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"You see before you the state-of-the-art demon fighter of tomorrow. This multidirectional, unitized, high-tech fighting machine is salt-free, tuna-safe and comes complete with 15 megabytes of double-density, wafer-thin alloy forming a virtual reality of modern demon extermination... need I say more?"

The outset of the 21st century... Earth is a planet teeming with life. Mankind, 7 billion strong, continued to prosper.

However... This prosperity had a price. To a species unable to halt the environment's destruction... the Land of Ruin would inevitably appear.

Even so... mankind, desperate for salvation, clung to hope. A brave few begin their mission... To the enigmatic Land of Ruin. Little realizing this harsh Journey will decide man's fate...
Strange Journey opening

The DS incarnation of the Shin Megami Tensei series. It was released for the DS in Japan on October 8, 2009 and March 22, 2010 for the United States.

In the year 20XX, a strange zone of pure blackness appears at the South Pole and gradually begins to expand outwards. Dubbed the "Schwarzwelt", this phenomenon swallows up everything it touches, and all attempts to analyse or explain it end in failure, as do attempts to halt its advance.

With no other option, the United Nations assembles four elite teams comprised of the most talented soldiers and scientists from around the world. Armed with the most advanced technology available, including the DEMONICA Powered Armor and four massive exploration vehicles, their mission is to physically enter and explore the interior of the Schwarzwelt, and find a way to stop it before the entire world is consumed.

You take the role of a decorated soldier on-board the Red Sprite, one of the four exploration vehicles sent into the Schwarzwelt. After a crash landing into the Schwarzwelt, the Red Sprite is separated from the other vehicles, and you soon discover that the interior of the Schwarzwelt is crawling with invisible demons eager to tear you and your comrades to pieces. Fortunately, with the help of a mysterious software program downloaded into your armor, you can perceive, converse with and recruit these demons to your side.

Cut off from the real world, all you can hope to do is push further into the Schwarzwelt looking for answers and a way out.

An Updated Re-release for the Nintendo 3DS called Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey Redux (Strange Journey Deep in Japan) was released in Japan in 2017. This update improves the visuals and adds voice acting, a number of new characters and recruitable demons, and new ending routes. It released in North America on May 16 2018.

There's a manga side story known as Deathtament: Shin Megami Tensei Deep Strange Journey -Another Report- by Yasuo Kanou, which centers on another team that lost contact with Red Sprite and is forced to investigate Schwarzwelt without any backup. It ran for three volumes.

Compare Etrian Odyssey by the same company, which Strange Journey shares a number of elements with.


Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey provides examples of:

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  • Adaptive Armor: The DEMONICA suit, designed to continuously improve your performance. You don't gain levels. The suit does.
  • Advancing Wall of Doom: The Schwarzwelt's earthly boundaries are delimited by a wall of plasma that destroys anything it touches. The Schwarzwelt is constantly expanding. So don't worry too much about all the people being swallowed up by the Schwarzwelt if the mission fails —everyone will be vaporized before it happens.
    • The role of the wall is to "disassemble" everything at the molecular level so it can be properly reconstituted as whatever the Schwarzwelt thinks it would best fit as. The outside world is the "crime," the plasma wall the verdict, the Schwarzwelt the sentence.
  • Affably Evil:
    • Mithras is less openly hostile to the humans than the other tyrants, and offers them citizenship in his domain first.
    • Demons with the "gentleman" personality are unfailingly polite, even if negotiations fall through. Instead of angrily telling you to piss off like other demons will, "gentlemen" demons will simply politely request to return to the battle.
  • Alas, Poor Villain: Jimenez in the Neutral path. Even before the fight, he expresses regret that things have lead to a Duel to the Death due to your bond with each other, and after the battle, as he dies he acknowledges that you were always better than him. In Redux, Demeter's Reluctant Sacrifice in all new routes, despite having manipulated the protagonist to obtain the cosmic fruit for the Three Wise Men, she genuinely believed in the World of Law (shame the Three Wise Men only care about themselves) as the best alternative for nature. Also Shekinah- the Three Wise Men's Final Speech in which she despairingly mourns that humanity will destroy the Earth she loves.
  • Aliens Speaking English: Played with regarding demons. Even with the Demon Summoning Program installed in the Demonica OS, demon speech will sound as utter gibberish until the Demonica has analyzed the demon at least once, allowing it to translate the back-and-forth banter between the demon and the Protagonist.
    • Played with even more with all demons getting several types of speech patterns. Yes, you may have to negotiate with a valley girl demon, a disgruntled southern gentleman demon, a street punk demon, or demons that can only speak in pidgin English.
    • Even lampshaded by a lot of demons who will ask you why you can talk with them. They accept different answers every time though.
  • Alignment-Based Endings: An ending exists for each of the alignments: Law, Neutral and Chaos. Further, mutually exclusive end-game Sidequests, unique equipment, and so forth also exist past the Point of No Return.
  • Ambiguously Evil: The Joint Project. As secretive government types they're rather shady, but they nevertheless seem supportive of the mission and mean you no harm. Over the course of the game, however, you learn that they sent the team with some rather... interesting equipment, including a gun that brainwashes people and an atomic bomb, and around the halfway point they attempt to destroy the Schwartzwelt with the team still inside, which would strand them in the demon world forever. Whether this was a case of You Have Outlived Your Usefulness or a simple miscalculation isn't particularly well explained.
  • Ambiguously Human: The three unique Demonica-Alignment demons. It's mentioned that the Spiegel Effect, which allows the Schwarzwelt to partially mimic human environments, is responsible for creating them by applying the same principles to the Investigation Team's soldiers.
  • America Saves the Day: Subverted. Red Sprite and the other ships do have members from the USA, including the main character (who is Japanese in the Japanese version), but many other crew members come from other parts of the world.
  • Anti-Frustration Features: Redux adds several quality-of-life features not present in the original DS version:
    • Instead of just two save slots, you now have twenty.
    • In addition to conventional saves that can only be performed aboard the Red Sprite and at Terminals, you now have a single "Field Save" slot that you can use when out on the field. The drawback to the Field Save is that once you load it you are at an increased danger of a nearby random encounter.
    • Many things involving the Sub-App system have been changed to give the player a better time:
      • One of the Sub-Apps that are available upon unlocking the Sub-Apps feature is March To Death, which averts We Cannot Go On Without You by allowing the game to continue after your death, as long as you have at least one demon out and alive. It's not available on Impossible difficulty, however.
      • The Omen Bug temporarily stops you if you're about to step on a warp tile or pitfall, and marks the tile on your map for map completion purposes so you don't have to walk into every dead end.
      • Guidance Angel lets you see a warp tile's destination by tapping its icon on the map, so you don't have to memorize which tile leads where.
      • Marco Polo automatically marks adjacent hidden doors on your map without needing you to face them so you spend less time awkwardly side-stepping along walls.
      • The Visualizer Main Apps now integrate the features of Scanning Zero, mapping out the tiles you've traveled without needing that New Game Plus Sub-App.
      • Replacing Scanning Zero is the Columbus Sub-App, which automatically maps out all squares within the player's 3-square scan range, making mapping a lot easier.
      • Sub-Apps no longer have costs. With the exception of mutually-exclusive Sub-Apps (such as the Encounter Repellant and Encounter Bait Sub-Apps, or Sub-Apps that serve the same function in different magnitudes), you can now activate as many or as few as you please.
    • Like in both Devil Survivor games, both Shin Megami Tensei IV games, and Persona 4 Golden, you can now choose what skills to pass on when fusing demons, instead of skill inheritance being decided by the RNG. This only applies when using a D-Source in fusion.
    • Healing at the Sickbay no longer costs Macca.
    • You can pick up free DLC that gives good equipment and a shower of recovery items to minimize Early Game Hell. Once you're past the first couple sectors, though, the DLC equipment is easily overshadowed, but by that point your tactical options would have considerably expanded.
  • Anti-Grinding: As per Megami Tensei tradition, overleveled demons or protagonist will stifle experience point rewards. Rather annoying in that on a New Game Plus, bringing in your endgame party at the start of the game will greatly stunt your level growth. The multiplier is personalized in Redux, meaning that only the overlevelled will get minimal experience.
  • Apocalyptic Log: Transmissions from unmanned drones sent into the Schwarzwelt. And the reports found in the Demonicas of the slain crew members.
  • Arch-Enemy:
    • The vampire Kudlak and his hunter, Kresnik, who first showed up in Devil Summoner, return again in this game. They're still pretty much at a stalemate.
    • Barong and Rangda of Balinese mythology are also represented, with Barong sending you on a sub-quest to issue a challenge to his eternal enemy Rangda.
  • Asshole Victim: The murder of Captain Jack by Jimenez and the brainwashing of Lieutenant Ryan by Zelenin are clearly intended to show how far gone the two are after their transformations. Given all Jack's Squad had done throughout the game, however, the player is unlikely to do anything but cheer.
  • Awesome, but Impractical:
    • Tetrakarn and Makarakarn, which grant Single Use Shields that repel physical and magic attacks, respectively. Not only do they cost a lot of MP (45), but they only last for the current turn, making them inefficient at best on high-speed demons and an outright waste of MP on low-speed ones. Averted with the new mechanics of Redux: support spells are quicker to come out than offensive spells, meaning speed is much less of an issue, and an early sub-app called Trigger Happy has a random chance at putting MP costs at zero for the turn, which is basically a free -karn spell.
    • Cold World, Charming Bolt, and Floral Gust are all 65-MP elemental spells that hit all enemies, with a relatively low chance of inflicting an ailment — instant death, charm, and mute respectively. They also are slightly weaker than their Ma-dyne counterparts, and the added effects are not at all worth the inflated MP cost. Their Fire counterpart, Ragnarok, avoids this trope as it eschews an added effect for the potential to do massive damage.
    • Riot Gun Copy, a skill unique to the Megido Fire, delivers a single powerful hit of Almighty damage. However, it also costs a whopping 80 MP. In contrast, Moan Bullet deals 1-3 slightly weaker hits, only costs 45 MP, and outdamages Riot Gun Copy when it manages to hit twice.
  • A Space Marine Is You: An RPG example, but still.
  • Badass Normal: The Strike Team, with the Main Protagonist being the most notable. Only demons can wield magic, whereas you need to rely on the Demonica and your firearm to substitute for it. Doesn't stop you from steamrolling and subjugating supernatural beasts.
  • The Bad Guy Wins: As in many games in this franchise, both the Law and Chaos endings can be considered this, special mention going to Chaos because you help the Schwartzwelt consume the Earth, the very thing you'd been sent in to prevent in the first place.
  • Bandit Mook: Demons who can use the enemy-exclusive Macca Beam or Wastrel Beam are the number 1 cause for premature baldness in gamers. Especially since they don't make you drop a preset amount of Macca, but a percentage of your total, so if a piddly little Preta from the second sector hits your endgame-level party (or, god forbid, a New Game Plus party) with Macca Beam, you'll probably have to reload just from losing hundreds of thousands of Macca. It gets worse with Kangitens that tout Wastrel Beam, a move which vaporizes half the money you have on-hand. Try not to sell off too much of that rare forma!
  • Barrier Change Boss:
    • Awake Jimenez, Empty Mem Aleph, and Vile Demiurge all change their resistances every few turns. The last of them only does this on a New or Full Moon, and if challenged at any other moon phase he repels everything.
    • The primary gimmick of the remake's True Final Boss is that she has a base form that is neutral to all six basic elements, but can shift resistances and moves to resemble the major bosses in the Womb of Grief, including Amon. In her second phase, this gets updated so that she will resist everything, even Almighty and a form's weakness, except for Demon Co-Ops.
    • Three of the four ultimate Optional Bosses of Redux have a weakness. However, at the end of the turn where that weakness is exploited, they change it to a random affinity, on top of re-obscuring their affinities with question marks, making it a crapshoot in trying to chain Co-Op attacks.
  • Base on Wheels: The Red Sprite, the Blue Jet, the Elve, the Gigantic, and the Lightning. A couple of stories tall, heavily fortified, can emit plasma shields, amphibious, and come with VTOL jets for short-distance flight. The interior is equipped with sickbays and laboratories, and each vehicle is run by an autonomous Artificial Intelligence. Also qualify for Cool Ship with a mix of Tank Goodness and a large side of Awesome Personnel Carrier. They can also split in half, each with its own VTOL capabilities: the bow carries the main command bridge, living quarters, and sickbay; the aft contains the manufacturing lab, power core, and auxiliary terminals for Arthur.
  • Berserk Button: Some responses to random-encounter demons' questions will simply make them go away (or on rare occasions, the demon will brush it off and forgive you). Some other responses, however...
    "The demon suddenly attacked!"
    • There are some (incredibly obvious) answers that will always force a demon to attack you. Some can be quite hilarious to see unfold.
      Female Demon: What is that mask for?
      Hero: It lets me see wrinkles.
      (Beat)
      The demon suddenly attacked!
  • Better to Die than Be Killed: Should you choose to do nothing and show mercy during The Holy Dragonslayer EX Mission, then Mother Harlot will have her Dragon devour her as a nod to Revelations 17:16 so that she will no longer be a tool for the Angels to use.
  • Big Eater: Horkos, daaaamn. He points out humanity isn't very much different from him, and that they consume and eat endlessly in their world of luxuries.
  • Big Labyrinthine Building: Sector Carina is a huge shopping mall with escalators and sliding doors, and rows and rows of bizarre products, and it also serves as a meat packing plant, as conveyor lines carry endless sides of meat to unseen kitchens where they are prepared for Horkos. It's also one of the more memorable areas of the game, as many characters are simply astonished by the appearance of a shopping mall in a different dimension, but apparently it's not so foreign, as Chen remarks that the sector is simply a copy of a real mall on Earth (although how many shopping malls routinely carry heavy military ordnance is anyone's guess). In the game's story, riots and lootings are trailing though South America due to shortages, likely stemming from the severe economic imbalance of the game's Crapsack World.
  • Bittersweet Ending: In the Neutral Ending, the Schwarzwelt has been destroyed and all Demons on earth have been wiped out along with it, but because The World Is Not Ready for such reality-warping knowledge, the team has to leave behind all their data and forma along with Arthur, who has to ensure the Schwarzwelt's destruction. There is also the possibility of the return of the Schwarzwelt if humanity doesn't improve.
    • The New Neutral Ending of Redux is also this. You destroy the Schwarzwelt, but it's clear that it will continue to come back over and over again. While the protagonist is now an immortal force who can destroy the Schwarzwelt again, he'll have to do it for eternity. While he has Arthur for companionship, it's implied he's also undergoing a loss of his own humanity.
    • The The New Chaos and Law Endings in Redux are actually far more sweet than bitter for once. New Law has Zelenin eliminate human propesities for violence instead of fully controlling them, with humanity thus progressing through cooperation and peaceful methods though it's implied this might backfire if another threat arises. New Chaos meanwhile has Jiminez using the Cosmic Fruit to ensure that all humans and demons are free to choose their paths on equal grounds though there's no telling how long it will be if or when a human or demon believes their best choices will come at the expense of others.
  • Blatant Lies: And how! This is a key conversation piece, such as you're a beautiful woman, the Demonica is part of your body/the latest fashion... it gets utterly hilarious with Relax Spray, because if they didn't believe the first time, the Demonica forces them to believe it, and they won't even care if they know your program is forcing them to change their opinion.
    • This is almost an Enforced Trope. The Pixie that walks you through conversation mechanics states that sucking up to demons and telling them what they want to hear are the keys to success. (She uses those exact terms.)
    • Oddly enough, any demon with the "old woman" personality does realize she's being brainwashed when you use Relax Spray on her. She still doesn't care.
    • Not to mention the answer to the question at the beginning of the game (Will the mission succeed?). Unless you do neutral.
    • Some demons pull this on YOU: they ask to join you and then will take advantage of your lowered guard. Catch them in the lie and they're impressed enough to let you go.
    • At one point a certain demon is described as a "beautiful and voluptuous goddess." Said demon? Mara.
    • Also the MC himself will receive Macca, items, and even demonic fighters just by telling them what they want to hear.
  • Blessed with Suck: The ultimate reward for Anthony's sidequests is a password that gives you a level 63 Gemori. However, although this Gemori is 3 levels higher, she has the exact same stats and skills as her random encounter version, and her default skillset is already mediocre to boot.
  • Blue-and-Orange Morality: In some SMT games, Law and Chaos are downplayed to "live freely" or "live for others." In this game, they're taken up to eleven: Law is "mindlessly worship the holy authority" and Chaos is "degenerate into bloodthirsty savages that are basically the same as demons." There's no way either of them could be construed as "good," because they take it way too far. Playing Neutral will have you feel like you're the Only Sane Man. The new endings in Redux slaps some sense into the alignment's representatives, allowing them to come up with a more beneficial approach to Law and Chaos.
  • Bolivian Army Ending: At the end of Deathtament, the Strike Team of the Gigantic that stayed in the Womb of Grief to rescue Jin are waiting for the ship to return, unaware that demons hiding among the crew blindsided the rest. The Womb itself slowly saps the strength of everything trapped within it and then petrifies them... but Louisa Ferre's ending narration implies that they may find an alternate path.
  • Boom, Headshot!: One particular gun has a skill called Headshot, which inflicts mild Gun damage with a chance of a One-Hit KO. The effect is simulated by applying a light chance of Curse-elemental damage.
  • Boring, but Practical:
    • The Rasetsu Vest, found in an EX Mission in the latter half of Sector Bootes, has no weaknesses but also gives immunity to Curse. It relieves the worries of dying to a stray Mudo spell, and is good enough to last you till Delphinus.
    • Mana Drain doesn't do damage, but saps away some MP and restores it to its caster. It becomes vital for most support or healer demons as it gives them something to do when they don't need to heal or buff, on top of allowing for self-sustenance in boss battles due to how much the strongest healing and support spells cost. Plus, fewer turns spent on having the protagonist chuck a Chakra Drop or Pot means more turns to attack. Later on it'll get replaced by Energy Drain which saps HP as well, letting the demon contribute to damage.
    • Due to an Action Initiative with item use, it's common to use the protagonist as the party's main healer, especially if he currently lacks the ability to hit the enemy's weaknesses. The game hands you enough Beads and Bead Chains that there's no reason not to expend them while having your demons do the heavy lifting. Having Tetraja, Dekaja, and Dekunda on demons also becomes superfluous when you've built up a nice stockpile of their respective Stones.
  • Boss Bonanza: As you go through Sector Fornax, you battle with a total of six new bosses — the reborn tyrants: Moloch, Mithra, Orcus, Asherah; Captain Jack, and Tiamat at the end.
  • Boss Corridor:
    • The penultimate floor of the final sector of the game has a very simple layout compared to the much more complex earlier floors. It's a straight path to the final floor where the Final Boss resides, and along the way you pass by several NPCs offering words of encouragement to bring the final act to a close.
    • The final floor of the Bonus Dungeon in Redux consists of a straight corridor leading up to the True Final Boss. The trope gets subverted when you trigger the sidequest that leads you to the new ultimate superbosses, leading you to explore the floor in its entirety.
  • Boss in Mook Clothing: Most demons that require the use of the Enemy Scan can qualify, as they're usually much stronger than other enemies in the area. As an added bonus, some of these demons can turn out to be Fiends such as Matador (remember him from Nocturne?), and Fiends are almost bosses in their own right.
    • To clarify, most of the fiends are generally hidden in areas where the enemies are notably lower in level. The first fiend that you will ever fight is David and he is both the first and the weakest that you fight. While he is not as much of a challenge as the other fiends, he is justified because you can CHOOSE when to fight him and he certainly is not scary when you bring the team that you used to beat Horkos. What becomes scarier is that once that happens you unlock the rest of them and they do not warn you on when they will appear.
      • You'll probably miss Matador the first time around (as he is not a horseman) and by the time you get back, you will not be that scared of him because he doesn't have many skills and his taunt skill will make him easier to defeat (if you have equipment and demons that void or even reflect phys, the job pretty much does itself for you).
      • The first real fiend that most will encounter is in Delphinus which is the White Rider. And boy when he appears you will be scared stiff. Not just that, he packs quite a punch too. He follows David's pattern of inflicting fear on your demons and then going all out. If you plan on fighting head on, White Rider can be even scarier than Asura because he can eject everyone in your party so that you will have to fight him alone (unless you waste turns recovering demons). The rest of the horsemen follow suit but special mention goes to the Pale Rider and the Trumpeter.
      • The Pale Rider shows up in Grus and his main strength is in his ability to attack you with heavy equipment until you die. You also better have something that nulls Curse because he loves to cast Mamudoon which is instant death with an 80% accuracy tag. Ouch. But he shouldn't need it as he can probably kill your party with bare blades anyway (unless you start buffing).
      • The Trumpeter has an incredible amount of health, and will instantly kill you unless you maintain a Tetraja effect. He also spams random status effects which are almost guaranteed to hit. When he gets low on health, he chain-casts the powerful spell Megidolaon. And to top it all off, he has no weaknesses unlike the rest of the Fiends, so you're in for a long fight.
  • Boss Room: Often pretty noticeable in the map. Sometimes even marked with a bright red "!" once you've discovered them.
    "Warning: Powerful demon detected..."
  • Boss Rush: In Sector Antlia on a New Game Plus, a strange device allows you to fight the sector endbosses back-to-back (as well as Pillar Zelenin, Soil Jimenez, and Mastema. Doing so allows you to grind levels and Macca like nobody's business in the span of minutes. Redux adds another one for the Womb of Grief bosses in the Ingress, though you have to go through the Sixth Sphere to reach it, and this one ends with Amon at his full power and Shekinah.
  • Boss Tease: Halfway through Sector Delphinus, you will find a statue of a demon. There isn't anything else you can do except progress through the story until the spirit returns to the statue, at which point you face Asura.
  • Boss Warning Siren:
    • When you're approaching a sector endboss, your Demonica alerts you and pinpoints the location of the boss room.
      • Subverted in Sector Bootes, when you approach Mithras's lair and get this warning, but when you enter, you're simply greeted with a speech and get escorted back to the Red Sprite afterwards. The warning doesn't trigger again when you approach Mithras's room a second time to assault him, but since you now know his location, it's not necessary.
    • Late into the game, in Sector Fornax, your Demonica warns you on multiple occasions that a powerful demon is nearby but cannot pinpoint their coordinates. Proceed further and sure enough, you face the One-Winged Angel form of one of the first four sector bosses.
  • Both Order and Chaos are Dangerous: While Law and Chaos have traditionally been represented by extremist factions, it's perhaps at its worst in this game. The forces of Law don't just want an iron-fist theocracy; they want to vaporize any and all thought that isn't unquestioning worship of God, by way of Zelenin's Mind Rape song. The forces of Chaos don't want just a world of freedom and personal choice; they want to reduce humanity to its primal instincts, primarily through the use of the Delphinus parasite. As a result, the Neutral path feels more like a Golden Ending more than anything else, with the message being "screw demons and angels, humanity is capable of fixing its own problems."
    • Redux however ends up subverting this with its + endings. While all new endings still have the humanistic message in the end, the + endings present it in a way that still incorporates the values of the Law and Chaos factions.
  • Bottomless Magazines: Well, your gun's magic costs you MP, but otherwise it's got infinite ammo; for its default attack, it requires 0 MP, so you effectively do have an unlimited amount of regular bullets.
  • Bragging Rights Reward:
    • In line with Shin Megami Tensei tradition, beating the game's superbosses lets you fuse them for your own use, but by that point you don't have anything worth using them on, barring perhaps the final bosses.
    • The Chakra Elixir, obtained after beating the base game's superboss, is a reusable Chakra Drop, ensuring that you'll never run out of MP on your travels. However, by this point you've gathered enough forma to create more Chakra Drops than you'll ever need, and that's not before going into the stronger MP recovery items.
    • Beating the ultimate bosses of Redux grants the player the Magellan Sub-App, which fully displays the map at all times. However, it's a superfluous reward, because by that point the player is likely to already have made the Columbus Sub-App, which makes mapping incredibly convenient. The Magellan Sub-App doesn't even contribute to map completion for the game's own Cartography Sidequest.
  • Breaking Old Trends: The new endings in Redux are tonally the opposite of the original endings, and ending tones in general in Shin Megami Tensei. Generally, in Strange Journey in particular, the Law and Chaos endings tend to be rather cynical depictions of their alignments, with Neutral serving as the Golden Ending for humanity. The new Law and Chaos endings are the happiest Law and Chaos endings the series has ever had, with Humanity thriving within the context of the respective alignment, but it's new Neutral ending is one of the most cynical, with the hero choosing to remain on the moon, knowing that the Schwarzwelt will inevitably return again and again until one day humanity learns to change its nature, with no real indication that will ever happen.
  • Breaking the Fourth Wall:
    • If you attempt to talk to a Dark-aligned demon (which cannot be recruited through normal negotiation) who has the "little kid" personality, they'll admit outright that the only reason they won't talk to you is because the game mechanics for Dark demons won't let them.
    • The hero does this in a subtle way. If you talk to Jack Frost or Pyro Jack, you have the special answer "Mascots aren't scary". Jack Frost knows he is ATLUS' mascot, so he throws himself into your party (you can't say no to him) to get even more famous. Pyro Jack knows he isn't the mascot, and will get angry and attack you.
      • In fact, any answers regarding yourself as a Protagonist (which can happen with any demon) can get major points with either Jack. It's still subjected to RNG whether it'll get good or bad responses, but the Jack Bros. rarely get angry with this topic.
  • Broken Aesop: The Neutral+ ending in Redux is one of the less-liked endings, as it runs counter to the humanist themes of SMT's neutrality. Because humanity doesn't learn its lesson, the Schwarzwelt returns. Rather than trying to help humanity correct itself to prevent the return of the Schwarzwelt, the "solution" the protagonist and Alex takes is to become an immortal being and destroy it each time it appears. Humanity doesn't improve, doesn't forge its own future, and ends up relying on another immortal being for their safety. Some say this is intended as a cynical response to the blind faith in humanity expressed in the original Neutral ending, serving as a contrast to the new idealistic endings for the Law/Chaos routes and their heavy cynical original paths. There's also the possibility that humanity learning their lesson means nothing; the Schwarzwelt will keep appearing just because the demons want to take the Earth away from humanity.
  • Broken Bridge:
    • Exploration through the sectors is routinely gated by locked doors, and the only way to open them is with Main App upgrades, developed from rare forma obtained by progressing or completing plot-mandatory Main Missions. On a couple of occasions, invisible enemies prevent your progress until you upgrade your Enemy Search App to see and beat them.
    • Sector Horologium gets a little egregious regarding the initial elevator that leads straight to the sector's boss. After the route lock, the elevator remains functional in the Chaos route so you can visit the boss and receive your next mission. In the Law and Neutral routes, though, the elevator mysteriously stops functioning to force you to progress a similar mission. After it's completed, a miniboss then destroys the elevator, forcing you to explore the rest of the sector.
  • Brutal Bonus Level:
    • In the original, Eastern Grus, which is only accessible on a New Game Plus via the Angels' Phase A Sanctum. A large, grueling extension of Grus's basement floors filled with teleporters and traps, leading up to Alilat. If you get Enemy Search C in the final area and beat Alilat, you get to fight the strongest boss in the game: the Demiurge.
    • In Redux, the Womb of Grief is a Labyrinth of Amala type example, acting as an extended dungeon you progress through as you go through the game, with its own bosses to go with it, though like Amala, there are endings that go with it. A straighter example in the vein of the still-present Eastern Grus is the Lower Layer of the Empyrean Ascent. While simply a boss corridor on the first playthrough, Louisa Ferre will be present in a conspicuous alcove on later playthroughs and take you to the rest of the floor to fight her faction's traditional generals.
  • But Thou Must!:
    • Played straight and subverted in a hilarious way on a mission for Anthony. When he says that his luck with women is horrible and asks for your thoughts, you are given the following choices: "I don't know...", "If you ask me..." and "Maybe...". The subversion is that all three choices all lead up to him changing his mind and asking you not to tell him because his self esteem would be shot.
    • The last question you must answer when you first get the Demonica is: "You have been sent to the Schwarzwelt, where conditions are expected to be harsh. Yet you have advanced equipment, a strong ship, the latest tech, and dependable comrades. Will the Schwarzwelt investigation mission succeed?". The only valid answer is "Yes".
    • Justified at the alignment lock. If you are too devoutly Lawful or Chaotic, Ubergestalt Gore declares you a lost cause and immediately attacks without even bothering to ask you what your ideals are.
    • Your final decision at the end of each path, including the new endings in Redux, do not even give you an option to refuse to finish your mission.
  • Call a Hit Point a "Smeerp": What would be called an item shop in other RPGs is instead called a fabrication lab. You can spend Macca—the franchise's staple currency and energy source—to manufacture (i.e. buy) items, and dispose (i.e. sell) items to get some Macca out of them. This explains why there's No Hero Discount; the Red Sprite needs the Macca to offset the energy used to produce goods for its crew.
  • Can't Argue with Elves: Or Demons or Angels. Both sides delight in slinging well-placed barbs towards our violent tendencies, frivolousness, greed and wastefulness, as opposed to them who are in tune with nature and strong in the case of the former and wise, polite and moral in the case of the latter. Surely they're justified in their judgement of our poor, clumsy, violent, weak, stupid species... right? Wrong, and the key to getting the good ending is making sure you don't get suckered in, call them out on their extremism, and then whooping both sides for the sake of the human race and the one thing it has that they could never understand: the power to change.
  • Cast from Hit Points: Averted! Unlike most previous MegaTen games released in the past ten or so years, physical attacks in Strange Journey run off of MP, not HP. Though this means that your physical attackers won't kill themselves by punching the enemy, it also means they might not be able to do their special moves too often before you need to hit them with a Chakra Drop.
  • Cerebus Retcon:
    • Redux pulls one for the original Neutral Ending, the only one where humanity didn't get brainwashed or reduced to the level of animals. Turns out all that effort spent closing the Schwarzwelt went to waste when it manifested again, this time with nobody to stop it... except for Alex, who went back in time to undo that whole mess by killing the main character. The new Neutral Ending properly puts an end to the Schwarzwelt's threat, but now the immortal MC is tasked with destroying each instance of the Schwarzwelt as it recurs, and humanity ends up relying on another immortal being for their safety.
    • There's another one for Law, which was already a horrifying route to begin with. It turns out that not only does Law destroy humanity's minds and leave them endlessly praising God, it doesn't even work. Half of humanity resists Zelenin's song, leading the Brainwashed and Crazy ones to commit genocide on an unprecedented scale to build God's Kingdom. Once again, Alex has to go back and prevent humanity from destroying itself.
  • Character Alignment: Invoked. It's even Color-Coded for Your Convenience. Blue is Lawful, red is Chaotic, white is Neutral. It's important for several reasons; if you strike an enemy's weakness, all party members of the same alignment smack the enemy for bonus damage. It's also difficult for a Lawful or Chaotic player character to recruit a demon of the opposing alignment (they're ambivalent if you're Neutral, and Neutral demons don't care what alignment you are). That said, once you've got them working for you, there's nothing stopping you from having party members of every alignment. Due to the fact that it shuffles weaknesses on a whim and it has an attack that will return all demons of one alignment to your Demonica, this is recommended for the final boss of the Law and Neutral routes. The True Final Boss of Redux is even worse, as it can repel all attacks of a certain alignment.
    • Even Jimenez and Zelenin's Demonicas are telling you their alignment. And their skin color, too.
  • Chekhov's Gun:
    • You didn't seriously think the Gigantic would just stay gone, did you?
    • You will encounter a statue of Asura before the demon manifests in it. And you know you'll have to deal with it before long...
  • Clothes Make the Superman: The Demonica suit, which is the actual thing gaining all the levels and allowing you to speak with demons. In fact, in this game, demons are completely invisible to the naked eye without the Demon Summoning Program! Taking off the suit in the Schwarzwelt is a sure way to die, too; it may look like an Earthly environment, but the demons forgot to reproduce that pesky thing called "air."
  • Coincidental Broadcast: As the Schwarzwelt Joint Project looks at pictures captured by their probes, the broadcast shows crimes related to the sector they show. Antlia is shown with a war with Eastern Europe, Carina is shown with lootings in Central and South America, Bootes is shown with sex crimes in Tokyo, and Delphinus is shown with pollution in Central Asia. This is one of the reasons they initially think there's some kind of transmission error when they see what looks like Earth-like terrain in what's supposed to be an alien dimension.
  • Continuity Nod:
    • As with recent Shin Megami Tensei games prior to this, the first mandatory demon you recruit (and who gives you the whole Negotiation Tutorial in the first place) is a friendly Pixie.
    • The "recipe" for fusing Shiva should be old hat to MegaTen veterans: Barong + Rangda.
    • In the Mara's desire EX mission, Mara says that she will be patient and wait for the protagonist to beat Seraph, since she doesn't want to be turned into a slime again.
    • Of course, there's also the whole endgame, which has the Chaos Hero turning into a half-demon and the Law Hero transformed into an angel.
    • The Three Wise Men are basically Michael, Uriel, and Raphael working incognito, with Mastema a less likable Satan Expy, making Gabriel rather suspicious in her absence.
    • Slime's Compendium entry refers to the demon and human realms as Atziluth and Assiah.
    • Orias, the very first boss of the game, was also the very first boss of Shin Megami Tensei I.
    • The ultimate Neutral demon, Masakado, nulls expel and curse while resisting everything else except gun and almighty. This is a nod to the Masakados Magatama in Nocturne, which nulled everything except Almighty. The Gun element did not exist in Nocturne, which is why gun attacks work normally on Masakado.
    • The hallway leading to the Demiurge, complete with a voice speaking throughout, is a reference to those traditionally preceding YHVH.
    • The Womb of Grief in Redux is structured largely like another remake dungeon: the Labyrinth of Amala. It's completely optional and divided into mini-dungeons that open up as you progress through the game, and like the True Demon ending, this game's new endings require you to complete it. There's also the case of the Third Sphere, which runs on a gimmick reminiscent of the Dante Tag sequence from Amala's Third Kalpa.
  • Cool Ship: All ships sent to investigate the Schwartzwelt. All five are several-story tall tanks with VTOL capabilities, an obscene amount of infrastructure supporting them and their crew (bleeding-edge sickbays, construction laboratories capable of mantaining Powered Armor suits, processing new, hitherto unknown forms of matter and creating incredible new technology, plasma shields, nav A.I.s, engines that require a Tokamak reactor only to get started), dimensional-crossing technology and plasma armor. The most advanced and retrofitted of the line, the Lightning, even has limited reality-warping technology. Of course, it's too energy-consuming to even allow it to move while in use, but still...
  • Combination Attack: This is what Demon Co-Op attacks basically are. When the player or their allied demon inflicts damage to an enemy demon that they are weak to or inflicts a Critical Hit to them, the player's demons of the same alignment gang up on a single enemy and deal Non-Elemental damage to them. Abusing this mechanic is cruicial when fighting against Shekinah in her second boss phase.
  • Copy Protection: Almost to EarthBound (1994) levels. Playing this game on emulator or a flash cart results in no random encounters, which makes proceeding through the game difficult. Even if you managed to get past that, the game performs a different save routine resulting in corrupt save data, which is then deleted upon attempting to load it! Get past that, and the game begrudgingly lets you play, but still crashes at random every so often.
  • Cosmetic Award: In the menu, you can find a list of various things you've accomplished, an amusing description to go along with it, and a title or "medal" case that serves as nothing more than bragging rights. Some of the things you have to pull off are impressive, like beating hidden bosses. Others are silly, like slamming into the walls 255 times (which you'll likely do a lot by accident anyway).
  • Cosmic Egg: While it's never stated whether or not the universe itself hatched from them, the Cosmic Eggs of the game have the power to remake the Earth as a world of absolute Law or Chaos. They can also be detonated in order to destroy the Schwarzwelt instead.
  • Crapsack World: Although not immediately obvious, you eventually realize that this game's version of Earth has serious problems even without the Schwarzwelt bearing down on it.
  • Crazy-Prepared: In some instances, Arthur brings up tech that the crew had saved for just such an occasion e.g. "mental parasites"; given where you are, being that prepared is a necessity. One of the ships even has a nuke on board.
    • Lampshaded by Tyler: "We've got a way to fight diseases no one has ever seen? Wow. We're so prepared it's scary."
  • Creepy Child: Wouldn't be a MegaTen game without Alice. Doesn't looking at her skinning, salting and devouring a living rabbit make you want to Die For Her?
  • Crystal Spires and Togas: The World of Law gives off this impression.

    D-G 
  • Dark World: The Schwarzwelt is this right down to the namenote .
  • Dark Is Evil: Technically, Light and Dark aren't even fighting in this game; a "Dark" demon can be encountered and fought but can't be negotiated with (so to get them, you also need to create them via Fusion). Light and Dark demons can be either Chaos or Law-based, too. That said, Dark demons and humans mostly share a mutual hatred, which is why they refuse to talk to you in most instances.
  • Death World: If the demon-filled hell gate doesn't kill you, maybe the thousand-meter-tall plasma storm surrounding the gate will. And make sure you have your helmet on at all times. And don't eat the food! And mind the demons!
  • Degraded Boss: Orias. Normally, he should be around level 27, but when you first encounter him, he's level 7.
  • Developer's Foresight: Your first encounter with Alex in Redux is a Hopeless Boss Fight as she massacres the protagonist and the party before they can even move. If the party survives the initial onslaught, the game eventually reveals that she has infinite health and unlimited turns to go to town on your party, preventing you from ever trying to defeat her. And for targets immune to phys and gun, she unleashes a guaranteed Almighty instakill.
  • Diegetic Interface: The game's interface is actually part of the suit.
  • Difficulty Levels: Redux adds difficulty levels: Casual, Standard, Expert, and Impossible in increasing difficulty. The last of these is only available on a New Game Plus.
  • Digital Piracy Is Evil: When in the second stage of conversing with a Data-personality demon, such as Sudama, it may ask you what the mask of the Demonica is for. If you answer "It analyzes ROMs":
    "That is, taboo of taboos! And this, is punishment!"
    The demon suddenly attacked!
  • Disc-One Final Dungeon: Sector Eridanus. Particularly notable in that it does not cause an Interface Spoiler since you get the opportunity to explore almost its entire map. Not to mention the traps. Oh dear god, the traps.
  • Disc-One Nuke:
    • Oni is one of the earliest examples, being recruitable as soon as the second floor of Antlia, at level 8. One of their attacks is Fang Breaker, a physical skill which reduces offenses of the target, effectively functioning like an offensive Tarunda with a marginally cheaper MP cost, making its one of the best possible ways to beat the upcoming first sector boss. Once it overstayed its welcome, Oni's demon source offers Tarukaja, and can be rigged to have Fang Breaker which allows you to carry over the move through inheritance or source if you want to.
    • Zan-Ei is alvailable from Jueyuan which is a level 10 demon, 2 levels above Oni. Normally, its a significant increase in damage when compared to Fang Breaker, and is comparable to the best physical moves in the game, but when used under New Moon, a condition that is easily rigged for important boss fights, Zan-Ei does 50% more damage, making it stronger than most random multi-hit physical moves on average. Only something like Madness Crush beats it, and that skill is earliest available from level 50+ demons. As with Fang Breaker above, Jueyuan doesn't have Zan-Ei as a natural skill on its demon source, forcing you to rig it to pass the move through the source.
    • The Frost Cannon has great power with skills corresponding to 3 elements and can be obtained from an easy EX mission early in the third sector. It can last you until very late game, even up to the 7th sector.
    • Around Bootes you can also fuse Morax with a source to cover up his weakness, and the special fusion and source leave the possibility of him having all four elements.
    • Shiisaa is level 16 but comes packing War Cry, equivalent to two uses of Tarunda and letting you defang bosses in one or two moves, as opposed to needing to wail on them with Fang Breaker for a while. Although this MP cost is steep, it can easily become a mainstay of your party thanks to its habits of showing up in D-Sources, and will only overstay its welcome once you find Luster Candy and Debilitate.
    • High Pixie is obtainable at level 19, comes with Bufula and a gun skill and innately inherits Magaru and Mazio from her components. With the assistance of D-Sources she can also be imparted Agilao or Maragi, giving her access to six different damage sources for setting off Co-Op attacks, making her a keeper until level 30 or so. Her D-Source also contains Mediarama and Recovery Boost, letting you turn a demon of your choice into a potent healer.
    • Black Frost and Frost Ace are level 30 and 34 respectively, and both come with Bufudyne (and Black Frost has Mamudoon); few other demons around those levels have high-level -dyne spells. In addition, neither one has any weaknesses and both have several resists and immunities. Black Frost's D-Source contains both Agidyne and Bufudyne, lending extra elemental flexibility to the caster you use it on.
    • The Manshonyaga is greatly overpowered, mostly due to its insanely accurate Stone Bullet skill — and very, very few enemies (most of them bosses or Fiends) are immune to Petrification. While the Jackal Gun offers additional gun skills and better base power, it also demands the player hunt the rare White Rider.
    • The Uber-Pixie you can get through a Password provided by Atlus themselves starts at Lv 1, but has a magic stat of 10 (normally, Pixies have a 3) and a luck stat of 99 (compared to the usual 5). On top of this, it has the spells Megidolaon and Mediarahan for heavy damage on every enemy and full HP Recovery for every ally respectively! Granted, you have to pay a very huge amount of Macca to summon it from your Demon Compendium, but once you can afford it and level it up accordingly, hooooo boy... The password itself is: Madoka Ueno in the original and Stay Faithful in Redux.
    • D-Sources can provide very strong skills ahead of time if you take your time in fully analyzing your demons. Examples include second-tier skills as early as level 10 (e.g. Zionga from Hamsa and Bufula from Apsaras and Gremlin), -dyne spells at level 30 (Agidyne, Bufudyne, and Mamudoon from Black Frost), Luster Candy and Debilitate at level 40 (Vivian and Thoth respectively) and raw physical power (Charge and Berserker God from Momunofu, Grand Tack from Pabilsag). The kicker probably goes to Ammut's and Girimehkala's D-Sources, which pack Victory Cry and Enduring Soul and are accessible as early as level 55 and 57 respectively.
  • Doomed by Canon: The Deathtament spinoff is about the crew of the Gigantic, which is discovered to be inoperable and deserted near the end of the game. The end of the manga shows most of its crew being slaughtered by demons hiding among them while they were escaping the Womb of Grief; the only surviving members are the Strike Team who stayed behind expecting its return...
  • Door to Before: Hidden doors opened with the Gate Search Main App can serve as shortcuts for repeat trips, but they can only be unlocked from one side.
  • Down in the Dumps: Sector Delphinus, a sprawling and poisonous garbage dump full of moving floors, pitch-black hallways, a nasty parasite that drives those infected by it to violent insanity, and some fairly nasty demons. Ironically, this sector is ruled by Asura, who intends to "polish" the human spirit by reducing the entire world to a state of savage barbarism. In the game's story, riots have started in South Asia due to the catastrophic spread of pollution.
  • Dual Boss:
    • The third challenge from the Heralds in Eridanus is to fight both of them at once with a team whose average level is below 45.
    • In Redux, if you beat Maria but don't choose to help Alex, she taps into her demonic heritage and summons Amon and Shaytan to her side.
  • Dump Stat:
    • For your Demonica, Magic. You'd expect it to influence how powerful your Gun skills are, seeing as Gun skills are basically your suit's version of magic spells, but that's actually the domain of the Strength stat. Magic instead influences how powerful your attack items are, which don't come very often and thus can fall into Too Awesome to Use territory easily, while MP can be recharged onboard the Red Sprite and at healing stations in the field for a small fee.
    • At higher levels, your dump stat becomes Agility for a number of reasons. Since your character's damage output is limited by his inability to use magic or skills, it is often the demons that will be pulling the weight of the party around, meaning that his primary use becomes the item caddy (where every item has a maximum stock of 99). Since items have turn priority, it doesn't matter how slow he is, he will still go first. Since a missed attack carries no extra penalties in this game (as this game does not use the Press Turn system used in mainline games from Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne onwards and Digital Devil Saga), the main character has no reason to invest in accuracy unless he really wants to be an active participant for damage. The last and probably the most important reason is that with the way armor works, it is entirely possible to have your character take next to no damage from attacks simply by stacking magic and vitality. By the end of the game, the only stats that really matter to you is Magic (magic defense), vitality (physical defense and HP) and Luck (survival).
  • Earth Is a Battlefield: While the upper portion of Antila is a Slippy-Slidey Ice World supposedly set deep in the bowels of the Antarctic, much of the lower levels of the sector are set in a burning urban landscape ruled by Tyrant Morax, who believes the best way to kill humans is to mimic how they kill each other: through modern warfare. One character even comments the area looks like it came out of a World War instead of a more recent conflict, and in the game's story, a prolonged war is going on in Eastern Europe.
  • Eldritch Location: The Schwarzwelt is an exponentially-expanding quantum... hoozit. It is more specifically:
    • Negative Space Wedgie: An exponentially-increasing quantum gate thinger...
    • Ironic Hell: ... a monument to all your sins...
    • Another Dimension: ... and an alternate land that exists alongside the Earth where Mem Aleph resides when it isn't engulfing the Earth. It takes the ideal energy of the Earth and sentient lifeforms that evolve into it to become a beautiful realm, but becomes a Death World as the negative energies created by polluting the Earth come into it.
  • Encounter Bait / Encounter Repellant: Both abilities exist as sub-apps in the Demonica, each with two levels of effectiveness: Enemy Welcome and Enemy Challenge for the former, and Enemy Begone and Enemy Lullaby for the latter. After beating the game once, you also unlock Red Carpet, which turns off random encounters entirely. Redux adds Enemy Banish, obtainable very early by completing an EX Mission in the Womb of Grief, and can be obtained on the first playthrough. This app prevents encounters with enemies a certain number of levels below you, making it functionally identical to Red Carpet if you grind enough.
  • "End of the World" Special: Subverted in the neutral ending; you have Arthur destroy the Schwarzwelt instead. Played straight in the other endings; you throw the Cosmic Eggs into the Vanishing Point and create a world of Law/Chaos.
  • Enemy Chatter: Shin Megami Tensei's signature Demon Negotiation is taken above and beyond the series' standards. Particularly amusing ones often cross into Funny Moments, such as scaring "young women"-type demons with ghost stories or getting a legendary man-eating serpent to protect you after convincing it you're a beautiful woman.
  • Enemy-Detecting Radar: The Demonica HUD includes a moving bar at the top of your field of vision: blue for standard situations, yellow for "alert: demons nearby," and red for "attack is imminent."
  • Enemy Scan: Another function of the Demonica suit. However, in order to fully analyze a demon, including type, weaknesses, HP, skills, et al, you must encounter them and defeat them several times; if they're already in your party, their actions can also be analyzed by the Demonica and boost the scan rate.
  • Energy Economy: It's not certain if the demons regard Macca as energy, but since you're humans and therefore completely outside the demonic market, energy is almost all it's good for (besides bribing opposing demons to join your side). See No Hero Discount below.
  • Eternal Recurrence:
    • This is not the first Schwarzwelt to wipe an advanced civilization off the face of the Earth... and unless something is done about its origin, it won't be the last. Or, worse, it will be the last, because it will have succeeded in its original task of forcibly kicking the Law "taint" out for all eternity. Naturally, the Law Path has its own ideas on how to end the cycle.
    • It takes a bit of thought to realize it, but the first four Sectors and their ring connection are what demons see as an inevitable recursion in humanity. Antlia: Warfare; subjugation, conquest, and appropriation of something/someone else. Bootes: Victors turn their attention to unnecessary luxuries, since nothing can actually imperil their survival. Carina: The luxurious begin extracting luxury ingredients and transforming them at breakneck pace. Delphinus: All you've got now is worthless, unusable waste... not even necessities. How to get those necessities? Easy—back to Antlia's warfare, which leads to Bootes again... Given that Eridanus and Fornax aren't so much symbolic as the Schwarzvelt's control center, and Grus is a melange of the ABCD cycle components, we have Horologium as Mem Aleph's idea of a solution to this Vicious Cycle. Namely, make existence so frenetic and harsh that nothing can even slightly calm down to begin thinking about luxuries. Basically, an irrevocable Death World on par with Greenscale's dominion, crossed with Antlia.
      • Eridanus actually is symbolic in that it represents how some demons like Ouroboros Maia see the new world would be like: A perfect garden where science and nature coexist without humans around to trample it.
  • Evil Counterpart: Jack Squad. They even use pitch black Demonicas in contrast to the Team's golden ones.
  • Evil Makeover: Arguable on the "evil" part, but par for the course amongst Shin Megami Tensei games. A couple of times, you see an important character leave behind their humanity and they gain a radically new appearance which is simultaneously badass and off-putting.
  • Evil Twin: Doppelgangers, true to their name, are nothing more than grinning shadows of the protagonist.
  • Expy:
    • Arthur (see Shout-Out below) to HAL 9000. Especially at the end of the Neutral path, when he confesses fear before performing his Heroic Sacrifice. By the same token, the ascended Gore is Arthur's counterpart —an expy of David Bowman.
    • While it's in the same game as what it's an Expy to, Demonee-ho is a joke on the main character. Sort of like Raiho.
    • The Schwarzwelt Investigation Team, from their Demonicas to their transports, are a thinly-veiled update to the Anti-Demon Corps from Devilman —the latter's Devil Busters are heavily-armored, helmeted soldiers trained and outfitted specifically to combat demons using the latest technologies and weaponry, and their "Demon Hunter Cars" have almost the same exact wedge-shape as the Investigation Team's vehicles.
      • Even further, the Anti-Demon Corps' research facilities and headquarters performed the exact same kind of horrific experiments with demons and devilmen as Jack Squad's crew did, leading the protagonist to the same conclusion that Humans Are the Real Monsters.
  • Extreme Omnivore: Horkos, rather befitting the fact that Sector Carina manifests as an outsize shopping mall. There are numerous conveyor belts ferrying a constant stream of sides of meat to unseen kitchens, which are never enough to slake Horkos's hunger. And the first time you see him, he's busily eating the Elve. In battle, he may take a grisly bite out of you to restore his health (Taking a Bite), or he'll use Grocery Run to call up one of his minions, so he can eat them. And his minions are demon pigs, too. Do not obstruct his meals if you know what's good for you.
  • Face–Heel Turn: Not that Jack's Squad were friendly allies to begin with, but at least there was some cooperation and willingness to help the Red Sprite's crew as long as it didn't interfere with their goals.
  • Faceless Goons: What most members of the Strike Team are reduced to, thanks to their Demonica helmets. You may know their names, and they may sometimes have individual field sprites and battle stances, but you'll only see the faces of a select few. It seems to work against them, as many Strike Team members end up getting killed rather quickly.
  • The Fair Folk: There's a recurring series of side-missions where you help a Fairy Pixie build a Fairy village. These ones are generally pretty nice to you since you recruited them; enemy fairies, on the other hand, can be very mischevous and cruel.
  • Faux Affably Evil: Captain Jack.
  • Final Boss:
    • Mem Aleph on the Law and Neutral paths, Pillar Zelenin on the Chaos path.
    • In Redux, should Maria be defeated in the Womb of Grief and you still opt for either the original Law or Neutral endings, Amon, Shaytan, and a demonically strengthened Alex fight together after the original Final Boss's defeat. They still do this on Chaos, but are fought before Pillar Zelenin.
  • Final-Exam Boss: While not quite the final boss, Ouroboros in its second form will require a pretty much flawless defense to defeat, as it possesses insta-kill magic, an elemental attack, a heavy physical attack, and can inflict every single status ailment.
  • Fission Mailed: After briefly scouting out the first part of Bootes in Redux, Alex appears, murders the player's party, and leaves them to die. The usual Game Over sequence instead transitions to a cutscene of the protagonist keeling over in a pool of his blood, but is saved from the brink of death by Demeter, which sets up the introduction of the Womb of Grief.
  • Five-Token Band: There's the main protagonist (Asian in the Japanese version, Caucasian in the NA version), Jimenez (Hispanic), Zelenin (Caucasian), and Gore (black).
  • For Science!:
    • Once they've gotten over their reservations and initial fear, Irving and Chen are positively thrilled at devising new and exciting equipment with the Forma (Schwarzwelt-borne materials) you scavenge for them.
    • On a less pleasant note, Jack's Squad.
  • Four Is Death: The Schwarzwelt is ruled by four "Kings" and four "Mothers".
  • From Bad to Worse: How the Schwarzwelt expedition kicks off. And how it continues afterwards.
  • Fun with Acronyms: DEMOuntable Next Integrated Capability Armor
  • Fusion Dance:
    • As per Shin Megami Tensei tradition, you can fuse demons with one another to create new ones, which can inherit skills from their progenitors. However, since demons don't learn skills by leveling up in this game (all they do is replace existing skills or drop their Demon Source), you can feel free to fuse to your heart's content.
    • Jimenez does one with Bugaboo to save its life.
  • Future Badass: The Protagonist in the conclusion of the Madness of Yggdrasil EX Mission.
  • Gaia's Vengeance: This is what the Schwarzwelt is initially assumed to be—an onslaught of (later-proven-to-be-demonic) antibodies to protect Earth from human corruption. Afterwards, the Schwarwelt will rebuild the Earth after consuming it as revealed in the Chaos route.
  • Gaiden Game: One of two direct spinoffs to the mainline Shin Megami Tensei games, the other being Shin Megami Tensei if.... If however is revealed to be set in the same timeline as Devil Summoner and Persona, where the events of Shin Megami Tensei I never happened and the Earth was spared an apocalypse. Strange Journey meanwhile is a Military Science Fiction set 20 Minutes into the Future in its own contained universe, without much connection to other games.
  • Gameplay and Story Integration:
    • While searching the remains of the Elve for part after defeating Horkos, Jimenez manages to recover Bugaboo's forma/D Source, and uses it with the data registered in his Compendium to resurrect Bugaboo offscreen. He even mentions that because he's using the Compendium data, he has to teach Bugaboo English again.
    • When enemies hit you in the middle of a cutscene, the battle HUD shows up and everyone actually takes damage. Granted, it's not a big deal in terms of gameplay since you can just heal the damage and it isn't lethal, but it drives home the point that you're dealing with an entity you do not want to mess with.
    • When you fight Zelenin in the Neutral and Chaos routes, one of her attacks is the Mind Control song that Mastema has such big plans for. It, naturally, inflicts Charm.
    • Averted when trying to speak to Jack's Squad soldiers in combat. Doing so might net you insults and hostile remarks, because you're using your Demon Summoning program to speak to the them when you use the talk command, instead of talking to them normally. Jack's soldiers are all humans and can communicate with the player without having to be in their suits, as they are only fought in an environment that is safe for humans.
    • In the battle with Asura, the Hate Plague he's been inflicting on your squadmates takes the form of Asura Roga, an attack that inflicts Rage upon random party members.
    • In Redux, Demeter says in her first scene that she's so weak she would lose to a Pixie. You can fuse her in a New Game Plus, and not only does she lack any offensive moves naturally, but her sole weakness is Fire, Pixie's element of choice in this game.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation:
    • While otherwise averted with the Jack's Squad members, the game treats them as separate from their demons for combat purposes, meaning that you can still talk to their demons. All of the demons they use are Dark, so you can't negotiate with them, but "friendly demon" reactions still occur...
    • Officially, the protagonist is in command of the Strike Team after Gore's death; while Arthur does serve as mission analyst and advisor, the protagonist has to be the one to decide whether to accept Arthur's advice and to carry out the orders. However, you, the player, don't really have much say in whether to have your character accept or reject Arthur's analyses (to be fair, it's not like other options that aren't "give up" exist when you're in the middle of an Negative Space Wedgie that humans know nothing about) and there's no squad mechanic for your fellow human soldiers in this game, so in terms of gameplay you're Authority in Name Only. The closest you get to that role is locking the game into one of the Alignment-Based Endings, which will determine what happens to the Red Sprite and its crew.
  • Game of Nim: One EX Mission consists of winning at a counting-based variant of this game. Facing one of your crewmates you play "Don't Count Thirty". The solution is to control every fourth number—1, 5, 9, 13, 17, 21, 25, and 29.
  • Gender Bender:
    • Asura/Asherah.
    • Louisa Ferre (who looks strangely like Alice)...
    • Mara, of all things. Looks the same, just claims to be a lady.
    • At the end of Redux, the Three Wise Men fuse into Shekinah, a female.
  • Genre Shift: While most SMT trappings are present, Strange Journey switches up the setting with a military science fiction theme in Antarctica instead of Urban Fantasy, and the focus is on working adults instead of youth. The major change in focus and setting, despite the game having the trappings of mainline SMT is partially why it's not labelled as SMT IV as originally intended. The actual Shin Megami Tensei IV would return to Urban Fantasy and having teenagers getting their bonds and world views shattered.
  • "Get Back Here!" Boss: Horkos flees each time you hit him with the Horkos Buster.
  • Gilded Cage: The Law faction's endgame is the effective conversion of the entire planet into one of these, a world of peace and happiness, but also no dissent or free will, period.
  • Glass Cannon: Asura can kill you like a traditional MegaTen boss can, but will go down quickly if you can avoid that.
  • Glowing Eyes of Doom: As a callback to the early Super Famicom games, many demon sprites have these, usually flashing red and black or red and white.
  • Go Wait Outside: There's a dwarf in one area who will make you special weapons if you bring him the right forma, but it takes him a set number of moon phases to finish.
  • God Is Evil:
    • YHVH Himself doesn't put in an appearance, but the Three Wise Men are presumably acting on His orders, and they aren't any nicer than he is in earlier installments. There are hints they're actually acting on their own initiative as YHVH has been broken into pieces and the only one remaining is too weak to do anything, but, aside from SMT II, angels don't usually have a history of that in SMT.
    • Two New Game Plus quests more than imply that Metatron and Demiurge are Pieces of God who lost to the Mothers before the story began. The Piece that takes Metatron's form even says that God forgot his love for humans and humans stopped believing him in return. However, after fusing with the Demiurge piece it shows this God hasn't changed at all. Luckily you have a chance to seal him away for good thanks to a mysterious female entity who is not aligned with Law or Chaos. This leads to the question of whether the Angels are actually acting on their own agenda or were following the Piece that took Metatron's form.
    • Mastema and Louisa/Lucifer imply there are actually two distinct incarnations of God, one which was worshipped by humans and ruled the Earth before being taken apart by the Mother Goddesses, while another is the one whom Mastema seeks blessings from and Lucifer defied, who predates humanity. Schwarzwelt Reminiscence artbook has the game developers explain the God which works through the Three Wise Men are born from the will of the Earth just like Mem Aleph, while Mastema and angels around him are visitors, alien to this world; meaning both Lucifer and the other God are as well. Whether or not this one is evil or not is unclear; Lucifer claims the madness of this God was what created humanity. The Updated Re Release muddles things further by having the Three Wise Men reform into Shekinah (a feminine expression of YHVH), who claims to exterminate humans and protect Earth on behalf of God/Great Will; but the Metatron/Demiurge fusion also becomes far more reasonable and even join you in defeating Shekinah. All in all, this trope is ultimately zigzagged.
  • Golden Ending: The Neutral ending is the most sane and optimistic of all three endings, with the Schwarzwelt being obliterated and Earth returning to normal. And this is on top of Neutral being the Path of Most Resistance (and having a bullshit Final Boss), as per SMT tradition. See Nightmare Fuel in the YMMV tab to see how the Law and Chaos endings fare in comparison.
    • The Law+ and Chaos+ endings in Redux are much more optimistic than their vanilla counterparts. The Neutral+ ending, on the other hand, is more bittersweet.
  • Gratuitous German:
    • The Schwarz (black) welt (world). One demon conversation has the demon translate it as its probable intended meaning, "Black Horizon," which the Schwartzwelt certainly is; a zone of blackness enveloping the Earth.
    • There's also Commander Gore, who becomes the "ubergestalt."
    • There's an endgame almighty-gun skill called Freischutz, which means "The Marksman" or "The Freeshooter".
  • Greater-Scope Villain: The unnamed client corporation that hired Captain Jack. We know they exist and are presumably corrupt, but nothing else is ever revealed about them.
  • Green Aesop: A driving force of the entire plot. Earth at the very start of the game has turned into a hellhole of pollution, famine, and insanity, and this is highlighted in the sectors Carina, Delphinus, and Eridanus. Carina reflects mankind's greedy and endless desire for resources and wealth, Delphinus reflects the results of mankind's greed, depicting endless trash and pollution, and Eridanus depicts what Earth will be like when the Schwarzwelt removes the humans from Earth. It also is an important part of the endings. The Neutral ending implies that the surviving crew will have the responsibility of teaching mankind about what they witnessed, so the Schwarzwelt doesn't manifest itself again; the Chaos ending explicitly states that, in its Social Darwinist world where only the strong survive, Earth will revert to a wild and untamed world and Mother Nature will be free to flourish again; finally, the Law ending states that, with every last living thing on Earth in the thrall of Zelenin's Song, mindlessly singing God's praises for all eternity, mankind won't spoil Earth's bounty and the environment will recover gloriously.
  • Guide Dang It!:
    • You can get through most of the game without needing special outside assistance, but there are several demons that can only be unlocked by entering special passwords. There's no in-game indication of any of these passwords; fortunately for completionists, Special-Password-Only demons don't count towards or against how much of the Compendium you've finished.
    • Stuck on a certain warp puzzle in Horologium's 4th floor? You're supposed to use the right warp in the right moon phase. A nearby NPC gives a hint to the solution, but you're also likely to miss it.
    • The fifth floor of the Womb of Grief has bizarre teleporters that only work depending on which previous teleporter you took. Fortunately, there are a few NPCs that give you hints on how they work. Meanwhile, the warp puzzle in the Empyrean Ascent has similar features but operates a little differently, but you're meant to discover the mechanics the hard way without anyone to assist you with them.
    • The ultimate superboss Demiurge reflects everything but expel and curse, which he's immune to. However, if you challenge him on a New or Full Moon, he's weak to one damaging element, which he shuffles around every two turns. Most players don't catch on to this quirk, or read about it but forget about the Moon phase bit, and simply bypass the gimmick by spamming Almighty attacks.

    H-N 
  • Hannibal Lecture: Every major boss gives one based on the theme of their sector. Your response to these lectures (including agreeing with them) heavily swing your alignment one way or the other.
  • Harder Than Hard: Redux has Impossible difficulty, which is harder than Expert. While normally only available on a New Game Plus, selecting Impossible also disables some of the bonus features, on top of enforcing We Cannot Go On Without You by removing the "March to Death" Sub-App.
  • Happy Ending Override: The original Neutral ending sees the Red Sprite crew complete their mission, and it is implied they attempt to inspire the rest of humanity to change its ways to prevent the re-emergence of the Schwarzwelt. In Redux, on the Neutral route, Alex comes to inform the protagonist that their efforts were futile, and she hails from a future where the Schwarzwelt reappeared and erased humanity after it had grown complacent.
  • Hate Plague: The Delphinus Parasite.
  • Hate Sink: Captain Jack, who exists to put a face on the sort of human greed and depravity that summoned the Schwartzwelt to begin with.
  • Heel–Face Brainwashing: Ryan and his men, after Captain Jack's death.
  • Hell Gate: Yeah, what did you think the Schwarzwelt was really gonna be, given what franchise this is?
    • Within that hell gate lies Orcus, who is redesigned as this in reference to his roots as an emissary to Hell. He still uses the older look though, as Horkos, Carina's end boss.
  • Head-Turning Beauty: Zelenin is a dark version. If Asura's taunts are to be believed, she's deeply insecure about her good looks and feels as though her male colleagues only keep her around to ogle her.
  • Herald: The name for the Seraph clan in this game.
  • Heroic Mime: As per franchise standard. You also define his beliefs via decisions in-game.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Arthur in the Neutral path's ending, and is referred to as such by the surviving crew.
  • Holier Than Thou: Even mentioned by Jimenez, regarding Zelelin after her transformation
  • Hopeless Suitor: Anthony keeps crushing on female demons, only to be turned down by them without fail. Lampshaded by the game itself as each and every time he reveals a new crush, even the music stops to show the Protagonist's mute horror. It gets more complicated for him when he tries to invoke tropes such as Really 700 Years Old and Defrosting Ice Queen, much to his crush's disgust. At this point, it's obvious that this quest-line is both an acknowledgement and admonishment of certain people who fetishize the demons in the franchise.
  • Hot as Hell:
    • Some humanoid demons can come close to this, between their dress code and flirty personality.
    • And then there's the outright hypersexuals among them. Incubus also embodies this physically (q.v. his stinger and brow), while Succubus and Lilim fully befit the trope. Lilim even visits the aforementioned Anthony in an offscreen Erotic Dream, and becomes the subject of another of his side quests.
  • Hot Skitty-on-Wailord Action: The demon Myrmecolion is "the result of a lion and ant mating". Wrap your mind around that one.
  • Humans Are Special: The game is actually quite pro-humanity, though it may take more than one playthrough to realize it. Our technology let us fight evenly with the great mythical figures of old, but more than that, despite our faults we have the ability to change our ways, which is more than the angels and demons can say, or even comprehend. More than perhaps any other game in the series, the Law and Chaos options are essentially giving up trying to sway humanity, since in both, humanity is forced to be a certain way.
  • Humans Are the Real Monsters: Many demons will be quick to point this out, and the Schwartzwelt itself is essentially a hell on earth, with half of it being a mockery of modern human society and the other half being a tribute to the power of the demons. The more wild/bloodthirsty demons clearly state how awed they are by the bloodshed and destruction humans produce with a grudging respect/obvious distaste, though of course, demons are just as big as hypocrites as humans are. It's still possible to convince some demons that mankind isn't so bad, though. Jack's Squad plays this trope straight; Negotiation with them in battle will only earn you insults, even though you're a human just like them, and they experiment on demons for profit and personal gain, not to mention how they kidnap and successfully fuse Jimenez with Bugaboo.
  • Humans Through Alien Eyes: And like the above, this is particularly evident in the Negotiation sequences.
  • Humans Are Warriors: Quite a few demons will end up being impressed by the strength the humans hold, particularly yours, as the main character. Also, Morale is a song mostly attributed to the humans, and it's a triumphant military theme. On the other hand, Antlia is an embodiment of the dark side of this trope and its leader, Morax, wants to imitate Humanity because of this and wants learn from and use mankind's own warrior prowess to wipe them out.
  • 100% Completion:
    • It'll take you a hell of a long time to do it, but it can be done. A more localized hundred percent completion focuses on fully analyzing demons you've got: it's how you get their Demon Sources (stuff that provides extra skills to demons you fuse) and makes them much cheaper to summon from the Compendium.
    • If you can somehow map every tile in the game on one playthrough, the Dantalian on the top floor of Eridanus will give you a whopping ten of each stat-boosting Incense. Keep in mind this requires, among other things, deliberately falling into every pit trap and tripping every teleport hazard.
  • Hypocrite: Mastema claims he's acting in humanity's collective best interests and wants to create a world free of human conflict and selfishness. If you're playing Chaos, however, you eventually find out that he's motivated purely by egomania and self-interest, as he feels if he succeeds in his mission YHVH will give him a promotion, and he knowingly and gleefully ruins an innocent woman's life to get there.
  • I'm a Humanitarian: It's pretty much a given that a fair number of the demons wandering around can't see humans as much more than tasty treats. Hariti used to be this way, but renounced it quite some time ago (although she does need human-flavored underworld pomegranates to temper withdrawal every now and again).
    • Hariti's story in the game actually parallels her story in Buddhist mythology.
  • Infinity -1 Sword:
    • The Amenomurakumo (named Kusanagi in Redux) clocks in as second strongest compared to the ultimate alignment-exclusive weaponry, but is usable by any alignment and is accessed after completing a much simpler EX mission. Redux adds the Amenohabakiri, which can be manufactured and stands toe-to-toe with the Amenomurakumo.
    • The Meteor Dragoon and Ebony Tear are among the strongest guns you can manufacture. Though they are not as strong as the ultimate weaponry, these guns grant access to Moan Bullet, which is agreed to be the most reliable of all Almighty gun skills.
  • Infinity +1 Sword: Some of the game's strongest weaponry can only be obtained through EX missions. There's one ultimate melee weapon exclusive to each alignment, and one ultimate gun exclusive to Law and Chaos. Redux adds new equipment tied to its ultimate superbosses that outclass the alignment's ultimate equipment.
  • Incredibly Lame Pun:
    • There's a Jack Frost in a Demonica suit as a special-password demon. Its name? Demonee-Ho.
    • There's also the New MegaTen Sub App. Both "true"note  and "new" can be pronounced shin.
  • Interface Screw: A majority of Horologium B5F's floor is invisible. You'll have to poke around blindly to figure out which parts of thin air you can walk on, and your map will outright lie to you on what is and isn't the edge of a platform. A similar phenomenon happens in the Fourth Sphere of the Womb of Grief in Redux.
  • I Surrender, Suckers:
    • Occasionally at the beginning of an encounter, one of the enemy demons will offer to join you free of charge. Most of the time, it's legit, but sometimes its actually this, and they'll actually call you out for falling for it.
    • This is how Commander Gore meets his end in Sector Antlia. When he charges in to defend his men from an Orias, the demon pretends to retreat in the face of his onslaught. Once Gore turns to check on the wounded, the demon comes back and deals him a lethal blow.
  • Item Crafting: You obtain most of your items, as well as weapon, armor, application, and accessory upgrades, by having the Red Sprite's lab manufacture them by mixing together Forma scavenged during exploration and combat. You can't even buy much more than the most basic items without using up Forma of some kind, so you have to kill many demons and investigate every Forma Search blip on your radar you see.
  • It's Personal: This is what greets the Protagonist upon reaching the central chamber of Fornax, and the Tyrants he defeated in the first four sectors proclaim their vengeance towards him.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Jimenez. His heart of gold starts to shine through once he finds a demon he becomes personally attached to, though, but he's still a major jerk to everyone except that demon and you. It's clear that "look out for number one" is his motto. When he fuses with Bugaboo to become a demon himself, he's pretty much able to use it as an excuse to say "Screw you guys, I'm going to do what I want" and leave.
    • Though after leaving he does come back by to give you a forma for helping him.
  • Kleptomaniac Hero: You're basically under orders from Irving to pick up every single thing you see. Lampshaded in one EX Mission, where a demon yells at you for getting on his case about taking something when you've been grabbing anything that catches your eye.
  • Klingon Promotion: Ryan's promotion to Jack's Squad Commander. He really didn't want that promotion. At the time.
  • Lampshade Hanging: Somehow, Jack Frost and Pyro Jack know who the mascot is supposed to be. Pyro Jack actually corrects you and then realizes he doesn't know what a mascot is.
  • Last Lousy Point:
    • Most members of the Zealot race can only be obtained through Fusion Accidents. Fortunately, there are Sub-Apps that lets you manipulate the chance of a Fusion Accident on top of guaranteeing it makes a Zealot.
    • The Cartography Sidequest issued by the Dantalion in Eridanus's top floor requires that you map out every last tile of the relevant floor. This also includes stepping on every hazard and warp tile, going through every one-way door, and falling into every pit. The southeast corner of Grus 1F is incredibly obnoxious about this, as it involves an absurd amount of backtracking, and the Gate that bars access can only be opened from the other side.
  • Last-Name Basis: Unlike in other Megami Tensei games, which use the opposite, you and your fellow crew are addressed by last names; even the in-game menus address you as such. However, a few of the crew will call you by first name when in more informal situations.
  • Late to the Tragedy: When the Red Sprite's crew finds the Blue Jet crash site.
  • Leitmotif: The melody of the opening theme "The Eternal Throne" gets reprised in "Take the Shield, Raise the Spear." The Law and Chaos themes also get a remix each.
  • Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
    • If you say something about portable videogames to a demon, one might respond with "I'd make one that folds open and has two screens!"
    • You can call the Jack brothers mascots. Jack Frost will happily join your stock with no further question because it would be bad for him if he were to hurt the main character, but this does not go well with Pyro: "Hey, you've got the wrong Jack!"
    • Some demons will ask you what your favorite kind of video game is, and if you answer that you prefer the old classics, some will get angry at you for being stuck in the past and ask if you're sure there isn't anything about the new ones you like. Given the debate over "old-school" vs. "new-school" MegaTen games...
    • Trying to talk to a demon while you have the same demon dead in your party: "If you let my pal down, I'll take you down too! Huh? It'd be game over if that happened?"
  • Liberty Over Prosperity: This is the demon's path; not to be confused with the "bad" path, the game makes it fairly clear there is no bad or good path, the demons want everyone to be free in all things, which would result in a dystopian planet with no society because everyone would do what they damn well want, and the angel's path leads to a world were everyone is happy, because they have no other choice but to be happy, and are brainwashed into so. You can also Take a Third Option.
  • Light Is Good: Technically, Light and Dark aren't even fighting in this game; a "Light" demon is one that can't be encountered or obtained except through Fusion. Light and Dark demons can be either Chaos or Law-based, too. That said, most of the Light demons tend to be based off of more benevolent deities and mythological critters.
  • Line in the Sand:
    • A lesser version occurs after Maya goes down, when the half-demon Jimenez and the angelic Zelenin state their ultimate positions before leaving the Red Sprite for good, convincing several crewmen to follow them along their respective paths.
    • The Point of No Return between the various Multiple Endings. At a certain point, a character forces the Protagonist to decide which faction he will support —earning enmities and alliances depending on his choices.
  • Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: The Co-Op attack mechanic reduces the tactical advantages of scoring critical hits and hitting weaknesses. Because of this, physical attackers are less potent than magic attackers as there are very few enemies weak to phys, while scoring critical hits only gives bonus damage. Not all hope is lost, as strength-oriented characters can still exploit Gun weaknesses that are rather common, and fewer skill slots used on attack skills means room for more support skills. Redux evens the playing field more by adding a Sub-App that allows critical hits to trigger Co-Op attacks.
  • Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: The Red Sprite Crewmember Anthony is this full stop to the point of being Love Makes You Dumb. He constantly tries to seduce demon females by having the PC be a messenger for his advances, even though the demons are for the most part hostile and repeatedly try to kill the Red Sprite Crew and the fact none of the demon females are interested in him.
  • Loophole Abuse: The password system is supposed to give players a way to share their custom demons without the need for any direct communication between devices. However, a player can jot down the password for their own newly-fused demon, reload an old save, and use the same password to gain that very same demon without expending the fusion components. While it consumes a fair amount of Macca, it's a convenient way of repeated fusions without consuming D-Sources (especially when customizing demons via Mitama fusions), and it saves on the effort spent on grinding for the Source again.
  • Lost Food Grievance: The Side Quest involving Cerberus and Orthrus revolves around an argument over who ate Cerberus's meal.
  • Louis Cypher: This time taking the appearance of a young woman, disturbingly similar to a certain famous young girl from a previous game in the franchise. The name she actually goes by is Louisa Ferre.
  • Luck-Based Mission: Looking for a Fiend via Enemy Search? Well, they start out with only a 2% chance of spawning. Once you upgrade it to B, the chance does go up... to 5%.
  • Lunacy: As another MegaTen tradition, during a Full Moon, demons are too deranged to negotiate with you. However, this time you can install a Sub Application in the Demonica that allows successful negotiations during Full Moons, even with otherwise unrecruitable Dark demons. Unfortunately, they're still drunk on moonshine, so whether or not they like what you have to say is pretty much a coin flip. The moon also changes phases pretty darn fast while you're in the Schwarzwelt, so if you flub the negotiation, it's a while before you hit the next encounter under a full moon.
  • Mad Scientist:
    • Mithras, whose experiments on several humans result in a lobotomy, a draining of blood, loss of air, and an Early-Bird Cameo of the Delphinus Parasite, all of which left the affected crew members dead
    • Captain Jack as well, who is what Mithras would be like if he was human. And, you know, even less redeemable.
  • Magitek: As with many other MegaTen series entries, you are able to communicate with and control demons thanks to the use of computers. Your "magic" in this game is also limited to the kinds of guns you equip yourself with (which actually uses the physical skill) and expendable items that mimic spells (that actually use your magic stats), but given that they are constructed out of the leftovers of demons combined with human science, they probably ARE shooting magic bullets.
  • Manipulative Bastard: Quite possibly you. Demon negotiation is the fine art of lying your ass off to get demons to do what you want, after all.
  • Marked Change: After fusing with a demon and becoming half-demonic, Jimenez's strange tattoos stand out visibly through the pitch-black substance that flows over his body. Notable in that he already had them before the fusion, but they were hidden discreetly under his clothes and were easily overlooked.
  • The Masquerade: To prevent the populace from falling prey to panic, the world's governments, acting through the Schwarzwelt Joint Project, cover up the existence of the Schwarzwelt as "a ferro-magnetic blizzard" that forced the "withdrawal of nearby bases." This doesn't last too long, though, since the Schwartzwelt is too huge to hide forever and is growing. Eventually, the demons begin invading Australia and South America through the ocean while the humans back on Earth fail to close the Schwartzwelt with an endless rain of nuclear weapons.
  • The Maze: Naturally, since it's a Dungeon Crawler. Also contains some nasty Mobile Mazes.
  • Messy Pig: Horkos and his cronies. Which he will sometimes eat. This restores his health and confers any status ailments his food is currently suffering.
  • The Mirror Shows Your True Self:
    • The Tamashiro Mirror is needed to help unmask Amaterasu.
    • The Sun, Moon, and Star Mirror formas are needed to form Enemy Search B, which is used to identify the invisible assailant in Sector Fornax.
  • Money Spider: Minibosses found through "Enemy Search" always drop extremely valuable Forma. You will need to save a few of these to assemble new equipment, but you'll probably need to build that particular item only once, and random encounters yield so little money that Enemy Search Forma becomes your best, and primary, source of income.
  • Monster Compendium: Two kinds: Demon Analysis lets you review the stats, attributes, and skills of any demons you've encountered on the field. The more traditional Demonic Compendium only keeps track of demons that have joined you, either by negotiation or fusion, and you can register your customized demons for summoning them as many times as you want (for a price.)
  • Mood Whiplash. The first several Anthony missions are silly and hilarious, but the Skogsra one is poignant and a little sad.
  • Morality Pet: Bugaboo, to Jimenez
  • Multinational Team: The Schwarzwelt Investigational Team consist of an African American (Gore), a Japanese or American depending of the version (the MC), a Russian (Zelenin), an Hispanic (Jimenez) and a few other memebers from other countries like a Texan (Irwing), a Chinese (Chen) a British and an Italian among others.
  • Multiple Endings: There are various endings based on your alignment. Redux adds three more, which serve as less extreme and more optimistic endings.
    • Law: Earth becomes a world of total peace but no freedom, where humanity devotes itself solely to praising the greatness of God.
      • Law+ (Redux): Zelenin deviates from Mastema's and God's will and creates a new song that only suppresses humanity's violent nature. The world is peaceful and free as humanity solves problems through non-violent means only, but the narration warns that should a threat arise, humanity may not be strong enough to defend itself without a will to fight.
    • Chaos: Earth is transformed into a primordial world of gods and demons, where only the strongest survive and humanity is expected to suffer for their role in disrupting the natural order.
      • Chaos+ (Redux): The world is regenerated into a form where nature flourishes and humanity can live in harmony with gods, demons and the Earth. Instead of a world ruled by strength, it becomes a world filled with infinite possibilities for humanity, where each person is free to act as they choose.
    • Neutral: The Schwarzwelt is destroyed and things can continue as they were before, but with a warning that if humanity continues to abuse the Earth, then the return of the Schwarzwelt is inevitable.
      • Neutral+ (Redux): Same as Neutral, but the protagonist decides to live forever on the Moon to act as an eternal guardian of humanity and defend it whenever the Schwarzwelt reappears, until humanity learns its lesson and breaks the Eternal Recurrence themselves.
  • Mysterious Antarctica: The Schwarzwelt is here. Word of God says that Antarctica was chosen for international appeal (contrasting the standard Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe) because of the series' growing western fanbase.
  • Mythology Gag: It's possible on the Womb of Grief in Redux to have an encounter with Pyro Jack, Jack the Ripper (AKA Skeleton Jack) and Jack Frost, a reference to them being the 3 playable characters of Jack Bros. on the Virtual Boy.
  • Nerf: A few things were changed in Redux:
    • You can no longer just carry 99 of each in-battle consumable. Medicines and Life Stones cap at 50, while things as potent as Somas or Beads of Life cap at 5 or 10. Since excess copies of an item past the inventory cap are immediately discarded, the player is encouraged to use them more. This change also downplays the protagonist's Item Caddy role in long battles.
    • Completing the Fairy Village line of EX Missions lets you talk to the Goblin in there and may prompt a few dialogue choices that let you nudge the protagonist towards Law or Chaos, so that you can adjust to alignment-exclusive content even after the alignment lock. In Redux, your alignment locks for good, so when you get to exploring Sector Horologium proper, no amount of pestering the Goblin will alter your standing.
  • New Game Plus: Despite your best efforts, you won't be able to get 100% of this game finished the first time through. Besides, don't you want to see the different endings?
    • You can't access half of Grus prior to New Game Plus (and it's large and confusing enough to have been its own sector.)
    • You also get some neat Sub Apps on an NG+: Red Carpet (removes Random Encounters COMPLETELY), 7-Card Hand (lets you wield any 6 other Sub Apps regardless of their sizes), and New MegaTen (okay not really, it just congratulates you for buying the game or crashes without doing anything). You'll also be able to pick up some sweet accessories, such as a ring that repels physical and gun attacks, and a ring that repels all four standard magic attack elements.
    • In Antlia, you can find a Boss Rush device that can't be used on your first playthrough. In Redux, a similar device appears in the Womb of Grief.
    • Redux expands on the things you carry over, including map data, protagonist stats, EX Mission completion data, and Sub-Apps. You can now adjust what can be carried over, too.
      • Those willing to go the extra mile to challenge themselves unlock the Impossible difficulty in Redux, which among other things restricts the data preserved in a new cycle.
  • Nietzsche Wannabe: Captain Jack, whose philosophy states that in the face of the imminent apocalypse, the only thing that still matters is money.
  • No Hero Discount: Justified. There is a store on the exploration ship, but it's really more like a fabrication lab; they're using the demon money "Macca" as energy and the raw materials you find to craft things. So there's no "buy" or "sell" option, just "manufacture" and "disassemble."
  • Not Completely Useless: Attack and Magic Mirrors are generally too much of a gamble to be reliable, since most demons have both physical and magic attacks. Attack Mirrors, however, significantly decrease the difficulty of Ubergestalt Gore, otherwise one of the hardest bosses in the game, since he has no magic attacks whatsoever.
  • Nothing Can Stop Us Now!:
    • Some of the strike force are this way after you C4 a boulder blocking the way to a wrecked ship, as though this is evidence that the Schwarzwelt's denizens can't stand up to them. Cue Curb-Stomp Battle from an Orias legionary. A much weaker than usual Orias legionary (they usually start out at Lv.27. This one's at Lv.7).
    • Happens several times as the team makes progress only to find more trouble, again and again. Eventually they get used to it, or go crazy.
  • Nuke 'em: This is the Schwarzwelt Joint Project's response to the threat, with the excuse that it would further destabilize the already unstable particles of the Schwarzwelt and nullify it. As you might expect, it doesn't work... from the outside.

    O-S 
  • Obliviously Evil: Many demons don't see anything wrong with killing humans, and some humans see no problem in exploiting the demons. See Playing with Syringes for an example.
  • Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Give the people of Earth some credit: one of the communiques from the Joint Project reveals that the Schwartzwelt crisis has resulted in at least temporary world peace, with every country banding together to fight the demons once the Project can't cover up their existence any longer.
  • Only in It for the Money:
    • Why Jimenez went from "warrant officer" to "Schwarzwelt attack participant". Given the rest of his personality pre-Bugaboo, this isn't too surprising.
    • Also Captain Jack and his men, who are so blatant about it that they actually make the demons look like nice people.
  • Orchestral Bombing: The soundtrack is primarily orchestrated and heavily reminiscent of Space Opera scores, which stands out among the series as other games usually lean towards electronic rock, pop and/or metal. Ominous Latin Chanting is, of course, inevitable.
  • Order Versus Chaos: An important part of the basic gameplay; demons are either Lawful, Chaotic, or Neutral and this affects how well they co-operate with you and each other. Order and Chaos have battled in many previous MegaTen games (there's even a Shout-Out to it in Digital Devil Saga 2 with the division of the Karma Society) but it's been a long time since it had such an overt impact on the gameplay. Given Ouroboros's condemning humans as "prisoners of matter" and "sinful clumps of matter", and her spin on Morax and Asura's claim that humans must be reborn as demons being that humans must be returned to disparate atoms and molecules drifting in space, there may also be a (Dead/Inert) Matter Versus (Living/Free) Energy/Spirit dynamic at work.
  • Organ Drops: Quite a vast variety of Forma obtained (randomly) from demons consists of body parts, from the mundane ("Oh, a feather!") to the squicky ("Is that an angel's heart?") When found in the field, on the other hand, most of the illustrations of Forma appear to be crystals, which possibly lessens the squick factor. Even stranger, the relevant demons in your party will occasionally give these drops to you as gifts.
  • Our Demons Are Different: As per series tradition, "Demon" is actually a catch-all term for any supernatural being ranging from goblins and fairies to gods; even angels are technically one specific type of demon (though they'd probably be very angry at you if you called them that). Demons in general are still very bad news for unwary humans, despite not all being horned monstrosities straight out of a Doom game. Well, that's what the word "demon" (or, if you want to be picky, "daemon") originally meant: "spiritual being". The negative connotations were mostly post-Constantine Christianity apologists trying to explain away outside religions.
    • Unlike most other games in the franchise however, this games goes into a bit of a detail into the nature of demons. They are composed of something akin to data, information essence which forms reality itself. This is illustrated by how blue squares are the form invisible demons and the demons in Grus after being affected by Zenelin's song take. Additionally, unlike the usual Deity of Mortal Creation practice for demons and gods, here they are formed from the will of the planet Earth itself, who is a sentient being containing the plane of information where demons are born from. Though human thoughts affect their creation, the demons do not need humans to exist like in other games, so they are free to Kill All Humans.
  • Our Zombies Are Different: One hapless teammate named Norris gets turned into a shambling corpse in Bootes. He's "just" a demon-corrupted and possibly Delphinus Parasite-infected human who fights like an animal. A much more different zombie is the Ubergestalt, who's situationally benevolent and not rotten.
  • Ouroboros: The boss of Sector E, representing the will of the planet. Ouroboros also classically represents infinity itself, as several demons point out to you.
  • Path of Most Resistance: Story-wise, the Neutral route, where both Heaven and Hell are out for your blood, as per SMT tradition. Gameplay-wise, however, it's actually Law, as it requires you to fight both of the absolutely brutal path-specific bosses. While you don't have to deal with Zelenin like in the other two routes, the Neutral Commander Gore (who has absurdly high HP and spams devastating physical attacks) and the Chaotic Mem Aleph (hello, 100% accurate instant kill!) make that rather cold comfort.
    • In Redux, this title is usurped by the New Chaos route. In addition to fighting Commander Gore, Mastema, and Pillar Zelenin as in the original Chaos route, you also have to fight Mem Aleph and Shekinah. The only major characters you get to avoid fighting are Jimenez and the final battle against Alex.
  • Prophet Eyes: Features prominently in Redux where the Law alignment is involved. Ubergestalt Gore's eyes are confirmed to be this due to a more detailed portrait. The protagonist gains these when he's devoutly Law-aligned. On the Law route, the Red Sprite crew gains this after Zelenin brainwashes them with her song.
  • Player Data Sharing: You can exchange demons with other players through passwords, although in order to summon a password-obtained demon, you still need to pay Macca as if they're a demon registered in your compendium, on top of having a level that matches or exceeds that demon's, preventing you from just using a level-99 demon right out of the gate.
  • Playing with Syringes:
    • In an exceptionally creepy part of the early game, you can find reports on demon experiments done to your crewmates. All of them died quite terribly, but the demons don't mind. They're just happy to have removed humans of their ability to suffer. Then, when you confront Mithras, you find out why Fomorian was so gleeful about his experiments. As far as Mithras and his goons are concerned, everything they were removing—blood, organic thought (q.v. brain), air, sane diet, protection from the Schwarzwelt—was pointless. Were they trying to strip humans down to their "proper" essence? One wonders if the demons have any respect for physical matter. Ouroboros's reference to humans as "prisoners of matter" and "sinful clumps of matter" doesn't help the situation.
    • This gets turned around later when you find out what Captain Jack and his men are really doing in the Schwarzwelt. Let's just say that the demons are actually portrayed in a sympathetic light for once even as they curse humans for being mutilated, torn apart, and put back together. It actually tugs at your heart when you turn off the cultivation tank they're in and put them out of their misery.
  • Pocket Dimension: The ship of Jack's Squad, the Lightning, is able to create one of these to serve as the squad's base of operations, and unlike the rest of the Schwarzwelt, the atmosphere in it is perfectly breathable by humans. The catch is that the power output necessary to generate such a location is so high that the Lightning cannot move or use its weapons in the meantime.
  • Point of No Return: While the game doesn't have a standard example like the Super Famicom games, the traditional alignment lock, the point where the main game splits into its endgame routes and there's no changing it, is still present. Here, it's at the very beginning of Horologium, where Gore returns to the Red Sprite and evaluates the Protagonist. Based on his judgment, he'll either attack and lock you into Law or Chaos or entrust you with the future and fade away, locking you into Neutral.
    • Redux has a very subtle example related to its new endings. The new endings are triggered by completing the Womb of Grief, which is considered completed by defeating Maria in the Sixth Sphere. Once you beat her, you'll either have to do the new dungeon and True Final Boss or stay on the standard ending you get at the cost of the final Alex fight getting more difficult. If you don't defeat Maria, Alex fights you one last time just outside Mem Aleph's chamber and you're locked out of the new endings.
  • Pokémon Speak: Bugaboo, though Jimenez tries to teach him language to some success.
  • Post-Final Boss: In Redux, not beating Maria and going down Law or Neutral results in a standard fight with Alex after beating Mem Aleph. This fight is present in Chaos, but due to how that ending works, Alex is fought before that route's final boss.
  • Power Born of Madness: The Chaos alignment is all over this. Asura condemns order and calm as the very things contributing to the Earth's decay and miseries by interdicting the growth of strength. This is important because he personally generated from his soul the Delphinus Parasite, which "polishes" humans into demon-like rage elementals. Translation: Eternal madness is the proper order of things in his eyes. Moloch (as in, Morax after undergoing rebirth and power boosting via Tiamat) glories in the fact that his power is such that his sanity is fleeting. And if you choose to side with Chaos, after Jimenez deploys the Delphinus Parasite throughout the Red Sprite, he's joyous that everyone's been freed of sanity's oppression.
  • Power Limiter / Power Nullifier: Alilat embodies a seal that is preventing the Demiurge from trying to reassemble himself.
  • Powered Armor: The Demonica Suit.
  • Preorder Bonus: Preordering it fetched the soundtrack CD, a cardboard case and a mini-poster.
  • Psychological Torment Zone: Sector Grus. Imagine the first four Sectors' worst parts, merged together in a haze of illusion...
  • Puny Earthlings: Humans this time around lack the unexplained magic powers they had in previous games and a lot of faceless soldiers get killed very easily throughout the course of the game. In addition, the Demonica suits are the things gaining levels and getting stronger, not the wearers themselves. With the exception of Captain Jack and his men. The soldiers and sergeants working for Jack have tons of HP, and Jack and Ryan are absurdly powerful in combat.
  • Pure Is Not Good: As per Shin Megami Tensei tradition, this is why neither Law nor Chaos classifies as a good guy club. It doesn't help that each faction thinks "pure" and "good" are perfect synonyms. Another way to put it is that Law regards calm as the primary good that outweighs all others, including free will, and Chaos regards strength as the only real good. Strength that rejects anything that could possibly constrain it, at that. Anything less just stunts and corrupts existence.
  • Rage Against the Heavens: As "Metatron" (actually a shard of God) reveals after you defeat Alilat, this already happened. Humans and God abandoned each other, and the mothers (who had been suppressed by God) decided to take their revenge. Hence why the piece of God who said this wants to be "whole" again (cue Demiurge EX Mission, where you fight another piece of God...)
  • Rank Scales with Asskicking: The main character is the leader of the Strike Team, and the one who does most (if not all) of the fighting in the mission.
  • Really 700 Years Old: Invoked by minor character Anthony to cover his attraction to a Moh Shuvuu, a "young-looking" female demon. Unfortunately, she seems to have the mindset of a child when you speak to her.
  • Recurring Boss:
    • In an interesting variation to the trope, later in the game you fight "upgraded" versions of previous bosses, who look very different but still have the same elemental weaknesses.
    • In Redux, Alex makes a good four separate attempts on your life. And if you don't complete the Womb of Grief or refuse to help her change the future, she tries a fifth time.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: Goes hand in hand with the Glowing Eyes of Doom for most demons. Most strikingly, however, the viewports in the Demonica's helmet (see illustration above) produce this effect quite effectively.
  • Red Herring Twist: Throughout the game, there are various hints that the Joint Project may be up to something sinister, with the crew being aghast that the Project sent them with a gun that can brainwash others and an atomic bomb, as well as Jimenez's suspicions that the crew is not intended to return alive. These suspicions would seem to be confirmed after Eridanus when the Project attempts to destroy the Schwartzwelt with the team still inside it, but the matter is thereafter dropped, and the next time we see them, the Neutral ending, they're completely cordial and genuinely happy that you managed to survive.
  • Red Shirt Army: Most of the crews of the four ships wind up dying horribly really quickly, though this peters out as time goes on; the toughest (or luckiest) survive until the end in a grim but rapid example of natural selection. The game is also very vague on exactly how much crew complement you have at any given time, but it's likely that each ship was actually overstaffed with redundant crew just to be safe.
  • Route Boss: The Neutral alignment has its own representative boss — Commander Gore — who fights you shortly after you lock into either Chaos or Law. And while picking Neutral will get you to fight through the Law and Chaos representatives to get to the Final Boss, they're not as strong as they are when challenged on the route of the opposing alignment.
    • In addition to the above, Mastema can only be fought on the Chaos route.
    • Things get a little complex with the additional content on its 3DS remake Strange Journey Redux, as the final fight with Alex will change depending on whether you chose to finish the extra Bonus Dungeon and whether you reject or accept her plans for a new world. Finishing the Womb of Grief before reaching the depths of the final sector, and then rejecting her ideas will trigger one final fight where she invokes the power of her stolen Fruit and calls a couple of exclusive demons to her side. Otherwise, she just fights alone.
  • Rule of Symbolism:
    • Maia Ouroboros, Tiamat, and Maya all share the letters MA, which is an Indo-European root for mother. Mem Aleph refers to the two Phoenician letters that would eventually become MA.
    • MA is also the name of Mem Aleph's most devastating attack.
    • Amaterasu also comments she was drawn into the Schwarzwelt, with the feeling she was supposed to be one of the mothers.
      • Funnily enough, she temporarily disguises herself with some strange, large kind of headgear, taking on the appearance of Kinmamon.
  • Rule of Three: Each of the three factions is, itself, led by three primary representatives for you to join or antagonize: a governing/driving entity (the World Council for Neutral, the Three Wise Men for Law, Mem Aleph for Chaos), an ideological sponsor (Commander Gore, Mastema, Lucifer), and an executor (Arthur, Zelenin, Jimenez), who ultimately ends up as your partner in your chosen path.
  • Running Gag: Anthony falling in love with demons. And causing all sound to stop as a result.
  • Sarcasm Mode: The Compendium profile for the Zhu Tun She:
    A monster snake said to be sighted around the Song dynasty.
    It is about three feet long, has four legs, is covered in fur, and squeals like a pig. Because there is no animal that remotely fits the description, it is believed to be a completely unknown creature.
  • Science Is Bad: Averted, subverted, inverted, and kicked until it runs screaming. With the smörgåsbord of human sins that is the Schwartzwelt, technology is a major exception, and indeed, many demons seem to like it. In less common instances, demons will complain that science allows humans to play god, but such complaints seem to be directed to the humans using the technology, not technology itself.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: The Demiurge. At the end, you can spring him so he can join you (only in the Law path), or shove him back in there.
  • Secret A.I. Moves: No Macca Beam or Bite the Dust for you!
  • Sequence Breaking:
    • Gate Search E is unlockable through a sidequest that can be completed shortly after you gain access to Sector Fornax. By this time you won't have Gate Search D available just yet.
      • And with access to Gate Search E, you can find a forma early in Sector Grus that forms Unlock E, before you even have Unlock C that shows up much later in the sector.
    • In general, being diligent with completing sidequests, and even clearing them at levels lower than they expect you to be at, lets you gain more advanced Sub-Apps before their weaker forms are available through the plot.
  • Serial Romeo: Anthony.
  • Seven Deadly Sins: It's not immediately obvious or pointed out, but the different areas of the Schwarzwelt follow this theme (it should click by the time you get the demonic shopping mall, though).
  • Shout-Out: The translation team, stuck at what exactly Makurein was meant to be (as it could have been "McClain, MacClane, MacLaine or any of several other Scottish surnames") went with the assumption it was a shout out to Die Hard. Two AIs are named Arthur and Verne; the manga gives a third the name Isaac.
    • Crewmen Blair and Norris are references to The Thing (1982), as is one of the EX Missions where you have to weed out which of the fellow crewmen are "normal". Dent possibly refers to the other Arthur.
      • The game itself could be considered a Whole-Plot Reference to The Thing, considering that you have to fight an otherworldly force at the South Pole.
    • Among the guns available to you is the Reaper Colt.
    • Some demons have an ability called "Bites the Dust" that has a chance of giving the bomb status to any party member, which will K-O them if hit again by a physical attack. The fact that "Strange Journey" is literally a synonym for "Bizarre Adventure" is likely more than just a coincidence.
    • A password you can enter to unlock a certain demon is ISHTAR FIGHTS TAMMUZ ANGELS.
      • Not to mention TRUSTIN SCALY. Remember that the second line is all dashes.
      • Almost as old, almost as classic, it's HELP ME!
      • Also, MTDQD serves much the same function as its counterpart.
    • Aliens reference: One of the strike team members you are attempting to save in a certain EX mission shouts something along the lines of "Game over, man!"
    • A sidequest in Sector F has you going "down a rabbit hole" (a trapdoor, but same difference) to chase after a rabbit at the behest of Alice. Yes, THAT Alice.
    • Captain Jack could be a reference to Sparrow or Harkness, or both.
      • Alternatively, Captain Jack and his lieutenant Ryan could be a reference to Tom Clancy's character Jack Ryan.
      • Speaking of Doctor Who, the DEMONICA armor looks uncannily similar to a Cyberman, particularly the 1980s incarnation with its segmented lower jaw and large rifle with prominent carrying strap, as well as the antannae on the sides of the helmet.
    • The demon Asherah can only be created by a special fusion of Asura and Valkyrie; a feud between Asura and a Valkyrie was part of an important Side Quest in Lost Kingdoms II.
    • A possible one to Claymore. One of Demon Jimenez's racial names is "Awake." "Awakened Beings" in Claymore are humans mixed with demons who are insanely dangerous and powerful.
    • Irving, after upgrading your Demonica for the first time, says "Got 'r done!", possibly as homage to Larry the Cable Guy.
    • The first rare forma you find, Lemegetonite, is named after one of the alternate names for the Ars Goetia, Lemegeton.
    • There is an almighty-gun skill called Freischutz, the name of a german play. It was also the inspiration for Freikugel, a physical-almighty skill in a different game.
    • In the room where you fights Horkos, you can see among the pile of various objects behind him a TV with a yellow screen.
    • The room that the Three Wise Men pull the Protagonist into, in order to discuss their plans, is designed after the "hotel room" from David Bowman's journey into the monolith.
    • One of Mem Aleph's skills is called "Reason's Start", which seems to be a reference to Orochi from The King of Fighters—its Leitmotif is called "The Origin of Mind", and Mem Aleph shares a fair bit of philosophy with it.
      • "Reason's Start"(originally 始祖の理, Shizo no Kotowari, "Founder/Originator's Reason") also refers to Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne, where a Reason (kotowari) is a philosophy of creation proposed by a god, which the Demifiend must support, in order to bring forth a new world after the dissolution of ours. Throughout Strange Journey, the goal of Mother Goddess and creator of mankind, Mem Aleph, is to usher in a new world under her philosophy.
    • Mastema's pleasure that Zelenin can say "shibboleth" properly is a reference to events mentioned in The Book of Judges where the fleeing Ephraimites pretending to be from another group were forced to say the word. If they couldn't they were killed.
    • One of the Rare Forma needed to progress is Ice-10.
    • The expedition's ships heavily inspired by the all-terrain vehicle design of Damnation Alley's Landmasters and the Demon Hunter Cars from Devilman.
    • The MK Guns used to weed out the Delphinus Parasite are most likely named after Project MKUltra AKA the "CIA mind control program". Given the guns were originally configured to brainwash unwilling subjects, it's a safe bet.
    • The command staff have yellow stripes on their Demonicas' shoulders, the scientists have blue stripes, and the soldiers have red stripes. Sounds like the color scheme for a certain famous science fiction show.
    • In the US manual, the protagonist is given the placeholder names Langdon Alger and Lance Murdock.
    • The Cursed Sarai is described as "The sword of Anubis that drives people mad", referring the antagonistic evil sword from Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure Stardust Crusaders.
  • Shown Their Work: A lot of EX Missions, demon designs, and even item drops pay very close attention to the demon's particular background, from the Lady of the Lake, to Cú Chulainn, to Tlaloc's appearance, to Hariti's culinary tastes. Par for the course with Atlus.
  • Side Quest: The EX Missions. They make up a lot of the game's content, and some are necessary to make certain demons-even certain types of demons-available for fusion. The superboss is also confronted in one of these.
  • Signature Move: Redux changes the innate skill set of fusable bosses such that you can use their unique moves in your party. These include Morax's Gehenna, Mithras's Waking Dream, and Asura's Black Flame. These skills cannot be passed through fusion and will not appear on a D-Source.
  • Snowy Screen of Death: Since you (as the Protagonist) are seeing out through the Demonica's display, death in combat yields this.
  • So Last Season:
    • Just as you've installed new and exciting Main App upgrades to discover hidden doors, open locked portals, or visualize dark zones, you'll run into doors and zones that make them obsolete and require additional upgrades. Sometimes within minutes.
    • One particular door in the top floor of Sector Carina requires Unlock C to open. After gaining that App near the end of Sector Grus, you open the door only to find a short corridor that leads to another locked door. This door requires Unlock D, which isn't obtained until the alignment lock shortly after, thus combining this trope with a literal Double Unlock.
  • Social Darwinist:
    • The Chaos-aligned demons, most notably Asura, believe that an ideal world is one of constant conflict where only the strong can survive. In Redux, this is brutally deconstructed by Alex, who explains that such a world has led to her becoming the last human alive because a world fueled entirely by social Darwinism will inevitably end with everyone wiping each other out.
    • It should be noted that not only do Chaos aligned characters show Social Darwinist tendencies, but also Law aligned characters. After the defeat of Mother Maya, the Three Wise Men mention that the weak-willed will be purged and only the strong-willed will be allowed to live in the new world. At least in Strange Journey, being a Social Darwinist isn't exclusive to Chaos. The main difference is whether the strength is physical or mental.
  • Some Kind of Force Field: The last wrench the Schwarzwelt tosses in the Protagonist's path, after the Dark Zones, conveyor corridors, dimensional pocket spaces, warp tiles, and pathways in the air, is a single-room maze filled with invisible walls that become briefly visible when bumping directly into them.
  • Southern-Fried Genius: Irving.
  • Spoiler Opening: The opening video of Redux shows Zelenin and Jimenez transforming into their demi-divine and demi-demon forms, respectively. If you have a good eye you can also see a spinning Shekinah, the final boss of all of the new routes.
  • Stable Time Loop: Happens in one particular Extra Mission. In an earlier battle requested by the Disir, you'd have been killed by Yggdrasil if it weren't for the intervention of someone more powerful: Yourself from much later on in the game, sent back by the Norns who used to be the Disir who made the request.
  • Status Effects:
    • Sleep: Affected combatant can't take actions but regains HP and MP at the end of each turn. They take increased damage on the next hit, but also wake up in the process.
    • Poison: Affected combatant takes damage after executing their action.
    • Strain: Affected combatant loses MP after executing their action.
    • Fear: Affected combatant may lose their action for the turn or even run from battle.
    • Paralysis: Affected combatant may lose their action for the turn and acts later than other combatants in battle.
    • Stone: Affected combatant can't take actions. If all surviving combatants on one side are petrified, combat ends.
    • Mute: Affected combatant can't use skills. Muted enemies can still attempt to use skills and end up doing nothing for their turn when it happens.
    • Charm: Affected combatant is uncontrollable and will randomly attack themselves or their allies.
    • Bomb: Affected combatant takes extra physical or gun damage. If struck enough times, they explode, damaging their allies.
    • Rage: Affected combatant has increased attack but is uncontrollable, and will randomly attack other combatants, friend or foe. Unlike the other ailments, there is nothing you can do to resist or prevent its infliction.
  • The Stoic: The main character, to the point where he's actually complemented for not being fazed by anything... and people get shocked in the Chaos route after Gore is killed "Did... did you just laugh?"
  • Stupidity-Inducing Attack: Zelenin's Song, in addition to its more overt brainwashing vibes.
  • Sudden Soundtrack Stop: The music in this game never stops playing, except for one moment. In one sidequest, one of the Red Sprite's crew members confesses that he has fallen in love with the demon. To cover up for the Heroic Mime protagonist's apparent silent reaction, the music goes quiet in his stead.
    "Hey, what's up with the sudden silence?"
  • Super Prototype: The Lightning, rebuilt with technology (and weaponry) far more advanced than the Red Sprite and its brethren.
  • Superboss:
    • On the second playthrough, you get to punch out the Gnostic Demiurge, a level 99 kick in the nuts.
    • In Redux, several more are added, but one EX Mission presents the successor to the Demiurge on a second playthrough. Or rather, successors; there are no less than four ultimate bosses stronger than the Demiurge: Nebiros, Belial, Lucifuge, and Beelzebub, all of whom are at Level 99 and guard the new ultimate equipment. Their stats are upwards of twenty points higher than the Demiurge and even the new True Final Boss, and generally require either using DLC or days of dedicated Incense grinding to bring your team up to snuff. Beating them all leads to unlocking Magellan, a sub-app that automatically maps everything, but doesn't count unexplored territory as travelled.
  • Supernatural Gold Eyes: Jimenez gains them when he is fused with Bugaboo. In Redux, the protagonist gains them when he's devoutly chaos-aligned, and so does the rest of the Red Sprite crew when Jimenez infects them with the Delphinus Parasite on the Chaos route.
  • Suspicious Video-Game Generosity: Uncharacteristically for a mainline MegaTen game, you'll find Terminals (Save Points that can teleport you back to home base) relatively near Sector bosses, and often with a Fountain of Healing nearby. The Demonica is even generous enough to advise you when you're getting near "a powerful demon," even those that lay hidden in ambush in Sector F, who are nice enough to camp out right after Terminals and Fountains.
  • Sword and Gun: The Protagonist starts off with a standard-issue combat knife and machine-gun, then goes off from there.

    T-Y 
  • Take a Third Option:
    • In Sector Grus, a demon guards the way to the sector boss, and asks for you to exterminate Jack's squad after they had already been pacified, so they get their deserved retribution for their demon experimentation. Zelenin steps in and suggests that you use her song to make the demons submit so that they open the path for you. Choosing either will heavily influence your karma meter in favour of Chaos or Law respectively. But a third option exists — fight the demon yourself.
    • This is essentially the point of the new endings in Redux, as you are given the opportunity to convince Zelenin and Jimenez that they don't have to blindly follow their gods and forsake humanity in service of their goals. This results in new Law and Chaos endings where humanity isn't explicitly screwed over in the creation of the new worlds.
  • Techno Babble: In the form of both Reverse Polarity and Hand Waving.
  • Theme Naming:
    • The various Schwarzwelt sectors are code-named from A to H as the Red Sprite navigates them. In turn, each initial denotes the name of a constellation, like Antlia, Boötes, Carina, Delphinus, and so on. And if that wasn't enough, the sectors that occur after you locate the Vanishing Point (Fornax, Grus, and Horologium) are all the names of constellations in the southern hemisphere, while the first four sectors' titular constellations are located in the northern hemisphere!
    • The Red Sprite, the Blue Jet, the Elve, the Gigantic, and the Lightning are all named after atmospheric phenomena.
    • The Mother Goddesses which rule Sectors E, F, G, and H all have the syllable "ma" in their names: Maia Ouroboros, Tiamat, Maya, and Mem Aleph. The proto-Indoeuropean root ma means breast and is the origin of the word "mother" in modern languages. Also, it isn't just Mem Aleph's initials (and the name of her MA attack) but Mem, the Phoenician for waternote , is itself also derived from proto-Semitic ma. At one point, even Amaterasu, the Japanese Sun goddess and often considered a Mother Goddess as well, wonders why she felt drawn to the Schwarzwelt, even first appearing in an alternate guise called Kinmamon.
  • There Was a Door: The resurrected Tyrants in Sector Fornax like to burst into scene by plowing through walls. Which would be quite fearsome and intimidating if the Demonica hadn't warned you about their presence minutes beforehand.
  • Those Two Guys: Irving and Chen, your inventors in the laboratory. Well, Chen is technically a woman, but the trope is otherwise played straight.
  • Time-Limit Boss: Take too long to defeat the new ultimate superbosses in Redux, and they start spamming an incredibly strong Almighty attack.
  • Too Awesome to Use: D-Sources, gained after fully analyzing a demon, contain very useful skills and become very handy in doing things like covering weaknesses. While they are automatically given the first time a player finishes analyzing the demon in a playthrough, it can take an absurd amount of luck or grinding to get another copy once the D-Source is used. It's common for players to sit on unused D-Sources for most of the game, only to find that they don't carry over in a New Game Plus.
  • Tragic Monster: Norris succumbs to temptation and gets drawn into Mithras's palace. He gets subject to human experimentation, and when you finally get to rescue him, you have to fight him and put him out of his misery.
  • Trick Boss: Forneus in Redux. You've beaten the boss of the Fourth Sphere, all's good... and then Alex and George realize that you're now in the situation they were in when Alex beat Amon and attack. For the first and possibly only time, you are required to take down all of Alex's health, and she starts using all of her gimmicks.
  • True Final Boss: Shekinah in all the new routes of Redux.
  • Unexplained Recovery: Commander Gore dies very early in the game, and his body preserved in the Red Sprite. By the time the crew reaches Delphinus, his body goes missing, and the protagonist finds the restored Gore wandering through the later sectors. Gore eventually reunites with the crew as the representative of the Neutral route, and even then, how he was restored is never fully explained.
  • Ungrateful Bastard: One of the most annoying things that can happen to you in the game - a demon takes your offerings in negotiation when you ask it to join you, looks at you again, and then changes its mind and leaves! This only happens with Law or Chaos demons that you don't share alignments with, and the "Tea Amity" Sub App will make them reconsider and join you with perfect reliability.
  • Urban Segregation: Sector Bootes takes place in a shabby red-light district inhabited by demons, but the primary landmark of the sector is Mithras's Palace. The palace itself towers over the other buildings in the city, and is full of lavish decor and beautiful feminine figures in the background, though several levels are actually torture chambers where Mithras carries out his experiments. In the game's story, there are a string of sex murders going on in Tokyo as humanity grows more and more depraved.
  • Useless Useful Spell: Perhaps the only saving grace of some skills is that they count as high-rank skills, meaning they can mutate into much more powerful and useful skills if you're lucky.
    • Lost Word is a Random Effect Spell that can heal, buff, or debuff either all enemies or all allies. While it costs about half as much as its equivalent skills (20MP compared to 35MP for Mediarahan or 50MP for Luster Candy or Debilitate), it's much more efficient to use the skills that don't have a chance of giving a boon to the enemy.
    • Judgment, Holy Wrath, and Sea of Chaos are Almighty spells that do extra damage to targets of specific alignments. They also hit your party along with all enemies. With friendly fire being as unwelcome as it is, there's no surprise why very few use these skills.
    • Laplace Curse is a passive that applies a free Debilitate to all enemies that you've fully analyzed at the start of battle. However, if you've fully analyzed an enemy, chances are you've already fought and defeated it enough times that you don't need the free Debilitate to beat it. (Yes, this includes the Fiends.) This skill also won't work on bosses as you don't get any analysis level on them, even if you've already fully analyzed their playable versions.
    • Horn of Fate casts either Mahamaon or Mamudoon, so in exchange for compressing both skills into one slot, you have a 50-50 chance of not hitting with the element you want. Also, there's a 10% chance of it accidentally affecting your team — a self-inflicted Total Party Kill is most unpleasant, even if the caster is largely resistant to it.
  • Verbal Tic: Horkos bellows "BUONO" whether things are going well for him (gorging himself) or not (getting shot with the Horkos Buster).
  • The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Sector Horologium, the center of the Schwarzwelt. Not only does the area resemble primordial earth, as one character notes, but it's also where Mem Aleph, the Big Bad behind the Schwarzwelt, lives. This is also where the SMT games' traditional alignment-locking event happens.
    • Redux adds the Upper Layer of the Empyrean Ascent, which leads to the Three Wise Men and Shekinah on the Lower Layer. Said Lower Layer notably doesn't count, as aside from the hallway leading to Shekinah, the entire area is blocked off until New Game Plus as the bonus dungeon.
  • Video Game Caring Potential: You can stop Alice from torturing and eating the Hare of Inaba, leading to an instant battle. If you do so, the Hare thanks you with a Bead Chain.
  • Villainous Breakdown: Mithras when you confront him in his palace, and Mastema in the Chaos path. The latter breaks down just as hard in the New Law path in Redux.
  • Villainous Glutton: Horkos. Dear god, Horkos. His entire megamall-themed stage appears to be one giant assembly line designed to feed him, and immediately before you encounter him the first time he manages to force down one of the expedition's lost ships. Pretty much the entirety of his area's quest after that point is to find a way to break through that ship's defense shields, which now surround Horkos and make him invulnerable.
  • Wake-Up Call Boss: Orias will teach you that yes, you do need to plan your Demon Co-Ops if you want to deal any significant damage to bosses. The fact that by then you are restricted to three demons (Pixie and any two of Knocker, Tangata Manu, and Angel) and your basic equipment makes it all the more unforgiving.
  • We Cannot Go On Without You: In the same vein as recent MegaTen games. Protagonist dies, Schwarzwelt swallows Earth, game over. He is the only thing that is tying those demons down and once he kicks it, there is nothing stopping the demons from calling it quits right then and there and just ditching your dead body to the enemy, even if they are on the lawful side of the spectrum.
    • While demons can be revived as often as needed with revival beads, resurrecting dead humans seems to be impossible by conventional means, as quite a lot of human characters bite it over the course of the story.
    • This can be averted in Redux by developing the "March to Death" Sub-App, which allows demons to continue fighting if the player is killed or petrified. Naturally, on the Impossible difficulty, this app is unavailable.
    • The boss following the Law and Chaos alignment locks, Commander Gore, exploits this with an attack that targets you, and only you, and does enough damage to guarantee a kill if you're not guarding and don't have physical-resistant gear.
  • We Need a Distraction: When the Protagonist needs to infiltrate Mithras's Palace to rescue Zelenin, the rest of the Strike Force mount a frontal assault to distract Mithras's forces. This disables random encounters in the building until you reach Zelenin.
  • Wham Episode: In the final sector, Gore, having been reborn as an Ubergestalt, reunites with the Red Sprite, where the most alignment-important scene in the game takes place. If you are devoutly Law or Chaos, or answer Gore's questions in a non-Neutral manner, Gore deems you irredeemable and fights you to the death. Following his death, the Command Room is shown to be in shambles, Arthur suffers a terminal error in his personality matrix that forces him to self-terminate, and whichever sidekick you're aligned with invades the Red Sprite and brainwashes everyone into worshippers of God or beastly-minded savages.
  • The Wild Hunt: It's a demon of the Night race here.
  • The Window or the Stairs: In Mithras's palace, there are several areas where you have three hallways to choose from. On the floor in front of them, you find a message saying, "Take the long road". The shorter hallways either have a trapdoor that will drop you to the floor below or are lined with damaging floors.
  • The World Is Not Ready: In the Neutral Ending, you wind up having to erase most of the data on demons and Forma that you found in the Schwartzwelt because, as amazing as the discoveries were, they would just as easily issue forth a horrible demon-based arms race in the world. Considering the plot of Devil Survivor, where people able to summon demons start to turn on each other like crazy after only a week, you may see the point of this.
  • World-Wrecking Wave: The result of the Schwarzwelt swelling up unchecked, as the wall of plasma races across the surface of the world, annihilating everything and everyone on it.
  • You Bastard!: Between Gore doing a complete 180 and turning you, to Arthur's gut wrenching death, and Jimenez/Zelenin turning the remaining crew into gibbering manchildren/soulless drones while they tearfully beg him/her to stop, it's really hard not to feel guilty for taking either the Chaos or Law path.
  • You Cannot Grasp the True Form:
    • All demons show up as static in the Demonica's display until you've encountered them, or fused them, at least once, and until then you can't even understand their speech. Taken even further with Mem Aleph, an entity so unbelievably powerful that you can't even try to analyze it until a traveler of the Schwarzwelt grants you with the "brilliance" to see it.
    • Also expressed in so many words in an early EX Mission:
      Something nearly imperceptible happened to (main character)!
  • Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: The Red Sprite finds the Vanishing Point atop Sector E, and is about to leave the Schwarzwelt, when their plans... hit a snag, so to say.


> The Main Mission Visit Unabridged Version has been completed.

Alternative Title(s): Strange Journey

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