YMMV / MILGRAM

• Accidental Aesop: Milgram works on a 'three trial system'- the prisoners each get three music videos about their crime, and the viewers (through Es) vote them guilty or not guilty/forgiven or not forgiven. But the videos aren't clear about exactly what each prisoner did and why, with later videos revealing information that has led to the viewers flipping their stances on prisoners. As such, it's easy to see the overall message of Milgram as along the lines of 'You shouldn't try to decide someone's guilt or innocence without having all the facts', or 'Be careful about jumping to conclusions, in case it turns out that your conclusion was wrong'.
• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • "It's Not My Fault" features Rei, the girl Mu murdered, as the Token Human in a world of insect girls, at least when it's not focusing on the real events. Seeing as the music video is symbolic of the singer's state of mind, it can either be read as Mu recognizing that Rei was not willing to comply with the rest of Mu's clique, or because Mu recognizes them all, including herself, as monstrous while Rei was truly innocent. It is telling that Mu is speaking the "I'm the drama queen/pathetic" line after she stabs Rei.
  • "I Love You" uses cake as a metaphor for the kind of love Mahiru and her boyfriend give to each other. While Mahiru's clearly delusional, unable to recognize that the affection she was giving her boyfriend was toxic and pushing him to suicide, many viewers also pointed out that he was feeding her "cake" too (although it was not shown outside of the "happy" scenes). With that in mind, combined with background knowledge of Mahiru trying out different things she's not used to so she can attract the boy and he stating that the boyfriend thought it was "fate" for the two to couple, perception of the relationship went from "Mahiru being overbearing until her boyfriend couldn't take it anymore" into "Mahiru and the boyfriend were mutually toxic, but Mahiru didn't or won't comprehend this".
  • In "Magic," Yuri is the only one of the four cult leaders who looks sad about punishing Amane. Does that mean he doesn't want to do it, or is he just disappointed that she broke a rule?
  • In his second round of interrogation, Mikoto answered one question with an incomprehensible mess covered in dots, like he'd repeatedly stabbed the pen into the paper, and another question with some random lines that don't say anything. This has fans debating possible explanations, such as: he'd been in the middle of a breakdown at the time, he didn't want to answer the questions, they were switching while trying to answer, John was having a rage fit at the time, or John is illiterate.
  • The added context of "Deep Cover" raises questions about both Kotoko and the girl: did the girl recant her testimony because she or her family were bribed or threatened? Did she recant because Kotoko really did go too far while defending her? When Kotoko glares at the girl, is she genuinely angry, or is she trying to protect the girl by scaring her away?
• Base-Breaking Character: Applies to all the prisoners. This is, of course, the entire point of MILGRAM, as they are all "murderers" and as such, different people will have different opinions of their sins and judge them differently.
  • Futa's "murder" is that, in his pursuit of justice using social media to call out wrongdoers, he drove someone to suicide. "Callout posts" are nothing unusual on social media nowadays, and there's no way he could have known that someone would react that way, but regardless, many people regard the cowardice of cyberbullying, especially to the point of driving someone to kill themselves, as unforgivable.
  • Shidou is also a notable example. While many seem to resent the idea of forgiving him at all because 1. his crimes were premeditated unlike many others and 2. he may have caused the deaths of over 200 people (while most of the other prisoners had a much more limited scope), he also has a large fanbase that either find his motive tragic, sympathize with him because of his willingness to atone via the death punishment, or...think he's hot.
  • Mahiru is infamous for garnering this response from the fandom as well. Many fans hate her, seeing her as a manipulative abuser who feels no remorse for her crime, while supporters of Mahiru argue that she isn't intentionally manipulative, but instead extremely blinded by rose-colored glasses when it comes to love and relationships...or they think she's hot.
    • The beginning of the Second Trial would seem to have lessened hate against Mahiru somewhat, given that as a result of her ‘Not Forgiven’ verdict, she was reportedly attacked by Kotoko— resulting in her updated character art having her boast a broken arm and leg, alongside lifeless eyes. Many have shifted to pitying Mahiru, as a result.
    • With her Second Trial song "I Love You" and associated voice drama revealing that she's extremely compassionate to the point of forgiving Kotoko for attacking her and even managing to make Es cry and that she never meant her boyfriend any ill will at all when they were in their relationship, and (depending on your interpretation) may have experienced abject poverty with him, reception of Mahiru's character is starting to go headlong into woobie territory instead.
  • Kotoko is shaping up to become this as of the start of the Second Trial, given right off the bat (pun not intended) with her new character art and voice lines, she has seemingly taken to attacking the characters who were deemed ‘Not Forgiven’ in the First Trial. Fuuta and Mahiru explicitly state that she had attacked them— however, it is unknown as of yet whether she tried to attack Amane or Mikoto. Fans are split on whether Kotoko’s actions are expected/justified or completely out of line.
    • Moreso now the Second Trial introduction has been released it's been confirmed Kotoko attacked three out of four of the 'Not Forgiven' inmates. Amane was not attacked; Fuuta was protected by Kazui and got off relatively lightly; Mahiru is only alive because Shidou was able to provide medical care having been 'Forgiven' last round with Jackalope explicitly stating if anything else happens to her she will die, and the only reason Mikoto wasn't injured was because his alter was an even match for Kotoko in a fight and beat her into a draw. The general consensus is at least an acknowledgement that by deeming her 'Forgiven' it's only prompted her to double down on her viligante justice methods, and a growing concern what that could mean going forward.
• Breakthrough Hit: "MeMe" hit 1 million views in just a week and is the most-viewed video on the channel.
• Broken Base: Even putting aside the various possible interpretations of the prisoners, one often-debated practice is "meta-voting", or voting based more on how a prisoner might react or how their character might develop, rather than based on the crime itself. Supporters tend to believe that the early trials are the perfect opportunity not to vote based on the murder since we're still learning about the prisoners and what they did, while detractors argue that there's no guarantee that voting a certain way will lead to the outcome one might have hoped for.
• Common Knowledge: It's very easy to mess up, but the audience is voting on whether the prisoners should or should not be Forgiven for their crimes, rather than if they were Innocent or Guilty. All of them are responsible for whatever crime they committed, so they're automatically Guilty by the latter dichotomy.
• Creepy Cute: Mu's insect girl appearance that she takes on in "It's Not My Fault" is as freaky as it is endearing, not just appearance-wise, but also thanks to the juxtaposition between the cruelty of her actions and the cutesiness of her demeanor.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Fans believe Haruka to be neurodivergent or have developmental issues based on his difficulty in understanding or using advanced vocabulary and his desperate desire for attention caused by his mother neglecting him.
• Draco in Leather Pants: While all of the characters are sexy/cute in their own rights along with being murderers to different degrees, Shidou and Mikoto receive an absurd amount of thirst from the fandom, despite confirmation in Shidou's case and implication in Mikoto's to have had many victims. For the girls, Mahiru, Kotoko and Mu are also the subjects of this, though to a lesser degree.
• Ensemble Dark Horse
  • Despite having no name for over two years since her first appearance, Mu's victim Rei has a lot of fanart, probably because before the Second Trial, she was the only victim who was depicted clearly (instead of having their features censored, being represented by something else, or just not appearing).
  • After the release of "Magic", Yuri quickly became the most popular of the four leader figures for how different he was from them: he is the most human-like in appearance, wears shabbier clothes than the other three, doesn't have the cult's cloud symbol anywhere on his clothes, and, perhaps most importantly, he is obviously not happy about punishing Amane.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Before John's name was confirmed, fans would refer to him as 'Orekoto' and Mikoto as 'Bokukoto', after the Japanese Pronouns John used for them.
  • The girl Kotoko rescued has been nicknamed 'Lucky' after the logo on her cap.
• Foe Yay Shipping: Mikoto and Kotoko. They're described as equal level in strength and Mikoto is the only one who doesn't hate or being afraid of her (part of the reason being his Alternate Identity Amnesia). Kotoko herself is also intrigued with his condition and wanted to know more about him.
• Friendly Fandoms: With Vocaloid, as the co-producer of MILGRAM, DECO*27, is well-known for his Vocaloid work. Official covers of DECO*27's Vocaloid songs featuring the prisoners are included with the prisoners' albums. Taken full-circle with the Miku cover of "Undercover" for the project's 1st anniversary.
  • Also with The Caligula Effect as Takuya Yamanaka was the director for Caligula and a writer/co-producer for MILGRAM, and DECO*27 featured in The Caligula Effect: Overdose. The two met while working on Caligula.
• Ho Yay: Yuno and Mahiru, being the least destructive relationship being portrayed in the project thus far. Yuno is cold and distant toward everyone except Mahiru. In Yuno's birthday event after Season 1, Mahiru expressed her thanks to Yuno for giving her a wheelchair and wishing her a happy birthday, despite nobody else is in the mood for celebration. Yuno replied:
  Yuno: In this situation and you still say something like that?... Mahiru, you truly don't deserve to be here...
• I Knew It!: A few fans suspected early on that Mikoto's case involved some kind of memory loss, and that he had more going on than being The Everyman. Cue "MeMe" showing his crime in graphic detail, and the subsequent reveal he has dissociative identity disorder.
• Jerkass Woobie: Possibly Mu as of the second trial. Watching her videos in chronological order reveals that she went from her school's Alpha Bitch who would gleefully bully other girls to a bullied outcast herself who was tormented by her former friends and nearly Driven to Suicide.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Hoota/Footer/Hooter ^ExplanationGoogle Translate usually reads Futa's name as one of these, as it's usually written in katakana and thus translated as a foreign word. Translation of almost everything except the videos is done by fans and takes some time, so English speakers who use machine translation for bits and pieces of info while waiting will be seeing these frankly hilarious translations pretty much every time Futa is mentioned. "Hooter" is especially notable for enabling jokes about the restaurant chain as well.
  • ITA ITA ITA ^ExplanationPerhaps the catchiest part of the chorus of After Pain ("Nee nande ita-ita-ita-itai no yamete kurenai no?"), which as a whole is already incredibly catchy in itself. It's been used to refer to, well, pain.
  • MeMe ^ExplanationThe name of Mikoto's song. It’s both a play on the English first-person pronoun "me" twice and the word "Meme", lots of people were joking about how his song is named "Meme" as soon as it was revealed.
    • Nande ^ExplanationMeaning "why," this word shows up three times in the fifteen or so seconds of MeMe’s preview. The fandom has taken to using it to express confusion. Can be expanded to "Nande boku ga" or the full line "Nande boku ga koko ni iru no", literally meaning "Why am I here?".
  • They need therapy more than prison/Voting for therapy ^ExplanationAs the prisoners’ songs are released and we see more and more of their motives, ways of thinking, and what actually happened, it becomes insanely obvious that the prisoners make up a really bad case of Dysfunction Junction, leading to the birth of this meme.
  • Mahiru and rats ^ExplanationThe imagery of Mahiru feeding her boyfriend rats in "I Love You" is probably metaphorical, but has nonetheless inspired a disproportionate amount of jokes for such a short scene.
  • I’m fifteen, so I’m an adult in Puerto Rico and Haiti. You’re twelve, so you’re a child no matter the country.^ExplanationA copypasta of one of Es's lines from Amane's second voice drama, which is so specific that it's easily proven incorrect and subject to a lot of mockery.
  • Kotoko is a furry ^ExplanationThe end of "Deep Cover" uses imagery showing a werewolf-like being that emerges from Kotoko's mind, leading to a lot of jokes about how she's come out as a furry.
• Narm:
  • In Relative Zero Degrees, Yuno's voice drama, she introduces herself as sixteen years old. She’s eighteen. This was acknowledged by the production team, but it's still funny that the mistake made it in.
  • In Double, Mikoto's frantic running scene ought to be something out of a horror movie scene. However, his expression, especially when he trips, looks more goofy than anything.
  • In Deep Cover, Kotoko's shadow turns into a werewolf at the end. It should look intimidating, but it looks bulgy and ridiculous; rather than being afraid, many commenters began jokingly congratulating Kotoko on coming out as a furry.
• Nightmare Retardant: In the teaser trailer, Futa's line is "There's no way something like this is forgivable! This is a human rights violation!" Presented with little to no context, the implications of the quote are terrifying. Then comes the character voice trailer, which reveals the full line to end with "I'm gonna sue you!" Suddenly, the line is hilarious.
• One True Threesome: A platonic version of this sprang up between Haruka, Futa, and Mu after the latter two were asked which of the prisoners they got along with best and both answered Haruka (with Futa in particular saying that he looks out for Haruka because he's younger than him). It's not uncommon to find fanart specifically featuring the three of them. it got a bit of a wrench thrown in it when Jackalope claims Mu and Haruka have become a codependent Queen/Slave relationship by the second trial, but the ship still holds.
  • Theres also a ship between Fuuta, Mahiru and Mikoto based on how they were all voted guilty in the first trial. A common joke with this ship is for them basically adopting Amane as she was also voted guilty.
• Shocking Moments
  • Crying B features Mu noticing and pointing out Es' unusual unawareness of their own thoughts, which not only leads to a breakdown on Es' end, but references Es' role as the Audience Surrogate and introduces the possibility of the plot going meta.
  • Mikoto was introduced as the clueless Generic Guy and his song preview's lyrics consisted him being confused. Then, over a year later, MeMe premiered and gave us verses that sound like they came straight out of heavy metal and one of the bloodiest, most disturbing videos of the first trial.
  • John Doe has who we first assume to be Mikoto going on an uncharacteristically angry rampage and beating the shit out of Es, when any prisoner harming the warden was previously demonstrated to be impossible - the reason is immediately revealed to be the identity of the attacker, that is: Mikoto's alter. Kotoko also shows up to save Es, marking the first time a voice drama has more than two speaking roles.
• Values Dissonance: Because many of the prisoners represent a Japanese societal conflict, some seem much more or less innocent depending on the background, age, or culture of the viewer. Most notable are Yuno, whose "crimes" consisting of several abortions are not even unethical to many younger fans, and Shidou, whose decision to pressure family members of brain-dead patients to euthanize them for organ donation purposes is always sketchy, but much less so abroad, as in native Japan it is much more controversial whether organ donation is morally acceptable and whether people without cognitive activity should be considered alive.
• Viewer Name Confusion: Due to differing translations from Japanese to English, it's not uncommon to see variant spellings for some of the prisoners' names- specifically Futa/Fuuta, Shido/Shidou, and Mu/Muu.
• The Woobie: As shown by the results of the forgive/don't forgive polls, it's not hard for fans to feel bad for many of the prisoners despite their crimes.
  • Haruka may be one of the most notable examples. His timid demeanor, self-loathing, and sole wish of being loved garnered him a lot of love and sympathy from the fandom—enough so to vote him innocent for the First Trial (in fact, Haruka's results were tipped in his favor more than anyone else thus far; while other prisoners voted innocent just barely passed, Haruka's poll ended with 58% of votes for his innocence).
  • Mu can also be considered one, as she was bullied enough to push her to considering suicide, and showed clear remorse immediately after committing her murder. However, the reveal of her entitled side in Trial 2 removed a considerable portion of sympathy for her.
  • Amane, the youngest of the prisoners, quickly became loved and pitied by the fans. Not only is she in a prison facility while still being an elementary schooler, but it also appears that she was abused and brainwashed into committing her crime. Immediately after the release of her MV, an overwhelming majority of votes were in favor of forgiving her (although things turned out very differently).
  • Trial 2 has these feelings arise in the fandom towards the prisoners voted guilty, especially for Futa and Mahiru, who on top of being left in a state of mental disarray are suffering the painful aftermath of a Kotoko-issued No-Holds-Barred Beatdown.
• Woolseyism: The French translation for I Love You preserves the “daisuki/die” pun by capitalizing the letters M, O, R, and T in the subtitles. “Mort” is French for “death”.

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