Danganronpa 2 Goodbye Despair / Tropes N to Z

Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair Trope Examples
A - D | E - M | N - Z

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N

• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The Future Foundation is initially referred to by the name "World Ender," and Monokuma mocks the name, saying that an obviously evil name is something that only a kid would think of. The "World Ender" moniker turns out to be Metaphorically True, since the Future Foundation's goal is to bring an end to the world full of suffering and despair that Ultimate Despair brought about.
• Nebulous Evil Organisation: The Future Foundation is made out to be this by Monokuma. At first, Hajime believes it to be true, because the Future Foundation took away his memories. However, it turns out that the Future Foundation was on the side of the students all along, and the entire game was an attempt to rehabilitate their Brainwashed and Crazy personalities instead of just killing them all. In fact, the final chapter has Hajime subverting the trope by shooting down his own arguments about how everything is the fault of the Future Foundation.
• New Transfer Student: After getting the "lying fever," Nagito claims that Nekomaru succumbed to his wounds, and that an exchange student will be coming in to replace him. Given the nature of his condition, though, this doesn't end up happening. At least, not in the form of a completely new character.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Hajime, whose self-hatred and longing to be "talented" was so strong that he willingly took part in a project to suppress his real identity and be rebuilt as the multi-talented "Ultimate Hope", Izuru Kamukura. Then he fell under Junko's influence, murdered the student council, kickstarted The Worst, Most Despair-Inducing Incident Of All Human History, and made the events of Super Danganronpa 2 possible by smuggling AI Junko into the Lotus-Eater Machine.
  • The chapter 5 murder is essentially caused by this. Nagito set up a crime scene that looked as though he had killed himself, culminating in starting a fire at the scene. However, he didn't actually die until the other students threw a set of fire grenades in an attempt to put out the fire. One of those grenades had been filled beforehand with a deadly, gaseous poison, by Nagito. So, by Monokuma's twisted definition of a murder, the student who threw that grenade was the one who killed Nagito.
    • Nagito's plan would likely have become this had it succeeded. His main intention was that he wanted the Future Foundation member to graduate and for the other students - the Remnants of Despair - to be executed by Monokuma. However, he clearly couldn't have known that the graduation process was highjacked by Junko, and would have caused all the dead students to be possessed by her...
• No Mercy for Murderers:
  • Case 4 has Gundam, who killed Nekomaru to save classmates from hunger. Executed.
  • Case 5 has Chiaki unknowingly killing Nagito due to his plan to expose the “traitor”. Any actual court would rule her Not Guilty, but since Monokuma wants to get rid of her so she can no longer interfere with his plans, she is executed with Monomi.
• Non-Standard Game Over: Downplayed in the final trial. The first time you're offered the choice of graduating or repeating, choosing to get out will instantly send you to the retry screen with special dialogue, even skipping over the failure screen that usually precedes it, as if the game is telling you "This isn't the right choice, but we can just pretend you picked the other one."
• Noodle Incident: Whatever embarrassing thing Sonia was up to in her bathroom that she fears would disqualify her from marriage/queenship, especially given that at an earlier point in the game she cheerfully let the others know she wasn't a virgin.
• Nostalgia Level: The final investigation takes the students back to Hope's Peak Academy. For bonus points, while in there Monokuma refers to them as "the supporting cast".
  Monokuma: I went to the trouble to bring you to Hope's Peak Academy, and you don't feel surprised or nostalgic... Oh well, it's not like I did this for you guys. Even if you don't feel nostalgic, I'm sure someone is feeling nostalgic right now!
• Not a Mask: At the start of Chapter 4, Kazuichi is convinced Nekomaru's new robotic body is an elaborate costume, until he tries to remove the "mask".
• Not Disabled in VR: We find out in the final chapter that every one of the students besides Chiaki were once members of Junko's despair group, and in multiple cases were covered in self-inflicted mutilations from their desire to feel despair (with some severing their own body parts to be replaced with limbs from Junko's corpse). The survivors from the first game placed them all inside the Neo World Program with the intent of reforming them by erasing sections of their memories from before they all entered high school and got involved with Junko in the first place, which restores them to their youth to keep the illusion real and gave them bodies to reflect this.
• Not What It Looks Like:
  • In chapter 3, Hajime says this to Fuyuhiko, after he is discovered with Mikan in his bed (she crept into it while he was sleeping).
  • During an unlockable scene in chapter 3, Kazuichi drags Hajime into spying on Nekomaru and Akane after overhearing them talk about doing "it". "It" turns out to just be Nekomaru giving Akane a really intense massage.

O

• Obfuscating Postmortem Wounds: Played with in Nagito Komaeda's scheme to expose the "traitor" among the students in Chapter 5, which involves getting the students to unwittingly cause his death. Nagito inflicts numerous wounds on himself while alive, as Red Herrings indicating his cause of death once he's killed by one of the students throwing a poison gas grenade Nagito prepared himself; this culminates in a seemingly mortal spear impalement the moment he inhales the gas and lets go off the rope holding the spear. Whether it was the gas or the spear that killed off Nagito isn't exactly known, as Hajime Hinata notes in the chapter's Closing Argument at the class trial.
• Ominous Latin Chanting: "Let Us Sing of a Hollow Victory" (Disc 3, Track 8 in the OST).
• Once More, with Clarity: A pretty immediate version. When Peko is revealed as Mahiru's murder, her version of the event shows Fuyuhiko standing next to her with an elated grin on his face, and when she declares she has done his bidding, he wordlessly smirks in triumph. But shortly after, we see Fuyuhiko's recollection of the event, which is clearly implied to be the "true" version of the event. Here, Fuyuhiko is at first utterly flabbergasted at Peko's slaying of Mahiru, and upon gathering his senses enough to respond, his first reaction is to ask her in panicked tone if she has any idea what she has just done, and their following conversation makes it clear that he is downright horrified that Peko would throw her life away like this.
• Ordinary High-School Student: Nagito claims to be this. Subverted, as he is insanely lucky. But played straight with Hajime, who has no Ultimate talent and is referred to within the text as this trope.
• Out-of-Character Moment:
  • Chapter 3's motive has this happen to several characters thanks to Monokuma infecting people with a "despair disease" in order to provide a "motive" to kill. Akane suddenly breaks down and cries, Ibuki becomes very serious and gullible, and Nagito tells obvious lies.
  • An unlockable scene in Chapter 2 also qualifies for Hajime, in which he decides to go spy on Mahiru and Hiyoko bathing. At the end of the scene, he even wonders to himself, "Was my characterization always like this?"
  • Makoto's first appearance during the Trial of Chapter 6 sees him unusually forceful in trying to get the survivors to select "Graduate". Hajime pulls on a weak point, and then exploits the trust password, to reveal that this Makoto is a fake created by Monokuma.
• Out-of-Genre Experience: In chapter 4, when you're playing as Nagito, there's an escape-the-room sequence straight out of Zero Escape, another series by the same developer. (Sadly, you don't get a "SEEK A WAY OUT!" screen.)

P

• Painting the Medium: By the end of chapter 5, dead characters start popping out of nowhere and the game screen starts becoming pixelated, with blocks of the screen falling off at any given time and text being placed where it really shouldn't be. This is to represent that the virtual reality the characters find themselves in are on its last legs.
• Permanently Missable Content:
  • On a given playthrough, you obviously can't spend Free Time with someone after their death. In addition, if the player doesn't spend time with Nagito during the first two free time opportunities in Chapter 1, you can still spend time with him but cannot get his actual Free Time events.
  • The hidden Monokuma dolls can only be found in the respective chapters that revolve around the current island. They cannot be obtained by revisiting the previous islands in a subsequent chapter, so players may have to replay the required chapters if they wish to finish their collection.
• Plot Hole:
  • When Mikan is enacting the cover up to confuse the hours of her murders, she relies on Hajime watching her own re-enactment of Ibuki's supposed suicide, which causes him to quickly run to the Titty Typhoon. He reacts to Ibuki's body first and then runs up to the hotel dorms to alert the others, which then apperently Mikan was fast enough to follow him, enter the Typhoon when he left, smashed a drumming stick, unraveled a piece of fabric from a pillar, and glued up the door before closing it, while also being fast enough to arrive with Fuyuhiko just in time to not look suspicious or tired at all when encountering Hajime. Not helping matters is that she was previously known as being very clumsy and having a bad case of tripping in suggestive positions, so it would be even harder to believe she was fast enough to do all those things.
  • The Despair Disease in chapter 3 reverses the personalities of the people who suffer from it. Hot-Blooded Akane becomes a coward, honest Nagito becomes a compulsive liar and zany Ibuki becomes Comically Serious. But when Mikan gets it it restores her memories as a member of Ultimate Despair, specifically being cited as her getting a Remembering Disease. The only problem is that Mikan was never previously shown to be unusually forgetful. Rather her most defining characteristic was her timidity, so one would think she would act more like Akane usually does.
• Poor Communication Kills: Basically the theme of Chapter 2, where the murder occurs because Peko fails to understand what Fuyuhiko wants from her. Mahiru also falls victim to this as well, yelling and chastising Fuyuhiko for his role in Twilight Syndrome when she wanted to atone for her actions. Hiyoko also ends up drawing suspicion to herself in the early part of the trial by falsely claiming she didn't go to the beach house.
• Power Dyes Your Hair: Along with Kiyotaka in the previous game (although less important to the plot), Hajime's hair turning white is a perfect example of this in the final chapter.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Fuyuhiko succeeds in avenging his sister...at the cost of Peko and Mahiru's lives and the loss of his right eye.

R

• Recycled Soundtrack: The music from the first game is reused in this game, except the songs are remastered, the reused tracks labeled with an "Re:" on the game's official soundtrack album.
• Red Herring Twist: In Chapter 3 when Nagito, Akane and Ibuki all have the Despair Disease, Hajime and Fuyuhiko go check on Nagito and then start looking for Ibuki when she appear to be missing. Neither of them remember to check on Akane, but nothing comes of it, as Ibuki is the one who was murdered and Monokuma lifts the Despair Disease once a body is found.
• Relationship Values: Like the first game, the protagonist can hang out with the other students and give them presents. This time, you'll be rewarded with Hope Shards which can be exchanged for skills during the trial sequences, and hanging out with them enough to fill out the report card also gives you a unique skill. Also, like the first game, there's a limited number of free time segments in each chapter, and you can't hang out with someone if they're dead. There are also certain characters who are unavailable at certain times for plot reasons. However, unlike the previous game, there is now one character that you can't make any relationship progress with unless you spend some time with them at least once before a certain event, so even though you can technically spend time with them afterwards, nothing will happen if you missed their "deadline" earlier, which is very easy on a first time un-spoiled play through.
• The Remnant: The entire cast of students, except for Chiaki, are what's left of the original Ultimate Despair group that kickstarted The Worst, Most Despair-Inducing Incident In Human History.
• Revealing Continuity Lapse: Aside from various visual glitches, dead characters inexplicably start appearing as if they never died.
• Room Escape Game: Chapter 4 features one as a direct Shout-Out to Zero Escape - it's actually fairly difficult to the point that the game offers to let you skip it with no consequences (other than the loss of some Monocoins you would have received as bonus for finishing it).

S

• Sacrificial Lamb: Hiyoko teases Kazuichi by calling him a 'background character' who's doomed to suffer an early death. His profile on the official Japanese site even implies the exact same thing. Subverted, because he's not! He survives the entire game, while Hiyoko herself gets killed in chapter 3.
• Sad Battle Music: In the final Rebuttal Showdown of the fifth trial, in which Sonia desperately tries to argue that Chiaki isn't the traitor, the background music is "All All Apologies" instead of the normal music.
• Sadistic Choice:
  • Kill one of your classmates, or spend the rest of your life in captivity — and when it comes down to the trial, fess up and receive a gruesome punishment, or escape with the blood of everyone else on your hands.
  • For everyone else, the choice isn't much better. Sentence the killer to a horrifying and gruesome execution—or have everyone else suffer the same fate.
  • Chapter 4's motive boils down to choosing between starving to death alongside everyone else or committing murder to get out.
  • In Chapter 5, Nagito's Thanatos Gambit forces the students to convict an innocent party (the one who accidentally and unknowingly killed him) so that the others can live.
  • In the final chapter, the students are given a choice: choose to "Graduate" and leave the island with their new memories but enable Junko's AI to hijack the bodies of everyone who died in the game; willingly stay in the Lotus-Eater Machine with all of their friends but doom the three members of the Future Foundation who came in to help them; or force a shutdown that would destroy Junko's AI but also erase their new memories, resetting them back to how they were before the game started along with the memories of all the atrocities they committed as part of the Ultimate Despair.
• Scylla and Charybdis: The Big Bad makes a distinct effort to create this situation in the final trial, as if to make both hope and despair look unattractive.
• Sealed Evil in a Duel: One of the options in the final trial offered by the Mastermind is to remain trapped on Jabberwock Island in order to keep her trapped with them.
• Self-Deprecation: This game has its moments, such as when Monokuma criticizes stories that have last minute amnesia plot twists and just casually drops at the beginning of the game that the whole cast lost their memories, and when Kazuichi states that the global tragedy sounds like a bad story from a high-schooler. There's a lot more of it in the final chapter; Hajime constantly complains about the implausibility of some of the more unrealistic features of the school, like the indoor cherry trees in the dojo, and thinks that keeping dead bodies in the schools bio lab is "a ridiculous idea that should've been scrapped in development."
• Sequel Hook: Makoto notes in the epilogue that, while the game's events are over, The Tragedy isn't.... Kyoko states that things have finally started to "calm down" during the sixth trial, but it's clear the world is still far from stable, let alone "normal."
• Shrine to the Fallen: Hiyoko makes one for Mahiru at the start of chapter 3, only to make it so poorly that everyone finds it horrendous, she breaks down crying soon afterwards.
• Shoo Out the Clowns:
  • Ibuki, one of the more lighthearted and energetic students, is murdered in Chapter 3, and while the game still has its humorous moments thanks to Nekomaru and Gundham, they're not nearly as frequent. When those two end up being the victim and murderer respectively of Chapter 4, things immediately get much, much darker.
  • Done somewhat In-Universe, when Kazuichi gets Akane to turn off "Minimaru" during the Chapter 5 trial, so they won't be distracted.
• Show Within a Show: In Chapter 2, Monokuma presents the students with a doujin game called Twilight Syndrome Murder Case (which is based on the real-life Twilight Syndrome series originally by Human Entertainment), which functions as Schmuck Bait: completing the game reveals a motive to kill, but if you choose not to play and someone else does, then you might be in danger and not know about it. In the end it gets revealed that the game covers two murders that happened during the period that their stolen memories are from, specifically the murder of Fuyuhiko's sister and that of her killer Sato.
  • It also counts into the "game (the motive) within a game (Danganronpa 2) within a game (Neo World Program)" premise of the chapter.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!:
  • A lengthy monologue at the start of Chapter 2 is finally cut off by an unknown speaker screaming "SHUT UP!" (It's later revealed that this was Kazuichi, right before he and Nekomaru knock Nagito unconscious and tie him up hand and foot.)
  • Chiaki calmly tells both Nagito in Chapter 1 and Monokuma in Chapter 2 to be quiet.
  • Mikan hits back at Nagito when he says he cannot forgive her for killing out of despair, saying she did it out of love and that he couldn't possibly understand because he's never been loved.
  • And, with some help from Chiaki, Hajime eventually retaliates in this way to the hallucinations of Izuru Kamukura in his head.
    Izuru: I can't choose the future.
    Hajime: Even so!
• Similar Squad: There are some noticeable similarities between the new students and the batch from the first game. However, much of it is used to later subvert audience expectations with Nagito's status as Makoto's Evil Counterpart being the most obvious example.
  • Of particular note are also Chiaki and Akane. Chiaki not only shares the same basic role as Kyoko, but they also have similar color schemes. Chiaki is also very similar in appearance and role to Chihiro. Since Chiaki was created by Chihiro and the latter may have incorporated some of his friends' personalities and appearances into her design, this is likely completely intentional. Akane, on the other hand, not only shares the same basic role as Aoi Asahina, but has the same skin and hair color.
• Sock It to Them: A variant is used during Monokuma's Twilight Syndrome scenario. The murder weapon is eventually determined to be a stolen swimsuit, stuffed with gravel from the broken aquarium near the body.
• Something Else Also Rises: When Hajime wakes up in the hospital with Mikan in bed with him in bed, his ahoge is sticking straight up.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Monomi is not executed alongside Chiaki in the stage play.
• Stepping-Stone Sword: This is how Chapter 2's murderer managed to leave the scene of the crime without leaving any footprints behind - by using her shinai as a ladder to reach a window high up in the shower room.
• The Story That Never Was: Everything is all a computer simulation to retrain everyone to be better people. Well, at least that was the plan before Monokuma showed up and hijacked everything. A large part of the finale is about how to proceed with the situation, either undoing it all or letting the villain win. Despite all intents and plans, the reset turns out to somehow allow everyone to retain their memories and character developments, despite the timeline being thrown out.
• Stuff Blowing Up: In Chapter 5, Nagito decides the best way to flush out the traitor is to start blowing up everything, threatening to destroy all of the islands unless they expose themselves. It turns out to be a bluff.
• Stunned Silence: Kazuichi is reduced to this after the "materials for a boat" Monokuma promised turned out to be for a toy boat.
• Super Gullible: Near the middle of the third chapter, Ibuki Mioda catches a disease which Monokuma released on the island with random, personality-affecting symptoms. Among the three who contracted the disease, she was unlucky enough to get 'gullibility' as her symptom, which made it easy for Tsumiki — who was the nurse that was supposed to be caring for the sick — to strangle her to death; Ibuki quite literally went along with her own murder without suspecting a thing.
• Super Supremacist: Zigzagged: Nagito is very adamant that Ultimates are inherently better than the untalented masses. However, Nagito has an Inferiority Superiority Complex in that he considers himself worthless despite having one of the most powerful talents as the Ultimate Lucky Student, but still sees normal people as beneath him. The other Ultimates do not condone his views and largely detest him due to his insanity.
• Supporting Protagonist: It's eventually revealed that the students are nothing more than pawns for the AI Junko to play with in order to lure out the real "main characters", aka the survivors from the first game. Once she finally makes her appearance, she continuously makes it clear that Hajime and co are nothing more than supporting roles in the big picture.
• Suspect Is Hatless: After reading about Genocide Jack, Sonia warns Hajime to beware of middle and high school girls in Sailor Fuku. As you might expect, several characters across the franchise fit the description.

T

• Take a Third Option: Chiaki's speech to Hajime in the final chapter essentially boils down to this.
• Tall Poppy Syndrome: The mysterious voice who talks to Nagito in the mind-screwy "Chapter 0" believes that the world is like this, with talentless people hunting down those with talents and driving the world into an evolutionary dead end. It's revealed near the end that the voice belongs to Izuru Kamukura.
• Ten Little Murder Victims: Monokuma invokes this by announcing early on that there is a "traitor" in the group of sixteen students. Subverted on multiple levels: Yes, there is a mole. No, she is not a murderer but instead is a "mole" working for the good guys to observe and support the students. And no, the knowledge and suspicion of a "mole" does not lead anyone to commit murder: Nagito uses this excuse as a bluff to try and kill everyone but the mole.
• The Mole: According to Monokuma, there's a "student" on the island who isn't supposed to be there. Subverted in that the "traitor" is not the students' enemy.
• This Is a Work of Fiction: Inverted in-series with the game Twilight Syndrome, which comes with a disclaimer that the events depicted are factual and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely deliberate. It's later is indeed this, with the evidence being enough for Fuyuhiko to order a murder.
• Tiny Tyrannical Girl: Hiyoko is one of the shortest, youngest-looking members of the cast and she's also a foul-mouthed, cruel bully.
• Together We Are X: Monokuma and Monomi do this when introducing their comedy routine:
  Monokuma: Hellooooooooooooooo, I'm Monokuma!
  Monomi: Um... I'm Monomi...
  Monokuma & Monomi: And together we are The Monokumas!
• Toilet Humor: The game enjoys this. Nekomaru loves talking about taking a shit or how eventually he'll want to take a shit during trials. When he's turned into Mechamaru, he laments his inability to take shits now. At different points, Mikan, Sonia and others have fart jokes at their expense.
• Tomato in the Mirror: One of this game's defining endgame plot twists is that the person who set up the killing game by installing Junko/Monokuma into the program was Hajime himself, or rather, his personality after being genetically modified to be an Ultimate with every possible talent, Izuru Kamakura.
• Trauma Conga Line: Hajime, Fuyuhiko, Kazuichi, Akane, and Sonia already went through more than enough before trial six thanks to Nagito tricking Chiaki into killing him and learning about her being The Mole but after the reveals about their situation and who they are starts up it seems like one Break the Cutie moment after another. On top of losing their friends, they find out that they're Ultimate Despair, how monstrous they've become, they killed their friends, family, and parents; and the kicker...they are told that everything they went through will be erased. They will revert back to their despair selves, and their friends will possibly stay "dead" forever. Should they choose graduate, then they run the risk of letting AI Junko possess their friends (and eventually themselves) and finish destroying the world. Poor kids can't catch a break.
• Tragic Keepsake: In the stage play, after Peko’s death, Fuyuhiko holds onto her sword and sheath. During the bow he gives it back to her.
• Treachery Cover Up: Hope's Peak attempted to cover up Izuru's murdering the student council because of his involvement in the Ultimate Hope Project. When Ultimate Despair revealed this to the world, all hell broke loose.
• Trust Password: Used by Hajime during the final chapter to prove that Makoto, who joined the class trial to persuade the survivors to graduate, wasn't the real deal. The false Makoto, controlled by Monokuma, could not remember why the real one chose 11037 as the password to the ruins.
• Two Girls to a Team: By the end of the game, only Akane and Sonia are left alive of the girls.
• Two-Teacher School: Though the game doesn't take place at school anymore, there's still only two "faculty" members around; Monokuma and Monomi. And both of these are robotic stuffed toys whose interest in educational pursuits is questionable at best. At least Monomi isn't trying to get the students to murder each other.

U

• Unconventional Food Usage: In the first chapter, Teruteru uses a hunk of meat at the party as a means of concealing the murder weapon, a metal skewer.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Hajime is very slow to pick up on all the bizarre glitching going on during and just before the final chapter, including several of his classmates apparently coming back from the dead. Likewise, even the classmates who are still alive seem to act like nothing's wrong.
• Useless Useful Spell: The skill earned by filling out Byakuya Togami's report card passively doubles the Monocoins gained from finding hidden Monokumas and gives a 10% increase in Monocoins after finishing each Class Trial. However, his last Free Time Event only becomes available on Island Mode, which only unlocks after you finish the main story. This means you can only benefit from this skill while you're replaying chapters to fill out your collection or find things you missed. In contrast, a similar skill in the previous game can be unlocked within the first half of the story.

V

• Varying Competency Alibi: One of the pieces of evidence that points to Mikan's guilt is the fact that her assessment of Ibuki's cause of death was hanging, to hide the fact that she had strangled the victim to death. However, when it becomes apparent the victim wasn't hanged, Mikan tries defending herself by explaining she just made a mistake, only for Nagito to point out that she's the Ultimate Nurse and even a drunk med student would have been able to tell the difference.
• Viewers Are Goldfish: During the second trial, the game once flashes back to something Fuyuhiko said earlier in the trial. It's a fairly significant line, but it seems that the game has no faith in the players' ability to remember something Fuyuhiko said less than an hour ago.
• Villain-Based Franchise: Monokuma's back, and ready for more despair!
• Villain Has a Point:
  • Though it doesn't excuse what she did, when revealed to be the murderer, Mikan says she became the way she is thanks to being bullied throughout her life and nobody ever accepting her. When you look back at how the group never call Hiyoko out on her merciless bullying of Mikan or reassure her when she called herself "worthless", she's not exactly wrong.
  • Though he's not an out-and-out "villain", in Chapter 4, Gundham shoots back after being berated for being the culprit:
    If one would call murder so that one may live "evil", then what must one call surrendering on life itself?! If the world shall name it just, then I shall fight that world with all my strength! For to renounce life and choose death is to blaspheme life. It is the perversion of nature, the conceit of mankind!
  • Shortly after this, he says, "You must agree that this is a better outcome than us all starving to death in that surprise house...". Chiaki doesn't contest this reasoning, simply saying, "So that conviction led you to commit this crime..." with a sad and resigned expression on her face.
• Virgin Sacrifice: Sonia asks Gundham to take her along next time he goes to the amusement park of Hell. When he says that the admission is the blood of a virgin, she dejectedly says that her blood would not meet the requirement.

W

• Well-Intentioned Extremist: The Future Foundation in general. Their goal is to bring hope back to the world, and they're willing to execute the remaining members of Ultimate Despair in order to do that.
• What Could Have Been: An odd, in-universe example found in the Dojo. If you examine the targets, Hajime notes that they could have had a minigame here if the production team had more time. He then wonders why on Earth he was thinking that.
• What If?: Completing the game once unlocks Dangan Island, an alternate scenario where Monokuma fails to take over and the class trip goes as planned, focusing on socializing and getting to know your classmates better.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Sonia chastises Fuyuhiko in the Chapter 2 trial for lashing out at Mikan when she starts agreeing with Hajime that Hiyoko likely didn't kill Mahiru. Interestingly, she doesn't scold Gundham for the same thing when Gundham does it to her earlier.
  • The group react like this towards Hajime when he and Nagito conclude that Mikan killed Hiyoko and Ibuki, finding it unlikely she'd have it in her.
  • Mahiru does this twice to Fuyuhiko — once in the first trial when he threatens to sell Mikan to a whorehouse when she says Byakuya could not have been killed with a knife, and again when she calls him out on murdering Sato. The second time it costs Mahiru her life.
• Who Murdered the Asshole:
  • Chapter 3 has Hiyoko as the second victim (or rather the first), who was a straight example of The Bully. The cast discover that Mikan is her murderer.
  • Chapter 5 has Nagito as the victim, who, to say the least, while being a Well-Intentioned Extremist is someone who takes the "extremist" part way too far and doesn't care for who is affected by his goals in his desire to spread hope in his own twisted way. He mutilated his own body as part of a scheme to lure out the "traitor" and make them win the killing game by making them unwittingly murder him. This plan nearly succeeds.
• Who Writes This Crap?!: At one point, Kazuichi mentions to Hajime that he stumbled upon an computer with emails describing the Worst, Most Despair-inducing Incident in the History of Mankind. Kazuichi then casually dismisses the whole thing as obviously being some wannabe writer sharing their silly manga plot with their friends, finding the whole idea of a bunch of disgruntled Japanese high school students suddenly causing world-wide riots and even widespread societal collapse to be completely "unrealistic", outright saying that he finds it an even more "impossible" plot than that story about "a notebook that kills people just by writing in it."
• World of Buxom: The female cast members (except for Mahiru and Hiyoko) are drawn this way in the Super High-school Level Good Luck and Hope and Despair spin-off manga.

Y

• Your Mind Makes It Real: Despite the students being trapped in a massive computer simulation, the program works too well, meaning that anybody who dies inside it effectively becomes braindead in the real world. Possibly.
• Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: Averted. Sparkling Justice is consistently referred to as a serial killer who targets criminals, when most people would call that sort of person a vigilante.

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