Fanfic / Raise Your Voice Against Liars

"We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin."

—Andre Berthiaume

Raise Your Voice Against Liars is a crossover between Miraculous Ladybug and Persona 5 by Naruwitch and BeeTeeDubya14.

It takes place shortly after Season 3 for Miraculous Ladybug, and after Futaba's Palace for Persona 5.

"A chance encounter on a school trip warps the reality between two groups of heroes."

Or, the Phantom Thieves get a Paris division and start wielding Miraculous.

Naruwitch, creator of this fic, has also done Code Geass: Paladins of Voltron.

It has been confirmed a sequel will release covering the events of "Strikers" when the original fic is finished.

Currently stands at 131 chapters.

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This work contains examples of:

• Adaptational Badass: Some of Marinette's classmates, including those who were not Miraculous holders, become Persona-users and join the Phantom Thieves.
• Adaptational Dumbass:
  • Alya, who wants to be a professional journalist, repeatedly publishes Lila's lies as fact on her blog without ever making any sort of attempt to verify whether or not they're true, no matter how outrageous they are. However this is a Downplayed Trope as Alya had done something similar several times in canon, making this somewhat of an exaggeration of her usual behavior.
  • Mme. Bustier apparently never made even the slightest attempt to verify any of Lila's excuses for when she cut class, simply accepting Lila's excuse that her mother was too busy with her work at the embassy to be bothered by a phone call. Again somewhat of an exaggeration from canon, as she never seemed to check Lila's excuses in "Chameleon".
• Adaptational Early Appearance: In a way, Haru/Noir. In the game, she is only spoken to briefly during the Hawaii trip before she joins the team. Here, she’s the one who indirectly sets off the Thieves' tirade against Lila when she asks her not to lie about her father’s business.
• Adaptational Gender Identity: Naoto Shirogane, who in canon is portrayed as a crossdressing cisgender woman, is here described as non-binary. Naoki Konishi is also a trans girl.
• Adaptational Jerkass:
  • Mme. Bustier, who very nearly crosses into Adaptational Villainy territory. She eventually reaches that territory when the Phantom Thieves discover some very unsettling things about her.
  • Also Alya, who goes from being Marinette's best friend in canon to a mindlessly obedient Beta Bitch to Lila, turning on and tormenting Marinette ^note Best shown when her cognition in Lila’s Palace is revealed to be an executioner that tries to execute Marinette 'as planned'. She also expects Marinette to instantly and completely forgive her after she apologizes, and then acts like Marinette's the one with the problem when she refuses. She's such a Jerkass in the fic that Marinette declares her to be unworthy of wielding a Miraculous, and strips her of her status as Rena Rouge. She gets better.
• Adaptational Sexuality: Some members of the Phantom Thieves are revealed to be homosexual. Akira and Ryuji, for example, are in a relationship while Ann is asexual. Morgana apologizes to her in light of learning about this.
• Adaptational Villainy: All the thieves' targets are people who, while canonically at least questionable, weren't the sort of complete monsters that the Phantom Thieves normally deal with. Needless to say, they've become substantially worse people in order to justify them being targets of the Phantom Thieves.
  • Lila. Dear god, Lila. You thought she was bad in Miraculous? As Marinette and the Phantom Thieves later learn, she wasn’t the only person Lila went out of her way to harass or ruin their social life beyond repair. She's done it to countless others, some of whom have committed suicide.
  • Mme. Bustier in canon was a Misplaced Kindergarten Teacher at worst who genuinely wanted to help her students (hence taking an Akuma for Marinette) but was a bit too permissive towards Chloé and Lila. Here, she’s a major target with the sin of Apathy, and she only cares about her class to the extent they make her look good.
  • Bob Roth's worst canon crime was plagiarism and his general demeanor is more akin to a trend-chasing, idea stealing, corner cutting executive. While he was an unlikable person and did favor XY, he most certainly wasn't a human trafficker who wants to take over Paris with force of arms to declare open season on women, including his friend the mayor's wife.
  • The human Big Bad of Persona 5, Masayoshi Shido, manages to top even his canonical horrific behavior by implying he'd be willing to start a world war to bring Japan to greatness.
• Adaptation Name Change:
  • Some of the Miraculous holders get to become heroes again, though since Hawk Moth knows their identities, they have to use different Miraculous, costumes, and aliases so as to not alert him.
  • Downplayed by Haru's Metaverse codename. In canon, it's Noir; in this story, the French party members point out that Noir without an 'e' is the masculine form of the word (ex. Chat Noir) and the feminine form is Noire.
  • In canon, Marinette goes by Pegabug when using the Ladybug and Horse Miraculous combined. In this fic, she goes by Lady Horseshoe. Justified, as the fic started long before Season 4 first aired.
• All for Nothing: Gabriel kills Audrey to silence her before she can reveal that he is Hawk Moth. Does him no good, as the heroes learned it in her Palace before her heart was even changed. See Out-of-Character Alert below.
• And This Is for...: After Shadow Gabriel is defeated, Rogue and Chance lay a beatdown on him for all the abuse he sent Adrien and the Miraculous users he beaten.
• Armor-Piercing Question: When Adrien explains to the class and to the Phantom Thieves that one of his reasons for not exposing Lila is because he was afraid she would get akumatized, Makoto asks him if he ever thought about Marinette potentially getting akumatized because of Lila’s bullying. His Oh, Crap! expression says it all.
• Ascended Extra: Shiho Suzui gains a much larger role in the story as she ends up transported to Mementos, and with the Phantom Thieves' help, awakens to her Persona and joins them.
• The Atoner: A major portion of Marinette’s class, not just the ones that join the Phantom Thieves, becomes this after they learn the truth about Lila in verifying degrees. ^note  Alya wanting Marinette to be her friend again and doesn’t realize what she had done, Adrien trying to change for the better yet is still naive, etc.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: When Marinette explains the Ultimate Power of the Ladybug and Cat Miraculouses to the Phantom Thieves, Yusuke, Futaba, and Makoto are instantly suspicious that there's some sort of catch due to it sounding too good to be true, Futaba even mentioning The Monkey's Paw, with Marinette agreeing due to how the universe works on a Balance Between Good and Evil. When asked if Hawk Moth might be aware of any price, Marinette admits that she's half-convinced he doesn't know, and half-convinced he doesn't care.
• Because I Said So: Gabriel and Nathalie resort to using this line to keep Adrien home from school on the day of Lila's confession, expecting an opportunity for a mass akumatization event and wanting to keep him out of the crossfire but unable to explain this for obvious reasons.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Miraculous Ladybug's Big Bad Hawk Moth is the most prominent threat to the heroes, but Persona 5's Big Bad Masayoshi Shido is still hovering in the background making his own play for power.
• Bitch Slap: Lila's mother slaps Mme. Bustier in front of the class, furious at the teacher for not contacting her about Lila's supposed diseases and injuries. Mme. Bustier tries to excuse that she couldn't reach her, so Ms. Rossi slaps her again, as the school could have tried contacting her at the embassy where she works.
• Boom, Headshot!: Rouge/Adrien does this to Black Mask to prevent him from killing his father. And while Black Mask is quickly healed, the Thieves are forced to take him with them to get him further treatment, resulting in them discovering his real identity.
• Boss Rush: A non video game example. Shadow Gabriel summons the various palace rules during his fight in order to finally stop the Phantom Thieves.
• Broken Pedestal: Several characters are this in Paris:
  • First is unsurprisingly Lila Rossi. Everyone is horrified by Lila due to her lying to her classmates for two years, by revealing her cooperation with Hawk Moth, framing Marinette for everything that never happened, threatened her by taking everything she holds dearly, and for having driven students who had called her out before to suicide.
  • Marinette no longer looks up to Ms. Bustier due to allowing Chloé and Lila to get away with their schemes for two years. This is taken up to eleven upon learning that she has a Palace and discovering her dark secrets (such as how she sees her students, particularly Marinette, as porcelain dolls with cracks, with Marinette’s being the most damaged). It proves so horrifying that she has a panic attack and has to be taken to a safe room by the Phantom Thieves to calm her down.
  • Ms. Bustier's class and Ms. Mendeleiev are horrified upon learning what Ms. Bustier has done: treating her students horribly, molding them into taking different interests, punishing students who attempted to disrupt her order, and for doing all this just to get back with Nathaniel’s dad.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Bob Roth can’t remember if the judge's niece is among the girls his criminal associates abducted, simply because they abducted too many people for him to remember their names.
• Calling the Old Man Out: Done multiple times.
  • First it’s done by Kagami to the Shadow of her mother for being way too controlling of her.
  • Nathaniel also does this to Shadow Bustier during the battle with her, outright stating that she’s not his mother unless she changes for the better.
• Control Freak:
  • Tomoe Tsurugi, to the point where she wanted to transfer Kagami to a different school, causing Kagami to anonymously put up a request on the PhanSite to change her heart. And ultimately, Kagami ends up confronting her mother’s Shadow herself when she’s accidentally transported to Mementos, awakening to her Persona in the process.
  • Bustier is one as well: She tries to influence her students into taking career paths that are not suited for them in order to have a diverse class and never tries to actually help her students, instead forcing bully victims to never stand up for themselves and to forgive their bullies in order to "keep the peace" and to "be a good example" (even going to the point of trying to force Marinette to forgive Lila for her bullying AFTER Lila’s confession). This ultimately ended up negatively affecting not only her current class, but her past classes as well, as M. Garçon and his classmates ended up either as abusive authority figures, criminals, or dead from drug overdoses in some cases. The rest are in therapy.
• Cool Teacher: Ms. Kawakami goes right up to bat to defend Marinette from Lila and Ms. Bustier.
• The Corrupter: It's noted that Lila has an uncanny ability to bring out the worst in people (cranking Alya's passion for journalism into a hunger for sensationalism, turning the milquetoast Adrien into a spineless doormat, and inflating Max's ego enough to override all common sense, for example).
• Creepy Doll: The cognitive students in Mme. Bustier's Prison's cell complex are lifelike porcelain dolls. They're only recognizable as such because of the sheen of their bodies and most of them showing some kind of damage like cracks and chips. Their existence unsettles the Phantom Thieves, as they show how Mme. Bustier sees her students as objects that she uses for her own ends and mistreats if they displease or disappoint her.
• Darker and Edgier: The subject matter covered is far darker than canon Miraculous Ladybug. While the worst danger in canon is a cackling Silver Age-esque supervillain, the worst dangers here are things like being driven to suicide by a bully, abuse of authority, and human trafficking.
• Deconstruction Fic: An unique example as while the story does call out Adrien for his awful advice regarding Lila and ultimately leaving Marinette despite his promise at the start, it gradually deconstructs salt fics by not only giving Adrien Character Development to shed his naive viewpoint and gradually learn to stand up for himself but also has the Thieves’ negative view of him both as Adrien and as Chat Noir gradually cause them to act very petty towards him, ultimately culminating in them refusing to warn him about Gabriel being Hawk Moth or about the fact he had murdered Audrey out of the flimsy excuses of not trusting him and only seeing him as a spoiled rich kid. This blows up in their faces when Chat Noir ends up inadvertently following them to Gabriel’s Palace out of concern for them (with everyone but Chance/Marinette aiming their firearms at him out of mistrust when they see him) and learning for himself who Gabriel really is and how he sees him, causing him to awaken his Persona to save himself and have a panic attack right after, passing out. And while the Thieves do realize that they had went way too far and that they had disregarded the fact that Adrien is ultimately still human, he still rightfully confronts them for trying to keep him out of the loop and declares that they simply didn’t care about his safety, which they had to accept was unfortunately true.
• Didn't See That Coming: Persona users derail several of Hawk Moth and Mayura's plans, since they're an Outside-Context Problem and still an unknown concept to them at this current point of the story.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • Adrien was so concerned with keeping Lila happy that he failed to realize how bad things had gotten for Marinette, or how harmful Lila’s lies could be, or how badly his classmates would take The Reveal as Lila’s confession ended up causing a mass akumatization incident. The Phantom Thieves call him out for this when he and the rest of the class tries to apologize to Marinette for their actions.
  • Subverted for Marinette, Luka, Marinette’s classmates, and the Phantom Thieves. They quickly realize that Lila’s confession would cause an akuma outbreak and spend some time preparing for it. They do it again for Ms. Bustier, showing that they are fully aware that the confessions will cause akumas and will prepare for them properly, rather then let their targets continue their abuse of power to avoid akuma attacks.
• Disqualification-Induced Victory: Mmd. Bustier no longer qualifies for the position as the new principal due to her change of heart and being arrested for her crimes, thus Mmd. Mendeleiev wins due to having the second highest votes.
• Door Slam of Rage: Invoked Trope. Since she knows that Lila's confession likely will cause a mass akumatization, Marinette deliberately makes a dramatic and seemingly furious exit during said confession and slams the door of the classroom behind her. That prompts every person's emotions to overflow, drawing Hawkmoth's attention.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • In Chapter 41, Nino suggests in the chat that the Phantom Thieves one day should target Gabriel Agreste for how he treats Adrien, which is brushed aside because it's irrelevant to the current topic. The Phantom Thieves at one point discuss that they can and have to bring Hawk Moth down, but need to know his civilian identity's name to access his Palace. Hawkmoth and Gabriel Agreste are the same person.
  • In Chapter 57, Ladybug compares Chat Noir and Adrien to each other due to their naïve black-and-white worldview.
  • In the same chapter, Hawk Moth wonders why Ladybug hasn't made Fox!Yusuke a permanent Miraculous Wielder if he's immune to being akumatized. He guesses right that the Tokies live far away from Paris, so it's harder for her to call on them on short notice. What he doesn't know is that not only the Tokies, but almost every current Miraculous wielder is immune to his powers.
  • When the heroes finally discover Hawkmoth's identity in Audrey's Palace, Marinette has a full-blown panic attack at the thought that Adrien might have been working for his father all along, treating his relationship with his classmates as a game, and might even know her secret identity. Of course, the reader is well aware that Adrien is actually Chat Noir, values his friendships more than anything, and a lot of his problems stem from the fact that no one tells him anything.
• Driven to Suicide: Lila has done this to previous schoolmates who have refused to fall under her thrall. Marinette nearly succeeded in killing herself, but Luka found and saved her before it could take.
• Easily Conquered World: How Roth seems to think taking over the capital of the nation with the world's sixth most powerful military guarded by superheroes will go. The heroes would beg to differ, even as they don't point out how moronic it is.
• Enfant Terrible: Lila has been a sociopathic bully who has ordered her classmates mutilated and driven them to suicide since the age of 11.
• Ensemble Cast: The merged casts of Persona and Miraculous Ladybug make for quite a large amount of characters.
• Et Tu, Brute?: After Lila's confession, Marinette is forced to confront how badly her "friends" let her down. She ranks them all on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being no harm done and 10 being This Is Unforgivable!; Alya and Adrien rank 8s, Kim, Rose, and Max all rank 6s, and Nino and Alix rank 2 and 3 respectively. After Lila leaves, everyone except Alya manages to lower their ranking.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • It's noted that even Hawk Moth's stomach churns a bit when he finds out Lila has driven some of her former classmates to suicide.
  • Hawk Moth and Mayura are just as horrified as anyone else when Okumura's mental shutdown takes effect and kills him. Hawk Moth frantically denies responsibility and displays further rage at the thought of someone taking a parent away from their child (as a widower and single father, he'd know), and both of them speculate the Phantom Thieves may have done it in earnest good faith.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Sae, while listening to the story in the Flash Forward, expresses her own disgust as usual with the Parisian targets despite being the final target of the Flash Forward narrative.
  • Kawakami may not be winning Teacher of the Year in her own book, but even she finds the way Bustier mishandles her class problematic and reads her the riot act after a second fight between the Shujin and Dupont students, and not doing anything to reel in Lila's lying.
  • Ms. Mendeleiev is ashamed to find out her colleague has been incredibly apathetic to her role as a teacher.
  • Anarka Couffaine is a known rebel amongst the Parisian adults, and doesn't like the police. But that doesn't stop her from calling them when her daughter is targeted by kidnappers.
  • XY is horrified and disgusted by the things his horrible dad has done.
• Evil Teacher: Ms. Bustier proves to be the second-worst teacher in the history of teachers (nobody beats Kamoshida). She sees her students as nothing but dolls to be molded as she desires for her own fame and fortune so she can win back her ex-husband.
• Extreme Doormat: Deconstructed. Living with his emotionally neglectful and abusive father - who controls Adrien's entire daily life and schedule, finds fault in everything he does, doesn't listen to his son's arguments, and forces him to treat him like royalty - has left Adrien a passive, obedient people-pleaser. This nature in the face of social conflict in his civilian life, not to mention his lack of social skills, have majorly contributed to Marinette's suffering under Lila. Adrien was also afraid that the class wouldn't have believed him either and would have shunned him like they did Marinette. So instead of standing up for her to stop the bullying, inquiring about her well-being, investigating what Lila was doing, or disproving her lies, he let Lila's actions continue and escalate. Adrien's cognitions in Lila and Mme. Bustier's Palaces underscore that. In Lila’s Empire, his cognition is a completely silent and perfectly obedient Sex Slave, complete with a chain on his neck. In Mme. Bustier Prison's cell complex, each of the dolls representing the students show at least some damage, meaning that they went against Mme. Bustier's expectations or displeased her. Only Adrien's doll is pristine.
• Fatal Flaw: Adrien has plenty.
  • Adrien's need to please and make everyone around him happy. He abandoned Marinette in his plan to keep Lila happy so that the latter wouldn't be akumatized, and was also afraid of being bullied if he stood up for her or himself. This has destroyed his bonds with both Marinette and Nino, two of his closest (and only) friends.
  • Adrien also has a tendency to fall into tunnel vision and black-and-white thinking. He didn't realize that Marinette's suffering made her susceptible to akumatization or that Lila would never willingly change (especially while being pandered to). And while he has every right to be suspicious of the Phantom Thieves, he also fails to consider the good they are doing, or the greater picture that many more people abusing their influence like Hawk Moth exist and need to be stopped. Displaying these traits as Chat Noir has made Ladybug reluctant to tell him about her involvement with the Phantom Thieves.
  • On a different note, he doesn't handle rejection well. He reacts inappropriately as Chat Noir in whose disguise he feels more comfortable showing his frustrations. It's understandable given his upbringing, but he repeatedly showed an entitled attitude to Ladybug's affections and the knowledge of her identity, straining their partnership.
• Foil:
  • Mme. Bustier serves as one to Madarame. Both are teachers, but while Madarame is an artist, Bustier is a school teacher. Madarame plagiarized the artworks of his students and Bustier goes out of her way to convince her students to take up career paths different from their classmates, even if that career doesn't suit them.
  • Kim can also be considered this to Alya. While Alya does want to make it up to Marinette, it’s clear she expects to be Easily Forgiven and is refusing to take things slow, making a big plan to "get her back." Kim, on the other hand, has realized he would probably not be forgiven and is making small attempts, such as going on jogs with Marinette and checking to see if she is okay. As a result, Alya is still on bad terms with Marinette, while Kim is slowly regaining her trust and her friendship, though Kim becoming a Phantom Thief has also helped him with rebuilding his friendship with Marinette. Even how they take their replacements as Miraculous Holders can be this: Alya takes hers so poorly, she ends up getting akumatized into Rena Rage and battles Fox!Yusuke for the Fox Miraculous and angrily confronts Ladybug about it after, while Kim ultimately accepts his, asking Ryuji to take care of Xuppu.
  • Adrien can also be seen as one to Black Mask a.k.a. Goro Akechi. Both put up a presentable mask while in public while expressing their real selves as their alter egos (which both hold the power of destruction), have abusive fathers^note  who themselves have no qualms about using their sons to get what they want, as shown in ‘Chat Blanc’, and both desire to have friends. However, while Goro had grown up in multiple child institutions while Shido was absent from his childhood, Adrien was always under Gabriel’s "care". Goro also used his powers to commit crimes, while Adrien genuinely wishes to do good as Chat Noir. Adrien is open about not wanting to be alone and tries to keep the friends he has^note  which ended up backfiring on him when it came to his choices regarding Lila and Marinette while Goro doesn’t admit it until he is confronted, and in Royal, refuses to reconnect with the Thieves due to his crimes, seeing himself as unworthy of their friendship. Finally, Adrien's criticisms of the Phantom Thieves are done from a legitimate fear of them abusing their powers, while Goro's are just a front.
• Forgiven, but Not Forgotten: DEFIED! Marinette makes it clear that, under no circumstance, she will ever forgive Lila for nearly ruining her life with her bullying. This earns her resounding applause from a large majority of students, even Adrien's own bodyguard.
• Freudian Excuse: Kagami puts in a request for her mother's heart to be changed, and she gives a good reason why she's acting like this: her father died in a car crash and one of her mother's friends was a lead suspect. Since then, she's developed a cynical view of friendship and began coddling Kagami to the point of forcing her to move following the second mass akumaization event.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: No one accepts Adrien’s excuses^note  his concern for her getting akumatized, thinking her lies are only small things that can’t hurt anyone, that she was lying only because she wanted friends and would had stopped, not wanting to be isolated himself, and the fact no one believed Marinette for not doing anything regarding Lila, with the Phantom Thieves quickly countering them. ^note That Marinette could had gotten akumatized herself, that Lila isn’t the only person capable of getting akumatized, that Lila did not want friends, and that lies can really hurt (something ALL of the Thieves know due to what they went through).
  • As the story approaches the climax, this gets Played With. When the Phantom Thieves confront Cognitive Gabriel, the members who actually know him and his son are quick to accuse him of being the reason Adrien was too afraid to stand up against Lila. Later on, Akira is still well aware that Adrien did wrong, but realizes that he and his friends were a bit too quick to dismiss Adrien as a “spoiled rich boy” and forget that Adrien HAD reasons, even if they didn’t understand them.
    • This is also flipped back onto them, as much as they do have a reason to dislike Adrien for what happened with Lila and be wary of him both as his civilian self and as Chat Noir due to needing to ensure no one finds out about their identities (or in Marinette’s case, fearing another Chat Blanc future), it ultimately does not excuse them from not bothering to help him in regards to Gabriel or even trying to warn him that Gabriel was Hawk Moth or that he murdered Audrey, as it shows just how little Adrien’s safety meant to them.
• Grew a Spine:
  • Marinette, with help from the Phantom Thieves and Luka, ultimately culminating with her rejecting Lila’s public apology to her, despite being expected to forgive Lila. Everyone except for her class applaud her for it.
  • Adrien also grows one after entering his Father's Palace, both deciding to stand up to his father and tearing into the Phantom Thieves for their terrible treatment of him.
• Godzilla Threshold: Villainous example. Bunnyx reveals the consequence of Gabriel's deadline: he'll become so desperate to win that he'll cross the one line he's refused to this whole time: deliberately targeting Adrien, akumatizing him into Chat Blanc, who will destroy the world.
• Guile Hero: Ryuji, of all people, gets to be one. With a mere two conversations, he forces Max to acknowledge the fact that the napkin Lila "saved" him from was completely harmless and forces Marinette's entire class to acknowledge that if Jagged Stone wrote a song dedicated to Lila (a minor), he'd be a pedophile.
• History Repeats: Many of the events in the fic echo events in Persona 5.
  • Marinette and Luka accidentally happen upon the first target's Palace, are captured for trespassing, and are nearly executed; they are only saved by Marinette awakening to her Persona. Akira and Ryuji underwent the same process with Shadow Kamoshida.
  • The Phantom Thieves are initially reluctant to change the first target's (Lila/Kamoshida) heart; they change their tune when they discover the target's actions have led people to attempt suicide.
  • Marinette's first Mementos target was victimized by the second Palace target, and directs the Phantom Thieves to said target after his own change of heart; this echoes Nakanohara and Madarame in canon.
  • The third target, Bob Roth/Kaneshiro, is a member of organized crime whose distortion covers an entire city.
  • The fourth hostile target, Audrey Bourgeois/Kunikazu Okumura, is the abusive parent of a main character who is assassinated by the Big Bad before their change of heart can take.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Adrien shows this multiple times, first believing that Lila is a misunderstood girl who’s lying only because she wants friends and would have eventually stopped, and then that the Phantom Thieves are potential threats that will eventually abuse their power and should be taken down. This is in addition to his canonical defenses of Chloé in regards to her horrendous behavior. At the same time, however, he is starting to outgrow this due to Lila’s confession, as he is able to quickly realize that Bustier would make a terrible principal. And while Adrien is jumping to conclusions regarding the Phantom Thieves, he is not the only one. Their operations look suspicious from the outside and nobody knows what their methods are. And that’s not getting into what Goro Akechi did in the actual game.
• Hypocrite: Mme. Bustier doesn't follow or believe in her sayings about 'being a good example'. She knew from the start that Chloé's behavior at school was unacceptable. But instead of curbing her bullying or talking with her father to find a solution, she basically kept Marinette as a distraction for Chloé to focus the majority of her bullying on, until somebody else came along to stop her, while Mme. Bustier had all the means to do it herself. Her Shadow also claims that she has moved on from Mr. Kutzberg to "better things", but her Treasure reveals that she wants to get back with him.
• Immune to Mind Control: Persona users cannot be Akumatized. Hawk Moth tries this on Yusuke and the results are quite painful for the former.
• Inspector Javert: Mixing in with Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist, Chat Noir becomes this towards the Phantom Thieves, as he thinks they are blackmailing their targets into confessing and will abuse their powers. Considering how Goro used the Metaverse to commit murder, how the heists the Thieves committed ended up working in Yaldabaoth’s favor in the actual game and Akira could potentially end up accepting a deal with him to freely use the Metaverse in the Bad Ending, he has every single right to be concerned.
• Interrupted Suicide: Before the story's start, Luka walked in on Marinette slashing her wrists out of despair at having to deal with Lila and saved her life.
• Irony: Kagami's mother wants to send her back to Japan following the Mass Akumas in order to keep her safe. Considering the Phantom Thieves are dealing with in their home country, Japan is arguably more dangerous than Paris.
  • In Persona 5 tradition, the mission to infiltrate Audrey’s Theater of Egocentricity is given a deadline by the threat of her doing something drastic. In this case, that deadline involved pulling strings to bring her daughter Chloé back to Paris, and the Thieves are forced to scramble in fear of all the akumas she’s sure to cause upon her return. When Chloé does return for Audrey’s funeral, it turns out that she’s gone through massive Character Development in the wake of Miracle Queen with the help of counseling at her new school, and she only wants to do whatever she can to make amends to her victims. Meanwhile, the Thieves’ infiltration of Audrey’s Palace eventually leads to Hawkmoth murdering Audrey to protect his identity, and using the city’s horror to cause another mass akumatization. Even after the heroes defeat the immediate gauntlet of enemies, the trauma the day caused led to weeks’ worth of akumas on a daily basis.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: Why Chloé is only mentioned in the story: She was sent to a boarding school in Sweden by her father after a public outcry regarding her willingly working with Hawk Moth in the Miracle Queen incident and her not being punished for endangering lives in the past.
• Liar Revealed: One of Lila's lies is that Jagged Stone wrote a love song about her. The Phantom Thieves point out that that would mean that Jagged Stone (a fully-grown adult) wrote a love song professing his romantic interest in Lila (a teenage girl).
• Locked Out of the Loop: Chat Noir admits to Ladybug how painfully aware that he is this, and how he wishes she would trust him enough to tell him the truth about her decisions about the heroes, their identities, and to let him have a say on who should get a Miraculous. Unfortunately, his inability to deal with the frustration of this has resulted in him developing an attitude problem towards the choices Ladybug makes (such as him showing a negative attitude with the new heroes and then lashing out at Ladybug when he finds out Luka/Kobra knows who she is) which in turn, makes Ladybug even more reluctant to fully disclose information to him.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: It's revealed that Ms. Bustier is Nathaniel's mother.
• Mama Bear:
  • Sabine (and by extension, Tom) fits this to a subtle T when Kim comes by with the offer to jog with Marinette the first time. While Tom is the one that makes the vocal threat, Sabine standing by the counter with a kitchen knife making apple juice (not to mention the juice looks strangely red in the lighting) does little to calm Kim's nerves.
  • Anarka tosses aside her long-standing disdain for the police when Juleka is nearly kidnapped by human traffickers.
• Mistaken for an Imposter: When the heroes enter Gabriel's Palace, Chat Noir ends up detransforming in front of Shadow Gabriel, who assumes Adrien to be a sentimonster meant to trick him because he thinks the "real" Adrien is too weak-willed to be Chat Noir.
• More Insulting than Intended: After Adrien finds out in Chapter 118 that the Phantom Thieves were aware of his father for months, but only made a move to stop Gabriel when they learned he was Hawkmoth, he bitterly stated that clearly, none of them knew what it was like to live every day with someone like that. Since, in reality, at least a quarter of the Phantom Thieves (Kagami, Ryuji, Yusuke, Makoto, Futaba, and Haru) had experience with abusive caretakers, they’re left wincing at the realization that they'd basically put opposing that familiar pain on the back burner because they didn't register that Adrien was suffering.
• Mundane Solution: During Ann's first run as Bombshell, Ladybug gets a champagne bottle for a Lucky Charm and struggles to come up with a plan to use it. Bombshell clubs the akuma with it.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • Lila's confession hits Adrien so hard that, right before Hawk Moth starts Akumatizing students left and right, he breaks down in the school bathroom and realizes how badly he's screwed up about telling Marinette to just endure Lila's bullying.
  • All of the class gets hit with this when Lila confesses. Kim in particular is hit hard, as he realizes that not only was Marinette telling the truth, she also was innocent of all the things Lila had accused her of, which drove him to bullying and isolating her.
  • All the Thieves get this when Adrien learns the truth about his abusive father and how they refused to do anything to help him, finally realizing that Adrien is ultimately still human despite his flaws and that they left him to his fate simply because of their grudge against him.
• No-Sell: When Hawk Moth tries to akumatize Fox!Yusuke (who is suffering from fear due to Reverser) during the akuma break-out, Goemon interferes, using the connection to cause pain to Hawk Moth (and Yusuke, and all akumatized victims) while telling him that he isn’t welcome and that he’s already claimed Yusuke. The pain ultimately forces Hawk Moth to cut the connection, saving Yusuke from being akumatized. However, Word of God says that the immunity isn't perfect, as Persona users can still be akumatized if the offer appeals to them truly.
  • Hawk Moth tries again with Shiho gets triggered during the battle with Bob Wrath, and again he is thwarted when Leda comes to the rescue, and the akuma is stunned long enough to be finished off.
• Not Me This Time: After stopping the akumatized Kunikazu, he suffers a mental breakdown and dies, causing Hawkmoth to protest he doesn't kill.
• Official Couple: Marinette and Luka, Adrien and Kagami, Akira and Ryuji.
• One Degree of Separation:
  • Shiho's therapist turns out to be Yu Narukami, the hero of Persona 4.
  • Akira's original doctor turns out to be Sayoko Uehara, the Devil Social Link of Persona 4. It's later revealed that his adoptive mothers, aunts, uncles, and auncle are the Investigation Team.
• Out-of-Character Alert: Ladybug drops a Precision F-Strike as a sign that Hawk Moth has crossed the line by murdering Audrey Bourgeois.
  "GET BACK HERE, YOU FUCKING MURDERER! WE KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE!"
• Pull the Thread: The Phantom Thieves and Haru do this to Lila, putting her on the spot and actually pressing her for details on her lies, forcing her to repeatedly backpedal and revise her stories as they begin to fall apart under even the slightest bit of scrutiny.
• Put on a Bus: Before the start of the story, the aftermath of "Miracle Queen" resulted in Chloé getting sent off to boarding school in Sweden. The fifth major arc kicks off with the announcement of her imminent return.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Ms. Bustier ended up winning the principal election, but due to having her heart changed, she breaks down onstage, confessing her crimes and stating she doesn’t deserve to be principal. After her Akuma is dealt with, she’s arrested, officially ensuring she can’t serve as the principal despite winning.
  • Changing Audrey's heart, like Kunikazu Okumura before her, gets her killed to protect the Big Bad's identity. See All for Nothing above.
• Related in the Adaptation:
  • As revealed in Chapter 51, Mme. Bustier is Nathaniel's birth mother.
  • In canon, there's no indication that there's any connection between the Phantom Thieves and previous Persona wielders. Here, Akira is the adopted son of Chie and Yukiko, and he considers the rest of the Investigation Team his honorary aunts/uncles (and auncle, in Naoto's case).
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • Kawakami at the end of the Hawaii trip, after helping break up yet another argument between the Dupont and Shujin students, absolutely RAILS Bustier about her completely unprofessional teaching methods, Akumas in Paris be damned. She admits she's far from perfect herself, but she finds Bustier's failure to do anything about Lila's Consummate Liar status and Marinette's status as the class' "good example" disgusting.
  • In Feed Your Soul Like Fire, Ryuji’s rank 8 Confidant receives one. Instead of standing there letting Ryuji’s former track team beat him up, Akira stops them from doing so, pointing out that Ryuji is as much of a victim of Kamoshida’s abuse as they are, that Kamoshida is to blame instead of Ryuji, and lastly stating that if they beat up Ryuji, they’re no better than Kamoshida, and makes them apologize to Ryuji or just leave. They do leave, but not before apologizing to Ryuji.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Kawakami has made strides from the near apathetic figure she was at the start of the game. The best case of this is shown when Marinette is tripped by Lila during the Hawaii trip, Kawakami scolded Bustier for her students' behaviors and for her beliefs of setting a good example, saying a real good example would have been helping Marinette pick up her things.
• Rejected Apology: Marinette does this multiple times.
  • First she rejects Lila’s public apology to her, calling her out for trying to ruin her life just because she wouldn’t grovel at her feet and declaring she will never forgive her.
  • She then rejects her class' apologies to her after. She asks if they just want things to go back to the way they were, points out how easily they could had found proof^note  Rose could had contacted Prince Ali, Max could have had Markov check the internet, etc., and calls out how easily they turned against her.^note  After, though, she makes it clear that while she is willing to be their friend again in the future, they are going to have to work for it.
  • Finally, she rejects Adrien’s personal apology, telling him how much he had hurt her with his abandonment of her. She also tells him like with everyone else that he is going to have to work to regain her trust.
• Second Super-Identity: The heroes all change Miraculouses like they change socks. Luka and Kagami also regain their old Miraculouses, but under new codenames due to having been outed to Hawk Moth beforehand.
• Secret-Keeper: Luka starts off as knowing Marinette's identity due to finding her earrings after interrupting her suicide attempt. Later on, all of the Phantom Thieves learn the Miraculous holders' identities.
• Secret Secret-Keeper: Chat Noir overhears Kagami as Dragonica mutter how she doesn't want to fail Ladybug "again", cluing him in to her identity. He keeps it to himself to prevent her from losing her Miraculous.
• Sequel Goes Foreign: Not a sequel, exactly, since this takes during both Persona 5 and Miraculous's stories, but the Phantom Thieves exploits soon extend to Paris, courtesy of their encounter with Marinette during their field trip to Hawaii. Chapter 74 strongly hints that Hawk Moth is planning to make a move on Japan as well.
• Seven Deadly Sins: Like the Palaces in Tokyo, the Palaces in Paris are based on these.
  • Lila: Empire of Mendacity, based on Pride and the old concept of Vainglory (deceitful boasting).
  • Mme. Bustier: Prison of Apathy, based on Sloth.
  • Bob Roth: Jungle of Audacity.
  • Audrey Bourgeois: Theatre of Egocentricity.
  • Gabriel Agreste: Cathedral Of Desperation.
• Skewed Priorities:
  • Adrien fails to see long-term consequences in favor of short-term placation. He'd rather keep everyone happy to avoid an akuma, which is impossible. Everyone includes people who need to be stopped in their actions like Lila or Mme. Bustier, who are abusing the people around them and causing much more harm (and akumas) in the long-term. And while his concerns about the Phantom Thieves' goals have merit, even if their operations do cause akumas, Hawk Moth will always find other events to abuse so long as he has the Butterfly Miraculous.
  • Alya would rather have Marinette forgive her instantly instead of owning up to the fact how much she hurt her and making proper amends.
• Stupid Good: Adrien earnestly means well, but his naivete and poor social skills lead him to grossly overestimate Lila and Chloé's desire to change themselves for the better and make multiple bad judgement calls in dealing with them.
• Serious Business: As in canon, art is this to Yusuke. When he sees the handiwork of an art-themed akuma, he proceeds to use the Fox Miraculous to curbstomp the akuma while going on a Gordon Ramsay-esque rant that terrifies everyone present.
• Tempting Fate: Iwai pelts dung at the fates when he claims that nothing in the world could freak him out. Soon enough, he's being strongarmed into jaunting to Paris on a day-trip to be a part-time superhero.
• Timed Mission: Like in game, each of the Parisian Palaces all have a set deadline that the Treasure needs to be stolen by that day or else there will be consequences:
  • Lila: Lila will leak a photo of Marinette and Nino hugging and spread rumors that will put their reputations in the gutter.
  • Bustier: Bustier will be elected for the school board.
  • Roth: Juleka will sold into Roth's human trafficking ring.
  • Audrey: Audrey will have Chloé brought back to Paris and risk another Miracle Queen incident.
  • Gabriel: Gabriel will akumatize his son into Chat Blanc and bring about the Bad Future Marinette was warned about.
• Took a Level in Badass: The majority of the cast gets this, as Marinette and her classmates awaken to their Personas and become Phantom Thieves, while the Phantom Thieves themselves become temporary holders of some of the Miraculouses.
• Took a Level in Kindness: The students at Shujin ^note compared to how they were at the start of the game certainly have, as they all yell at Lila for trying to make the Phantom Thieves look like bullies when they call out her lies.
• Toxic Friend Influence: Lila's sway over the class has changed many of the students for the worse even after she has left, like making Alya more stubborn or Adrien more passive.
• Trauma Button: Shiho gets triggered when Bob Wrath puts her in a situation reminiscent of when Kamoshida had done something similar. Had Leda not intervened, she would have been akumatized.
• Trophy Room: Lila's Empire has two.
  • The Trophy Garden. It’s where Shadow Lila has the statues ^note  Her older victims (and people who wise up, as shown with Nino) as old and neglected, showing how she fully drained them while her new victims are well taken care of of the people who believe in her lies, and harvest their goals and dreams (in the form of flowers) as fuel for her lies.
  • On a much more disturbing level, she has two for her deceased victims. One being an area where her victims are shown crucified with their heads on pikes and have plates explaining their ‘crimes’, while the other is full of shelves filled with items that explains what each victim’s dream/passion was.^note (Such as a microphone representing Ivanka Ptichka, a former opera singer) And in both of those areas, she has prepared spots for Marinette, her next intended victim.
• True Companions: The Phantom Thieves very quickly become this to Marinette during their trip to Hawaii; spending time with her, complimenting her fashion designs, defending her from Lila and most importantly, telling her to stand up for herself and that her feelings do matter. May also be a case of Big Brother Instinct since Marinette is confirmed to be younger then the majority of the Thieves and they know just how bad lies can be due to their pasts.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: The Phantom Thieves inadvertently end up setting the stage for the Gabriel Agreste arc with both their actions and their inactions: He was able to find out about them and takes advantage of their heists to not only cause more akumas with their targets confessions. However, they don’t take their investigation into him seriously enough, resulting in him turning to murder in order to hide his identity, resulting in Audrey’s death. They also don’t do anything to help Adrien and even try to keep him out of the loop, resulting in him wandering into Gabriel’s Palace, almost getting killed in the process. And even though he’s able to save himself by awakening his Persona and agrees to join them, Bunnix warns that if Gabriel’s heart isn’t stolen in time, he will become desperate enough to akumatize Adrien into Chat Blanc, causing the end of the world. Basically, if the Thieves had dealt with Gabriel a lot sooner, it would had saved a ton of grief for everyone, Audrey wouldn’t have died and Adrien wouldn’t be at risk of getting akumatized and destroying the world if the Thieves fail to change Gabriel in time.
  • Marinette herself by telling Gabriel the heroes know where he lives, no doubt contributing to the paranoia and desperation that would drive him to cross his one line in the sand if his heart isn't changed in time, by letting him know they are coming for him.
• We Can Rule Together: Mayura offers Chat a cut of the Wish in exchange for his aid in fighting Ladybug. Chat tells her to shove it.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Why Andre wants his wife's heart changed: she somehow convinced the school board to let Chloé come back to Paris, and he's concerned there might be another Miracle Queen incident.
• We Used to Be Friends: After all that Lila's done to wreck her social life to FUBAR levels, Marinette obviously doesn't consider Alya and the others to be her friends. She also refuses to accept their apologies and attempts to rekindle their friendship, although she does start to reconnect with a few of them, particularly those that have joined the Phantom Thieves.
• Wham Episode:
  • Chapter 60: The Phantom Thieves encounter Shadow Shiho in Mementos instead of their intended target, and it’s highly implied that the girl that has entered Mementos by accident is Shiho herself.
  • Chapter 61: Shiho awakens to her Persona and joins the team.
  • Chapter 74, anyone? Gabriel plans to expand his business to Japan, as a result of the third major Change of Heart he sensed.
  • Chapter 88 ends on a cliffhanger, with Kunikazu Okumura becoming akumatized.
  • Chapter 126: Rouge/Adrien quickly shoots Black Mask before he can kill Shadow Gabriel, causing the Thieves to take him out of the Metaverse for treatment and discovering his identity as Akechi.
• Wham Line:
  • When Nathaniel is held hostage and looks as though he's about to be killed by Shadow Bustier, he asks if he's going to be reunited with his mom after she kills him. Bustier gives him a rather startling revelation:
    Shadow Bustier: You said dead as if she's passed on... but the truth is that I've moved onto better things than your father!
  • In Chapter 80, Shiho very casually drops an unexpected bombshell.
    Shiho: One of my therapists. Narukami-san's been nothing but a blessing.
    Akira raised an eyebrow. Surely it wasn't that Narukami...!
  • In Chapter 93, someone posts on the Phan-site that they want Audrey Bourgeois' heart changed, and has Oracle look into the poster. Turns out her own husband was the one who posted it.
  • In Chapter 94, Andre takes out a picture of him with an infant Chloé and a woman that is clearly stated to not be Audrey.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • The Phantom Thieves give one to Adrien after Lila’s confession for naively allowing her to continue bullying and isolating Marinette and lying to the class, countering all of his excuses for doing so. Becomes an Et Tu, Brute? moment when Marinette and Nino remind him of his promise to support her throughout Lila’s reign, only to ultimately turn his back on her to "uphold his illusion of peace".
  • Chat Noir tries to give one to Ladybug for letting Luka/Kobra keep his knowledge of her civilian identity ^note  it’s strongly implied that Chat Noir still has feelings for Ladybug and wishes to know who she is and for her to know who he is, despite dating Kagami , saying she should had erased his memories. Both Ladybug and Kobra very quickly shut him down, calling him out for his insistence for an identity reveal that Ladybug is not ready for.
  • Ann and Akira call out Morgana in Feed Your Anger Like Fire, when he makes fun of Ryuji due to the theme of the Miraculous.
• Would Hurt a Child: Discussed. The Phantom Thieves are initially leery of changing Lila's heart because she’s the first prominent target to be a minor and it may damage their reputations. Then they find out she has been driving her victims to suicide since the age of 11, and all of their objections go out the window.
• Wrong Context Magic:
  • This applies to Personas on the Paris side, where magic is known to exist because of the Miraculous. Except for the Phantom Thieves themselves, nobody else knows that their operations are based on a different kind of magic with its own set of rules, which lets them operate invisibly to the public. The Parisians believe that the Phantom Thieves blackmail their targets.
  • Personas don't play nice with Hawk Moth's use of the Butterfly Miraculous. When he tries to akumatize Fox!Yusuke, made vulnerable by fear due to Reverser, Goemon interferes. As Hawk Moth doesn't know about the concept of Persona, he has no idea what repelled him, or that most of the current Miraculous wielders have become largely immune to his powers, too. Even if he tried to akumatize one of heroes when they're in their civilian life, he couldn't be sure that they're wielders since other people have rejected his akumas before.
• You Are What You Hate: Played for Drama, as even though the Thieves’ reasoning for disliking Adrien for what happened to Marinette and worrying about Chat Noir finding out about them is understandable, they ultimately end up becoming bullies towards him despite their claims to hate them, bullying him off the team, refusing to do anything to help him with Gabriel and gradually turning his friends against him just because they saw him as a spoiled rich kid as Adrien and as a threat to them as Chat Noir. After Adrien inadvertently follows them into his father’s Palace out of concern, nearly gets killed by Gabriel’s Shadow and calls them out for their refusal to warn him afterwards, the Thieves are left with the bitter realization of how low they had fallen due to flimsy excuses, as Adrien proved that he wasn’t the person they wrote him off as.
• You Dirty Rat!: When Chat sees a guy on the street kick a rat, he can't muster any sympathy for the rat because they're dirty and spread disease.
• You Remind Me of X: Alya's behavior reminds Mishima of his own behavior at his lowest point, when he was only using the Phantom Thieves as vehicles for his own personal fame.
• You Said You Would Let Them Go: What Bob Roth intends for the Couffaines. He wants to have Juleka kidnapped and demand a ransom, while secretly sending her to Germany instead.
• Your Mind Makes It Real: Due to the nature of Cognition, this trope heavily affects Shadows, as shown when the Parisian Phantom Thieves bring nerf guns to the final raid on Lila's Palace, they work like real guns due to the Japanese Phantom Thieves painting them black.

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