Video Game / Corpse Party

You will surely die here.

— English Trailer

Years ago, a series of terrible incidents occurred at Heavenly Host Elementary.^note 天神小学校 – Tenjin Shōgakkō Mysterious accidents, disappearances, and murders finally resulted in the school being closed and torn down. In its place, the high school Kisaragi Academy was eventually erected, and Heavenly Host became the stuff of bad memories and ghost stories…

Like the ones Ayumi loves to tell her classmates, much to Satoshi's dismay. No matter how much he tries to be brave, he still spooks easily… and his childhood friend Naomi's not much help either, giving him even greater grief whenever he gets frightened. Thanks to their teasing, Class 2-9's cleanup after their culture festival takes much longer than anyone else's, and they're all caught in their classroom when a strange earthquake hits, splitting the floor and separating everyone. The Corpse Party series follows Satoshi, Naomi, Ayumi, and the other students who find themselves impossibly trapped in the long-destroyed Heavenly Host Elementary and seeking to escape from the master of the school, Yoshikazu Yanagihori, and his army of malevolent spirits.

Installments

• The original Corpse Party was a PC-98 game made with RPG Tsukuru Dante98. It was later adapted into a PC game released in chapters (after an unfinished mobile phone remake), titled Corpse Party: Blood Covered, with a reworked plot and new characters. Blood Covered was later released on the PSP and 3DS as Corpse Party: Blood Covered ...Repeated Fear, with new art, event CGs, and a different voice cast. This version was localized and released on the PlayStation Network by XSEED Games on November 22, 2011.
• A PSP sequel titled Corpse Party: Book of Shadows was released on September 1st, 2011 in Japan. This one was also released overseas by XSEED.
• There is a Carnival Phantasm-esque entry into the series called Corpse Party 2U, released on August 2nd, 2012, with an international version of it officially released in 2019 under the name Corpse Party: Sweet Sachiko's Hysteric Birthday Bash.
• A manga adaptation titled Corpse Party: Blood Covered also exists, as well as a manga adaptation of the PC-98 game entitled Corpse Party: Musume, and also one of Book of Shadows.
• The next in the series is Corpse Party: Blood Drive for PS Vita that continues the story of Blood Covered and Book of Shadows and concludes the Heavenly Host trilogy. Blood Drive was released in Japan on July 24, 2014.
• The next in the series is Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient. Dead Patient is set in a hospital and features a new central cast, but there are several hints that there's some connection to the events of the previous saga. It was later regarded as non-canon when a proper sequel titled Corpse Party 2: Darkness Distortion was announced in 2023.
• The creator has also made a manga series called Dolls Fall, which is implied to take place in the same universe as Corpse Party.

Recurring CharactersThose trapped in Heavenly Host include:

• Satoshi Mochida - The protagonist, though each character has their own chapter. A tad cowardly — he really doesn't like ghost stories — but gentle and compassionate.
• Naomi Nakashima - Satoshi's Unlucky Childhood Friend, who loves giving him grief.
• Seiko Shinohara - Naomi's best friend and irrepressible Genki Girl with a perverted streak.
• Ayumi Shinozaki - The Class Rep for 2-9, she loves spooky stories and strange rituals.
• Yoshiki Kishinuma - A decent guy with the Face of a Thug.
• Mayu Suzumoto - Energetic and popular with the guys. The culture festival was going to be her last day at Kisaragi before transferring out...
• Sakutarou Morishige - A guy with glasses. He and Mayu share a Like Brother and Sister rapport.
• Yuka Mochida - A middle schooler (although she looks and acts younger), and Satoshi's adorable little sister.
• Yui Shishido - Class 2-9's Cool Teacher, beloved by all her students.
• Naho Saenoki - A bespectacled student from Paulowina Academy who doubles as a paranormal researcher, author, and Ayumi’s idol.
• Yuuya Kizami - A popular student from Byakuden Senior High School who says he’s looking for his sister. He meets Yuka and takes a liking to her.
• Sachiko Shinozaki - A mysterious girl in a red dress who was the Sole Survivor of an incident in which several Heavenly Host students were kidnapped and killed. Shows up to help the party from time to time.
• Yoshikazu Yanagihori - A once-beloved teacher who nevertheless was found to be the culprit behind the above incident, and haunts the school looking for more victims.

For two similar series, see Danganronpa and When They Cry.

Warning: Due to the nature of the plot, it might be best to experience the full series before going any further.

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This series contains examples of:

• 100% Completion: In order to unlock the final chapter of Book of Shadows, not only must you complete all the other chapters, but you have to see all of the Wrong Ends. Unless you import a savestate from the first game, in which case you only have to reach each chapter's regular ending.
• Adaptation Expansion: Corpse Party: Blood Covered significantly reworked the story from the original version, with more characters and a more complex plot.
• A Day in the Limelight:
  • Book of Shadows includes chapters from Suzumoto and Morishige's viewpoints, both of whom were Out of Focus in Blood Covered.
  • Additionally, the students from Byakudan get notably more screen time in Book of Shadows. Namely Mitsuki, who went from only briefly appearing in chapter 3 of BC to getting a decent amount of screen time in chapter 5 of BOS alongside the main protagonist, as well as appearing in chapters 5, 6, and 7.
  • Corpse Party Cemetery focuses on Naho and her paranormal investigations.
• All Just a Dream:
  • One of the Wrong Ends in Blood Covered. Though it turns out to be both a case of Or Was It a Dream? and "Groundhog Day" Loop.
  • Yui's encounter with Yoshie ends with her losing consciousness and waking up in the school infirmary with Tsukasa at her side and the nurse still there. Whether it was All Just a Dream or Yui's memories of the incident being erased is debatable, however.
• All Love Is Unrequited: Naomi covers up her crush on Satoshi by constantly teasing him, and Seiko hides her own feelings for Naomi behind a "Just Joking" Justification. And then there's Yoshiki, who has a crush on Ayumi, while Ayumi covers up her crush on Satoshi by scaring him with horror stories.
• All There in the Script: Certain chapters of the manga are followed by black pages that contain information about the corpses seen in that part, giving their names and describing how they died. In the games, the player can fill a gallery of "name tags" by examining corpses to similar effect.
• Alternate Character Reading: A very clever, stealth one: Sachiko Ever After (幸せのサチコさん Shiawase no Sachiko-san) translates literally as "Sachiko of Happiness"; Naho miswrote the name of the ritual on purpose — the original reads 死逢わせのサチコさん (Shi Awase no Sachiko-San) literally, "Meeting Death with Sachiko". No, that's not omnious or anything, it's truly a "Best Friends 4Ever" ritual!
• And I Must Scream: People who die in the school get the special privilege of experiencing the pain they felt as they died as a spirit. Forever.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: Each chapter of the game focuses on a different lead character, though Satoshi is stated to be the main protagonist.
• Another Dimension: The Tenjin Elementary they find themselves in is described as an alternate dimension created by spirits to ensnare living beings.
• Anyone Can Die: To put it bluntly, there were originally five characters in the PC-98 version. Everyone has the possibility of dying. However, anyone else added to the later adaptations that are trapped will die no matter what.
• Apocalyptic Log: The messages left behind by previous victims, especially the "Victim's Memoirs".
• Art-Style Dissonance: Blood Covered depicts the characters in-game as cutesy chibi-fied sprites (not unlike other RPG-Maker programs). This does not exempt them from grisly bloody deaths.
• Asshole Victim: Among others, Principal Takamine in both versions as one of the major reasons behind Sachiko’s misery is forced into eternal torment, Kizami is turned into an anatomical model, and Misuto is beheaded by Magari. In Another Child, the Big Bad Saki ends up being more sympathetic than the people she kills, to the point where it’s hard not to root for her.
• Big Bad:
  • In Blood Covered and Book Of Shadows, Yoshikazu Yanagihori, once an elementary school teacher, is the master of Another Dimension, Heavenly Host Elementary School, keeping everyone trapped inside, and is also the killer of three of his students in an incident from Heavenly Host's past. Except Yoshikazu was framed for the crime by Sachiko the Girl in Red, who is the incarnation of Sachiko Shinozaki’s hatred after being killed horribly.
  • In 2U, Yuuya Kizami takes the position, as he antagonizes the other students throughout in many ways, including attempting to sabotage the cooking competition and stealing the Book of Eibon to hijack Heavenly Host.
  • The spin-off manga Another Child has Saki Akagiri, the ghost girl messing with Heavenly Host and murdering Tamaki’s friends (who are mean bullies) as part of her supernatural crusade against bullies.
  • Blood Drive introduces Misuto Kiriya and Sachi as the antagonists. Misuto aims to control Heavenly Host for himself and take revenge on humanity, while Sachi, Sachiko's unborn and jealous sister, is the new master of Heavenly Host. However, Misuto is killed, and Sachi revealed to be a mostly-mindless puppet; the real threat is, once again, the Heavely Host/Nirvana/Witch Queen, revealed to be the amalgamation of the witches executed in the European witch hunts.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Misuto, Magari, and to a lesser extent Aiko in Blood Drive, who all want the Book of Shadows for their own purposes but end up being a secondary threat. Ultimately, Magari and Aiko make a Heel–Face Turn while Misuto gets his head cut off.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • In the manga, Satoshi, Yoshiki, Naomi, and Ayumi show up just in time to save Yuka from Kizami. Especially impressive in that we're initially led to think they'd walked by the Science Room without realizing Yuka was in there. Earlier, Kurosaki (who we initially think is dead when Yuka finds him) prevents Kizami from killing Yuka by revealing himself to be alive and punching him. Unfortunately, this leads to Kurosaki's real death.
  • In the third chapter of Book of Shadows, the elderly woman who passed away while giving warnings to Yui eventually became a ghost (who manifested via a blinding light and a voice only heard by the latter), and arrives just in time to save Yui and Tsukasa from being killed by Yoshie, while also exorcising the malevolent spirit in the process.
• Bittersweet Ending: The ending of Blood Drive, as well as the Heavenly Host trilogy as a whole. Ultimately, it proves impossible to save Seiko and the others from their fate. However, Ayumi eventually succeeds in destroying the school itself, once and for all. Not only does this allow them (and the countless other students who died in the school) to finally rest in peace, but it also restores everyone in the outside world's memories of them, allowing the survivors (especially Naomi) to finally get some closure. However, the process nearly destroys Ayumi's body, leaving her bound to a wheelchair, and everyone except Yoshiki loses their memory of her.
• Bloodier and Gorier:
  • The Tortured Souls OVA manages to be this in a series that was already incredibly bloody and gory to begin with.
  • Blood Covered is this to the PC-98 version, containing a dramatic increase in the amount of gory scenes and scary moments where the original game was easier on the characters and the scares.
• Bloody Horror:
  • It's shown that the ghosts you encounter in the game all died extremely bloody and gory deaths as children. For example, all of them had their tongues cut out, one of them was decapitated, and one of their deaths was so morbid and graphic that the news article you originally read about the murders in omits it from the article.
  • In the first chapter you encounter blood and guts decorating a wall and the floor in the hallway. You find out in the next chapter that Mayu was killed there when she was thrown into the wall by ghosts so fast that she exploded.
  • After Kizami pushes his friend Kensuke Kurosaki down a pit where he falls down a floor and breaks his ribs. Yuka finds his friend and witnesses Kizami stab him several times and leave him to die in a pool of blood. Yuka eventually runs away terrified with her clothes and shoes now stained with blood from the murder
  • It's revealed in a flashback that Sachiko was the real murderer of the children, and she is covered in blood from killing them.
• Bound and Gagged:
  • A flashback in Chapter 4 of the first game shows the original kidnap and murder case, with several girls tied up.
  • In Chapter 2 of Book of Shadows, Nana is thoroughly tied up and gagged in a booby trap. If you screw up saving her, she gets a face full of sharp objects.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: The Darkening causes this in whomever it possesses, either driving the host completely insane, augmenting the darker emotions they keep inside, or controlling their actions to some degree without actually taking their sanity. This is evidenced by Naomi in a Wrong End and when she kills Seiko; by Ayumi in a Wrong End where she goes full-on Yandere in the classroom in which Yui finds Ayumi, where she tells Yoshiki to go ahead of her when she didn't mean to say that; and by Naho, who was so corrupted by The Darkening that she unknowingly killed Kibiki and when The Reveal causes her to Freak Out, she releases the Darkening within her in the form of a black ooze. Also, as shown in Book Of Shadows, Naho posted the wrong info on her blog about the charm under the influence of Sachiko's curse.
• Broken Pedestal: In Blood Covered, when Ayumi meets Naho again in the reference room, she confronts her about the fact that she purposefully posted the Sachiko Ever After charm incorrectly on her blog, leading to the deaths of dozens, including some of her friends and classmates, all for Kibiki's sake. When Naho seems to have no remorse for this, Ayumi tells her that she is a horrible person. Instance of the trope in that Ayumi has been idolizing Naho for the entire game up to this point.
• Bury Your Gays:
  • Poor Seiko, who confesses her love to Naomi shortly before being hanged by her (in a possessed state).
• But Thou Must!:
  • In Blood Covered, seemingly averted when you're prompted to either continue moving forward or go back at the warning of Sachiko. Played straight by the fact that even if you choose to turn back, Yoshiki will decide to continue onward. (Also, choosing to turn back leads to a Wrong End.)
  • Right after Seiko and Naomi split up in chapter 1, Seiko has the option to follow the voice or not. If you choose "no", it gives you more time to explore the area, but the only way to actually continue the game is to hit "yes". This action leads to Seiko's death.
• Call-Back: Yui-sensei mentions being well-versed in the ghost stories concerning the school in the intro scene. Then Book Of Shadows reveals the reason why. She lived through a ghost encounter in the school.
• Came Back Wrong: In Book of Shadows, this is the result of Ayumi and Naomi attempting to bring back Mayu with a ritual.
• The Can Kicked Him: Bathrooms are dangerous in these games. Further reinforced by Ayumi in Book Of Shadows where she explains that rooms that have any source of reflection tend to be bad news as they can be mediums for spirits to manifest.
• Cassandra Truth: In one of Blood Covered's Bad Endings, Satoshi can't convince Ayumi or anyone else not to attempt the ritual. Though he admittedly doesn't try very hard, either.
• Cheeky Mouth
• Class Representative: Ayumi has the position, but not so much the stereotypical personality type.
• Clawing at Own Throat: Ayumi dies from this if Yoshiki saves her from the anatomical model in the Science Lab.
• Colon Cancer: First there was Corpse Party: Blood Covered, and then Corpse Party: Blood Covered... Repeated Fear.
• Compressed Adaptation: The Tortured Souls OVA compresses a 10-hour (give or take) game into just under 2 hours.
• Continuity Nod / Canon Welding: Starting with Book of Shadows, it became suggested that all endings, true and wrong, of it and its predecessor are canon and represent different timelines and/or timeloops. 2U cemented this, for instance by explicitly stating that Kishinuma, one of the five survivors, has already died a couple of times. Because this game was not localized outside of Japan, it was Blood Drive that to most people established the multichronical nature of Heavenly Host. Blood Drive actually went further by incorporating elements from the Tortured Souls OVA and the Naho-centric supplementary manga, drama cds, and light novel. There's even reason to suspect Blood Drive is a different timeline than Blood Covered, for instance because the latter had Matsudo as Yui Shishido's replacement and the former Kuon Niwa. At the end of Blood Drive, all timelines are reunited into one.
• Cool Teacher: Yui Shishido and Kuon Niwa.
• The Corruption: The 'darkening' which corrupts the souls of those who lose hope in Tenjin. It is capable of passively killing the affected, but usually manipulates them into actively killing others or themselves. Some victims are surrounded by black matter, others look just the same as they always do, and spiritual goldmines can look whichever way. Known victims in various timelines, not counting narrative-less game overs, are the ghost children (murderers), Naho (murderer + passive victim), Sayaka (passive victim), Naomi (active murderer + active victim), Kokuhaku (passive victim), Satoshi (passive victim), Azusa (murderer), Yoshiki (murderer + passive victim), Ayumi (murderer), Sakutaro (active victim), Haruyuki (murderer), Erina (murderer + active victim), Mitsuki (active victim), and there's some implications for Shiho (murderer), Yuuya (murderer), Emi (murderer), and Tohko (active victim).
• Creepy Child: The giggling ghosts.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: The series' trademark. Such deaths include:
  • Getting your eyeballs ripped out.
  • Having your tongue cut out.
  • Being vivisected.
  • Being thrown at a wall so fast that you explode.
  • Cannibalism.
• Death of a Child: Considering that antagonists are ghosts of children and the brutal manner in which they were all murdered, it's definitely safe to say that this definitely happened.
• Dead Guy Puppet: One Wrong End in Book of Shadows has Sachiko taunting Nana by treating Chihaya's severed head this way.
• Death by Adaptation: Although Yoshiki, Yuka, and Satoshi all make it out alive in the "True End" of the game, they don't make it out in the Tortured Souls OVA or in Corpse Party: Musume.
• Despair Event Horizon: In a very literal sense, the entire haunted school is one giant black hole made of despair, sucking in people who, when they die, become a part of the problem (usually by becoming a vengeful and/or pain-filled ghost). Most people caught in the school crack and go completely nuts if they aren't killed either by the ghosts or one another.
• "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: The openings and endings of Blood Covered and Book of Shadows are sung by Asami Imai, who voices Ayumi Shinozaki. On a particular note, she made a duet with Eri Kitamura (who voiced Yuka Mochida) under the name Artery Vein for "Pandora Night".
• Disc-One Final Boss: In Blood Covered Yoshikazu turns out to be an unwilling accomplice to Sachiko, the supposed survivor. And in Blood Drive Misuto is killed off long before the finale, and Sachi follows suit.
• Doomed by Canon:
  • Anyone who dies in Tenjin is dead, period. Even if another timeline takes place, like in Book of Shadows, they will simply end up dying in a worse way than they did previously.
  • In Blood Drive, not even Ayumi sacrificing herself to the Book of Shadows can reverse the previous deaths. It does reverse the Ret-Gone of her friends, restoring memories of them to the world in exchange for Ayumi (and Yoshiki, who stayed with her) being erased from her friends' lives.
• Doomed Protagonist: This game is basically what would happen if you took a whole bunch of doomed protagonists, put them in a building together, and let nature run its course. The only characters that have a possibility of living are the original five from the PC game: Satoshi, Naomi, Ayumi, Yoshiki, and Yuka, and that's only in the True Ending.
• Downer Ending:
  • Even in the True Ending only Satoshi, Naomi, Ayumi, Yoshiki, and Yuka survive. Yep, about half of the main cast consists of Doomed Protagonists and can't be saved by any means whatsoever. And don't get started with all the secondary characters that die or have died. Oh, and it's still possible for others to fuck up the ritual and get thrown into the Nightmare School Dimension even if Sachiko passes on, since the actual source of evil remains unharmed. Not to mention that the friends they lost will not only relive their deaths in eternal suffering, but they also are completely forgotten by the world at large except their friends who survived. Quite possibly one of the harshest, most horrifying afterlives anyone could exist in, to be sure. And in the sequel… well, the protagonists only manage to mess things even more.
  • Tortured Souls is even worse. Only Naomi and Ayumi survive. The final scene shows that the horrors of her ordeal has turned Naomi into a broken, catatonic Empty Shell who spends the rest of her life just staring into nothing.
  • EVERYONE dies in the end of Musume. Most of them are based on the bad endings to the game, except Naomi – hers is far worse.
• The Dragon: Yoshikazu serves as an unwilling version. Kizami and Naho also serve as more willing Co-Dragons.
• Dub Name Change: Not for any of the characters, but in the English release, the dreaded school is called "Heavenly Host Elementary". This is a legitimate, though very poetic, rendering of the kanji in "Tenjin".^note  (天神 literally translates to "sky deity") Anyone who's read the New Testament will never take the name so peacefully ever again.
  • Note that those same characters also can refer to Tenjin, a Shinto spirit who serves as the patron of scholars.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: While the basic plot of the original PC-98 game was the same, there were originally only five students: Satoshi, Yuka, Naomi, Yoshiki, and Ayumi. The whole cast had black hair and eyes, although each had certain traits already in place (like Yoshiki's face and Ayumi's hairstyle). Instead of being separated during the transfer, they ended up all in the same place, and only wound up dividing into two groups accidentally. Satoshi's status as the Main Character made more sense, as he was leader of the main party. There were plenty of spirits, but only one major threat, a single Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl.
• Eerie Anatomy Model: Aside from Sachiko, the most iconic villain of the franchise, having been part of the series since the original game. Starting the reboot, it even has a backstory!
• Eldritch Location: Tenjin/Heavenly Host Elementary School is the base form for a sentient multi-layered murder-dimension, powered by suffering and constantly changing its layout to confuse, terrify, and slaughter its victims.
• Electromagnetic Ghosts: Sachiko. During the "radio recording" scene in Book of Shadows, the producers and directors of the studio heard a "third voice" in a room where only Naho and Sayaka are speaking (though Naho can see her in the corner, but still acts normally). The recording is replayed several times by the staff until one of them immediately notices that it's an EVP while another suffered a cardiac arrest from hearing it.
• 11th-Hour Superpower: Ayumi gets one in the form of energy balls she can shoot at the Nirvana's core. This is coupled by eleventh hour macguffins you find in one last area, all next to each other, which are needed in order to combat the core and avoid wrong ends.
• Everything Trying to Kill You: One of the reasons the horror and setting in the game are especially effective. There are ghosts everywhere, both core vengeful spirits and hundreds of hapless victims out to get you in hideous ways. The school itself is a Genius Loci re-arranging itself or creating traps to both directly and/or indirectly get you murdered. The Curse is always working on you and can and WILL kill you just for giving in to the despairing nature of the place and situation, or worse, causing darkening. Or making you kill yourself. The other living people there often snap and try to kill you, even before falling to the curse. And even your basic Human nature will kill you terribly without food, water, or any other amenities. And all that's if you don't kill yourself.
• Evil All Along: The true antagonists in Blood Covered are introduced in this way: the violent, murderous sociopath Yuuya Kizami doesn’t actually have a sister but plans to forcibly make Yuka one, Naho Saenoki was intentionally getting people trapped inside the school in a misguided attempt to please her mentor Kibiki, and Sachiko Shinozaki is the true murderer and the Man Behind the Man to Yoshikazu, who is just a mindless slave. In addition Principal Takamine was a corrupt official who used his status to get away with Attempted Rape and murder in addition to being an Unwitting Instigator of Doom. Technically there’s also Aiko, Magari, and Misuto, but they really don’t do a good job of hiding the fact that they’re up to no good.
• Exact Words: Little did Ayumi realize the true implications of the "Sachiko Ever After" ritual means: She and her friends would indeed be together forever, with their souls eternally trapped inside of a cursed school where death is not a reprieve.
• Eye Scream:
  • Accidentally run into the ghost who lacks one of her eyes? Have fun watching your characters getting paralyzed and stabbed into their eye sockets with a scissor while listening to their screams. Okay, you don't actually see what is going on, but you HEAR it, which makes the whole incident even worse. The text describing the event doesn't help, either.
  • Also happens in the Tortured Souls OVA when you see how the ghost girl missing the eye was murdered, as well as to Yuka and somewhat to Yoshiki.
• Fatal Flaw: Poor Naomi. Not only is she unable to confess her feelings, she tends to take out her frustration verbally on everyone around her. Even when she knows it won't help anything, she can't stop herself…
• Foreshadowing:
  • Before being torn apart, the students perform a ritual ripping a tiny paper doll into pieces; holding onto their pieces of the paper is supposed to bind them together forever. However, Ayumi teases Satoshi by claiming that bad things will happen if the ritual is performed incorrectly…
  • A note you find fairly early in the game establishes that good spirits glow blue, while evil spirits glow red; however, the dangerous child ghosts are blue. You find out in Chapter 2 that they're Not Evil Just Brainwashed and Crazy – the note never claimed that good spirits couldn't still be dangerous. This case of Exact Words works both ways. There's a red spirit in Chapter 4 (in fact, the spirit of the person who wrote the note regarding spirits) that won't harm you. She's only red because she now holds a grudge against her sister.
    • This also foreshadows one of the major reveals. Sachiko, the girl in red, turns out to be the Big Bad. Her sister Sachi, who wears blue, seems malevolent but is merely another mindless puppet.
  • A few dead bodies you find in Chapter 2 mutter "Ki…za…mi…" after you take their name tags. You then meet the Kizami they were talking about in Chapter 3. And then you find out why they were muttering Kizami's name.
  • During Chapter 2, Yoshiki and Ayumi attempt to appease Yuki Kanno and Tokiko Tsuji in order to put their spirits to rest and free Mayu from their clutches. However, when they offer the Penitent Spirit, in the form of Yoshikazu's antique doll that bears his guilt and regret, they fly into a berserk frenzy and kill Mayu anyway. While it comes off as a failure to the pair, it actually is a very subtle hint that despite reports, Yoshikazu was not the true murderer and thus his regret, though true, wouldn't appease the ghost children.
  • When the first dialog choice in Book of Shadows appears (the scene where you choose whether or not Naomi should apologize to Seiko), there is a slightly noticeable detail in the background CG being displayed. Seiko already had a reddish "scar" around her neck even before her supposed hanging scene, foreshadowing Sachiko's statement in the chapter's ending that those who have died in Tenjin before are "bound" to repeat their deaths over and over.
• Faux Shadowing: For a great part of the game Yuka has to pee, and the first level while playing as Naomi, you find a bucket with a stinky yellow liquid, but when you get to play as Satoshi and Yuka the same bucket is empty. It has been explained that all of you are scattered in difference "layers" of the school with its own time and space, meaning that their past could be your future. In Naomi's layer someone has peed in the bucket, while in Satoshi's layer, no one has, and Yuka still has to pee; puting two and two together, you realize that the solution for "Yuka's Quest" is the bucket. It's not. The only bathroom that is used for its purpose is just before the climax, and if you used it you get a bad ending.
  • More obvious if you came from the PC-98 version which had the yellow liquid bucket, but just had a single moment where Yuka had to go to the bathroom when they already know where one is, rather than the game-spanning issue in Blood Covered.
• Fan Game: Several fangames have been made over the years:
  • Corpse Party Zero
  • Corpse Party: Cross Fear
  • Corpse Party if...
  • Corpse Party D2: Depths of Despair
  • Corpse Party D2: Fatal Operation
• Genius Loci: The Big Bad, Heavenly Host Elementary. While it started as a "mere" haunted school with Principal Takamine Yanagihori's murder of Yoshie and Sachiko, the decades of slaughter and suffering, beginning from the medieval witch hunts, have given the school a malicious consciousness in the form of the Witch Queen. She’s implied to have split Sachiko in half to use the evil self as an avatar. This is further confirmed by Yuki, who mentions to the heroes that even if they managed to appease Sachiko, the school would produce another Sachiko to replace the original one so that it may continue its evil, and that all those who already died there STAY there.
• Genki Girl: Seiko Shinohara. Naho's friend Sayaka as well.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: Mayu, of all people, does this to Nana in Book of Shadows Chapter Two "Demise". Trust, it is to calm them down so they don't trigger a trap but the person who initiates the action is still pretty unbelievable in behaviour.
• Girlish Pigtails: Ayumi Shinozaki. Seiko has hers in curls.
• God Save Us from the Queen!: The Final Boss of Blood Drive and the core of the Nirvana is called the Witch Queen.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: Morishige when he realizes that the corpse picture which fascinates him the most is of Mayu.
• Gorn: Although the original game focused on audio, the Tortured Souls OVA definitely falls under this category.
• Gratuitous English:
  • Kizami shouts some of these lines to Yuka in Book of Shadows and Blood Covered. He says "It's Showtime" when preparing to dissect her and "Run, rabbit, run!" when chasing the little girl.
  • The titular "Book of Shadows" is first spoken aloud in-game in this manner.
• Greater-Scope Villain: A few, of the Unwitting Instigator of Doom variety.
  • The original PC-98 game has Sachiko’s teacher. His Attempted Rape of her winds up killing her, releasing the curse sealed inside her and creating the alternate Tenjin. Her hatred takes a physical form as the new dimension’s avatar.
  • Principal Takamine Yanagihori. In the original game, he covers up the murder of Sachiko to protect his school’s reputation. In the Heavenly Host saga, he’s the one who tries to rape Sachiko’s mother and winds up killing them both. Once again, this releases the Nirvana and Sachiko’s hatred becomes it’s host.
  • Yoshie Shinozaki. The final chapter of Book of Shadows shows that she may have been the one who created the supernatural version of Heavenly Host in the first place, using a ritual from the Book of Shadows, a powerful grimoire passed down in the Shinozaki family. It is also hinted that her magic may have been involved in Sachiko's death. And she was the one who created (or at least discovered) the ritual that would become the Sachiko Ever After charm. Prior to their demise. The events of Blood Drive reveal that she accidentally set the pieces in place for the creation of the hell known as Heavenly Host in a misguided attempt to be reunited with her deceased husband.
  • Sachiko herself is this in Another Child, since Saki put her to sleep in order to complete her own scheme instead. In fact, when she awakens, Saki sacrifices herself to hold her off and let the others escape because Sachiko is clearly the greater threat.
  • Blood Drive reveals that the medieval witch hunts as a whole were this, since the resulting negative energy created the Nirvana.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: Implied in a Wrong End: Naomi goes insane and chases after her friends, dragging Seiko's corpse behind her.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop:
  • In the final Wrong End of Blood Covered, Satoshi finds himself about to repeat the nightmare all over again, unable to prevent it from starting…
  • The series as a whole seems to take place in one of these. The Big Bad outright admits she can loop time.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • Getting the True End for later chapters can be difficult at times.
  • Most of the game is this, due to being kind of a Hidden Object Game and screwing with your sense of logic on what to do. Here's a spoiler free guide if you ever get too stuck.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: In one of the wrong endings, Ayumi and Yoshiki suffer this fate.
• Hanging Around: How Seiko dies in Chapter 1 of Blood Covered and the Tortured Souls OVA. Naomi (who puts the noose around Seiko’s neck under the influence of the Darkening) ultimately tries to off herself the same way in Chapter 4 of Blood Covered. In the True Ending, Satoshi is able to save her by taking her weight while undoing the noose, but one of the Wrong Endings has him slip and inadvertently break her neck instead.
• Hate Sink: Principal Takamine Yanagihori is the father of Big Bad Yoshikazu Yanagihori and is indirectly responsible for his insanity. In the past, he tried to rape Sachiko Shinozaki's mother Yoshie, leading to her accidental death when she tripped down the stairs trying to escape, and then strangled the seven-year-old Sachiko to death to keep her quiet. As a result, the spirit of Yoshie cursed him and his bloodline for all eternity, which made Yoshikazu go insane- and his murder of Sachiko unwittingly unsealed the Nirvana/Witch Queen, the true villain behind Yoshikazu, making the events of the game his fault. Even when the spirit of Sachiko tortures him for his actions, he refuses to take responsibility and blames her instead. Though revered by the community as a good man, Takamine Yanagihori is rightfully considered by Aiko to be a disgusting individual who is ultimately responsible for the suffering that the heroes and trapped souls must endure.
• Have a Nice Death: The dialogue boxes are very detailed when somebody dies…
• The Heavy: Sachiko and Yoshie. Yoshie was the one that started the curse that would give birth to the cursed Heavenly Host, and Sachiko would become the main cog that holds the whole dimension together, and can influence the darkening in anyone within it. And should anyone come in and out of Heavenly Host while she's not appeased, she can also curse them and use them as proxies to manifest in the real world and was controlling Yoshizaku, who killed a good number of people trapped in Heavenly Host. So, any death in the series that Kizami wasn't responsible for can be traced back to them.
• Hidden Object Game: In Book of Shadows, one half of the gameplay mechanics involves interacting with key objects in the environment from a first-person perspective.
• Hope Spot:
  • When Naomi runs off to get a platform to keep Seiko from strangling to death.
  • In the manga, Yui is trapped under a shelf, being stabbed with the knives that were in it. A ghost offers to help her if she agrees to sacrifice her students. Instead, Yui asks him to save them rather than her. The ghost seems moved and lifts the shelf off of her. Just as Yui is breathing a sigh of relief, he drops it back on her, refusing to believe she's a good teacher. He does eventually lift it up for real, though.
  • Another nasty one in Book of Shadows: Naomi remembers what happens the first time during Seiko's death, and manages to save her. Seiko runs away shortly after and from the text it seems like Naomi will catch up and grab her… only for the player to hear the sound of someone falling down the stairs; and for Naomi to see Seiko lying at the bottom of a staircase, her head neatly severed from a piano wire at the bottom stair noticed earlier on.
  • In Corpse Party: Musume, just as the group resolved the mystery of the haunted dimension and was about to escape, an enemy suddenly managed to stab through Yuki's body and killed her. And even the survivors were not completely safe after escaping from the place. For example, after getting home, Naomi found out that she was Dead All Along and was the next girl cursed to be trapped in the Tenjin.
• Hotter and Sexier: Despite the occasional panty shot and breast fondling, none of the games, OVA and main manga got too far in the erotic department; Musume though brings the sexuality in with a vengeance, and mostly not in pleasant way, it is Fan Disservice as a matter of fact, with Naomi’s bare breasts being shown when she is being possessed by the Darkening, Miyu being anally raped to death by the Darkening, and a possessed Ayumi stabbing her privates with a pen.
• How We Got Here: The fourth chapter of Book of Shadows starts with a glimpse of the chapter's last scenes where Sayaka is being dragged by Yoshizaku in an underground hallway, and Sachiko notices the chocolate candy dropped on the floor before the chapter's title is displayed. Then the player is treated to a flashback which eventually builds the plot up to that point.
• I'm a Humanitarian:
  • One of the wrong endings where Yoshiki temporarily snaps out of his possession and finds himself dining on Shinozaki's corpse. Overcome with grief, he still continues to eat her while crying in his possessed state. When the screen fades black, the player can still hear the sounds of crunching and slurping.
  • In Book of Shadows Ayumi is possessed by multiple spirits. As Yoshiki tries to break her out of it, the last ghost starts talking about how wonderful it'd be to eat him and even causes Ayumi to take a bite out of his neck. Thankfully he snaps her out of it in time.
  • Emi will eat Naomi when she loses the cooking competition and if Naomi follows her.
• I Shall Taunt You: Throughout the game, you'll encounter notes written in red from the Big Bad, bragging about how they’ll kill the characters and goading them into giving in to their darker selves.
• It Amused Me: "Sachiko" initially killed children to give her mother company, but when Yoshie dissaproved she continued her evil actions anyway simply because she enjoyed it.
• It's All My Fault
• It Was a Dark and Stormy Night: It's perpetually twilight and never stops raining.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Seiko encourages Naomi to take advantage of their circumstances to get closer to Satoshi, instead of doing the same herself.
• Jump Scare: Used for the Game Over screen announcing a Wrong End, with a Bloody Handprint suddenly slamming into the screen.
• Kill the Cutie:
  • Seiko, nooo...
  • Also Mayu, not to mention every other character in the games' various Wrong Ends.
  • Mayu gets this double time in her alternate universe story in Book of Shadows.
  • Yuka is stricken with this in the anime OVA, as well as in various Wrong Ends. However, she survives in the good ending of the game.
  • There's also Sayaka, Nana, Naho… really, any girl in the series that's been killed off counts big time. Even Yuki and Tokiko, the ghosts that chase you, count.
• Let's Split Up, Gang!: Many, many times. Even without the closed spaces, they keep doing this. And usually someone dies or is immediately attacked afterwords.
• Light Is Good/Dark Is Evil: The light blue spirits are good, while the flaming red spirits are evil. Also, White Sachiko has white skin and wears a white dress, while Red Sachiko has grey skin and wears a red dress. Though it’s averted with the Witch Queen.
• Literal Split Personality: Sachiko is split up into two halves- the evil red half and the good white half. Made more explicit in the original PC-98 game.
• Loads and Loads of Loading: The same "NOW LOADING" screen will appear for every scene transition in the Vita version of Blood Drive, including opening the main menu and navigating to/from the various sub-menus. Even if it doesn't last more than a few seconds, expect to see it a lot.
• Love Dodecahedron: You're hard-pressed to find a character with no romantic interests or suitors whatsoever and the ones without tend to be dead, very young, "weird", or a combination of those factors. Characters at the center of this mess include Satoshi Mochida, Azusa Takai, Yoshiki Kishinuma, Naho Saenoki, and Sayaka Ooue.
• Made of Evil: The whole dimension is made of hatred and despair spreading throughout time but dating back to the medieval witch hunts.
• Magic A Is Magic A: Averted in Blood Drive. Despite anyone dying in Heavenly Host becoming Ret-Gone,^note Naho being an exception because she became a part of the school instead of truly dying one character is remembered in spite of their death, and is the driving factor of one character wanting to go to the school and turning into a villain after discovering she's been long dead. No explanation is given for this, either.
• Malevolent Architecture: Tenjin, especially in the original PC-98 game, where the floor is riddled with holes and keeps rearranging/losing pieces.
• Maybe Ever After: Naomi and Satoshi in the original PC-98 game, where they're alone at class and Naomi asks Satoshi if he'd like to come over to listen her to play the piano.
• More Expendable Than You: At the end of the Blood Covered manga Naomi and Ayumi both offer to stay behind in Heavenly Host to let the others escape. Yui offers herself instead and ends up staying behind.
• Multiple Endings:
  • In the original PC-98 game, you get the best ending if all five survive. If, on the other hand, your choices led to somebody's death, you get a significantly worse ending where it's made clear the others are still haunted by what happened.
  • Each chapter of Blood Covered has a "True End" and a few "Wrong End"s. The use of "True End" rather than "Good End" should give you a hint about the overall tone. There's also one "Extra End" that works identically to "Wrong End"s but takes significantly more work to reach.
• Murder Into Malevolence: The Girl In Red, a.k.a. Sachiko Shinozaki was just a normal little girl who saw her mother murdered for no reason, and then was chased down and killed by the murderer, who might have also later returned and mutilated her corpse based on his own gnawing guilt. End result: a spirit so angry and vengeful that it creates/is possessed by a wholly separate reality to pull in and cruelly murder hundreds of victims.
• Murder the Hypotenuse: Appears in one Wrong End where Ayumi burns Naomi's paper scrap and renders her unable to escape Tenjin, planning to escape with Satoshi.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: Appears in the first chapter, with Seiko: "Where are we?! And where are our friends?! And Ms. Yui?"
• Never Got to Say Goodbye:
  • The last words exchanged between Naomi and Seiko were a huge argument.
  • Subverted if you count Naomi's dream and the mails she receives near the end of the game.
  • Same goes for Sayaka and Naho, Morishige and Mayu… And oh god almighty Yui-sensei…
• Never Split the Party: The victims were deliberately split up and cast into separate 'closed spaces' of the alternate dimension, and must first find out how to reach each other.
• Never Suicide: This is played straight by Seiko, who didn't really kill herself. Averted by Morishige, who did.
• New Transfer Student: Inverted with Mayu Suzumoto; she was transferring out of Kisaragi, and the Culture Festival was meant to be her last day there…
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero
  • Naomi and Seiko were lucky enough to end up together when everyone was separated; however, Naomi takes out her frustration on Seiko, accusing her of not taking matters seriously, driving her away. This doesn't end well.
  • According to Naho, the reason they got trapped within Heavenly Host in the first place is due to this: someone messed up during the paper doll ritual. Later, it's discovered that wasn't the case; Naho intentionally posted the wrong instructions on her blog.
• Nightmare Face: Not only do many of the evil spirits sport these, the victims' reaction faces veer into this territory, especially in the manga.
• Nightmare Fetishist:
  • Subverted with Ayumi. She delights in telling scary stories, but once she finds herself in one, she is very freaked out. Sakutarou plays it straight, though.
  • Sakutarou was pretty creepy for this in Blood Covered, but goes further than ever in Book of Shadows when he describes the act of chasing Yuka around as 'nearly orgasmic'. But this is dismissed as he then says 'No... This isn't right. This isn't who I am. Could it be that this nightmarish location is messing with my head?' revealing that all the problematic and creepy behaviour was none of his doing and was the Darkening.
• No Canon for the Wicked: Averted. Several of Book of Shadows's chapters follow a Bad Ending where Satoshi finds himself in a "Groundhog Day" Loop and can't prevent the others from performing the ritual and returning to Tenjin. Another chapter expands upon a path where Kizami caught Yuka – and some of Sachiko's dialogue hints it may simultaneously follow from the former Bad Ending. The only chapter that follows Blood Covered's True Ending must be unlocked, and basically sets up the next game, Blood Drive.
• Non-Standard Game Over: Obtaining a "Wrong End" counts as the traditional "Game Over" screen and makes the next chapter unavailable until the current chapter's "True End" has been unlocked. However, the game still saves the data as it keeps track of all the endings obtained by the player.
  • Blood Covered contains additional Extra Chapters that are straightforward and only have one ending. It is still possible to get a "Wrong End" in the first chapter depending on the player's actions. In these situations, the screen will fade to black, and the player character narrates that their party has endlessly searched around but were unable to find clues. The dialog then ends with "Ending not Obtained".
• No Periods, Period: Averted. Ayumi gets her period without realizing it (you begin seeing a blood stain on the back of her skirt partway through the game). She's very embarrassed when Yoshiki notices and asks when she got hurt, but she can't think of any way to change or cover it up. No one else comments on it though (either they think it's from one of the numerous dead bodies, or they just have bigger problems).
• Not Enough to Bury: Pretty much everyone's deaths in Tenjin, given that they died in an otherworldly location. Even more so when it's destroyed, taking all of the bodies with it.
• Nothing Is Scarier: Frequently combined with a form of Gory Discretion Shot: instead of fully illustrating whatever horror the characters are enduring, you instead have to hear it. Book of Shadows uses this even more extensively.
• Off with His Head!: Happens to Seiko and Hinoe in Book of Shadows, Misuto in Blood Drive, Yui in Tortured Souls, and Miyu in Musume.
• Old School Building: The series has a haunted old school as the main setting. That school itself contains two buildings, one of which (the wing that disappears and reappears seemingly at random) is in a noticeably older architectural style. It's where Sachiko and her mother were murdered in 1953. Also, it’s sentient.
• One-Steve Limit: Frequently averted.
  • Ayumi isn't the only Shinozaki in the game…
  • On a less significant note, the nametags you find include another Shinohara, as well as a Yuuya, a Satoshi, and a Seiko.
• Phone Call from the Dead: Shown with a horrific effect - Morishige is in shock when his phone suddenly plays its caller ringtone while in photo viewer mode and without a call notification. It is because the image he is currently viewing is the pulverized corpse of Mayu, who is speaking to him in the call not to look at her current state. Morishige, being unable to accept Mayu's death, goes insane, running and laughing while screaming her name.
• Plot Coupon: The Crystals Of The Six Demons in Blood Drive. Collecting them all and uniting them into one crystal gives the wielder control of the Nirvana.
• Pocket Protector: Can appear in Chapter 4 of Blood Covered, deflecting a pair of scissors. Sadly, Seiko's cell gets destroyed in the process, leading to a Wrong End.
• The Pollyanna: Seiko.
• The Power of Friendship: It's established very quickly that the only way to have even a chance of surviving Tenjin is to have reliable friends and companions with you – if you get separated from them, death, possession, or insanity borders on instantaneous. Also referenced in one of the Chapter 5 has name tags, where it failed to save its believer.
• Present Day|Present-Day Past: Corpse Party is set when the first game was released. That game was released multiple times and contains some dates that don't add up, so there's that, but eventually 2U canonized 2008 for when the Kisaragi kids went to Heavenly Host Elementary. This is the release year of the first few chapters of the PC version. There's some two months between it and Blood Drive, so at latest the saga ends in January of 2009. The actual game, however, came out in 2014 and incorporates developments present in 2014 but not yet in 2009, like the use of smartphones instead of flippable phones. Of course, given the existence of a "Groundhog Day" Loop...
• Press X to Die: Early in Chapter 2, you're explicitly told not to read all five parts of a Victim's Memoir. The first four parts are readable without danger, but as soon as you find the fifth part, the game actually stops you and makes you confirm you want to read it. Reading the fifth part forces you to die in the same way as the person who wrote the memoir. This applies to every set of Victim's Memoirs.
• Promotion to Parent: After losing her mother, Seiko has become a sort of surrogate mother to her younger siblings.
• Public Domain Soundtrack: Morishige's theme of love in Book of Shadows is a slightly lower pitched version of Pachelbel's Canon in D Major.
• Razor Wire: Occasionally, nearly-invisible piano wires can be found stretched across the hallways of Heavenly Host Elementary. These wires can effortlessly slice through flesh at even the lightest touch, and are deliberately placed in areas where one could accidentally run into them without noticing, such as at the bottom of a staircase.
• Red Herring:
  • Double Subversion with the health points in the PSP version. Most deaths are a Non-Standard Game Over, so it doesn't matter how many HP your characters have. There are some instances where the floor reduces your HP if you walk over it, but since you find a measure to become resistant against it, HP doesn't have much meaning here either. And unlike in the PC-98 version, there is no Final Boss Battle.
  • There's another, more story-related red herring example. If you really look at it, in the original storyline, trying to tell who exactly the bad guy is can be rather complex. Is it the children? No. Is it the mentally-challenged man who killed them? No, and he wasn't even the killer! Was it the real killer, Sachiko, for whom the curse is named? Sort of. Is it her mother? Sort of, but no. Is it the Principal? Sort of, but no! The truly evil entity (read: Not crazy) may very well be Heavenly Host Elementary School itself, as even when Sachiko, who was supposedly the keystone in causing all of this, is gone, the school just makes another one and then seals itself away even tighter so that it's even less possible to escape than it was before!
    Oh, and it doesn't end there either. This whole ordeal, at least for all of the recently-killed students, was caused by Naho in an attempt to please Kibiki by providing him with more 'samples' of sorts for his investigation by purposely posting the WRONG version of the Sachiko Ever After ritual on her paranormal blog, and so everyone (normally high- or middle-schoolers) who tries it appears in the Closed Spaces. It would've ended when the original school was demolished had it not been for her. Although Book of Shadows has heavy evidence that Naho was being controlled by Sachiko when that happened.
• Ret-Gone: In Blood Covered and Book of Shadows, this is the fate of the classmates killed in Tenjin. Only the survivors remember them; for everyone else, it's like they never existed in the first place. At the end of Blood Drive, this is reversed, and, while those who died still couldn't be saved, at the very least, everyone's memory of them was restored.
• Retirony: If Mayu had only transferred out a day earlier…
• Rewind, Replay, Repeat: The climax of the radio recording session of Naho and Sayaka in Book of Shadows. The producers and directors heard a third voice inserted in the conversations. It's actually Sachiko manifesting as an EVP. For an added effect, as the recording gets replayed over and over again, the sound becomes clearer and louder.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: Ayumi is immediately suspicious of the testimony from Yoshikazu's doll, feeling like it's too close to what they want to hear and probably insincere. She was right that it was too good to be true, but it was entirely sincere. It's just that Yoshikazu wasn't the killer, but an unwilling accomplice who genuinely does regret what he was made to do.
• Rule of Seven: The seven pillars and their crystals, though the seventh only show up after the first six crystals are collected.
• Schmuck Bait: So damn many.
  • Hm, let's rest in the infirmary—OH DEAR GOD *consumed by ghost*; Hmm, the fifth and final Victim's Memoir—*SPLAT*; Hey, that anatomy model is kinda creepy—OHSHI- *Mauled to death*; Oh, a hole in the bathroom door, let's peek- *Eye gets stabbed*
  • There's also a case where you must take one of those deliberately to proceed. More specifically, the one in the room with the message from the dead that tells you not to read a newspaper. If you don't read it, you get a Wrong End. If you do, you proceed and can go to the next chapter. This is the one time this must be done.
  • Which is a better hiding place? A supply locker, which is large enough to contain an adult, and has a door that can be closed, or the underneath of a teacher's podium where said adult must curl herself to fit in? The locker may be a suitable choice, but the moment you open its door, it causes the nearby ghost to sprint. Said ghost is also strong enough to crush the player character hiding inside the locker. The other option is necessary for the story to proceed.
• School Setting Simulation: The games' primary setting, Heavenly Host Elementary School, is a decrepit, haunted schoolhouse that exists within another realm of reality. It is inhabited by the violent, vengeful ghosts of the students that were slaughtered there, and traps all people, dead or alive, there for all eternity.
• Schrödinger's Cast: Tortured Souls, Musume, and Book of Shadows had more of the cast members die than Blood Covered, which is considered the main canon of the Heavenly Host Trilogy. Then there's 2U which appears to be in an alternate timeline where the cast happens to be in Heavenly Host on Sachiko's birthday. At first, it all seems like the writers for all the spinoffs and supplementary works didn't care. Then Blood Drive reveals that all the timelines are connected and merged through the Nirvana's dimensions. The dimension is multi-layered, allowing for the mix-up of past, present, and future events, all in the same location. Additionally, Sachiko has confirmed to be able to loop time. What this means is that all Corpse Party characters, events, and spinoffs are all canon.
  • Sachiko mentions that Yoshiki has died several times in other time loops.
    • This leads to some Fridge Horror: this means that no matter what timeline is presented, no matter what events or choices occur, Seiko, Mayu, Yui, and Morishige are fated to always die.
  • This also means that the original PC-98 Corpse Party may just be as canon to the series as every other related material. Perhaps even the fangames!
• Senseless Sacrifice: In the PC-98 version, Heroic Sacrifices tend to get negated in this fashion:
  • First, if Yoshiki sacrifices himself to draw the anatomical model away from Ayumi, and they're the only casualty, then during the ending Ayumi gets choked to death by a vengeful spirit. Assuming, of course, she isn't hallucinating the whole thing and clawing her own throat out.
  • Secondly, if Naomi saves Yuka from the stall, this leads to her Demonic Possession, where she ultimately kills Yuka with her own hands.
• Sensory Abuse: Twice in Blood Drive, using the same exact thing. The first is when you first set foot in the gym, music so loud that it's actually distorted blares from the game. This is especially horrid because the game recommends you wear headphones to immerse yourself, which will instead result in massive ear pain for a while. The second time, it's the exact same music when you're wandering Heavenly Host as Yuka, Satsuki and Mitsuo.
• Sequel Hook: The final chapter of Book of Shadows provides a big set-up for a sequel, including a 'Continue to the next game' note right before the credits.
• Shout-Out:
  • Blood Drive's flesh-walls you encounter give a nod to Saya no Uta.
  • Satsuki's head sprouting open is attributed to Parasyte.
  • The first Chapter 1 Wrong End in 2U has Seiko lose her head much like Mami's infamous moment in Puella Magi Madoka Magica.
• Slasher Smile: Several. Most notable ones being the shadowy creature faced at the end of chapter one, possessed Ayumi, and Sachiko. Oh sweet lord, Sachiko.
• Spirit Advisor: Seiko becomes this for Naomi after her death.
• Spoiler Opening: The opening shows CGs and characters that are HUGE parts of the story.
• Stepford Smiler
• Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl
• Stupidity Is the Only Option: You have to ignore several warnings throughout the game in order to get the True Endings. The first example of such is a real Player Punch: If the player heeds the dying words of a previous victim – found in a room you're warned it's a bad idea to even enter, at that – and does not read the newspaper clipping in chapter 1, not only does Seiko die hung by her neck, Naomi herself is possessed and commits influenced suicide by swallowing a pair of scissors. What a way to shake up the player's expectations.
  • It's even worse if you came from the PC-98 version, as it's directly based on an event from that game that you needed to avoid or else sacrifice an item that was hugely useful against the final boss.
• Symbolic Mutilation: A cross between this and Does This Remind You of Anything?. The first ritual has the students rip a proxy doll apart, which is supposed to correspond to Sachiko, as the ritual carries her name. The correct ritual has the survivors unite said paper doll, begging her (for her forgiveness) so as to appease her wrath in order for her to pass on at last.
• Tempting Fate: Ayumi survives the ordeal, which she created with the whole Sachiko Ever After charm, and THEN she decides to investigate her bloodline in what is clearly an ill-conceived attempt to undo all the damage she caused. She picks up an eerie-looking book called THE BOOK OF SHADOWS, inside what appears to be a smaller version of the Heavenly Host Elementary School (since the property appears and disappears at will and is actively distorting the nearby region) but still decides to attempt a resurrection spell after casually believing in the "out of sight, out of mind" motto. Honestly, that girl is a Disaster Magnet mixed with Dumb Chick in a Nightmare Fuel world.
• There Is Another: The students of 2-9 aren't the only ones currently wandering through Tenjin…
• This Is Reality:
  Naomi: How is this possible...? We're not in a video game or a manga...
• Title Drop: While inspecting a certain corpse in the Book of Shadows chapter "Shangri-La", Morishige gleefully describes Tenjin as a "Corpse Party" as well as calling it "Shangri-La".^note "Shangri-La" is also the title of Blood Covered: Repeated Fear's opening theme, making it another reference.
  Morishige: This whole school is like a veritable corpse party. I've seen so many other bodies since I've arrived here... but none like hers.
• Tongue Trauma: The three victims of the Heavenly Host massacre in the 70's all had their tongues cut out. We later learn that Sachiko's own tongue was cut out by the principal back in the 50's because he wanted to be absolutely certain she could never tell anyone he was responsible for her mother's death. Note that he had already killed Sachiko at that point; he was that paranoid.
• Too Dumb to Live: In Book of Shadows, Mayu, who for some reason is more concerned with her personal appearance than staying alive, runs away from her friends and further into the school alone when a strange bruise suddenly appears on her cheek. To add more stupidity, she hides in the infirmary where she was killed in the previous timeline, and as a result is even more brutally murdered by the ghosts. Even worse, earlier she had a vision about getting captured by the ghosts in the infirmary so she had a bad feeling about that room tried to stay away from it until the end.
• Took the Wife's Name: The Shinozaki family maintained its spiritual power by marrying men willing to throw away their own family names for the sake of love. All of the men died within a few years of their children being born, and all of them had daughters, with the notable exception of Ayumi and Hinoe's grandfather, who had a son (their father), but still died.
• Trauma Conga Line: Ayumi faces a painful one. In Book Of Shadows, she is trapped in Heavenly Host, sees a good deal of people dying in horrible ways, nearly dies herself, tries to revive her killed friend only to have it backfire horribly on her, and ends cursed as a result. It seems like all is gonna be fine when Hinoe comes and saves her… only Hinoe gets beheaded when she is comfort hugging Ayumi.
• Tsundere:
  • Naomi is your typical tsun-tsun. Instead of presenting this as endearing, however, the attitude is Deconstructed as part of her Fatal Flaw.
  • Tsundere Ayumi who scares her friends cares about them a lot deep down.
• Twisted Ankle: Naomi's ankle gets twisted after a bad landing at the beginning of the game, making it difficult for her to get around at first.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: The original PC-98 version had a final boss fight, complete with each character suddenly gaining an RPG stereotype role. Later releases of the game omitted this.
• Unlucky Childhood Friend: Satoshi and Naomi have known each other since seventh grade. He isn't aware that she's interested in him, though, since she constantly teases and provokes him. Satoshi does have a Love Epiphany with regards to her, though. It's in one of two non-True-Ends in the game that's not counted as a Wrong End, and Naomi and Yuka die as a direct result of the choice that leads to this.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: In Book of Shadows, Naomi doesn't give any reaction to room 1-C being filled with green, glowing words like "It hurts" "Die" "Just Die" "No hope of rescue" "Spill your blood" and others on the floor and walls. She also doesn't seem to care that a creepy face from the green is covering a child's drawing. Then again, she's only seeing this because her in-game darkening meter is high enough to hit the Despair Event Horizon…
• Utsuge: You will cry, either because of all the Tear Jerker moments or because of the huge amounts of Nightmare Fuel. You know what? Both is the most likely case! "Re: No hard feelings"
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: If only the teacher and/or Principal Takamine hadn’t killed Sachiko, and Yoshie hadn’t attempted that spell, the Nirvana would not have been set free and none of this would have happened.
• Villain Protagonist: At different points of Blood Drive you play as Aiko, Magari, and Misuto.
• We Cannot Go On Without You: Blood Covered works this way with many of the Wrong Ends, in that if any of the 5 canon survivors die, the game ends prematurely with exception of several Wrong Ends during the final chapter. This actually makes sense given that those characters are connected to one another. Naomi or Yuka dying would cause Satoshi to lose hope and give up, Yuka is dependent on Satoshi so losing him would affect her, Yoshiki is in love with Ayumi so losing her would devastate him.
• Wham Episode: Each chapter will end this way, shoving a shocking event in your face that changes how you look at the situation.
  • Blood Covered
    • Chapter 1: Naomi finds Seiko hanging in a bathroom stall and is unable to save her. Seiko's death is the first to establish that no one is safe.
    • Chapter 2: Ayumi and Yoshiki are unable to save Mayu from Yuki and Tokiko, as she gets splattered on a wall like a tomato. Ayumi then runs off traumatized. While Yoshiki shouts for Ayumi to stop, he is hit from behind by Yoshikazu with a large mallet. He gets better though.
    • Chapter 3: Satoshi is separated from Yuka and Naho appears to tell him that they were brought to Heavenly Host because they did the charm wrong.
    • Chapter 4: Ayumi and Yoshiki get Yuki's tongue back, and are teleported back to the Kisaragi classroom. Yuki then appears and Ayumi asks Yuki to show her what really happened on the day of her murder. Through an Exposition Beam, we learn through Yuki's eyes that she was actually murdered by Sachiko (the fourth supposed surviving child), and not Yoshikazu (the supposed killer). All while Sachiko stabs out Yuki's eye.
    • Chapter 5: Satoshi, Naomi, Yoshiki, Yuka, and Ayumi escape, but they later learn the next day that those who died had their existences erased and that they are the only ones who remember them.
  • The Final Chapter of Book Of Shadows, "Blood Drive", also counts. Ayumi and Naomi travel to the Shinozaki estate to investigate what happened to them. While there, they discover evidence that suggests Sachiko's mother, Yoshie, had been investigating the Sachiko-Ever-After charm before she'd died. Ayumi and Naomi uncover the titular book and try to use a spell to bring Mayu back to life. It sort of succeeds. When Ayumi and Naomi are in danger of dying when their paper dolls catch fire, Ayumi's sister Hinoe comes right out of nowhere and saves them. Right when she's comforting Ayumi, however, her head comes off right in front of Ayumi.
• What the Hell, Hero?: When Ayumi and Yoshiki are returned to the classroom by Yuki Kanno, Ayumi asks to return to save the others. In a certain Wrong End, Yoshiki protests this. Ayumi calls him out, saying that he doesn't care whether their friends die. Yoshiki in turn calls her out, accusing her of only caring about Satoshi. It ends with a love confession on Yoshiki's part.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: Miyu Shinohara in Corpse Party: Musume.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: In Book of Shadows, Naomi tries to Screw Destiny, but learns that not only is Seiko marked for death, but each new demise will be worse than the last.
• You Can't Fight Fate: In Book of Shadows, it's claimed that anyone who previously died in Tenjin cannot be saved, no matter what. Not only that, but their new deaths will be worse than the first… There is, however, evidence that Sachiko is lying – that she's the one enforcing that rule, and can suspend it when it suits her. She all but directly states something to this effect in "Mire"'s True Ending, and it's subtly implied that "Shangri-La" takes place in the 'World Loop' universe and Sachiko is intentionally letting Morishige live because he amuses her. Later confirmed in 2U, where she mentions that she "forgot" to suspend Seiko's guaranteed death during the first chapter, and shows the ability to resurrect those killed at will with no apparent consequences.

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