Base Breaking Character / Persona 5

• Morgana and Ryuji have a decent amount of detractors for everything that happened before the Okumura arc where Morgana decided to leave the Phantom Thieves. Both of them during that time are accused of passing the Jerkass Ball as Morgana could not take Ryuji insulting him when he spends the whole game insulting Ryuji, and Ryuji absolutely refuses to give a sincere apology for his behavior; causing a heated debate over who's really at fault for the situation. Among these factors, there are other reasons the characters are hated alongside why the supporters loved them in the first place.
  • People love Morgana for his Badass Adorable status, his usefulness in battle as the game's primary healer, and his Funny Moments with the Treasure, as well as all of his snarky commentary when exploring Tokyo. Others loathe him due to his tendency to dictate the Protagonist's free time^note granted, this was toned way down in Royal, telling him he can't do something for sketchy reasons, and find his one-sided admiration for Ann more creepy and desperate than endearing. He's especially loathed for his needlessly Jerkass treatment of Ryuji, to which he often calls Ryuji some form of the word "idiot" in battle and normal cutscenes while also constantly dumping on him for his shortcomings.
  • People who like Ryuji bring up his loyalty, chemistry with Ann, friendship with the protagonist, mindfulness towards his fellow teammates in general (not named Morgana), righteous anger over injustice, and just how plain over-the-top he is; while those who dislike him point to him as an Idiot Hero with No Indoor Voice who's constantly putting the Phantom Thieves' identities at risk of exposure because of how loud he is, and how he never seems to learn his lesson despite being told multiple times.
  • There is a third faction who like both characters just fine but find them to be completely insufferable dumbasses during the Okumura arc for ramping their most negative traits to create one of the game's most inorganic conflicts right before the stakes escalate dramatically.
• There are four camps for viewing Black Mask, for being The Dragon and The Heavy for the Big Bad. Camp One acknowledges that while Akechi's actions can't be justified — indeed, the party never forgives him, they just come to understand him and sympathize with him somewhat — these fans think Akechi was a character that was severely manipulated by all sides, and as such, probably didn't have much of a choice but to be evil, even if he regretted his actions. Camp Two believes that while he had a tragic backstory, he still killed multiple people, including Haru's father and Futaba's mother, even helping spiral the latter into two long years of constant mental anguish and suicidal self-loathing, and caused a lot of other problems for the Phantom Thieves, along with being very smug and rude towards them. Camp Three just plain hates the guy, treating Akechi like a completely irredeemable scumbag and finding his many reprehensible acts to nullify any sympathy points he would otherwise get. Camp Four believe that Akechi is a full-blown Anti-Villain and that the heroes, though they do show some sympathy for him, should have forgiven him and are a bunch of hypocritical Designated Heroes for their failure to do so considering their other actions. This leads to another argument: whether or not he should turn out to be alive and have a redemption arc (Camp One, Two, and Four supporters want to see him atone for his crimes, albeit in different ways, while Camp Three supporters believe that his death was justified). Needless to say, bringing Black Mask up in any discussion will most likely result in a huge fight. See Alternate Character Interpretation and They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot on the YMMV page for how these camps may view Akechi's other role as an even bigger pawn to the True Final Boss, and how much he may have been influenced by him.
• Yuuki Mishima, for his cute design, apparent personality and Confidant abilities (increasing the overall XP gained as well as eliminating the need to grind benched party-members by having them level at the same rate as those currently in use) made him an Ensemble Dark Horse before the game was even released. After it did players found Mishima turned out to be selfishly using the Phantom Thieves to become popular, annoyingly needy and clingy on top of that, and his "big moment" (saving the Phantom Thieves by rallying Tokyo) is completely dependent on whether or not you finished his Confidant Link. Others haven't forgiven him for leaking the protagonist's criminal record to the rest of the school and turning him into a pariah, even if it was on Kamoshida's orders and Mishima's running the Phan-Site was (intially) a way to make up for that. While this would have easily made him The Scrappy, Mishima's saving grace is that his use of the Phantom Thieves as a tool to social-climb happens entirely offscreen, and that the game doesn't hesitate to call him out on his flaws. Joker's dialogue options also show his growing irritation with Mishima, helped by how Mishima is one of the few Confidants who it doesn't matter how you treat them for his link to progress (the other being Yoshida, but none of his dialogue choices are as rude as the ones you can give Mishima), and Joker ultimately loses his patience and drags Mishima's shadow by the ear in Mementos to smack some sense into him. But even then, Shadow Mishima is one of the few in the game that doesn't need to be fought for Mishima to realize his mistakes, because he ends up developing his own sense of courage and integrity anyway as the link is pursued. Some fans still didn't like Mishima in spite of all this, citing his character flaws and general Butt-Monkey status as rather irritating, even if it's acknowledged in-universe. Others acknowledge his glaring flaws and overcoming them as legitimate Character Development. Besides that, given the aforementioned extreme usefulness of his Confidant skills and the ease of leveling them up^note He's available most nights and every meeting with him is a guaranteed rank up, although he might not be available if you have an outstanding request, if you see the Floral Pants Man version of his big moment, it was either on purpose or you've mismanaged your time horribly.
• Shido, the game's main villain gets hit by this as well. Most of it stems from differing opinions on just how effective he is as a villain and character. Proponents find him a good Hate Sink, and how his vileness is connected to almost everything in the game which makes it all the more satisfying once you confront him in what many consider to be one of the best boss battles in the game. His detractors criticize the lack of motivations driving him beyond greed and power, making Shido come off as a rather flat Card-Carrying Villain in comparison to the better-received Kamoshida and someone whose evil comes across as so excessive that it gets difficult to swallow, even taking into account his power and connections. This could also factor in with Black Mask's four camps above in regards to what extent Shido responsible was in the former's actions. The first camp wholly blames Shido for abandoning Akechi in the first place and manipulating him into being his assassin before planning to have him disposed of as well, while the third, and to a lesser extent, second and fourth camps (depending on who in the fourth is asked) argues that Akechi deserves some culpability as he willingly approached Shido with the offer of being his hatchet man, though the second and fourth camps tend to be more sympathetic towards Akechi, agreeing that what he may have inherited from Shido did not help at all.
• The Ruler of the new final palace in Royal is generally considered to be a well-written and developed character, with fleshed-out motives that put them refreshingly in the Anti-Villain category, compared to the Hate Sinks most other Targets are. The divide itself comes in a case of Draco in Leather Pants. Due to Dr. Maruki being the only major antagonist in the game that's overtly sympathetic, and actually being genuine in his goal to end the suffering of their patients ^note as opposed to Yaldaboth's deal, which had ulterior motives, there are a good number of people in the "Maruki Did Nothing Wrong" camp. Some even argue that the bad ending you can choose in the new palace - in which Joker decides to live in Maruki's altered reality where all the Phantom Thieves have their hearts' desires - is more of a good ending than the true ending, since Joker and the other Phantom Thieves decide to separate and move on with their lives, with Akechi's fate, in particular, being left ambiguous. Needless to say, the classic debate surrounding Lotus-Eater Machine plots is in full swing here, with people who disagree with Maruki's motives pointing out the ethical and practical issues of living in an artificial world where all your desires are handed to you on a platter... especially when done so at the whims of a single, all-powerful ruler^note One segment of his Palace does a remarkable job of illustrating how, regardless of the method and motivations involved, at some point Maruki absolutely has to be imposing his own values and ideas about what "happiness" means onto others, potentially robbing them of their own ideal life in favor of one he chose for them. There are also complaints that the Phantom Thieves were emotionally weakened in order to make the third trimester work, and that Maruki's plan ignores the Hedonic treadmill. All desires, once fulfilled, change into expectations, and are inevitably replaced with new desires. Maruki's plan assumes people can be permanently satisfied, which is impossible. Conversely, there's a small but vocal subset of extreme Kasumi fans who view this character's actions towards her as a Moral Event Horizon and consider them just as much of a Hate Sink as the other Palace Rulers. That said, Sumire has the most sympathy toward Maruki out of all the Phantom Thieves, and believes he actually did her a favor of her by letting her live as "Kasumi."
  • Yet a third group exist arguing that while Maruki was still in the wrong, the Phantom Thieves' counter-argument to his Lotus-Eater Machine ignores people who have objectively better lives in Maruki's new reality (with many people even coming Back from the Dead), and that the game essentially says none of that matters, all because some people don't want to be handed happiness on a silver platter and that means it should be applied to literally everyone in the world. These people criticize the game's seeming willingness to uncritically let the Phantom Thieves make a unilateral decision on this concerning all of humanity without their will or consent as essentially walking back on the game's themes and making the heroes into hypocrites.

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