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Mythology Gag / Persona

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As a Spin-Off to Shin Megami Tensei, Persona has quite some Mythology Gags to them as well as inter-related to the franchise itself.

Persona 5 has its own page.


  • The original Persona contains a mythology gag itself: at the beginning of the Snow Queen quest, it's mentioned that minor character Tamaki (a student who recently transferred to the protagonist's school from her old one) is quite knowledgable about demons; if you talk to her yourself, she'll hand you a rapier and say that she used it for some stuff at her old school. Tamaki was the female protagonist of Shin Megami Tensei if..., the game that the Persona series spun off from.
  • Persona 3
    • The North American localization contains an in-game MMORPG that's a giant mythology gag to the first two Persona games. The game is named "Innocent Sin Online", after Innocent Sin, the subtitle of the first half of Persona 2 and a game that was never released in the West until the remake for the PlayStation Portable was released in 2011. When you first log on, you get a message from Phil. — short for Philemon, a major supporting character from the original Persona series. You start off in Lunarvale Hospital — Lunarvale is what the city in the original Persona was named for the US release, and its hospital was the first dungeon. A girl you meet in the game suggests you name your character "Tatsuya", and renames herself "Maya", the protagonists of Persona 2: Innocent Sin and Eternal Punishment respectively, and major party members in each other's game.
    • In the original Japanese version, the game was called "Devil Busters Online" and the MMO characters were named "N-jima" and "Y-riko", which were references to Digital Devil Story (the books that started the whole MegaTen franchise), the original Megami Tensei game (which was a direct video-game adaptation of the first of the novels), and Megami Tensei II (the first MegaTen game to draw themes from the novels without being directly based on them). Understandably, the references were changed for the English release due to the fact that even most Western MegaTen fans wouldn't have gotten the joke back in 2007.
    • The T.V. at the dorm sometimes shows a program called Who's Who. Some of the descriptions include a Chinese man with long hair and sunglasses, someone who wants to be a cop like his older brother, and an artist with a yellow cap who is studying art overseas.
    • At one point you hear rumours of a ghost haunting the local shrine. The same rumours circulate around the shrine in Innocent Sin, and in fact they are a major plot point. And at another point, someone rubbishes the idea of rumours becoming reality, which is exactly what happens in Persona 2.
    • And at another point, there's a brief mention of the Kirijo family once belonging to the Nanjo Group. Nanjo was a character from the original Persona — Nanjo was his family name — who was roughly equivalent to Mitsuru, although his rich family was much less plot-relevant.
    • Persona 3 Portable has one to itself in the new female route: Ms. Toriumi is the one who introduces you to the new Hermit Social Link character. In the original version, the Hermit character was, in fact, Toriumi herself.
  • Persona 4
    • During the King's Game Scene (which just so happens to take place in the "Club Escapade" nightclub from Persona 3), Chie compares Naoto to a detective from a film she once saw. The detective in question? Kuzunoha, of the Devil Summoner series (not to mention Persona 2!). It just so happens that Naoto looks a lot like a certain Devil Summoner.
      • Note that this particular gag is solely a product of the North American localization; the original Japanese was a reference to the Kindaichi family, which would be equivalent in the English-speaking world to a Sherlock Holmes reference.
      • During that same scene, Rise mentions that a surprise midnight performance at the same night club was canceled due to a power outage. If you played Persona 3 you can probably guess that this happened on the night when Arcana Hermit attacked Club Escapade, which is confirmed by Shinjiro in Persona Q. The rest of the Port Island sequence is mostly filled with overt references to the previous game as well.
    • The Entire Void Quest Dungeon is full of these, particularly in the boss fight against Shadow Mitsuo, which directly lifts attack menus from the original Megami Tensei.
      • Not to mention one of the floor dialogues has Mitsuo's mother lift lines from the protagonist's mother from Shin Megami Tensei I as well, mentioning sirens keeping her awake and a request to buy coffee. Whether it really happened or if it's another twisted manifestation isn't entirely clear. It gets even creepier when the next floor twists the dialogue.
    • Persona 4 Golden essentially turns the game's plot into a big Internal Homage to Megami Tensei I and II, by way of the new character, Marie. She's an amnesiac girl trying to discover who she was. As it turns out, she's a part of Izanami, and when you beat her in the Final Battle, Marie is restored to her true self of Izanami-no-Mikoto.note  Why is this significant? Well, the main characters of Megami Tensei were unknowingly the reincarnations of Izanagi and Izanami. Your persona is Izanagi. Marie is Izanami. You have more Ship Tease with Marie than any other girl, and the game allows you to romance her alongside another girl without being punished for it. It's hard to believe this is for any other purpose than to further the Mythology Gag given the aforementioned characters were the Official Couple of their game.

Alternative Title(s): Shin Megami Tensei Persona

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