the first game (as the name suggests), only for the spaceship to fly backwards and go to the depths of Earth's core. This is particularly cruel, given Kaito's greatest dream of reaching space, only to go all the way down instead.
    • As for why his execution seems so peaceful in comparison to the other executions and why it was so similar to "Blast Off!", the mastermind or Team Danganronpa didn't plan for the events of Chapter 5 to happen, and probably didn't plan for Kaito's execution either. When it was revealed that Kaito was the killer, they probably had to quickly think of some execution to use for him, so they basically reused "Blast Off!".
    • Alternatively, Kaito being the only character (save for Junko) that didn't get a unique execution, but instead got a parody of an execution that already happened makes it seem like he, despite trying his hardest to be a hero for everyone, isn't good enough to be worthy of a unique or grand execution.
    • Even the execution music was reused. When one hears the execution music closely, a part of it resembles DR2's Chapter 1 execution music. As for why the lyrics ("reach for the stars, reach so high...") are absent, its use in DR2 is layered with irony towards the first execution portrayed in DR1. Kaito ended up reaching space.
    • Why was Monokuma so pissed after Kaito's execution? For one, he did end up reaching space after going all the way underground and succumbed to his illness instead of dying from crash-landing into the Earth. Also, he (along with Kokichi) ended up ruining the mastermind's plans for that chapter when they Out-Gambitted them. For someone who wants their victims to die in despair, the fact that the culprit died peacefully is sure to make them livid.
    • Kaito's execution being a Call-Back to "Blast Off!" is fitting, as that execution was the first in the series and was meant to introduce us to the crazy world of Danganronpa. Kaito's execution preceded the defeat and execution of Danganronpa itself, and can be considered the last "official" execution of the series, thus book-ending it by having it begin and end with the Space Journey.
  • Tsumugi's execution, "Ultimate Annihilation":
    • The final execution is the destruction of the facility, with Tsumugi and Monokuma dying due to rubble falling on them, in a similar manner as Junko's in Trigger Happy Havoc. It's Danganronpa's execution.
    • Tsumugi's way of death received many complaints, centering on how she got off relatively easy. That's exactly the point. The most unremarkable character (judging by fan responses and her own perception of herself) gets the most unremarkable execution.
    • Another one: Tsumugi's character is pretty much all about imitation. She states that her 'cosplays are perfect imitations of the real thing' (hence her impersonation of DR1 and DR2 characters). Since Tsumugi has no real sense of self beyond fiction, it essentially shows that she has no solid identity, and she doesn't even deserve a proper execution unlike anyone else in the series. For a DR-obsessed fangirl who probably would have at least liked a flashy execution tailor-made for her, it's a very disappointing (of course also unpleasant) way to go.
    • Kaede herself was crushed from above when she was executed. Tsumugi's execution is supposed to mimic what would've ended up happening to her had the other students correctly known about Rantaro's killer. In addition, given how Tsumugi was the first-ever known killer to have somebody else get successfully executed for a crime they did (aside from what ended up happening in the non-canonical bad ending of Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc), it is very fitting how she ended up having the same execution as her victim.
    • Furthermore, it's rather ironic, in a way. Usually, when a game ends via Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies, the DM survives- here, the DM is the ''only'' one who dies from it- if you believe Keebo died when he underwent his Death of Personality.
• The murder victims along with their killers can make some sense.
  • Rantaro was killed by Tsumugi. If he ended up defeating the mastermind in his previous killing game like how the ending ended up implying, it was only fitting that he was killed by the mastermind in this game.
  • Ryoma was killed by Kirumi. Like a criminal who sentenced to death by the government, he manages to be killed by a prime minister.
    • Ryoma's body was dispatched by throwing it into a water tank full of piranhas. For one who's single-handedly eliminated an entire mafia, he sure did sleep with the fishes.
  • Angie was killed by Korekiyo. Korekiyo's motive into killing people was to send girls into the afterlife. With Angie being the Token Religious Teammate and the biggest believer in the afterlife, it makes sense for why Angie was killed by somebody who wanted her in the afterlife.
  • Tenko was also killed by Korekiyo. As somebody who Does Not Like Men, she was killed by a man with a female Split Personality. Additionally, as someone who wanted the academy to be a "girls-only paradise", Tenko was killed by someone who wanted to send only female friends to his sister's ghost.
    • Concerning Tenko's last moments until finally dying, if she wasn't slit in the neck in order to be successfully killed by Korekiyo's sickle, she likely would've exposed him for being a "degenerate male" and alerted the respective participants of the séance. She most likely would've made exposing her killer her dying message if not for having her larynx slit open, deducing it moments before succumbing to her injury. That may be why Korekiyo decided to orient her in an inescapable position so her only fatal injury is being slit in the neck.
    • Even more so, throughout the killing game, the two killers Tenko ended up witnessing were both female Sympathetic Murderers. Her killer ended up happening to be a male who has the most unsympathetic murder of this game.
  • Miu was killed by Gonta. Miu is somebody who swears a lot and makes a lot of lewd comments. Given how Gonta aims to be a gentleman (in which swearing and making lewd comments is very ungentlemanlike), it makes sense for why Miu was killed by Gonta.
    • Hence her strangulation by toilet paper; Miu talks a lot of shit. Also, keep in mind that Kokichi was the one who masterminded her death. Throughout the game, Kokichi would often insult Miu, such as calling her a human toilet on several occasions. Not to mention, it is implied that Miu has an excrement fetish.
    • Early in Chapter Four, Kaito punched Kokichi in the face. Guess who Miu tried to frame when she attempted to kill Kokichi?
  • Kokichi was killed by Kaito. It is very fitting how the person Maki was the most antagonistic to was killed by the person Maki was the most friendly towards.
    • In Chapter 4, Miu attempts to frame Kaito for Kokichi's potential unsolvable murder case. In Chapter 5, Kaito kills Kokichi in an actually unsolvable murder case in order to optimally taint the Killing Game.
    • Moreso, Kokichi's death involved poison, although it's not what actually kills him in the end. This mirrors both the poison bottle Miu uses to frame Kaito for his murder in the previous chapter and Gonta's execution, which involved Gonta being poisoned.
• Also, the first victims and culprits were the most competent cast members. Rantaro is a survivor of previous killing games, Kaede for reasons outlined above, Ryoma (should he regain his will to live) is a dangerous badass, and Kirumi can pretty much complete any task. It's as if the mastermind is weeding out those who can easily defeat her.
  • Heck, pretty much all of the victims and killers prior to Chapter 5 (aka the only chapter where the mastermind didn't know who the killer was and didn't plan for the events to happen in that chapter) had skills to defeat the mastermind. Tenko and Gonta are the two strongest students around. Angie, through either her "god" or her own wit, did manage to predict what actually happened with Rantaro's death (the mastermind using a secret passageway to kill Rantaro). Miu is definitely the most tech-savvy person around who created a means to take over Exisals with little trouble, and powerful electronics- and communications-jamming devices. And Korekiyo is a Serial Killer who only kills girls, and not only could have even gone for the mastermind, she (unintentionally) gave him an opportunity to do in chapter one of all things.
  • Along those lines, every person that was alive after Chapter 5 were less likely to defeat the mastermind had it not been for Character Development. Shuichi felt a lack of confidence in his detective skills at the start of the game, Himiko is extremely lazy, Maki starting off the killing game extremely anti-social, and Ki-bo has a Restraining Bolt in the form of being controlled by the audience.
  • Even Kaito and Kokichi may be useful to keep around in order for Tsumugi to not be defeated by the end. Kaito may put too much trust in Tsumugi like he did with Gonta in Chapter Four and Kokichi is likely a scapegoat for everybody else to think that he was the mastermind. It is extremely noteworthy that the mastermind didn't plan for the events of Chapter Five to happen by the way.
• One of the regulations states that Monokuma can never directly kill everyone. And in this game, he never does. The first three culprits are killed by the Monokubs, Gonta most likely dies immediately after being impaled by a wasp, Kaito succumbs to his own illness, and all other deaths are on the participants' hands.

Class Trials

• The placement of characters in the trial room can carry additional meaning and parallels if one remembers the previous games.
  • Shuichi is standing in the same position as Makoto and Hajime, facing Monokuma's throne. This is a rather blatant piece of Foreshadowing for him being the true main character before Kaede is revealed as a Decoy Protagonist at the end of trial 1.
  • Maki's trial seat is the same as Sakura's and Fuyuhiko's. Like Sakura, she is an Action Girl with some kind of unpleasant secret of hers revealed midway through the game by an antagonist. Like Fuyuhiko, she starts out antagonistic, but after Chapter 2's events (including a big reveal about her character), gradually starts warming up towards everyone. And like Fuyuhiko, her Implied Love Interest eventually commits murder to save her from becoming the blackened, with a lot of tears and an Anguished Declaration of Love following.
    • Maki's podium directly opposes Kokichi's, her being the most hostile to him out of all classmates.
  • Himiko, a Chuunibyou magician who believes herself to be an actual witch, shares a seat with Sonia, who was a Nightmare Fetishist fascinated with all things occult and was in love with Gundham, a Chuunibyou who believed himself to be a dark mage. Both girls also shared a deep emotional connection with the blackened of their respective games' Chapter 4 and were absolutely devastated after his death.
    • Her podium opposes Ryoma, another chronically depressed short student. But while Himiko manages to snap out of it and survive, Ryoma is not so lucky.
  • Rantaro's seat is right in front of Monokuma, the same place as Junko's and Ultimate Imposter's. While Junko is the first game's mastermind, Rantaro is at one point suspected to be V3's mastermind and faces the same fate as fake Byakuya, becoming the first victim and never seeing the courtroom. Additionally, Imposter initially seems to be a survivor of the previous killing game returning as a participant in another killing game, which is exactly what happened to Rantaro.
  • Kaede is in the same seat as Nekomaru and Chihiro. Both Nekomaru and Kaede were leaders who tried to inspire the people around them and sacrificed themselves for their classmates (even if it meant attempting to kill someone) during a situation when they had to choose between murder and Total Party Kill. Both Chihiro and Kaede, despite their short time in the game, ended up impacting the story in a major way and indirectly helping bring down the mastermind.
    • Kaede's poduim is placed opposite to Kirumi's. Kirumi is the first person to break her promise with Kaede by committing murder.
  • Ryoma's courtroom position is the same as Mukuro's (with whom he shares an athletic talent, a massive body count and We Hardly Knew Ye status) and Akane's (another athletic Ultimate who was originally intended to be the Ultimate Criminal while Ryoma considers himself to be the Ultimate Prisoner).
    • Placed next to him are Kirumi (his eventual murderer) and Maki (who plays a key role in his death).
  • Kirumi is seated where Kiyotaka and Gundham were. Kiyotaka aspired to be a politician while Kirumi herself was the prime minister's right hand. Like with Gundham and Nekomaru, Kirumi's victim gave his life willingly as a Heroic Sacrifice. Plus, Gundham's personal philosophy was to never give up on life - which Kirumi certainly followed, being Defiant to the End during her trial and even trying to escape being executed.
  • Angie is located where Kyoko and Ibuki used to stand. Similar to Kyoko, Angie was a morally gray white-haired character with a desire to end the killing game. And just like Ibuki, Angie was The Pollyanna with a somewhat childish personality that ended up dying in Chapter 3.
    • Additionally, she stands next to Korekiyo, who is as obsessed with the occult as she is with religion and, like her, regularly makes bloody sacrifices for a supernatural being (Atua in Angie's cases, his sister's spirit in Korekiyo's case), with Angie herself also ending up as one of his sacrifices.
    • Angie is placed opposite to Tenko, her main rival for Himiko's friendship.
  • Tenko's trial seat formerly belonged to Peko. Both her and Peko had a green color scheme, Braids of Action and athletic talents. And both ended up sacrificing their lives for their best friend, which later would inspire said friend to become a better version of themselves.
    • Considering she very vocally Does Not Like Men, it's particularly ironic that she is standing between two males (Although K1-B0 technically has No Biological Sex).
  • Korekiyo's position is the same as both Mondo and Nagito's. Mondo was, like Korekiyo, motivated to kill someone by an elder sibling's death (indirectly in Mondo's case) and had an execution involving a lot of spinning that ended with him being dissolved. And Nagito is, like Korekiyo, an unfettered character with a green color scheme and a...peculiar worldview that caused several people's deaths.
    • He is opposing K1-B0, the only Token Nonhuman classmate.
  • Miu stands at Hifumi and Mahiru's podium. Like Hifumi, she was a perverted comic relief that ended up falling in love with a robotic character (Alter Ego for Hifumi, K1-B0 for Miu) and eventually became a victim of the local Consummate Liar. Like Mahiru, she was a feisty young woman with a motherly side whose antagonistic relationship with a Derek Stephen Prince-voiced Tiny Schoolboy ended in her being killed by his bespectacled red-eyed tool.
    • The podium of K1-B0, Miu's Implied Love Interest, is right by her side.
  • Gonta is seated in Yasuhiro and Chiaki's former seat. He and Yasuhiro were the least intelligent students among their class, and both were accused of murder in Chapter 4 (atbeit with opposite circumstances: Yasuhiro believed that he killed someone while actually being innocent, Gonta believed that he was innocent while actually being a murderer). As for Gonta and Chiaki's similarities, both of them were Too Good for This Sinful Earth characters who were tricked into commiting murder by an antagonistic character with the entire class refusing to believe in their guilt until they can't deny it anymore. Plus, they both are executed along with an AI and end up as an AI at some point.
    • Gonta is situated between Rantaro and Kaede, whose circumstances he ends up paralleling. In Chapter 1, Tsumugi, the real mastermind, used Kaede's (failed) murder plan to dispose both of Rantaro and her, using her as The Scapegoat to prevent herself from being executed. During Chapter 4, Kokichi, the fake mastermind, convinces Gonta to kill Miu and uses Gonta's (successful) murder of Miu to dispose both of her and him, using Gonta as The Scapegoat to prevent himself from being executed.
    • He is opposing Kaito, who was defending him and insisting on his innocence during Chapter 4's trial.
  • Kaito is in Sayaka's trial location. As with Sayaka, he is the protagonist's best friend that later (seemingly) ends up as a murder victim.
    • Another thing to bring up is that he is always standing right next to his bro Shuichi.
  • Kokichi is standing where Celeste and Teruteru used to. Just like his predecessor Celestia "Queen of Lies" Ludenberg, Kokichi is a Consummate Liar and Manipulative Bastard that wears a persona of someone more grandiose than he actually is and midway through the game tricks a bespectacled boy into committing murder, remorselessly disposing of him when he is no longer useful, though while Celeste only got two people killed in a single chapter and got executed for her murder of Hifumi, Kokichi orchestrated several additional deaths in other chapters and never faced punishment for any of them. And in Teruteru's case, it's a darkly funny piece of irony that the seat formerly belonging to a guy indirectly killed by his game's rival character now belongs to an Indirect Serial Killer rival.
    • Considering that he loves tearing apart the bonds between other characters, Kokichi probably was really happy to be positioned right between Himiko and Tenko, separating both of them from each other.
  • Tsumugi is in the same seat as Mikan, Junko's underling with an unhealthy attachment to her, and she herself is a big Loony Fan of Junko, who is a fictional character in this universe.
    • The classmates next to her are Rantaro, the guy she ended up killing, and Korekiyo, another seemingly-pleasant Token Evil Teammate.
  • K1-B0 is standing at Toko and Kazuichi's podium. Similar to Toko, he has a Split Personality, though in his case it is voices of the audience rather than an actual DID case. And Kazuichi, who is the Ultimate Mechanic, would definitely be fascinated with such a humanlike robot as Keebo.
• The death portraits:
  • Rantaro's cross is the plainest of them all, being a simple red X drawn with a paintbrush. This may refer to his unknown talent or him being generally Out of Focus, - or, considering his status as a previous killing game survivor, may be mocking him by denying him any special marker which he thought he might've deserved by being a winner.
  • Kaede's cross is made of one thin and one thick line, giving it the appearance of a music note.
  • The cross on Ryoma's portrait is made up of straight, thick lines and seems to be printed. Not only is it quite fitting that a cartoony-looking character would be branded with a cartoony-looking cross, but the lines of the cross are drawn similarly to the design on his hat. On a more serious note, the big cross almost covers Ryoma's entire face, as if to say that he doesn't matter even in death.
  • Kirumi's cross is the opposite of Ryoma's cross, being made of thin, somewhat messy lines. This parallels both characters' motivations in Chapter 2, with Kirumi, who has a whole country to live for, murdering the willing Ryoma, who has no one to live for. The cross's thin lines also make it seem more elegant, fitting with Kirumi's ladylike character.
  • Angie's portrait has a halo and a pair of wings, which suit her devout personality. In addition, she was considered Atua's vessel by her island's people, which would probably make her an angelic figure in their eyes.
  • Tenko's cross is shaped like her pinwheel bow.
  • Korekiyo's portrait is covered with red in a way that looks like either fire, referencing his death by being boiled alive, blood splatters, referencing his serial killer backstory, or a ghostly aura, referencing his sister's death that led him to be obsessed with occult.
  • Miu's portrait has three crosses, which is used as shorthand for porn.
  • Gonta's portrait seems plain, until you notice that one of X's legs is split in two, giving it the appearance of bug antennae. It might also be referencing how he technically died twice, as human and as an AI. The other brush strike making up his cross also looks a bit like a smouldering stick, bringing to mind him being burned at the stake.
  • Kaito's cross looks like a pair of arrows, symbolising Maki's poisoned arrows that led to Kokichi blackmailing him into creating an unsolvable murder.
  • Kokichi's cross looks more like a checkmark, referencing the fact that he was the correct victim in trial 5. Plus, the fact that checkmarks are used to mark things as incorrect in Japan, while in the rest of the world they mean exactly the opposite, fits Kokichi's contradictory, lying nature.
• While Tsumugi, Keebo and the three survivors didn't have death portraits for obvious reasons, official merch has released death portrait designs for them too.
  • Tsumugi's portrait has a simple X in line with how all death portraits in Trigger Happy Havoc looked, symbolising both her status as The Nondescript and her being a fan of Danganronpa.
  • K1-B0's cross looks like a pair of wrenches, telling him that his robotic nature is the only thing of note about him.
  • Shuichi's cross looks like two smudged blood splatters, fitting both his talent as the Ultimate Detective and his role as the main murder-solver in the game.
  • Maki's cross looks like a crosshair. In addition to being suited to her job as an assassin, it refers to the events of Chapter 5, in which she certainly would have gotten executed for shooting Kokichi with poison arrows if Kaito didn't save her life by killing him first.
  • Himiko's cross looks like a wizard's staff crossed with a magician's wand.
• Argument Armament figuratively (and literally) leaves the opponent defenceless & pinned to a corner.

Scrum Debates

• Both Shuichi and Tsumugi are silent throughout the first Scrum Debate. Shuichi because he already knows the truth but can't bear to say it, Tsumugi because she wants Kaede to be framed.
• Rantaro is the only person who switches sides while being dead, opposing Shuichi in Trial 1 and 2, but siding with Shuichi from Chapter 3 on. Since in Chapter 1 Kaede wanted to expose herself as his murderer (with Tsumugi being the actual culprit behind his death), he certainly wouldn't want Kaede to die for something he fully knows she didn't do.
• Even after her death in Chapter 1, Kaede's death portrait always is shown on Shuichi's side, symbolising her impact on him during the brief time they had together.
• Ryoma always opposes the protagonist (even as a death portrait), paralleling his pessimistic tendencies.
• Angie, like Kaito, is always on the side of the majority both while alive and as a death portrait, paralleling both her deep-seated desire to have friends and her attempt to convert everyone into her cult in Chapter 3.
• Tenko, during the two trails when she's alive, is always on the side side as Himiko, whom she is very affectionate towards.
• Korekiyo is always opposing you until the third trial, where he is the culprit. Given that the debate's point was whether to vote for him or wait, with Shuichi's side wanting to wait, it would make sense that he'd try to save his own skin by siding with Shuichi.
• Miu always opposes the protagonist during Scrum Debates due to her hostile personality.
• Kokichi and Kaito, being bitter rivals throughout the game, are NEVER on the same side, even after their (perceived in case of Kaito) death in Trial 5. In addition to that, Kaito, who tries to be an Ideal Hero and is loved by the majority of his classmates, is always on the side that has more students while Kokichi, who is more or less Hated by All, is always on the side with less students.
  • Since Kokichi seeks to prolong the trials for his own amusement, it would make sense why he is opposing Shuichi in the first two trials. And as for why he sides with you in the following chapters... During Chapter 3's Scrum Debate, where he is on the player's side for the first time, since he has already figured out that Korekiyo killed both Tenko and Angie and that voting for him would be a correct choice, he purposefully sides with Shuichi, who doesn't know yet about Korekiyo's role in Angie's death, in order to make the trial last longer. In Chapter 4 his main objective is to get Gonta convicted so that he would avoid execution. And while he's already dead in trial 5, his portrait is on Shuichi's side, aka the side that wants to vote him as Kaito's killer.
• Tsumugi always opposes the protagonist, save for Chapter 1, where she needed to side with Kaede, who believed that she was the culprit and was going to condemn herself, which was what Tsumugi wanted. Additionally, she always sides with Gonta, who was probably the closest character to her during the game. However, unlike with Maki and Kaito or Tenko and Himiko, who are always standing next to each other, Tsumugi is usually far from Gonta, only standing by his side during Trial 4 when he is the Blackened, which foreshadows her, as the game's mastermind, not having any actual emotional attachment to Gonta and only keeping him company because she needed to have some social interaction in order to blend in better.
  • Additionally, Tsumugi is always positioned right next to the blackened, standing right next to Kirumi and Gonta in trials 2 and 4 respectively, right across from Korekiyo in trial 3, and being the closest to Kaito's death portrait in trial 5. The only exception is Chapter 1, where she is the murderer.
• During Debate Scrums K1-B0 is always on the right side, that being Shuichi's. Most likely, it's the voices in his head telling him the correct solution.
  • In Chapter 3 though, the opposing side is technically right. So why K1-B0 is sided with Shuichi? Most likely the viewers are telling him to not jumping to the voting because they want the trial to last longer.
  • Chapter 5 is the only instance where K1-B0 is not on Shuichi's side. Well, that's because Shuichi in this case is in the wrong.
• Maki is always on Kaito's side from Trial 2 onwards. Considering Kaito jumped to her defence in the second trial and was willing to provide her company and emotional support even after her true identity as an assassin got revealed, it's no wonder why she wants to stand beside him.

Daily Life & Free Time Events

• During the first chapter's Daily Life segment, Rantaro can often be found inside the library. He already knows, thanks to his Survivor Perk Monopad, that the hidden room is located there and he is trying to watch it closely.
• Kokichi can be found near the places related to the previous murder cases during the following chapter's Daily Life (visiting the pool plus Ryoma and Kirumi's labs in Chapter 3 and hanging near the three rooms, where Angie and Tenko died, in Chapter 4). This is most likely how he got all the items that are in his room.
  • Most notably, if you by any chance happen to visit Korekiyo's research lab in Chapter 4 and check the place, Shuichi will remark that the caged dog village book is missing. Come Chapter 6 and we find it in Kokichi's room, hinting that he was the one who took it.
• Maki's most favorite items are Space Egg and Home Planet, foreshadowing her becoming close friends (and maybe something more) with Kaito.
• Rantaro likes the Aluminium Water Bottle item. Notably, its description says that having it slung over your shoulder makes you want to go on an adventure, which foreshadows Rantaro's talent being the Ultimate Adventurer.
• Korekiyo's most hated present is Air Exorcising Spray, which repels ghosts. In light of Chapter 3's reveal, it's most likely that he's afraid of his sister's "ghost" getting exorcised out of him. Additionally, one of its ingredients is holy water, and Korekiyo happens to be one of the most evil characters in the game.
• Kokichi dislikes the "Helping Yacchi" present. Considering it can sense when its owner is in distress, it makes perfect sense for a Consummate Liar like him to not want it anywhere near him.
• Tsumugi's most hated present is the Death Flag, which is said to increase your chance of death. It would be extremely detrimental to the plot if the Killing Game's mastermind suddenly died.
• The Book Of The Blackened is liked only by Korekiyo, a known Nightmare Fetishist, Kokichi, a Sadist who enjoys people's pain, and... Tsumugi. Before you get to the Chapter 6 reveal, it would seem strange, but if you play the game knowing her true identity as the mastermind, then of course she would enjoy such a book, as it would give her more ideas for the next seasons of Danganronpa.
• The placement of characters next to each other in the Report Card lineup.
  • Shuichi is standing next to Kaito, as the latter is his best friend throughout the game.
  • Kaito is standing next to Ryoma, his idol.
  • Ryoma is standing next to Rantaro, being the next person to get murdered after him.
  • Rantaro is standing next to Gonta, who becomes suspected of murdering him in Chapter 1.
  • Gonta is standing next to Kokichi, who frequently used him as a tool during the game.
  • Kokichi is standing next to Korekiyo, another Token Evil Teammate with a massive body count who leads a life of crime even outside the academy's walls. However, the Affably Evil Korekiyo always kills people directly, derives no pleasure from his deeds, and can be said to be doing it for someone else's sake (even if that someone is his dead sister), while the Card-Carrying Villain Kokichi is an Indirect Serial Killer that revels in the suffering he causes and gets people killed solely for his own ends, be it simple amusement or an attempt to get back at the mastermind for controlling him (even if his actions end up benefitting his surviving classmates in the long run).
  • Korekiyo, an anthropologist, is standing next to K1-B0, the Token Nonhuman. Plus, both of them are "possessed" by something in a way, but while Korekiyo only believes himself to be possessed by his sister's ghost, in reality nothing more than a Tulpa, Keebo believes that the audience's influence on him is nothing more than an inner voice.
  • Kirumi is standing next to Himiko, as she later uses Himiko's magic show as a means of framing her for Ryoma's death.
  • Himiko is right next to Maki, with both of the girls surviving the killing game thanks to other people dying in their stead.
  • Maki is standing next to Tenko, who is, like her, an athletic girl with a desire to protect the person she loves. Additionally, both of them have very similar designs.
  • Tenko is standing next to Tsumugi. Tenko is honest about her emotions, even if that means showing less-than-pleasant sides of herself, and always tries to help others. Tsumugi hides her true emotions behind an unassuming facade while secretly being the one that is making everyone suffer in the killing game.
  • Tsumugi is next to Angie. Both of them are Token Evil Teammate with artistic talents, but while Angie is ultimately well-meaning, Tsumugi isn't.
  • Angie is next to Miu. Both of the girls, despite their less-than-pleasant personalities, ultimately tried acting for the greater good, only to get killed by a male Token Evil Teammate in a double-murder plan. Their "greater good" however is fully opposite. Angie, able to sway people at her side, tried to convince everyone to forget about the outside world and live peacefully within the academy's walls. Miu, being The Friend Nobody Likes, decides to kill someone and leave the academy in order to help the outside world (which, from what she can infer, is on the point of collapsing) with her inventions.

The Chapter 1 twist

• The game's title was localized as Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, making a reference to the fact that the main character is a pianist. It also makes sense from the standpoint of Monokuma killed that pianist thus it is called "Killing Harmony" and from the standpoint of the pianist being a killer and so being a "killing harmony." Not to mention a metaphorical sense, as Kaede was creating harmony among the other characters, and the loss of her presence led to the killing game going ahead as usual.
• Throughout Chapter 1's investigation and class trial, note how concerned Kaede is over finding the "mastermind", not the culprit of the murder. She specifically says "mastermind", and seldom if ever brings up the word "culprit", because she believes herself to be the culprit.
• If one goes by color, then Kaede's status as the Decoy Protagonist should have been obvious. Most things in pink are marked as lies, and what color is Kaede plastered in? That's right, pink, which is her motif color, the color of her car, and the color of her very announcement as the protagonist in the first Famitsu articles.
  • It is also basically worth mentioning that most things that are true are in red. Both Maki and Himiko are the two characters with red color designs and they along with Shuichi Saihara (who is the true main character of the game) are the only three characters to survive the killing game.
  • During the first closing argument, the silhouette of the culprit has dark pink eyes. In all the other closing arguments, the eyes on the silhouette representing the culprit have red eyes. This foreshadows the later reveal that Kaede was not the true culprit of the case.
• A thought to why Kanda Sayaka is cast as Akamatsu. There is a similarity to Akamatsu and Junko. In the first game, Junko is a character who had the Small Role, Big Impact effect that we don't know what her role is till late game and how much she affected the cast in future installments. In the same way, Akamatsu has little role compared to what was believed, but her death brought a great impact on Saihara's development. In addition, both have twin sisters, among other similarities such as similar body type.
  • Also in another similarity. Note that Toyoguchi Megumi, Junko's voice actress in the Anime and games, also voiced Mukuro, so Akamatsu also shares a similarity to Mukuro that in their respective games, they get executed first.
• Outside of Danganronpa, Sayaka Kanda's most popular voice-acting role was from the Japanese dub of Frozen, where she starred as Anna, who had a sister of her own. Elsa became full of self-blame and doubt ever since she accidentally injured Anna as a child. Similarly, Kaede blamed herself for Rantaro's death and wanted herself to be punished. The reason why Kaede has Elsa's role and not Anna's may be a reference to her turning out to be a Decoy Protagonist, with Shuichi taking the role of the true protagonist rather than Kaede. It could be one big Actor Allusion.
• Speaking of prominent casting, there is a Recurring Element in the series in which the main male protagonist is voiced by a female veteran seiyuu. Makoto Naegi was voiced by Megumi Ogata, Hajime Hinata was voiced by Minami Takayama and Shuichi Saihara was voiced by Megumi Hayashibara. The former two were known for voicing Shinji Ikari and Conan Edogawa, and Hayashibara appeared alongside them as Rei Ayanami and Ai Haibara respectively. Both of them were the protagonist's main Love Interest, similar to Shuichi having that role towards Kaede before her death. Also, he ends up having to confront both Makoto and Hajime in the final trial, as if Rei or Haibara were giving their respective protagonists a What the Hell, Hero? moment.
• During the pre-release, Tenko's main characteristic seems to be her being a man-hater. However, that aspect was downplayed in favor for her Genki Girl tendencies and her protectiveness over Himiko. Why did they do that? To make it more believable that Kaede was the protagonist, having fans believe that a male protagonist wouldn't be able to access her free time events as a boy.
• From this user, in a meta sense, it makes some sense to why Kaede was killed off in the plot. Given the reality show context the game supposedly takes place in, Akamatsu staying as the protagonist would mean the murderous reality show would stay around till the future. By having Shuichi be the protagonist, not only does it make the audience rage like how fans (in and out of universe) reacted to Shuichi taking Kaede's place as the protagonist, it is also what brought the game to a complete end. A very smart Franchise Killer move placed in the game's universe proper.
  • Alternatively, Kaede was killed off early because she was too good at being the main protagonist, but not for the same reason explained in Tumblr posts. She kept her focus on trying to find the mastermind at the very beginning of the killing game and was able to quickly gain the trust of nearly all her classmates. She managed to accomplish something that would take the previous protagonist an entire game to do in just one chapter. Even her trap technically succeeded in smoking out the mastermind, granted only after her death and a retrial with the surviving students taking a closer at the evidence of the first trial. Had Kaede had it her way, the game would have ended as early as Chapter 1, which would have a bigger Franchise Killer move. That could have been one of the reasons why the mastermind saw it fit to get rid of her as early as possible. Shuichi being able to put an end to the television show was largely due to Kaede's help.
  • Kaede was killed first because she was already an Ideal Hero from the start, with little room for character development. Considering the main aesop here is that fiction can change who you are, it's an important thematic point that the three survivors are people changed by their fictional Lost Lenores.
  • And for a doylist non-character explanation, Kaede was killed off because she was a girl. The entrance to the secret passage was located in the girls' restroom. One of the reasons Rantaro's murder goes unsolved for so long is that the people who do most of the actual investigative work are boys (Kokichi and Shuichi), who wouldn't usually enter the girls' restroom, so the passage goes unnoticed until the final chapter. Kaede had both established herself as an investigator and would naturally use the girls' restroom regularly, so she had to go before she stumbled on the passage.
• During the prologue, when characters are introducing themselves with the introductory splash screens, Shuichi introduces himself before Kaede. Since the protagonist tends to introduce themselves first, this may be foreshadowing who the actual protagonist is.
• Before the game's release, there were three official pieces of promotional art showing several characters paired together: Shuichi with Kaito, Kaede with Maki and Kokichi with Rantaro. While Shuichi and Kaito end up becoming good friends, Kaede barely has any interaction with Maki in the main story mode and the same can be said about Kokichi and Rantaro. This can seem pretty weird... until you realise that those pieces of art were actually showing the original "assistant", "heroine" and "antagonist" characters with the person who replaces them in this role after Chapter 1 's events.
  • Kaito replaces Shuichi as the "assistant" character after the latter becomes the protagonist.
  • Maki replaces Kaede as the female lead after the latter dies.
  • Rantaro is initially set up to be the new "rival" character, being very similar to Komaeda both appearance- and behaviour-wise. After he dies, his role goes to Kokichi.

The Mastermind's identity

• While there's already plenty of intentional Foreshadowing to the reveal of Tsumugi being the mastermind (and how the first case actually went as a whole), some details in the promotional material and events of Chapter 1 can come off as additional hints upon a closer look.
  • For starters, take a look at Tsumugi's official art. Yes, it references her talent as the Ultimate Cosplayer, but it also shows her pulling on a string. Almost like how a puppeteer would control their puppets, hinting at her true identity as the mastermind.
  • After Kaede, Kaito, Shuichi, and Tenko first discover Rantaro's body, a suspicious player who has played the first two games may find it strange that the usual conditions for the Body Discovery Announcement are certainly satisfied at that moment, but that the announcement does not in fact play until a substantial amount of dialogue takes place and a number of other students enter the room. The reason for the delay? It's necessary for Tsumugi's frame job to be successful. If the announcement had been played immediately, she wouldn't have had nearly enough time to return to the dining hall before the announcement played, which would have instantly made her a prime suspect.
  • Rantaro's murder has something off about the injury to those with medical knowledge. His corpse is in a position that's slightly away where the shot put ball should have fallen, and his wound is just a blow to the back of his head. Given how heavy those shot put balls were, if he had actually been struck by the ball as it fell from as high as it did, it would have hit him hard enough to cave his skull in and leave a much more brutal fatal wound. Also, even if it didn't do such a severe injury, given how he was positioned right before his death, it would have hit the top of his head, not the back.
  • During the first class trial, Kaito is adamant that neither Shuichi or Kaede are the culprit. Come Chapter 6, we find out that he was right.
  • Also during the first trial, when Tsumugi admits to having gone to the bathroom, Monokuma says "Oh, did I hear that right? The restroom, you say? Excellent! I was waiting for this moment! I'm getting so excited right now!" This is interpreted by Tenko as some sort of perverted comment, but in light of what we learn later is truly contained in that bathroom, it could very well be that he was actually excited by the prospect of the students possibly unmasking the mastermind.
  • The trial's Scrum Debate is the only time Tsumugi is in the player's side, and even still she doesn't give out any arguments of her own. It can make sense, given how Tsumugi wants Kaede to be executed and not Shuichi.
• Tsumugi's last name, Shirogane, can be read as "silver". As in "second-best", referring both to her purported inferiority complex and her status as a "second-rate" imitation of Junko.
• Tsumugi's love hotel scene can also be seen in a different light after the reveal she wrote the "backstories" and "characters" for everyone we see in the game. She's the only character to have sibling incest act as part of her "ideal partner", though only as Not Blood Siblings, with Shuichi as her "big brother". Giving Korekiyo, Monotaro, and Monophanie that type of relationship with their own siblings as well could be a case of in-universe Author Appeal.
• Monokuma's Japanese VA changing is totally justified in-story. Given how long Danganronpa has gone on, whoever provided the original voice has either passed away or didn't care to reprise their role, possibly several times, meaning The Other Darrin was applied to him in-universe. It probably got the same cries of They Changed It, Now It Sucks! for the in-universe fanbase when it first happened as it did in the out-of-universe fandom when V3 revealed he was getting a new VA. This applies to the English version too, even though Monokuma is still voiced by Brian Beacock, he ended blowing his voice out before recording started and had to spend most of the game working through it recovering, which again, would be something to be expected after 53 seasons of role reprising a high-pitched character in a dialogue-heavy work.
• So what does the mastermind do in Chapter 5 when Kokichi forces them to a game of Xanatos Speed Chess with his plan to pose as the mastermind and make the rest of the students feel so much despair they don't want to play the killing game anymore? They use a flashback light that reveals the entire in-story history of Danganronpa with elements of the "current script" added on to motivate the surviving students to keep going. This really highlights the fact that the mastermind on their own is an uncreative Fangirl whose only real talent is to copy from other works of fiction and is unable to come up with her own original ideas.
• If one replays the first chapter and watch closely while knowing Rantaro's true talent and the identity of the mastermind, it's subtly implied that Rantaro may have suspected that Tsumugi was the mastermind. Rantaro showing up for the bonus nail painting scene in Chapter 1 can be interpreted as Rantaro not wanting to leave Kaede, someone Rantaro himself had said would be targeted by the mastermind, along with the person that he might think is the mastermind, Tsumugi. This kind of leads to Fridge Horror when you consider Tsumugi's annoyed reaction to Rantaro's sudden appearance...
  • A big hint that Rantaro possibly suspected that Tsumugi was the mastermind, is when he asked about the Ultimate Hunt to the other students. In Chapter 6, it's revealed that Rantaro gave a hint to himself in his survivor's perk, telling him to choose carefully when sharing information about the Ultimate Hunt to the other students. The students that were present for Rantaro's question included Kaede, Shuichi, Kaito, Gonta, Himiko, Tenko, Kirumi, and Keebo. So one could assume that Rantaro removed these students as suspects of being the mastermind. The students that weren't present were Kokichi, Miu, Korekiyo, Ryoma, Maki, Angie, and Tsumugi, who left the room in that order. However, while all of the students that left are suspicious on varying levels, it was only until after Tsumugi, seemly the least suspicious of the seven, left the room that Rantaro talks about the Ultimate Hunt.
• Its subtle, but if you replay the game knowing Tsumugi is the mastermind, you'll notice that she doesn't once show genuine emotion throughout the game. While other characters emotions are clear, such as anger and depression and crying, Tsumugi gives the same limited expressions in which none of them reaches her eyes. The best example of this is Maki, who starts out cold but opens up later showing real emotions, compared to Tsumugi who keeps up the same Otaku girl act, until the reveal in Chapter 6. Even Kokichi, who is a constant liar, has his moments which proves he wasn't nearly as evil as he wanted people to believe.
• Tsumugi's skill, "2D Love", fills in some of the panels at the start of the closing argument. Makes sense when you consider the format of the closing argument and her love for manga and such, but then there is the fact that she's also the mastermind and it makes even more sense. Of course her skill would fill in parts of the explanation for how the murder went down, as the mastermind she would know already what happened.

The "Fictional world" twist

• In Chapter 3, Monokuma swears repeatedly that, if used, the Necronomicon ritual would indeed work and a dead student would be "resurrected", despite how absurd this claim seems. His claim is never tested directly and the ritual is never used, but we learn during the finale that the students' personalities and memories are all pre-written fabrications, meaning that "resurrecting" a student would have been as simple as recruiting a similar-looking "contestant" for the show and uploading the relevant memories. Thus, a student really could have been "resurrected", and Monokuma was telling the truth about the Necronomicon the whole time.
  • In fact, the person selected to be turned into the "resurrected" student wouldn't even need to look like the deceased student; all it would take would be a use of the Flashback Light to rewrite the memories the other students had of their dead friend and make them believe s/he had always looked like that, if the showrunners couldn't (or didn't care to) find a lookalike.
• Why are the graphics in the Neo World Program so much less-detailed than in Danganronpa 2? Because the virtual reality technology seen in Danganronpa 2 doesn't exist in the real world.
• On a glance, the Gofer Project does not make a whole lot of sense. Tenko Does Not Like Men and she is heavily implied to be a lesbian. Korekiyo and Angie could have been dangerous people to be put in the Gofer Project as Kiyo kills girls who are worthy of being friends for his sister, and Angie could do anything without any guilt because she has Atua on her side. Ryoma is a Death Row inmate. Finally, Keebo isn't even human and can't reproduce. All these inconsistencies could be foreshadowing for the Gofer Project all being fictional and not real.
  • Not to mention the entire scenario itself is suspect. Asteroids start raining down on Earth, so their solution to preserve humanity is to send just sixteen ultimate students into space, many of whom have talents and personality traits that make them completely unsuited for the task. A cult that sees this as the End of Days tries to hunt all of them down, but the organization spreads misinformation that they've all died and secretly launches them all into space. Except that the cult's leader had somehow infiltrated the project and sabotaged the whole thing, leading their ship back to the ruined Earth and having the last survivors kill each other off. Not to mention the other reveal that ties everything back to Hope's Peak and introduces an alien virus that evidently has No Biochemical Barriers and which the students were all immune to. Again, all of these inconsistencies could be ascribed to it all being fictional.
  • That being said, some aspects of it do make perfect sense. If you can only choose sixteen people on Earth to survive, it makes sense that you'd want the Ultimate Anthropologist there to remember what human culture was like. The Ultimate Robot being there means that if anything goes awry with food or water, at least someone can still survive. The Ultimate Assassin would be able to deal with any hostile life-forms encountered, and so on. The in-universe audience presumably know that the backstory is fake, but would still want a compelling story alongside the killings, so the mastermind does need to make some aspects of it work so that people will buy into it more.
• It's theorized that Kodaka and his supporting staff are literally tired of the series, enough to feel that this is like the 53rd game.
• 53 can be read as "gomi" in Japanese, which means "trash" — a hint that the franchise has basically become little more than a cash cow and a prediction that fans would hate the ending of the game.
• After learning about the truth of the killing game, you can look back at everyone's talents and see that all of the talents cannot be demonstrated or otherwise proven to exist. Every talent, asides from the Ultimate Robot, either refers to someone's focus of study (Entomologist, Anthropologist, Aikido Master, etc.), the character's past accomplishments (Magician, Detective, Inventor, Pianist, Supreme Leader, Maid, Astronaut, etc.), or both. Nobody has a talent that can be shown off to its full extent, like Nagito Komaeda's Ultimate Luck, Sakura Ogami's Ultimate Martial Arts, Teruteru Hanamura's Ultimate Cooking, Kazuichi Soda's Ultimate Mechanic ability, etc. The characters that do have talents that can be used in the killing game can be excused as being part of the character's skillset prior to being brainwashed. Himiko may actually know magic tricks and Angie is actually an artist, but neither can truly be called Ultimates in their ability. It must make brainwashing every character into thinking that they have such talents that much easier since if they tried to actually use their talents to the fullest, they would probably notice that they didn't have such talents at all.
  • However, many students ended up displaying their talents to extreme lengths where they could be actually Ultimates. Miu (whose talent is very similar to Kazuichi's, by the way) was able to regularly add features to Keebo, alter features of the Neo World Program, create machine-disabling hammers, and a hijacking device all by herself. Angie made realistic life-size statues of Rantaro, Kaede, Ryoma, and Kirumi in a remarkably short window of time. Tsumugi managed to perfectly cosplay the past Danganronpa characters, changing in and out of costumes in a blink of an eye. Shuichi did some insane logic deducing in the class trials, and Maki has the strength and reflexes of someone who has gone through rigorous training.
  • Alternatively, when everyone became part of the killing game, the brainwashing actually did give each character the talent worthy of their title. The knowledge and experience required of each talent were included among everything else forced into the cast's heads. Not sure how this would work for talents that involve building muscles, but Gonta was obviously already jacked from the start. Maki and Tenko could possibly have been relatively strong and athletic before then, too.
  • V3 was the very first time in the series there was no character with the Ultimate Lucky Student talent. With the true nature of the killing game, it makes sense why that talent was abandoned. The flashback lights might be able to implant knowledge or skills to a certain extent, but luck itself is not really a talent; rather, it's an abstract concept that even the flashback lights couldn't possibly replicate. It's very likely that the talent was abandoned around the time the in-game series transitioned from fully fictional games to "Ultimate Real Fiction."
• Keebo destroying the school grounds to end the killing game makes sense. "Kibou" means "hope" in Japanese, and so it would take hope to end all of the killing games full of despair. Although somewhat subverted: Keebo's (and the audience's) "hope" ends up being rejected by the remaining students in order to prevent Danganronpa from repeating again, thus ending with the survivors truly choosing neither hope nor despair. In a sense for the theme of "Truth and Lies" instead of "Hope and Despair" just like from the previous Danganronpa games, Keebo would be possibly the last titleholder of Ultimate Hope. And what a good way to finally start the new theme of Danganronpa than to get rid of the former theme itself.
• While this was very likely unintentional, the fake spoilers that went out could fit the theme of the game being truths and lies. The fake spoilers were all lies and the real truths were revealed in the game proper.
• Some of the story's elements do seem a little fitting if you think about it. A tennis player that took down the mafia? Spinoff children of the main mascot that were never-before-seen? Being a Robot is considered as a talent? Sounds just like a show in its death-throes that's just throwing out ideas until they stick. (Though even in the second game, there was an "Ultimate Princess"...)
  • However, Ryoma's backstory isn't too far-out by Danganronpa standards if you consider that previous games have had: a romance author who has a serial killer split personality; a runaway child who joined a top-class elite mercenary group; a gyaru who ended the world just because she was so smart that she got bored of everything except the emotion of despair; an orphan who was turned into a Yakuza heir's assassin; etc. The other two show-in-its-death throes explanations, however, get a pass.
  • Aside from the talents and in-universe plot, several of the elements in place turn out to be exactly the type of things that a Reality Show will pull in an effort to drum up interest. Like, say, bringing back a winning contestant from a previous season, pulling a Meta Twist by starting the game off with a new rule, or using audience polls to determine some of the events of the show. It's also worth noting that if these are desperation attempts to keep the show going, they all fail or backfire: Rantaro, the returning champion, gets killed before he can really do anything interesting, the new rule goes unused when Kaede elects to take the case to trial rather than escape, and Keebo's inclusion as an Audience Surrogate is what ultimately gets the franchise killed at the end of the game.
• As the above entries say, Shuichi denied his audiences a proper Killing Game. He also denied them one of the rules with the True Ending; the game would only continue until either everyone was killed except the blackened, or if there were only two players left. The game ends with three.
• Tsumugi revealed as the mastermind now makes a whole lot of sense, in spite of the backlash the twist has received. We have an Otaku who flawlessly cosplays as almost all of DR1 and DR2 characters at the final trial. The last PTA involves debating Keebo (the camera), hacked by a distraught audience not willing to end the franchise. Even at her "execution", she is last seen waving forlornly before being crushed by debris after Keebo decides to destroy the set. As her translated FTE's and her Motive Rant at Chapter 6 mostly involve the nature of fiction and how people still enjoy the Danganronpa franchise even after +50 seasons, it all comes together: Tsumugi is us, the DR fans eagerly waiting for this killing game to see who will survive or be slain, unwilling to give up on the series. Of course the DR fangirl would be the mastermind for such a deconstructive setting!
• Considering that all the student were brainwashed to act out a role, Miu's attraction to Keebo and her role as his mechanic makes a disturbing amount of sense when it is revealed that he is actually a first-person camera for the viewers of the show. Miu constant maintenance on Keebo's body would ensure that the "camera" is regularly attended to without arising suspicion. Then there is the added bonus of the audience getting a vicarious thrill of having one of the cast's most attractive girls shamelessly flirt with them as she is doing repairs. If he hadn't had his eyes closed during the entire cutscene, though.
• There are several hints in the game that the cast's talents and backstories aren't real.
  • Gonta's backstory has him being raised by wolves in the forest. Wolves haven't been native to Japan in years, and the "real" backstory this lie of his is trying to hide is even more ridiculous.
  • Kirumi's backstory involves her becoming the Prime Minister of Japan. In the game it's mentioned that the Japanese government is responsible for the creation of the Ultimate Academy - so Kirumi being a part of said government doesn't even make sense, because it's all a lie.
  • Maki's backstory is about her being raised in an orphanage. Japanese orphanages are low-funded, and a lot of the kids left at one usually don't end up going to high school in the first place since Japanese high schools aren't publicly funded. The fact that Maki even qualifies as an Ultimate should be unusual, since Hope's Peak Academy requires that students must "already be in high school" to qualify for admission, so it's a light hint about her backstory being fake.
  • Ryoma was put on death row for killing mafia members with his tennis skills. In Japan, only legal adults can be put on death row, as "minors" (people under 20) are only able to be given the sentence if they were at least 18 years old at the time their crime was committed. Being a high school student, it's unlikely Ryoma was placed on death row for as long as he's claimed, making his backstory very suspicious as a result. And, of course, it's fake - just like the rest of them.
  • Angie makes references to her island, which doesn't seem to be an island that actually exists. Once you figure out that there is no island, it all makes sense. And Angie even references Jabberwock Island from the second game when Shuichi asks her for the name of her island in her FTEs, which is another gigantic hint to the entire scenario being fictional.
  • Korekiyo indicates that part of his backstory is that he's killed nearly 100 women. Not only does this cause a lot of in-game plot holes, both in terms of the actual story and for the killing game's fake setting, he isn't ever considered an "Ultimate" in this field despite that supposed body count. While Genocide Jack's number is never spelt out there are no indications it ever got this unbelievably high (given the tally marks she has on her thigh per kill) and she was still nearly caught before HPA intervened to have Toko's two talents to study.
  • Part of Tenko's backstory is that she and her master created an entirely new form of Aikido to quell her emotional outbursts. Except not only does her Neo-Aikido break all the rules of traditional Aikido, but she's impulsive, has low pain tolerance, and disregards fair rules, none of which are very befitting of a martial artist. A clue that her skills are not real.
  • Miu claims to be a great inventor and that her inventions will change the world. Except that many of her inventions are useless or just nonsensical, like a gun that only teleports underwear or the machine that punches you for telling terrible dirty jokes. She also considered her first and very successful invention, the Eye-drop Contacts, to be a failure and sold off the patent. No matter how much of a Bunny-Ears Lawyer she might be, it's highly unlikely anyone would be willing to work with her. And despite the potential Story-Breaker Power she has at her disposal, it's only after she's dead that it's revealed she made devices that can help everyone escape. All clues that her talent was a fabrication and merely a method of driving the plot forward.
• Keebo is the one least affected by the revelation at the end that everyone is fictional. Of course it wouldn't have much impact on him - he's already an Artificial Human and has grappled with this constantly, and even in his (fictional) backstory, his memory was wiped once already. From his perspective, the questions of identity and "real"-ness that crush everyone else are things he's been dealing with all along. He's also the only participant who doesn't have a falsified talent, as he's advanced enough to actually be the Ultimate Robot.
• How each Monokuma Cub died could directly parallel the situation of the students:
  • Monokid and Monosuke being killed by Monodam represents whether they are sibling, friend, lover or not, they have grudges against each other. One of them has to kill a victim because of a motive, revenge or to save their life.
  • Monodam killing himself foreshadows the final chapter, in which audition videos showing a few students who sign up for the killing game for the sake of money, popularity, etc. are played. It doesn't help that they don't care about their own life and lack empathy, similar to how Monodam realized nobody treats him as a friend or family member and considered his action was unforgivable in two previous chapters.
  • Monotaro and Monophanie having amnesia represent foreshadowing of why students cannot remember their past, altering their personality and Love Hurts trope. Tsumugi confirms that romance stories help boost the TV ratings, and Shuichi gets heartbroken after having watched his and Kaede's audition videos. Monotaro and Monofunny have an incest moment there and their personalities had been altered, more or less. This also explains why Monofunny got pregnant.
• The demo version makes a good deal of sense with the reveal that the whole thing was just a television show. Makoto and Hajime break the fourth wall and referencing their killing games, even down to their catchphrases? Just giving out a Shout Out for the audiences. Hagakure's knife having a different handle on it? It most likely just re-using the prop from the previous demo. The scream that plays for body discoveries being missing? He's not dead, of course. The class trial and why it excluded Rantaro and Keebo? The demo was the equivalent of a 'sneak peek' of things to come and so that the audience can get to know the cast for the game. Rantaro doesn't participate because he was a survivor of a previous game and the audience already knows how he would act, and Keebo is the cameraman to make sure the audience gets a full view of events.
• Seeing the facilities within the academy, it's clear that the students aren't supposed to live long inside of it despite the claim that it's like Noah's Ark. Not only many places are not constructed yet, the academy has no medical bay. Both Hope's Peak and Jabberwock Island are shown self-sufficient for a long period of time; the students won't go starved because there's a farm and when they're sick there's an infirmary/hospital/drugstore. Not in Ultimate Academy.
• In Shuichi's lab, all he says is there are about 50 crime files, and the earliest among them have the crimes shown as drawings rather than photos. However, if you actually look at it, it's a case of five rows of ten files, with two extra on the sixth mostly empty bookshelf, so by "about 50" it means "52, rounded down". With the reveal that Danganronpa is a fictional franchise in-universe and this is the 53rd season, with assumedly the first few installments of this long-runner series being the same ones we have in real life, it seems possible that the change from drawings to photos reflects when the series got into being "real fiction" rather than being games and anime. He doesn't go into what the files contain, so each one could contain all of the murders that were solved in their respective seasons as a massive stealth Mythology Gag.
• In the pool room, there's a rule sheet displaying some silly rules, such as "Do not die from slipping" and things like that. They make more sense within the context of the killing game; after all, an accidental death wouldn't require a class trial and would be quite boring.
• For Ryoma's motive video, Monokuma is seen in a hard hat with the words "Under Construction" above him, claiming that he couldn't find anything for Ryoma to care about. This hints at the fact that the memories in the motive videos are fabricated, and one for Ryoma was something that Team Danganronpa couldn't think of in time for the motive's reveal.
  • More on motive videos: at the start of each of them, Monokuma claims they are "back by popular demand". While this can be initially read as a fourth-wall break, referencing the fact that, while the first game had motive videos, the second game did not, the final reveal adds more nuance to that sentence: it implies the audience both In-Universe and in real life wanted to see the comeback of the motive videos.

• The ontological mystery of the series is nearly exactly the same as the first game's, where the victims were selected by the mastermind to be a part of a reality show in order to heap despair on the intended audience. There are explicit opposites to both cases, however.
  • Junko broadcast the killing game by hijacking the airwaves in order to pursue the final step of her plan to spread despair internationally purely out of her own boredom, while Team Danganronpa broadcast the killing games with the legal consent of the idea to entertain a peaceful audience bored of the world around.
  • The battle to vote between hope or despair is different in the sense that Junko's choices had hope obligate everyone believing in their own identity to leave the academy into a tragic, defunct world, and despair has everyone hopelessly live in the academy after Makoto's presumably violent execution, neither of these choices involving the game's murders continuing. This one features fictional characters fighting for a disappointing ending due to both choices causing the killing game to continue, everyone battling against the entire world they're living in to ensure that end.

'* Pre-game Shuichi wanted to be the detective who committed the greatest murder of all. Well, he did; he murdered 'Danganronpa''.

• Kokichi gave Kaito a script for the 5th trial. Though he never figured out they were all in a TV show, the fact that he literally gave one of the actors a new script is symbolic of how much he managed to derail it.
• In a way, the finale of the game is an excellent Book Ends for the Danganronpa franchise in-universe. The execution of Junko Enoshima ends when she's crushed in a moment of confusion—leaving her in a state of neither despair or hope, denying her what she wanted. Trashing the Set and making the audience hate this season of Danganronpa to the point where they don't want to watch it anymore does the same thing; they're denied the catharsis of the hope vs. despair battle and exit the narrative in a state of neutrality.
• Once you know the alleged backstory of the Gofer Project, Monokid’s garbled speech in the last morning announcement of Chapter 1 sounds a lot like him accidentally giving away the plot: “This (square) is in (square) and you 16 are the (triangle) who (triangle) (circle) to leave (square) and come (circle) as the (triangle) (square) humans!” most likely translates as something like “This school is in space and you 16 are the ones who were chosen to leave Earth and come live as the last surviving humans!” Which makes Monotaro’s subsequent suggestion that he drink some more honey look less like concern(?) and more like shutting him up before he says anything else.
• The franchise's Chapter 1 tradition of killing off a heavily advertised character is twofold; Kaede of course dies after being marketed as the protagonist of the demo and the real game from our perspective (and likely the in-universe Danganronpa fanbase's as well)...but Rantaro serves the same purpose, as his former champion status would make him one of the selling points of the in-universe Season 53. The heavily advertised character is usually a victim too, rather than a culprit...which ultimately Kaede and Rantaro were.
• During the retrial for Rantaro’s death, Monokuma comments on how “the first case has become the focal point yet again”. At first, this sounds like a reference to Mukuro’s death in Trigger Happy Havoc’s first case becoming relevant in that game’s finale, but that doesn’t really fit the statement, as that finale had little to no focus on the actual case itself. Instead, it’s likely that Monokuma was referring to one of the unseen Danganronpa seasons, with the comment being a bit of foreshadowing that there have been killing games that the out-of-universe audience hasn’t seen.
• Monokubs, who just suddenly get introduced as the new mascot characters and also "children" of the original mascot Monokuma almost feel like Cousin Oliver characters... which they very much may be in-universe. If the in-universe show of Danganronpa went on for 53 seasons, it's not out of the question that at one point, Executive Meddling caused the show to add more cute animal mascots, regardless of how much sense it makes.
  • This is true out-of-universe too, as Kodaka has stated that the Kubs were added just to fill space and were deliberately made to have no real plot relevance.
• Many people were confused when the English dub reused VAs from the previous games, but it actually makes sense from a story standpoint: It's part of Tsumugi's plan to "copy" Junko's killing games. This also explains why they come back for when Tsumugi cosplays as them in the 6th trial.
  • Plus, after 52 other seasons, no doubt succumbing to Seasonal Rot along the way, would Team DanganRonpa really go through the effort of finding new voices/volunteers, especially for a show that has so many characters and many of them not even living all the way?
• The number of playable characters in Talent Development Plan? 53.
• Come to think of it, intentionally or not, the twist of this game has been foreshadowed a lot in the past entries, with so many references to fiction and media:
  • Danganronpa: The Animation's opening song contained the line "fiction comes alive, we start to play".
  • What drove the entire world to despair (and would've brainwashed survivors with hope), as shown in Danganronpa 3? Fiction.
• The fact that so many of the characters and stories have shout-outs to other games, shows, and stories- even more than previous games- might just seem part of Danganronpa's general quirkiness or because Tsumugi is both injecting things she likes and grasping whatever she can for inspiration.
• Why are the Monokuma Theater segments movie references this time around? It makes sense given who the mastermind is. Like Tsumugi, Monokuma is cosplaying. It's a reflection of the fiction of Danganronpa itself.

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