Crapsack World / Visual Novels

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• The Ace Attorney series shows just how common corruption and the ends justifying the means is in the world of law. Trials used to go at their normal pace until the public complained that trials went on for too long and nothing was resolved in a timely manner, along with correctional institutions being overcrowded with felons and suspected felons. To kill two birds with one stone, the courts decided that all trials have to be concluded within 3 days, which means the prosecution and the defense are under a strict time limit to prove that the defendant is guilty or innocent. It's even noted in game that many innocent people were sent to jail due to the new rules.
  • The courts are also heavily biased against defense attorneys due to said courts adopting the "guilty until proven innocent" mindset. The burden of proof falls heavily on the defense while the prosecution just needs to make a plausible case on why the defendant is guilty. You can see the concept of it all in every single case you play where the prosecution will pull every single stunt possible (within legal means, mostly) to make sure that you don't win. Phoenix Wright, a defense attorney himself and the main character in the "Phoenix Arc", is always riding by the seat of his pants and starts freaking out when things seem to be unwinnable for him until he can turn things around at the last possible moment.
    • This is also painfully Truth in Television, as the courts are based on the Japanese judicial system at the time the first game was released.
  • Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney explores the flaws of the court system further with Apollo noting that no matter what evidence, theory, or logic he comes up with, the prosecution comes up with a simple rebuttal that puts the game in their favor and Apollo feels like there's no true justice for the innocent. The broken law system is part of the reason why Phoenix helped create the Jurist System so that there can be people with an unbiased view overseeing the trial and the group can vote on a verdict.
  • By the time Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies rolls around, after several incidents of defense lawyers using forged evidence to win trials and prosecutors pressing false charges on the defendants to get them locked up happened, the public lost nearly all of their faith in the law system and "The Dark Age of the Law" came to be. Both defense attorneys and prosecutors alike will do anything to win, knowing that the public has given up on the system.
  • Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice decides to tackle a court system in a foreign country and it turns out the system there is even worse than the ones used in Phoenix's homeland. The Kingdom of Khura'in enforces the 'Defense Culpability Act' which makes it illegal to "support criminals". That is, if someone is deemed to be offering any kind of support to someone who has been accused of a crime, and the accused is then found guilty, then their "supporter" is to be considered guilty of the same crime and given the same punishment. This caused a lot of defense attorneys to die or suffer a heavy punishment to the point where no one wants to be a defense attorney, especially since the majority of the population has been convinced that all defense attorneys are inherently evil Amoral Attorneys willing to pull any dirty trick to get a win. All trials are now conducted with the prosecution giving their statement and evidence on why the accused is guilty, followed by a Divination Seance conducted by the kingdom's priestess/princess where the court sees the victim's final moments and they use that to seal the accused's fate. There's so much discontent with the law system that a group of rebels known as the Defiant Dragons are actively trying to overthrow the government and change things back, which has sparked a lot of clashes between the two groups. Throughout the game, you can just feel the sheer hatred and suspicion from the gallery in the courtroom in every trial Phoenix gets involved in due to their massive hatred for defense attorneys and demanding Phoenix to be executed for doing his job. Even when Phoenix proves the accused is not guilty, he's instead seen a foreign interloper bullying his way into affairs that are none of his business and is making a mockery of their traditionalist values.
• Analogue: A Hate Story exists in one, made all the more worse by the fact that you can't actually do anything about it. The game's focused on reading through the logs of an ancient Korean Generation Ship, the Mugunghwa that was lost thousands of years ago in order to discover why the ship, and everyone onboard, disappeared in the first place. The only way to achieve this is by working with the ship's only working AI, *Hyun-ae, who is the brain uploaded version of the girl who single-handedly killed everyone on the ship by shutting off the life support systems. Of course, you don't find this out until the climax of the story, after discovering that the Mugunghwa was in a misogynistic and ignorant society where the average life expectancy was between 30 and 50 years old and where the knowledge of Hangul, the Korean alphabet, was all but forgotten. Of course, the world outside of the Mugunghwa is better, but still...
  • Hate Plus explains the events that led to the Mugunghwa becoming a Neo-Joseon society in Year Zero, making it seem that much worse. How? It turns out that society regressed because of a Gayngst fueled crusade by a woman who wanted nothing more but to provide a better world for her "sister." To make matters even worse, the whole thing ended up being All for Nothing as her sister commits suicide because of said crusade. The knowledge of what happens to the Mugunghwa after this just makes the whole thing even sadder, as society only got worse on top of losing the only information on the birthrate decline.
• Danganronpa in general is an absolutely terrible setting to live in, comedic aspects aside. We're not joking when we say that once you get past the copious amounts of bright colors and wacky humor, or the fact most of the Dysfunction Junction Ensemble Cast of each mainline game consists of idiots, jerks, Butt Monkeys, Chew Toys and the occasional Only Sane Man, the game's world can get pretty openly disturbing to think on very quickly.
  • The crux of the original timeline, Hope's Peak Academy, is a private school meant to groom society's elite, with the absolute best of the best developing talents alongside the superhuman level. However, it turns out to be a Gilded Cage with all windows and exits bolted shut, security cameras watching everything, and armed turrets almost everywhere. Fifteen students are trapped inside by a sadistic teddy bear named Monokuma and given a choice: either cut all ties to the outside world and live inside the school forever or "graduate." Graduating involves murdering another student and getting away with it, while the survivors investigate the crime and hold a class trial. If the killer is found, they will be punished and life will return to normal for the other students. If they're not, they get to leave while everyone else is punished. This leads to the fifteen students partaking in the first game tearing each other apart in pure paranoia. As in, how many people of those fifteen walk out alive? Six, and if you count the bad ending, four. The death toll in each subsequent game only gets higher and higher from there on out, by the way.
  • And it turns out it was a pretty terrible place even before this. On the surface, it was a prestigious school where students were provided tremendous freedom and guaranteed success in life if they graduate. In reality, it was a research facility dedicated to studying talent. The students weren't really taught any practical skills like a regular high school, treated more like circus animals. The school was also funded by the Reserve Course, made up of talentless students who payed ludicrous entrance fees, faced severe discrimination, and were kept largely segregated from the rest of the school. Hope's Peak also had a tendency to cover up any crimes that took place on its grounds. Anything that was too big to be kept secret was blamed on any adequate scapegoat, who was then either fired or expelled. They were also conducting secret experiments on the Reserve Course students, trying to turn one of them into the Ultimate Hope for mankind by giving them every talent known to man. They succeeded, unfortunately.
  • The outside world ended up like this thanks to The Biggest, Most Awful, Most Tragic Event in Human History. What began as a student movement against Hope's Peak eventually escalated into an uprising of the lower class against the elite. Violence gradually normalized until people started killing and waging war simply for the sake of causing destruction and despair. Strong people murdered weak people, weak people killed weaker people, and weak people formed factions to lynch stronger people. The members of Ultimate Despair served to fan the flames of this chaos, initiating countless terrorist attacks and coup d'etats all over the world. The atmosphere is also horribly polluted, turning the sky a dark shade of red.
  • Spinoff game Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls shows that Hope's Peak even had an elementary school division, of which the main antagonists of said game, the Warriors of Hope, used to be a part of, and said division was just as horrible to its students as the main High School division was. And thats not getting into showing off just how horrible the Biggest, Most Awful, Most Tragic Event in Human History is first hand, including murderous Monokumas, children and adults killing each other, the brainwashed children that are killing adults televise their torture to the adult resistance live, and the Warriors of Hope themselves are all from horrible broken families. Except Monaca, who manages to be the child equivalent of Junko, but worse.
  • And, as Danganronpa 3 revealed, the Future Foundation, an organization formed to defeat the despairs and restore the world, is hardly much better. They're lead by a bunch of bickering, self-important branch heads who see killing every last one of the despairs as the only option and are willing to execute members of their own organization who disagree. And to make matters worse, Ultimate Despair had already infiltrated the Future Foundation, and it was The Mole's manipulations that helped foster the infighting.
  • Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony doesn't take place in the same universe as the other games, but it has its own crapsack elements. The game ended up having a "Truman Show" Plot that takes place within a reality show in which the characters are killing each other. Those characters have been willingly be part of the reality show. If the mastermind was to be believed, their entire existence have been replaced with new personalities, talents, and backstories though there is a chance of this not being entirely true. And the worst part is that the show has been going on for 53 seasons.
• Last Chance in Xollywood: If you're not part of the elite, life on Ingress is not especially good, what with the constant riots, protests, pollution, grime, inequality, drones and robots going haywire, muggers, scammers and so on.
• World End Economica: Both Earth and the Moon can be seen as Crapsack Worlds. Earth is described as a world that fell apart completely, falling victim to pollution, poverty, and overpopulation, leading to the Moon being colonized in order for humanity to get a fresh new start, and Earth economy cannot compete with the Moon's prosperity in any way whatsoever. Meanwhile, the Moon is a world entirely ruled by money, in which profit comes before morality, and things of emotional or spiritual value, like books or religions, are seen as worthless and futile.
• While it was implied throughout most of the game, the world of Hatoful Boyfriend is revealed to be this in the Bad Boys Love route, at least for humanity. In 2070, a mutant strain of bird flu called H5N1 quickly and lethally swept the world, killing billions. As a desperate means to stop its spread, a virus was engineered that would kill all infected birds, only for it to instead increase their intelligence. Humanity and these intelligent birds were at war for thirty years before humanity lost. By 2188, less than 140 million people- barely 1.38% of the pre-2070 population- have survived, immune to H5N1 but forced to live as hunter-gatherers in the wilderness while the intelligent birds have become the new dominant species. While a peace treaty between the two sides has held, there are still terror attacks and factions on both sides are eager to reignite a war. The protagonist, Hiyoko, was sent to prove that humans and birds can live together in peace. All of this can lead straight into humanity's extinction if you make the wrong decisions in BBL.

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