Persona 3 / Tropes A to D

Main Page | A-D | E-N | O-Z

---

Persona 3 provides examples of the following tropes:

Tropes A & B

• 11th-Hour Superpower: The protagonist will obtain the Universe Arcana and use the "Great Seal" to end the True Final Boss.
• 20 Minutes into the Future: The game originally came out in 2006, and takes place just 3 years later in 2009. Any futuristic tech has to do with Shadows, mainly the humanoid robot Anti-Shadow weapons.
• Aborted Arc:
  • Early in the game, the possibility of being able to summon a Persona without an Evoker is briefly brought up, as if the game was trying to set up some kind of future plot point. However, this is never mentioned again, even though Takaya summons his without one.
  • Shortly before the introduction of Strega, the player learns of a "revenge request" website and the group are later shown abusing their powers as Persona users to attack their targets during the Dark Hour. By the time Strega and SEES come into conflict with one another, this idea has been dropped in favor of Strega being a death seeking doomsday cult, and the website is never mentioned again.
  • Invoked if you go for the "kill Ryoji" ending, as the purpose and significance of Tartarus is left unexplained due to his death and everyone's memories of Tartarus and the Dark Hour vanishing. If you spare him and unlock the true ending, he'll explain the truth about Tartarus in the very next scene.
• Absurdly Powerful Student Council: Downplayed - it's not the Student Council that's absurdly powerful, it's Mitsuru, the Student Council President and heiress to the organisation that owns the school in the first place.
• Accent Adaptation: Easy to miss, since it's only in one or two easily-missable, non-voice acted dialogues, but during the Kyoto school trip, the Kansai accent is depicted as American Southern in the English version. Funnily enough, the same accent would be adapted as a North Jersey/Bronx accent years later in Persona 4 Arena.
• AcCENT upon the Wrong SylLABle:
  • From the opening theme "Burn My Dread", "My GHOstly shaDOW..."
  • Many of Fuuka's support quotes have her putting emphasis on random parts of her quotes.
• Accidental Pervert:
  • Occurs during the July Full Moon operation at Shirakawa Boulevard, after the party is separated. On the Male Protagonist route, a mind controlled Yukari exits the shower with a Modesty Towel and slaps him when she regains control of her faculties.
  • Can happen a second time during the hot springs incident in Kyoto - Junpei, Ryoji, Akihiko and (potentially) the Male Protagonist are still in the hot springs when they change over from men to women, and subsequently when Yukari, Fuuka, Aigis, Mitsuru and (potentially) the Female Protagonist arrive. If the girls catch the guys, Mitsuru will execute them on the spot - though how much the trope applies to Ryoji and Junpei is debatable, as the two had been openly discussing this very situation happening beforehand.
• Achievement System: The remastered port of Portable is the only version of Persona 3 with this. Much of it is copied from Persona 4 Golden outside of the story-related ones, one related to rescue favors, and one for completing both main character routes, as well as making defeating the Velvet Room attendants mandatory for 100% completion.
• Actor Allusion: In the English translation of Portable.
  • One of Ken's Social Links mentions a manga about an alien who takes different forms to save the day; Yuri Lowenthal voices both the Male Protagonist and the title character in Ben 10: Alien Force, which premiered between the release of FES and Portable.
  • Some of the responses on the Female Protagonist's dates are allusions to lines given to Rise, another Persona character voiced by Laura Bailey.
    Rio: What do girls do on group dates?
    FeMC: KING'S GAME!
• Adaptation Deviation: Every Updated Re-release features a revamped set of Elizabeth's Requests. No two versions have the exact same table of quest content or rewards.
• Adaptation Distillation: In order to compensate for the PSP having weaker hardware than the PS2, some changes were made to the game's presentation style. Cutscenes are no longer rendered in full 3D, but instead use Visual Novel-style static backgrounds and portraits, with non-verbal animations instead being described in narration, and exploring the city has similarly been changed from fully-3D environments to 2D point-and-click maps. Other than that, the core game is mostly the same.
• Advertised Extra: Thanatos features pretty heavily into promotional art and the opening - he's even in the picture at the top of the page. That said, he only has 2 mandatory appearances in the game, when the Protagonist summons their persona for the first time and when Ryoji tries to convince the Protagonist to kill him, after first refusing to do so. Additionally, Thanatos can't be fused until relatively close to the end of the game, after the Death social link completes, and you can easily skip summoning him - particularly since he requires a sacrifice of 5-6 other personas depending on the version you are playing. On top of that, Thanatos only requires the player reach level 64 to fuse him, so he's outclassed by several other late game Personas - with Orpheus Telos (in FES and Portable) and Messiah being much straighter examples for the Protagonist's ultimate Persona.
• A.I. Roulette:
  • This is the only reason The Reaper can be killed without resorting to Armageddon. The key to surviving this fight is that it likes to waste turns using element Break spells and then refuse to exploit the new weakness. The hardest part of the fight is actually the end - once the Reaper is almost dead, the roulette shuts off and its AI goes to "Nuke 'em" mode.
  • If your allies are left on "Act Freely", this can be applied to your Party Members. Granted, they will listen to what Fuuka has to say once she finishes her Enemy Scan, but that won't stop Mitsuru from using Marin Karin at the worst possible time. You'd best make use of tactics like "Full Assault", "Same Target", "Knock Down", or "Heal/Support" to railroad your party's decisions and avert this trope as much as you can.
  • The game actually gives quite a bit of Artificial Brilliance to the AI. God help you if you're ambushed by an enemy and are equipped with a persona weak to their attack: they will hit you with it, and once you're knocked down, they'll hit you again, and then the all-too-familiar game over screen loads. Your enemies (and your allies, prior to a scan) will almost always start with some version of "inflict damage on all enemies" in the hope of knocking everyone down, and, if that fails, the next member will zero in on the one who's weakest. Since this goes for enemies as well as your party members, there will be at least one battle in which you never make it to your first turn and simply watch the enemy use your tactics against you. There's also invoked That One Boss on 135 — Natural Dancer, who will learn that since you're willing to eat the damage of a reflected physical attack in order to break their barrier, it's best to charm you into inaction and pound you with consecutive pierce attacks if you've made yourself immune to wind. (They also tend to stop casting the Useless Useful Spell if you don't die from it.) On the other hand, some fights simply come down to AI Roulette: if the Hierophant boss chooses and inflicts "Prophecy of Ruin" at the start, you may as well reset. Generally, the AI shows signs of brilliance and waits for you to reveal a vulnerability, but if it chooses to attack, it will notice if one attack is more effective than another. If three out of four are vulnerable, it will take out the three before turning to physical attacks on the player character... damnit.
• All in a Row: Your party members will follow you everywhere in dungeons — or can be ordered to split up and search the area. They can even enter battles on their own, which you're then able to join to provide support. Generally, they line up nicely behind you, but if you hit a dead-end and suddenly reverse, you'll wind up hitting them with your weapon multiple times until you're leading the pack again.
• All Therapists Are Muggles: The cast frequently go into a twisted, bloody version of their school where they are in danger of being killed by their repressed feelings and fight monsters by shooting themselves in the head with guns that fire psychological trauma. But since no therapist would believe them about the Dark Hour, they're on their own.
• All There in the Manual:
  • A literal example that makes a crucial plot point make much more sense: according to the manual, the protagonist grew up in Port Island, which is never mentioned anywhere in game, and his arrival on the train in the opening is him returning. This explains why he's on the Moonlight Bridge ten years before the events of the game.
  • Want to know where Nyx comes from, the Shadows, how Mitsuru's motorcycle and the Evokers work? All of that's found in the Persona 3 fanbooks.
• Amazing Technicolor Battlefield: The fifth Block of Tartarus where the floors are made up multi-colored tiles despite the near-dark atmosphere.
• American Kirby Is Hardcore:
  • In an inversion, the American box art features whited-out silhouettes of the Protagonist, Junpei and Yukari over a blue and grey backdrop; The Japanese box art depicts the Protagonist summoning Thanatos, whilst the European box art for Persona 3 features portraits of the Protagonist, Junpei, Mitsuru and Akihiko flanked by a pair of tarot cards with Tartarus ominously in the background, over a black backdrop.
  • Zig-zagged with the release of Persona 3 FES - The Japan exclusive Append Edition features the Protagonist surrounded by a number of his school friends and Koromaru, whilst the American box art recycles the moodier design used on the original release but replacing the three silhouettes with one of Aigis. Comparatively, the Japanese box art for the full release of FES features S.E.E.S lined up on one side of the box, facing off with their respective Personas on the opposite side.
• Amnesiac Dissonance: Ryoji Mochizuki, AKA Pharos remembers that he's the one who's supposed to bring about The End of the World as We Know It - something he really doesn't want to do.
• Ancient Grome: The majority of the party boasts Greek figures as their Personas, such as Hermes (Junpei) and Cerberus (Koromaru), with Fuuka's Persona Lucia, a Christian saint, being the exception. Two examples of this trope are used for Fuuka's Ultimate Persona, Juno, who is based off of the Roman equivalent of Hera, and Akihiko's Ultimate Persona Caesar (he doesn't reference any Caesar in particular, but the motif seems to pick up from Julius Caesar.) The other Ultimate Personas take from completely different mythologies altogether, with Mitsuru's being based off of a real life ruler of a region in what was formally known as Asia Minor (a region that makes up most of modern day Turkey).
• And Knowing Is Half the Battle: Phoenix Ranger Featherman R delivers such messages on Apathy Syndrome.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: Gotten from some Quests and rare chests. Certain outfits can be bought from the police station at ridiculous prices. Some of the outfits actually have practical bonuses, though many are simply goofy and only useful for aesthetic purposes.
• Animation Bump: The All-Out-Attack animation in Portable is updated in the aesthetics and cut-ins similar to Persona 4's.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • In general:
    • Shadows' presence (bar the Reaper) depends on draw distance, so if the player is just focused on finding items/teleporters/stairs (or randomly gets the split party floor modifier in Portable; this draw distance rule does not apply if the player set their teammates to prioritize defeating Shadows), the player can just park their character somewhere without any Shadow nearby and wait until the job is done.
    • The Reaper will not enter any room with stairs, so parking the party in there for a brief break is the safest point to do so outside battles (contrary to popular belief, the Reaper countdown keeps going even when the menu is opened, it just prevents its movement upon spawning).
    • Certain non-automatic S. Links do not require having a Persona with matching Arcana in stock, mostly due to the limited schedule (Sun in both routes which can only be done on Sundays, Moon and Fortune in the female route^note The former is only available for a month while the latter is unique that it is tied to the story flow but still requires some manual interaction on certain ranks., Aeon (also both routes) which opens on the very last month before the epilogue^note Though it can still have one holdover visit due to the final rank requiring points, but as the month comes to an end the S. Link's availability schedule becomes more frequent.). The Devil S. Link (in both routes) will also always rank up every visit regardless of the player having a Devil Persona or not.
    • If you realize that a Full Moon Operation is looming but you've neglected to train up your party, visiting Tartarus the night before keeps you from getting Tired, allowing you to grind and fuse to your heart's content in perparation for the boss. If you or your party were Tired and weren't getting better any time soon, everyone's Condition will be reset to Good for the boss fight so that you won't have to fret about fighting on a handicap.
  • The original version of Persona 3 had a few questionable and highly annoying features that were removed in FES and P3P, largely because they just weren't logical to begin with and served only to hamper the player.
    • The Requests are changed between versions, some for the better. FES notably removed the Shadow Shard and Shadow Crystal requests from the original, probably due to how exceedingly rare the items are even with the knowledge of which floors to search (unlike with the weapons, there is no other way to get them and they cannot be brought over to a New Game Plus), which can lower replayability for those that like to complete all the requests. Portable, meanwhile, allows the player to attempt the superboss without the need of New Game Plus, so a player can theoretically complete all requests in a single run.
    • In the PS2 versions, the weapon shop would only be open in the afternoon, not the evenings, so when you went to the mall in the evenings (the only location you could go to in the evenings, in fact!) it would sit there, closed, taunting you. Portable allows the weapon shop to stay open at all times of the day.
    • Viewing the Sunday television shopping program would eat up precious time you could be spending on a Social Link. Changed in FES and Portable, where watching the show doesn't take up any time.
    • The "tired" mechanic was revised in P3P so that you only get tired the next day rather than in the middle of the dungeon. And if you needed to be in better condition right afterwards, you can use "Yawn-B-Gone" to cure the Tired state immediately. In Reload, much like in Persona 4 and Persona 5, the Tired mechanic is removed completely.
    • In Portable and Reload, you can now assign individual commands to all of your party members, like in Persona 4, whereas before, you could only assign tactics to each party member, leaving you at the whims of an occasionally unreliable A.I.
    • In the PS2 versions, you can only change the protagonist's equipment and can only use the protagonist's skills through the menu - if you want to change other character's equipment or have them use healing skills, you have to speak to them out of battle (and sometimes other characters will even change their equipment on their own, though they always warn the player if they do). This has a side effect of character's equipment not being changeable outside of Tartarus/Full Moon nights. In Portable and Reload, other character's equipment is now changeable from the menu, and the player can also use other character's healing skills from the menu.
    • In the PS2 versions, the cursor for the Fusion Select screen will always return to the top after you select a Persona. This is later fixed in Portable as the cursor remains to the current selection, saving the player a lot of time in fusing the recent Personas in the bottom of the list. Even moreso when the Personas are purchased from the Compendium as the previously-bought ones are at the bottom.
    • Just like in Persona 4, Portable allows you to immediately teleport through the highest unlocked floor in Tartarus if you walk through the door in the stairs of the entrance.
    • Portable adds a save point at the player's desk, so if they remember to save, they can reload the game to that afternoon if they make a mistake with their afternoon Social Links.
    • Unique to this version only is the bonus relationship point multiplier once the main character has max Charm. And yes, this stacks with multiplier from having a matching Persona Arcana in stock. In an entry that is stingy with time management, this is a life saver for a 100% max ranked S. Link run.
    • Teammates' portraits on the lower right part of the screen will darken if they are considered out of range, so the player can tell if they will join a battle or not and if they can be healed outside battles via the Skill menu.
    • Unlocking the Brutal Bonus Level for the first time no longer requires reaching the (most possible to explore) top of Tartarus. The player simply has to clear the Bloody Button request (which is an additional requirement in FES).
    • Portable no longer has neglect and jealousy penalties for Social Links (despite "jealousy" warnings still displayed on the male route). Related to this, one overlooked aspect in the male route is the fact that few of his Social Links have been reworked to remove the pitfall answers (Yukari's particularly has a different set of responses in her infamous Rank 5), though Chihiro remains the only Social Link that can be potentially ruined from a wrong answer.
    • And if you think Portable's AFFs make the game too easy...don't worry. Maniac difficulty is there to challenge you once again.
  • The remastered port of Portable:
    • It outright copy-pasted the customizable difficulty settings from Persona 4 Golden (except money modifier), meaning the player, if they wanted to, can retry on the last floor they got defeated on or outright continue after a game over. Because of this, however, Plumes of Dusk are no longer applicable — even the difficulty selection omits the number of times the player can get right back up upon defeat on the lower difficulties.
    • The game also comes with a Suspend Save function, so the player can take a break mid-dungeon at any time without using the clock.
    • Another minor but convenient addition is the message log function akin to the later games, so players no longer need to worry about forgetting a given context prior to a dialogue option from skipping the dialogue quickly.
• Anti-Grinding:
  • As a way to limit your grinding, your characters will eventually grow tired within Tartarus as you keep winning battles, thus their aim will worsen and they will get hit more often. This is a good point to call it a night, but for the persistent, characters will eventually go from "Tired" to "Sick", at which point not only will they have a higher chance of eating a Critical Hit, any healing cast on them is less effective. As soon as you return to the entrance, any tired characters leave automatically. However, the day right before a Full Moon Boss, as a way to stop the game from potentially becoming Unwinnable, this feature is removed, allowing you to train all you want. Well, excepting November. It was slightly changed in Persona 3 Portable: Characters will mention being tired between battles, and Fuuka or Mitsuru will comment about how you must be getting tired, but the actual 'Tired' status won't kick in until the next day.
  • The stronger your party members become, the less EXP they will receive, and lower-leveled enemies will simply run in terror if you attempt to get near them if your party is over-leveled.
• Anyone Can Die: Being that the game's theme is death, a lot of characters bite it over the course of the game. Shinjiro Aragaki, Shuji Ikutsuki, Takeharu Kirijo, Chidori Yoshino, Jin Shirato, Ryoji Mochizuki, and the protagonist all die by the end, Akinari Kamiki dies if you finish his Social Link, and it's also heavily implied Takaya Sakaki dies off-screen. If the correct things are done in FES and Portable, Chidori will come back to life (although the canonicity of this is ambiguous) and it's possible to save Shinji in P3P when playing as the female character.
• Apathetic Citizens: Ironically, the citizens in the game act this way toward Apathy Syndrome victims. People with Apathy Syndrome can't talk or move, so if they're stuck outside, they can easily become dehydrated or get heat stroke. However, other than occasionally commenting on them being creepy the general population doesn't seem to even notice AS victims are there, much less make any sort of attempt to get the AS sufferers off the streets and into some sort of care facility or really do anything about them. As a result almost every single area in the game is filled with Apathy Syndrome victims by the full moon, which only gets worse as the game goes on.
• Apocalypse Cult: Toward the end, a doomsday cult heralding the appearance of Nyx to bring death to the world appears. Though it only exists behind the scenes, it is led by none other than Takaya and Jin of the Strega.
• Apocalyptic Log:
  • The Documents found at the Tartarus barriers, in which an initially unknown writer describes the circumstances that created Tartarus. (It turns out to be the antique shop owner)
  • The video log left by Yukari's father is a more explicit version, although it was doctored and edited to manipulate SEES' motivations for slaying Shadows. Fuuka recovers the real thing later on.
• Arbitrary Gun Power:
  • Aigis uses her gattling fingers, hand cannon, or a rifle in battle, at which the said weapon types will deal almost equivalent amounts of damage as the melee weapons, gloves, or swords at the same level.
  • For plot-related purposes, Takaya's revolver is enough to send Shinjiro and Junpei at death's door. Yet during his actual boss fight, the revolver will only take a little amount of your HP.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: You can only have up to 4 members in your party including the protagonist. However, the game justifies this by having the party be an exploration team. That way, if the entire team bites it, SEES won't be wiped out (...Well, the world will end if the protagonist is killed, so they won't really get a chance to use the backup. But it's a nice thought). During the Final Battle, when all of SEES is present at the Boss Arena, the limit is enforced when Fuuka detects a large number of Shadows climbing up towards them. Mitsuru commands the rest of the party to Hold the Line against these Shadows and defend the main group while your group fights the final enemy.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: Despite wielding their inner psyches to fight their own repressed feelings in a magical dungeon, none of the party genuinely believes in the idea of ghosts pervading the school. In the end, though, the group is completely right.
• Arc Words:
  • "Memento Mori", a Latin phrase basically meaning that everyone will eventually die, and that you should make the most of your time on Earth before this happens. This is reflected with the numerous deaths in the game, either in the backstory of characters or during the game's plot. The protagonist dies at the end, but both he and Aigis seem to have accepted it and he passes on with a calm smile.
  • And the arc words for the entire Persona series: "I am thou... thou art I."
  • Starting with this entry, the phrase "Take responsibility for your actions" begins taking prevalence with the main characters as part of the contract with the Velvet Room.
• Armor Is Useless: Armor is best used for its additional effects (like stat bonuses) than its defense because your Persona's endurance stats and elemental resistances play a much larger role.
• Arrange Mode: Playing as the female protagonist in Portable results in a markedly different experience from playing as the male protagonist, who is the only option in the other versions. Key differences include:
  • Re-assigning Social Links to different characters, most notably having one for each of your teammates, unlike with the male protagonist who doesn't have any Social Links with male teammates.
  • Allowing the player to romance multiple characters at once but without the jealousy mechanic, much like in Persona 4. For those who prefer to have a single partner, you even get the choice to maintain a platonic relationship.
  • A different set of weapons; while the male protagonist uses one-handed swords, the female protagonist uses naginatas.
  • Allowing Shinjiro's life to be spared on October 4 by having their Social Link maxed out, with this character being one of the aforementioned female-exclusive Social Links. However, since Shinjiro being alive and conscious would drastically change the plot of the game onwards, he's instead placed in a coma, waking up only on the last day of the game.
  • Recoloring the user interface to use pinks rather than blues.
  • Different town exploration and random battle themes.
  • Differences in cutscenes and dialogue, although the overall plot remains the same.
• Ascended Extra:
  • As admitted by scenario director Yuichiro Tanaka, Elizabeth barely got involved in The Journey where her voice can only be heard in very few moments like her introduction scene and her boss battle. As a result, The Answer gave her more speaking roles and became more involved with the story.
  • Although being an Advertised Extra in the game proper, Thanatos has a somewhat bigger role in the manga and tetralogy films. In the manga, he shows up and brutally slaughters the Hanged Man Shadow, while in the films, he appears and personally battles the Nyx Avatar.
• The Artifact:
  • In the original release, the main character could equip any kind of weapon, and your teammates would give you tips on the advantages and disadvantages of each. In Portable, the main character can only equip swords or naginata, but the advice on differing weapon types remains.
  • Other changes to the weapon system also induces this on the Nihil equipment where ones based on the main characters' weapons are given the Void label instead in Portable, yet the Nihil Sword remains (with the same description text at that) instead of being renamed Nihil Rapier despite it clearly corresponding to said weapon type in this version.
  • S. Link flavor text often gauges how well the main character behaves toward the correponding person and warns of jealousy risks if the male MC has romanced at least one girl. Both of these are still mentioned in Portable, where neglect countdown and jealousy penalty no longer apply.
• Artifact Title: The Xbox and PlayStation 4 releases keep the Portable subtitle, despite not being on the PlayStation Portable, or a portable system in general. Zig-Zagged in the Nintendo Switch's case, due to its nature of being a hybrid console, and the PC, due to the ability to play on portable devices like laptops or handheld PCs like the Steam Deck. The port gives a nod to this by having the save/load screen a recreation of the PlayStation Portable one.
• Artificial Brilliance: The friendly AI will learn which special attacks do and do not work on enemies and change their tactics accordingly. They can also be programmed to follow certain tactics, such as focusing on an enemy's weakness to make All-Out attacks much easier to set up.
• Artificial Stupidity:
  • That said, there's still a few issues with your allies' AI. Persona 4 and Persona 3 Portable added the ability to take take direct control over allies, eliminating this problem.
    • Whoever is in charge of healing will usually wait until someone has lost at least 20 to 30 percent of their hit points before healing them rather than keeping everyone at perfect health all the time. This may or may not be Artificial Brilliance, however, as blowing 20-40 SP to restore 70 HP out of 400+ is inefficient.
    • If a character is set to "Act Freely" they will always choose to heal critically damaged units rather than attack... even if the enemy has 1 HP left, your entire party may decide to ignore it in order to do some minor healing.
    • Another common issue is one where an offensive ally whose turn comes before the healer uses his turn healing or providing a support item to an ally... immediately before the healer's turn, wasting an attack turn. Full Assault will stop your offensive leaders from healing, but the trade-off is that they have a tendency to knock down one of two identical enemies and rather than knock down the other, they'll hit the "down" one again, restoring its ability to attack. The Knock Down tactic will stop them from handing the enemy an advantage, keeping them knocked down.
    • There's Mitsuru's obsession with Useless Useful Spells, though this tends to show up most when the enemy either blocks or shows no particular weakness to ice. Even if it has no critical weakness, she'll still try Marin Karin over an ice attack, while everyone else is using a high-level elemental spell to inflict damage.
    • If you designate anyone as Heal/Support while the party is in good health, results are mixed: characters with status buffs and debuffs will tend to cast them (Koromaru and Akihiko take the hint quite well), while characters without those skills will waste a significant number of spirit points casting an elemental break spell. This goes up to eleven when they cast the break spell on an enemy that's already had its HP shredded and will be killed immediately after their turn. Mitsuru and Yukari are particularly problematic in this regard.
    • Despite having "seen" the effects of certain spells on enemies, your allies will never exploit weaknesses or avoid strengths unless an enemy is scanned. And even after an enemy is scanned, they may perform an attack that damages one enemy even if it heals others.
    • In the battle with Nyx Avatar, she will cast a reflect spell that will instantly kill any party member that uses non-elemental attacks. Fuuka herself recommends ordering the party to halt.
    • Perhaps as a downside to the addition of Direct Commands (or from reusing the Tactics list from Persona 4), the AI in Portable is worse. It is not enough that Knock Down, Same Target, etc. are removed in this version (at least Stand By's removal is justified due to the Defense command replacing Wait), but the issues already mentioned above become more prominent, though players are too busy using Direct Commands to notice.
    • When walking around Tartarus, your party members often have poor pathfinding and will sometimes get stuck on walls and corners. Since your party members won't show up in battle if you're too far away from them, this can screw you over in fights if you don't realize it in time and go back and lead them out. For more fun, set their priority to "Defeat Shadows" and watch as they gang up on a single Shadow only to have one or two of them be stuck running behind the combatant that initiated it (somehow no one is smart enough to make a few turns), or have them stuck running into a wall just because a Shadow is nearby but is beyond said wall, which is funny when it actually takes a good distance away to get to that Shadow but is aggravating when it is at a corridor just next to the room they are stuck in with a clear open path directly to it.
  • Non-party member-wise, certain foes suffer from this either due to programming oversight:
    • Takaya's second encounter is supposed to have two phases, with the latter phase having him stop holding back and start using Mahamaon and Mamudoon. Due to a programming error, he is stuck in the first phase the whole fight.
    • Jin's second encounter has a massive skill list to take account of every possible affinity weakness in the player's party. However, his AI goes through them as if in a fixed order, meaning he prioritizes Slash weakness first and Dark weakness last. As long as a party member with an affinity weakness high up in the list remains standing, Jin will always keep exploiting that same weakness.
    • For a regular encounter example, all Divine Mothers have a chance to cast Ghastly Wail should at least one party member with the Fear status is present. However, no encounter involving this enemy can cause the Fear status on the party, so unless the player intentionally induces it via items, this deadly strategy is never used.
    • In The Answer, ??? is supposed to be able to cast the stat-debuffing skills when copying Caesar but the condition was mistakenly defined to require the corresponding debuff on the party be active instead of not active, making this scenario impossible.
• Art Shift:
  • A series-wide example. This is not only the first Persona game where Shigenori Soejima designed the characters and setting, but it's also his first doing this job for any of the Shin Megami Tensei spinoff games, as SMT's main artist, Kazuma Kaneko, provided the art for the first three games. Soejima did work on earlier projects, but mainly as a debugger, and he illustrated the in-game character portraits for the Persona 2 duology. The end result is a switch from the harsher, slightly surrealist aesthetic that permeates Persona's parent series and other spinoffs into something that's softer and more anime-like with a reliance on either flat or blurry colors to portray a certain mood.
  • The additional character portraits included in Portable are drawn in the noticeably smoother style of the portraits in Persona 4, rather than the more sketch-based portraits included in the original Persona 3.
• Ascended Extra:
  • A variation in the Portable re-release, in that the female protagonist has Social Links with every member of SEES along with the plot-important Ryoji Mochizuki, whereas the male protagonist only has links with SEES' female members (and Aigis isn't even one of them in the original release of the game). As a result, Character Development for the guys is mostly seen or influenced by other characters, with Shinjiro in particular bordering on a Satellite Character because he's only in your party for one in-game month before getting Killed Off for Real.
  • The additional "date" requests also lets the player see more of Elizabeth in the FES re-release.
• Asleep in Class: The player is given the option to fall asleep in class. Doing so will improve condition, thereby letting the protagonist fight better in Tartarus, but in exchange the player misses out on the potential Academics boost. After maxing out Academics, the player can sleep all the time, giving a near-constant "Great" status.
• As Long as There Is Evil: Erebus is the embodiment of the despair and hatred in the collective unconscious of humanity, meaning it can never be truly killed until humanity itself is enlightened (something one of the heroes eventually sets out to accomplish).
• Astral Checkerboard Decor: Tartarus has a lot of this going on in the early blocks, which are patterned after the school environment.
• As You Know: Ikutsuki gives his early explanations about Shadows and the Dark Hour while conversing with everyone who is in SEES at that point, even saying the trope name word for word. Obviously, this is purely for the audience's benefit.
• Autobots, Rock Out!: As Shoji Meguro composed the game, it should be no surprise.
  • The Tartarus Guardians have the rocking "Master of Tartarus" accompany each of their battles. In the PSP rerelease, the female protagonist receives the much more heavy "Danger Zone" (an instrumental remix of "Soul Phrase") for these battles.
  • Right as the protagonist awakens to his Persona, the fast-paced guitar track "Unavoidable Battle" briefly plays before Thanatos wrecks the Magician Shadow. It reappears as the theme for battles against Strega.
  • The Velvet Room theme gets an epic rock remix for the final boss, "The Battle for Everyone's Souls aka Battle Hymn of The Soul".
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Be wary of elemental magic spells described as inflicting "severe" damage. Although they do more damage than -dyne spells, it's only by about 30%, and despite being single-target spells they tend to cost more SP than the all-targeting Ma-dyne spells, making them woefully inefficient for normal purposes.
  • Behold the Thanatos persona, your reward for tolerating the creepy child that keeps appearing in your room at midnight. The Persona that embodies the theme of the whole game, the one that's on the cover art. And then come down from that high as you realize the consequences of fusing the ultimate Death Persona from the other six Death personas in the game. Mudo spells up the wazoo, they'll fill the slots constantly on every setup, and will completely shunt out any more useful spells you could fill them with. Even in spite of this, he comes with a set of very generous skills, but has stats too low to make good use of them the way higher personas will later.
  • The remastered port of Portable enables the infinite revival setting. The player may turn it on and try to fight something super strong like the Reaper early. While the Reaper fight can be done on a fresh save as early as the first block (and, in fact, the corresponding achievement can be obtained early this way), considering the stats, have fun doing this for hours per attempt. The level-ups are not worth either, only reaching at most the 20s with a party of three and on Beginner difficulty (or at least with EXP set to More).
• Awful Truth:
  • Considering that a lot of characters connected to S.E.E.S. dies before and during the plot, the reaction of your party members on the deaths of Shinjiro, Chidori, Mitsuru's father, and the protagonist depict near-realistic symptoms of shock and trauma from losing a loved one such as not being able to start conversations or finding the right words to say (in Junpei's case) or locking oneself in isolation for weeks (in Mitsuru's case).
  • Erebus can never be truly killed as long as there is at least one person who holds a desire for death.
• Bad Moon Rising:
  • Shadow activity outside Tartarus is connected to the waxing and waning of the Moon; specifically, the most plot-relevant enemy Shadows appear on nights with full moons. Also, certain Persona attacks are more effective on New and Full Moons. And after the battle with Nyx Avatar, the Moon itself opens up to reveal that, in the Dark Hour at least, the Moon IS Nyx.
  • The names of several locations and characters also include references to the moon or moonlight. This never means anything good.
• Bag of Spilling: You know all those Infinity+1 Swords, rare armors, and useful artifacts you picked up during The Journey? All gone in The Answer. Along with character levels being reset to 25 at lowest. Lampshaded by Ken and Akihiko, who liken it to studying for a test and forgetting everything immediately afterward.
• Bait-and-Switch Gunshot: After betraying the S.E.E.S and getting shot by Takeharu, Ikutski tries to force Aigis into executing the S.E.E.S members he's crucified, even as they desperately plead with her to resist. Aigis does visibly hesitate but eventually opens fire...to free them from their restraints.
• Balance Buff: Certain characters were changed between versions:
  • In FES (and retaining in Portable), Junpei was changed to learn Agi and Re Patra slightly later, Rakukaja several levels earlier (which remove the original 11 level gap between Re Patra and Rakukaja, replacing it with a smaller gap between Rakukaja and Assault Dive), learning Counter a few levels before Counterattack, and replacing largely redundant Deathbound with Brave Blade, at the cost of pushing Marakukaja back a few levels. Curiously, The Answer still has Junpei learn Deathbound, rather than Brave Blade, and also has him learn Marakukaja even earlier than in the original game, and full 10 levels earlier than in The Journey
  • The Answer has Koromaru start with Counter (which he never had in The Journey) and Mudoon (in The Journey he only learns it on level 56 - which means he gets it a full 25 levels earlier!), learning Mamudoon at level 49 (compared to The Journey's 71), and replacing not particularly useful Evil Touch/Evil Smile with (Ma-)Sukukaja, at the cost of skipping over Counterstrike for some reason, and losing Fire Break completely. Portable backports the Evil Touch/Evil Smile to (Ma-)Sukukaja change, and also replaces Fire Break with Mudo Boost.
  • Also in The Answer, Ken is the only character who joins at lower level than he did in The Journey, but has the same starting skills, which means he starts with medium level skills when everyone else needs a few levels to get there. He also learns just about every skill aside from Mediarama and Spear Master at lower level. In Portable, Ken now starts with Diarama, learns Mediarama at the level he originally learned Diarama, learns Spear Master at the level he originally learned Hama Boost, and finally learns Primal Force at the level he originally learned Spear Master. And yes, it means Hama Boost is gone, which means his Hama spells became even less reliable than they were in prior versions.
• Barrier Change Boss:
  • The Empress and Emperor bosses constantly change their weaknesses and immunities over the course of the battle.
  • Nyx Avatar, who has 13 phases and changes their weaknesses and immunities as each phase transitions to the next.
• Battle Couple: The protagonist romancing any of their S.E.E.S. teammates results in this as they will still have to fight Shadows in Tartarus together.
• Battle Theme Music: The famous "Mass Destruction", a fast-paced, jazzy hip-hop song, accompanies every standard battle. The Answer uses another version of it in the same style with different lyrics, making it come off as a second verse of the song. The female protagonist in the PSP rerelease instead has "Wiping All Out".
• Be Careful What You Wish For: In the run-up to December 31st, SEES are presented with the choice to let Ryoji live and spend the following month despairing over the coming of the Fall, or kill Ryoji and erase their memories of the Dark Hour. The only member of the team in favor of killing Ryoji is Aigis, who doesn't want to watch her friends suffer. If the player goes along with Aigis' wishes, then she has to watch her friends go about their lives, oblivious to the coming apocalypse whilst she remembers everything and can't do anything to save them.
• Beach Episode: The Yakushima Island vacation, where the heroes meet Aigis. Noteworthy for "Operation Babe Hunt," in which the three guys embark on a nearly disastrous mission to pick up girls on the beach.
• Begin with a Finisher: The strongest Optional Boss periodically casts a Megidolaon that will do 9999 damage to the party in a game where the HP cap is 999. However, if you start the battle breaking one of the unwritten rules, the very first action they'll take is this very One-Hit Kill attack. Even if you use a method to avoid dying to it, the boss will simply keep spamming it until you die.
• BFS: Sword and Giant-type shadows have broadswords that are about 3 feet across and over 7 feet long. Nyx Avatar also carries a remarkably long blade.
• Big Bad: Nyx, though she doesn't really want to destroy the world.
• Big Ball of Violence: The All-Out Attack. Properly lampshaded in the animation for such. POW!
• Big Eater: Some Social Links will often comment on the protagonist's ability to eat several meals on one sitting while remaining thin.
• Big Sleep: How the protagonist, be they male or female, pass away at the very end of the game. In the Playstation 2 versions, the male protagonist falls into his big sleep on Aigis' lap with the rest of S.E.E.S. showing up Too Late To The Tragedy. In Portable, however, the player can choose a particular love interest who shows up just in time to allow the protagonist to die in their arms.
• Bilingual Bonus:
  • Most of the vocal themes on the soundtrack are in English, making them an example for the original Japanese version.
  • The Shirt of Chivalry becomes one in the English version. The characters on the back of each character are fairly descriptive or ironic in Shinjiro's case. The main character's "honourable man," Blood Knight Akihiko's is "fight," Ken's is grudge, Junpei's is color, but more likely "dirty minded", and Shinjiro's is "life."
  • "Kimi no Kioku", the ending theme song, which elaborates on the game's ending sequence and foreshadows Aigis and the rest of the team's emotional development during "The Answer"). Since the song is in Japanese and there are no subtitles, English-speaking players have to find out what the song's about on their own.
  • Strega means "witch" in Italian which in turn is derived from Ancient Greece where the "Striges" were mythological birds that lived in the marshes of Hades, by the edge of Tartarus.
• Bittersweet Ending: While the MC and the rest of SEES do eventually manage to save the world from well, itself, none of their efforts will go recognized since no one else remembers what happened. This is especially heart-breaking since the MC sacrificed his (or her) soul so that they could seal away Nyx until humanity comes to terms with its fear of death, which probably won't happen for awhile, if at all.
• Bizarro Episode: Parodied in-universe. Some of the Phoenix Ranger Featherman R episodes are clearly this, for example "Episode 26: Caveman Love! Romance knows no boundaries -- not even between different eras!" ^note  It's a reference to ep. 26 of Choujin Sentai Jetman, where the yellow ranger ends up in prehistoric times and falls in love with a native woman.
• Blame the Paramour: The character Saori Hasegawa is one of the Social Links exclusive to the female protagonist route in Portable. One plot point in the Social Link has Saori being asked out by a male student and her accepting it, only it turns out he already has a girlfriend, and so in the next rank, his girlfriend shows up, but takes her anger on Saori, claiming that she was the one who asked him out, even though it's very clear to the protagonist that it was the other way around.
• Bland-Name Product:
  • The numerous soft drinks in this game all have names that play on the names of their Real Life equivalents and also reference popular TV shows, video games, and even gaming conventions. For example, "Cylon Tea," described ingame as coming in 12 different flavors, and the BauerBar keeps you going for 24 hours. Other examples are Ciello Mist (Sierra Mist^note  Which has been discontinued as of 2023.), SoBay (SoBe), and Mad Bull (Red Bull).
  • If you go on a date with Kenji, he talks about getting D'z's new single, a reference to real-life Japanese band B'z.
  • While playing Innocent Sin Online, Maya mentions another MMORPG named "CoW".
  • The music store in the mall is Power Records, a play on Tower Records.
  • In the request where you retrieve a handheld game console from Junpei, he mentions the handheld console's name being the "COMPstation Portable". Must be a twist of fate.
    • Also, in the description of the item itself, it says that there's a disc for Odin Cube inside of it.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation:
  • The Portable version's English localization, while as good as the console versions for the most part, has translation hiccups on some lines, not helped by its Visual Novel format adding more text and the female main character's route on top of that. Very few certain lines do not sync with the voiceover, there are typos and missing punctuation marks, and, in a couple minor events, outright untranslated lines. The most notable ones seem to be "You told Junpei of you rfeelings." from Junpei's rooftop event and "Wanna go at it agian?" from Rio's hangout event, as these were fixed via patch (though modders beat them to it first), but other errors remain.
  • From the male protagonist's route in Portable, Yuko's Rank 8 S. Link event renders the line ">Yuko is a bit troubled." in broken Japanese (due to the kanji characters being removed). Another instance of untranslated text comes from talking to Fuuka in the dorm on 7/25 or 7/26. In this case, the translators forgot to translate Fuuka's response to the player's "No" option on the latter date.
  • In Portable, the "Attack" description on the battle menu for Strike-type and Pierce-type weapons repeats the "equipped" part.
  • Remnants of the male route still show up in the female route, like as in the intro to the Optional Boss fight with the Velvet Room attendant and Yukari using a voice clip meant to refer to the male MC when "I was scared, too." is picked during the first hospital scene.^note Both of these in particular were fixed in the remaster edition, though at the expense of voice acting in the former as there is no way to redub the fixed lines. But special mention goes to one particular flavor text on the battle result screen. The bright color scheme and low resolution make it hard to read at a glance, but the text "He is an uncanny fellow!" under the Bonus EXP text is the same even for the female MC. One might think it is because there is only one graphic file and the developers did not bother to make another, but nope, both main characters' menu graphics are separate, including the Bonus EXP flavor text. This was fixed in the remastered port by changing the text to "Great! Nice going!"
  • The Oracle command and the Summer Dream fusion spell were reworked in Portable, but the English translators just copied the battle text from the PlayStation 2 version. This is often mistaken for a bug, when it is actually the battle messages not matching the new effects.
  • On the map of Tatsumi Port Island, street names and other places are in French. Moonlight Bridge is rendered as "Pont Léger de Lune", despite "léger" meaning "light" as in "not heavy". Weirdly, on the same map there's also "Marina d'île de clair de lune" which translates correctly, if only a bit clunky, as "Moonlight Island Marina".
  • The description for the Herculean Strike skill mistakenly refers to it as a Slash-type attack, never mind the name and icon used.
  • The French version of Portable has been reported to have translation issues. For example, one scene involving Junpei and Chidori has one important text box rendered in German.
  • The remastered edition of Portable does not seem to bother with the English translation for the "good ending" texts (outside the default one) that are added to this version^note In the original, only the voice is played as the screen fades to white. In the remaster, for possibly accessibility reasons, a text box is overlaid to show what they were saying.. For the New Game Plus endings, the speaker's name label is untranslated, at full display, during what would be an emotional ending. Akihiko's ending suffers this the worst, as not only is his name label untranslated, but also his ending text does not match his dub voice clip, apparently using a direct translation of his original Japanese line as if unaware that his dub line already exists.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Aigis, Yukari and Mitsuru in that order.
• Bloody Horror: During the Dark Hour any water/liquid in the environment turns blood red. Blood will often be puddling on the floor and dripping off the walls during animated cut scenes.
• Boke and Tsukkomi Routine: You perform one of these with Kenji in honour of the cancelled (due to a typhoon) school Culture Festival.
• Bookends:
  • The Protagonist is listening to a remix of the game's main theme in the opening, muffled from his headphones. For the final boss, the song reappears in high-quality glory.
  • The school year begins and ends with Mitsuru giving a speech to the student body. She remarks on this similarity during the second speech:
    When I first addressed you from this podium, I spoke to you all about seizing opportunity while you had the chance.
  • The first few days of the game have Yukari and Mitsuru telling you to go to bed, stating you must be tired. Cut to the end of the game after you beat Nyx where the game beats you over the head with text boxes and characters saying you look exhausted and that you need to go to bed.
  • Near the beginning of the game, a text box says "The gentle spring sunlight is warm." Near the end of the game, a text box says "The gentle spring sunlight warms your body."
  • In The Answer, the final door SEES opens is also the first one they entered in the beginning - the one that leads to Paulownia Mall.
  • The title screen theme of FES is a rather melancholy piano instrumental. The credits theme for epilogue chapter The Answer is a cheerful, vocal remix of it.
  • The Journey begins with the Protagonist arriving at the Iwatodai Dorm for the first time. The Answer ends with S.E.E.S. leaving the dorm for the last time.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: The Shadows blocking your way on the "checkpoint" areas of Tartarus (which are also referred by the Mission Control as "powerful Shadows". They are basically more powerful than the "purple slimes" of the current block (as mentioned below in the Elite Mooks entry). But they do take the appearance of the regular mooks you can encounter in the tower, albeit larger, with a higher health pool, stronger abilities, and more resistances.
• Boss Remix: The final boss' theme is a hard rock remix of the Velvet Room theme, and the Post-Final Boss has the rap remix of "Burn My Dread" first heard in the intro cutscene.
• Bottomless Bladder: Averted. Going to the bathroom isn't necessary, strictly speaking, but doing so has a chance of giving you a better Condition in the vanilla or FES versions. Doing this in Portable instead drops flavor text to help clue in on what to do for the day.
• Bragging Rights Reward: Played with and played straight regarding Orpheus Telos and the Omnipotent Orb accessory respectively. The Omnipotent Orb nullifies all damage save for Almighty and is only acquired by either getting very lucky with Messiah's item drop or by defeating Elizabeth in the Monad Depths. Orpheus Telos is gained by maxing out all Social Links in one playthrough and is resistant to everything, which makes him extremely valuable against the superboss.
• Brick Joke:
  • Early on in the FES rerelease, the protagonist is asked to inspect a broken component in the operations room. There's nothing the player can actually fix, and it's instead a setup for the player to access the video recordings that were added in FES. Near the end, after the final recording is accessed, Aigis mentions that she found and fixed the problem.
  • One of Elizabeth's early requests is to fuse a Jack Frost with Dia. After you complete it, she expresses a desire to see a level 99 Jack Frost (its base level is 8, so it'll take loads of grinding). When she faces you during her superboss fight, one of her possible Personas is a souped-up Jack Frost.
• Broken Bridge: You can't progress past certain floors throughout Tartarus until the necessary plot-related events occur. Lampshaded by Mission Control, who note that they can see the path to the next floor but can't help you past the barrier.
• Brutal Bonus Level: The Monad Depths is the basement of Tartarus, unlocked after you complete a dangerous quest where you hunt The Reaper. It houses some incredible loot and is host to Shadows level 88 and higher, meaning every random encounter is deadly but yields massive experience points. You can also find some of the best weapons and armor in the game, and the bottom floor is where you meet and fight the Superboss.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Some members of the faculty are like this, with the others just being... weird.
• Butterfly of Death and Rebirth: Appears every now and then, most notably with the butterfly in the opening.
• But Thou Must!: Many of the choices (and the story itself, for that matter) run on this principle.
  • The player has no choice but to join SEES, even if the "No" option is selected.
  • Inverted in a minor conversation with an unnamed NPC who wants you to pass on a Christmas present to one of your teammates. Your options in that case are "No", "I refuse", or "Absolutely not".
  • Inverted during the full moon in July. You have to refuse to give in to the Lovers telling you to act on your desires in order to advance the story.
  • If you don't enter Tartarus within the first 10 days of being recruited, Mitsuru will personally make you go with the group automatically.

Tropes C & D

• Call-Back: During the group's stay at the Kirijo estate at Yakushima, a conversation between Mitsuru and her father reveals that the Nanjo and Kirijo Groups were once one and the same.
• Call-Forward: In the FeMC route in Portable, the Athletics Club event at the start of summer is reworked into a training fellowship that takes place at Yasogami High, and is suitably filled with nods to the events of Persona 4, which had released the year before Portable and is set two years after the events of Persona 3.
• Calling Your Attacks: An interesting version: the protagonists (particularly the Main Character) will sometimes call the names of their Personas (i.e. Orpheus, Io, etc.) before summoning them but the actual attack names (like Bufu or Bash) are never once called. Discussed in-game, as you're told that it takes a very high level of concentration to summon a persona, so it's likely names are called to maintain focus. Everyone (but Koromaru, for obvious reasons) has multiple lines to choose from before summoning.
• Canon Identifier: The series gives each player character a Canon Name in expanded material and adaptations, but also distinguishes them by a title from the fourth game onwards ("The Protagonist" for Persona 3, "Main Character" for Persona 4 and "Joker" for Persona 5).
• Can't Drop the Hero: There's the "contract" thing with Igor... Also solidified by the plot as Death living inside the protagonist is the reason why the twelve Shadow Arcanas are appearing in the city again.
• Can't Get Away with Nuthin': If the boys remain hidden during the Kyoto hot springs incident, Junpei and Ryoji - the two actual perpetrators of the guys still being there when the girls arrive - will pass out from the temperature.
• Captain Obvious: Whomever is acting as Mission Control during battle can veer into this, with their assistance in battle largely coming down to telling the player information they would know by looking at the screen. This is because In-Universe your Mission Control is not physically present and so have to describe things based on what they are able to understand.
• Cast from Hit Points: The Persona physical attacks work like this.
• Cast From Life Span: The cost for the Great Seal is the Protagonist's life; this is illustrated within the game by having the ability cost all of the Protagonist's HP. Sure enough, the Protagonist only lives long enough to fulfill their promise to meet the rest of SEES on the Gekkoukan roof on Graduation Day.
• Caught in the Bad Part of Town: The Protagonist, Yukari, and Junpei at one point investigate the back alleys of the Port Island Station area, against the protests of Junpei who knows that's where all the delinquents hang out. They get into a tight spot with said delinquents but then are saved by Jerk with a Heart of Gold Shinjiro.
• Central Theme:
  • Memento Mori, a Latin phrase meaning "remember you'll die some day," is a recurring theme that appears again and again throughout the story. Almost all of the main cast and no few supporting characters have had some kind of personal experience with death, often in the form of dead parents or family members. The theme may also overlap with Sacrifice, as the three characters who died purposely gave up their lives protecting someone. Shinjiro takes a bullet for Ken partway through the game to redeem himself for accidentally killing Ken's mother. Chidori uses her persona's power to "emit life" and gives Junpei her life to revive him from a gunshot wound to the chest. She dies in the process. And finally the Protagonist makes a Heroic Sacrifice at the end to prevent the world from ending.
  • Death as pertaining to the thirteenth Arcana, Death. Meaning, spiritual death more than physical. The story has to do with the various ways, big and small, it may become difficult for a person to want to keep on living. This factors in to not just the main story, but every single social link, even if some of the "reasons to desire death" may seem pretty trivial. The game's message is that those reasons are still important, and a person needs to confront and overcome them (And friendship helps a great deal with this).
  • Depression. Some symptoms of the Apathy Syndrome include the inability to move, feed, or take care of one's self, similar to the instances of a clinically depressed person who forgets the value of personal hygiene. During the later parts of the game, a cult worshiping Nyx and eager for the coming of The Fall signifies a depressed person's desire for death, and/or the lack of will to live. With regards to the desire for death, depression would ultimately lead to a person's suicide if he/she is left unchecked. In this game, the act of summoning a Persona is similar to a suicidal action - you, shooting yourself in the head.
• Chainmail Bikini: Surprisingly present, considering the modern setting of the game. Early in the game, players can find a set of female-only armor called the High Cut Armor (renamed to Battle Panties in the PSP re-release). It consists of shoulder-length gloves, thigh-high boots and... not much else, yet it has a higher defense stat than most armor at the time you get it. The female protagonist, Mitsuru, and Yukari can equip it, though the latter two are very reluctant to do so. Male party members are visibly shaken when the female protagonist tries to talk to them while wearing it. If the male party member happens to be her lover, they will get angry at her for wearing that outfit in public (namely around the other party members).
• Character Select Forcing: Plot events will prevent certain characters from participating in specific boss fights. Yukari cannot participate in the June Full Moon boss fight, but is compulsory for the July Operation; Junpei is unavailable for the September Full Moon Operation; Ken and Shinjiro are not present for October.
• Chekhov's Classroom: Mr. Edogawa, a teacher obsessed with magic explains the significance of the Major Arcana of the tarot about halfway through the game. This becomes at least marginally important when the Final Boss states that Death, the 13th Arcana, represents the end. However, as the teacher explained way back when, Death is merely a change, not the end, and there are another 8 Major Arcana after Death, which allows the protagonist to use the true final arcana, The World, to defeat Nyx.
• Chekhov's Gunman:
  • Ikutsuki, a conspicuously inoffensive character who is introduced early on, does next to nothing of note for much of the game (he's one of the few characters who fails to exhibit any obvious signs of a Dark and Troubled Past), and surprises absolutely no one when he turns out to be The Man Behind the Man.
  • In FES you can see most Social Link characters as well as Akihiko being pestered by fangirls during your character's first walks from the school to the dorm. You can also meet all your school Social Links on the first day of school, and even talk to them.
  • There's also a non-character example: the music the protagonist is listening to on his headphones during that scene is "Burn My Dread -Last Battle-". This track later plays as a proper BGM (rather than being all muffled and distorted) during the final battle with Nyx.
• Chekhov's Skill: Early in the game, two of your schoolmates mention the type of sport they participate in; Archery for Yukari and Boxing for Akihiko. Their hobby becomes their fighting style when they later join you in battles.
• Cherry Blossoms: The game has this in spades. The emphasis seems to be on change and later on, death. The story begins with the academic year in April and revolves around the New Transfer Student, the main protagonist. Cherry blossoms prominently appear again at the end of the game, in which, the protagonist dies on graduation day.
• Childhood Marriage Promise: Maiko will initiate this with the male protagonist if you maxed her Social Link.
• Christmas Episode: You're given the option to spend Christmas Eve with whichever girl/guy you've established a romantic social link. If you've established multiple romantic ties, you'll get multiple invitations.
• City of Adventure: Tatsumi Port Island, the main setting for the game and where all of the action takes place.
• Class Trip: The junior and senior classes take a trip to Kyoto. The Hot Springs Episode happens during this trip.
• Climactic Elevator Ride: Velvet Room has manifested as an elevator continuously going up. The last time the protagonist visits, right before the final battle, it arrives at its destination. It's more effective than it sounds.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience:
  • Shadows encountered in the floors of Tartarus come in three colors: Black for the normal enemies of the current block, Purple for the Elite Mooks which are noticeably stronger than the normal enemies for the current block, and Yellow for enemies that drop a lot of Yen, or rare materials.
  • A large number of enemies in the early parts of the game will make it painfully obvious what they're weak to by dressing themselves in the opposite motif, i.e. a white-colored enemy is weak to darkness, and a red-colored enemy will be weak to ice. Somewhat averted in the later dungeons, particularly in the topmost block where all enemies will be white / chrome-plated.
• Color Motif: The game itself has a recurring dark blue motif, fitting for the often-depressing, dreary nature of the story.
• Colour-Coded Timestop: Most of the "action" in the game takes place during the Dark Hour, a "hidden" hour between midnight and 12:01 accessible only to a select few (including Persona users). During this time, ordinary people are Transmogrified into coffins and unable to detect what goes on. Additionally, technology shuts down completely, unless it's explicitly stated to be enhanced with magic (in Mitsuru's words, special), which includes Aigis, Mitsuru's motorbike and the console banks at the dorm's Command Room. During the Dark Hour, there is a green filter over the world.
• Combination Attack:
  • Fusion Spells (Mixed Raid in Japanese), exclusive to the Protagonist, involve wielding two Personas to attack in tandem to unleash a specific effect. They can cost either HP or SP, but the SP ones cost percentages of your total SP rather than the usual flat amount. Every Fusion Spell involves a specific pair of Personas, both of which need to be in the current arsenal and one of them needs to be equipped to activate it. However, in Portable, this is changed: Fusion Spells are now expendable items, which can only be bought by trading gems in Shinshoudo Antiques. Each Fusion Spell item expends itself after one use, but no longer requires specific Personas to be in the protagonist's current stock.
  • The All-Out Attack, and Co-Op attacks in P3P.
• Combined Energy Attack: The final battle against Nyx starts with Nyx nearly knocking out the protagonist, only for them to hang on by a thread. The encouragement from the rest of SEES allows the protagonist to eventually shrug off Nyx's attacks and gather the strength to cast Great Seal.
• Complaining About Rescues They Don't Like: During Yukari's Rank 5 event, she gets accosted by some punks who stole her wallet, only to be saved by the protagonist who either fights the punks off or threatens to call for help. She initially thanks the protagonist but her insecurities quickly get the better of her and she starts lashing out at the protagonist. She eventually realizes that she was at fault and apologizes during the Rank 6 event.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard:
  • Enemies will never run out of Spirit Points, no matter how many magical skills they use. This was actually changed for the FES version and in Persona 4, where enemies also have a finite amount of SP.
  • When performing an Enemy Scan, the computer cheats in your favour. Although the scan results will refuse to show elemental affinities of Tartarus bosses, your party members (while AI controlled) will be secretly informed of what is effective and act accordingly.
  • In The Answer, during the two-on-two coliseum battles late into the game, your party members will use skills they ordinarily have no access to. Most egregious with Yukari Takeba, who uses Primal Force of all things, one of the strongest physical attacks in the game.
• Conflict Ball: In The Answer, the party falls apart and turns to infighting as to whether or not they should change the past. They figure things out and make up, eventually.
• Continuity Cameo: Many are added to the PSP rerelease as call forwards to Persona 4. Most notable is a younger Yukiko Amagi, one of the party members in 4.
• Continuity Nod: Quite a few to the previous games. Their presence would normally lead one to assume they're all in the same continuity, but a number of differences has lead to no little confusion among the fanbase as to whether 3 and its successors are in the same continuity as the first three games, set in an Alternate Continuity, or represent a Continuity Reboot. However, according to this surprisingly obscure interview with Persona 4's staff, the games do all take place in the same world.
  • The Kirijo Group used to be part of the Nanjo Group from Persona and 2.
  • Igor and the Velvet Room appear once again, Igor with an identical appearance to his other appearances and in the same role, and the Velvet Room still blue as always, although its appearance has changed from the previous installments (and would continue to change in subsequent titles).
  • Characters from Persona 1 and 2 are referred to on the television in the lounge.
  • In the English localization, there are many references to Persona 2 in the aptly named MMORPG Innocent Sin, mostly related to Maya and Tatsuya (in the original Japanese version, the MMO was named Devil Busters and the screen names were Y-Ko and N-Jima).
  • Additionally, a number of characters and locations from Persona 4 cameo in Persona 3 Portable:
    • The power outage which cancels Rise's appearance at Escapade is discussed during the Hermit full moon mission.
    • Yukiko, the town of Inaba, and the Amagi Inn appear in the female protagonist's story, and Chie is mentioned.
    • Kashiwagi, a teacher in Persona 4, appears in the male protagonist's story.
• Conveniently an Orphan: Almost every single person in SEES is missing at least one parent with Fuuka as the only apparent exception. Makes living together in a dorm and fighting Shadows easier. In several cases (notably those of Ken and the protagonist) the loss of their parents is directly linked to the same Dark Hour-related incidents and issues that get them involved in the plot.
• Cool Bike: Mitsuru's motorcycle is one of the only few machineries and equipment that work during the Dark Hour.
• Cool, but Inefficient: Several high-end Personas can only be made through special fusion using four or more specific Personas. You must have each of the ingredients on hand to perform the special fusion, so one Persona will demand up to half your max stock to fuse. It becomes very, very costly when you're discarding your favourites to free up space, paying out the nose for the fusion components, and then paying out the nose again to re-summon what you've tossed out.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Tanaka, who's gleefully amoral about the shopping channel he runs. Initially comes into play with the Kirijo Group, though the truth turns out to be more complicated than that.
• Credits Medley: Inverted in a strange way. The FES rerelease features a new opening with a new song, which combines and remixes elements of several other songs in the game - most notably the credits theme.
• Credits Montage: The end credits use clips from the animated cutscenes, interspersed with images of the party members and their respective Persona. The end credits for The Answer replace the clips with the animated cutscenes from the epilogue, and move Aigis to the head of the cast list whilst bumping the Male Protagonist to the end, and the end credits for Portable remove the clips of the animated cutscenes due to their absence in that version of the game.
• Creepy Child: Pharos.
• Critical Failure: It's possible that when an attack misses, there's a random chance the flubbed attack will cause the aggressor to trip and be Downed. Rage-inducing when it happens to your party members (and one of the reasons why Accuracy/Evasion buffs are relevant), but hilarious when it happens to enemies. Even the bosses can trip (at a very rare chance, mind).
• Critical Hit: The animations that show it are quite satisfying to see, they down an enemy, and they grant an Extra Turn. There exist skills to raise crit rate and a passive to protect against taking crits.
• Crucified Hero Shot:
  • SEES in The Journey after Ikutsuki ties the group up in this manner.
  • The Protagonist, in their new existence as the Great Seal in The Answer.
• Crutch Character: Ken in The Answer, thanks to starting with "medium" level skills Zionga and Cruel Attack, as well as learning Diarama relatively quickly, when every other character bar Metis starts with "low" level. Unfortunately, he still has the same Master of None problems he had in The Journey.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Thanatos positively mauls the Magician Arcana boss during the opening stages of the game.
  • When Ikutsuki shows his true colors, he has Aigis do this to the SEES group, managing to knock them all out... somehow. The details aren't shown because of how absurd it seems.
  • After awakening to the knowledge that he's actually Death, Ryoji gives one to Aigis when she attacks him.
• Custom Uniform: Only one of the main characters (Aigis) wears the school uniform properly, and even then, she still stands out as she wears the winter uniform during the summer. The rest of the team tend to alter their uniform by adding their own custom accessories and/or foregoing the uniform jacket.
• Cut and Paste Environments: One of the few big complaints about the game is that the randomly-generated floors in Tartarus tend to get repetitive after a while. You and your character will end up fatigued after spending too much time there.
• Cute Kitten: There are plenty of stray cats to feed and befriend in the city. One of Elizabeth's Requests is to feed one in particular. When you do feed it, it comes back looking larger and healthier.
• Cutscene Incompetence: Considering relative power levels at the time, it's rather egregious that no one was able to flee or fight back when Ikutsuki orders Aigis to attack the rest of SEES on November 4th, particularly given that it was one vs. six and that on Mitsuru's instruction, SEES all turned up to Tartarus ready for a fight. Tellingly, the anime adaptation alters events and has Mitsuru's father take SEES' equipment upon visiting the dorm to (mistakenly) congratulate them on ending the Dark Hour, and upon SEES' arrival at Tartarus, Ikutsuki reveals that Aigis currently has Mitsuru's father as a hostage in order to justify why no-one could fight back.
• Cutscene Power to the Max:
  • Thanatos absolutely destroys the Magician Shadow after the protagonist awakens to his Persona.
  • Takaya is much more deadly in cutscenes than he is in boss battles.
  • After Chidori sacrifices herself to revive him, Junpei completely blows his stack, awakens to his Ultimate Persona, and promptly hits Jin (who normally reflects fire damage) with a fireball so strong it knocks him ten feet in the air.
• Damage-Sponge Boss:
  • Tartarus bosses have a very simplistic moveset, and if they come alone (as opposed to a group of three), they have incredible HP and defenses to make up for lower numbers.
  • The Vision Quest rematches with the Full Moon Bosses don't really change up their mechanics too much aside from bigger numbers across the board, and some of them turn into wars of attrition this way. Standout examples are the Hermit, which has 16,000 HP and also uses Spirit Drain to sap away your ability to keep up the attrition game, and the Hanged Man, who has 18,000 HP and has phases where you can't even hit it.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!:
  • Closer to just the "memory" part, but players that first played the female route blind after getting used to FES (or just the male route in general) have been reported to assume Yukari's S. Link would start after the Yakushima trip, when she is actually available starting in April (which means early-game) and without any special requirements in this case, causing potentially wasted time slots. Though Portable in general rearranged S. Link schedules for existing characters (resulting in new fan guides), Yukari stands out compared to other female party member links due to the massive difference between male and female routes.
  • The 1.0.1 update for the remastered Portable reduces the extra button press needed to access the submenu while exploring Tartarus, so just a single button press is needed. Expect to accidentally pick a command when opening it in this version.
• Darkest Hour: The start of December serves as this - Ryoji is revealed to be Death, Aigis is out of commission after her attempt at killing him resulted in a Curb-Stomp Battle at her expense, and the rest of SEES are in such a funk after learning of the impending end of the world that everyone just mopes around the dorm for a week - unwilling to go to Tartarus or just hang out - until Junpei nearly fights the Protagonist over their carrying Death inside them for ten years and Mitsuru makes the point that moping around isn't helping anyone make a decision on what to do before ordering everyone to resume their normal lives.
• Dark World: The Dark Hour.
• Dating Sim: The Social Links serve as your Relationship Values that can be leveled up to ten by choose the right dialogue choices suitable for certain conversations. Though not all of them are romantic.
• Death Seeker: Shinjiro Aragaki.
  • The Answer reveals that everyone in the world is this to some degree, which is why Nyx attempts to bring The Fall in the first place.
• Debug Room:
  • In the remastered port of Portable, setting the in-game date to 4/1^note Only possible through hacking, even though the in-game calendar does not cover that date. will fill the Morning and Lunchtime time periods each with a single dialogue line ("test") from Yukari (named "Test") in an inn yukata taking place in the dorm (the line is only in Japanese regardless of language) and all her voice clips playing at the same time, presumably to test Social Link events as indicated by the "SL point increased" effect after each dialogue. When Afternoon comes, the player will be placed in Paulownia Mall (called "NULL" here) using the original background graphics (lower quality and with the arcade's dub name Game Panic used) and lacking animated elements. It is filled with three NPCs. The generic schoolgirl and old man do not do anything when interacted with and the player can not go anywhere else, but interacting with Chihiro will advance time to 4/6 and start a new game as normal. Note that only the male route covers all the above, while the female route will softlock if 4/1 is set to Morning/Lunchtime.
  • Also from Portable is an unused event meant to test all the dialogue emote effects. It is placed under the male route and consists of a dorm scene with Yukari Takeba in her summer uniform with a neutral portrait saying "test" in Japanese, each repetition displaying a different emote.
• Deflector Shields: Several.
  • Tetrakarn and Makarakarn double as attack reflectors, as they each generate a barrier on a target ally, which then reflects one physical or magic attack onto its caster, respectively. The physical and magic mirrors are these skills in item form.
  • Enemies and Personas can reflect individual elements, with the latter case being possible either inherently or through passive skills.
• Defunct Online Video Games: In-Universe: The "Innocent Sin" MMORPG Junpei gives you a copy of to access gradually becomes this as you progress the Hermit Social Link online with "Maya" (real name: Ms. Toriumi), with you two basically being the only players due to the playerbase moving on to other games. Eventually during the final stages of the Social Link, the developers announce the shutdown of the servers, but not before "Maya" leaves you a sand drawing the protagonist saves as their phone wallpaper.
• Demonic Invaders: The Shadows.
• Demoted to Extra: In Portable, if you choose to play as the heroine, all of the Social Links who are replaced by your party members (plus newcomers Rio and Saori) lose pretty much all of their plot relevance. Kenji, Kaz, Keisuke, and Yuko make bit appearances, Chihiro maintains her bit appearances in Hidetoshi's Social Link, Maya never appears in her online identity (although she still makes appearances as Ms. Toriumi), and Hayase and Nozomi are completely removed.
• Department of Redundancy Department:
  • The Glossary description for New Year's Eve mentions the choice of either killing Ryoji or having everyone's knowledge of the Fall erased... except the later is the result of the former. The actual choice is to spare Ryoji and fight Nyx, or kill Ryoji and erase everyone's knowledge of the Fall.
  • The repeated "equipped" on the Attack description for Strike and Pierce on Portable, as already mentioned on "Blind Idiot" Translation.
• Depending on the Artist:
  • Mitsuru's hair colour varies between her character model, portraits, key art and the animated cutscenes - her character model features a dark red that leans towards brown, her portraits give her dark red hair, whilst the animated cutscenes render her hair as being dark brown without any hints of red.
  • Yukari is generally depicted as having shoulder length hair; there are several animated cutscenes - notably the Kyoto trip and during The Answer - that instead show her hair as going past her shoulders and reaching partway down her back.
  • Messiah's artwork shows that the Persona carries Thanatos' coffin lid cape on a chain tied around one of his arms; whilst this detail is present in the PlayStation 2 versions of the game, the coffin lids are missing from Messiah's model in Persona 3 Portable.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • If the player did not prepare enough before a Full Moon boss battle, there is a high chance that they will have a hard time defeating it, preventing the story to progress further. Fortunately, saving and reloading exists and the player can easily load an earlier save to grind. There are also no means of saving during the Full Moon events so that the player may not accidentally "brick" their progress, nor override their previous save files if they wish to go back days before the Full Moon and grind further. In addition, party members will never get tired the day before Full Moons, allowing the team to grind as much as they want; and if a party member is tired when a Full Moon rolls around, they'll be suddenly restored to "Good" condition.
  • If you don't enter Tartarus at all for 10 days after the first time you go there, Mitsuru will scold you for not adequately training and automatically send you there regardless of how you respond to her.
  • In the updated version of the game, people will sometimes be stuck in Tartarus, requiring the player to save them. This can be a character you have a Social Link with, including Maiko. If this happens to her after you've completed her Social Link, which involves her moving away, Kurosawa will mention later that she came back to visit.
  • Jin's battle strategy is focused on exploiting weaknesses, especially during his final fight when he has skills corresponding to all elements. If you give your party equipment to resist or nullify their elemental weaknesses, Jin recognizes what the player's doing and expresses his frustration at it.
  • In lieu of the male route's festival clean-up scene (which has all romanced girls up to that point show up and the protagonist's male friends end up distracting them; the female route plays the scene differently) and Junpei's comment on one of the protagonist's girlfriends if he has any during the January conversation, the female route slips in or alters certain existing dialogue depending on which character(s) she has romanced. For example, if the player plays out Yukari's Rank 9 S. Link event while having already romanced Akihiko, Yukari will add an extra remark that having the protagonist come along with her (the line offering this normally ends the conversation) would anger him, making her change her mind.
  • Hierophant S. Link's Rank 8 event ends with Bunkichi and the player character going to the school. If this happens on a Sunday (only possible in Portable due to schedule changes between versions) or any other day the school is closed, the narration will note that the player character and Bunkichi leap over the school gates just to see the persimmon tree.
  • The female route's Star S. Link's Rank 5 ends differently depending on if the player has already started the Priestess S. Link in the current run, which makes the main character join the cooking club in this route. Should this condition is fulfilled, Akihiko will notice this and ask her to make pancakes for him.
  • In the HD rerelease of Persona 3 Portable, player character names input in one language are incompatible with others, so switching the game language will cause all existing save files of a different language to default the player name to the Canon Name: "Makoto Yuki" for the male protagonist, and "Kotone Shiomi" for the female protagonist.
• Dialog During Gameplay: Your party members are quite chatty during battle, and they provide all sorts of commentary on things like scoring a critical hit, missing an attack, finishing off an enemy, another party member finishing off an enemy, getting inflicted with a status element, an ally getting downed, number of enemies left, etc, etc.
• Dialogue Tree: Of course, it is a Simulation Game. Portable takes it up a notch with the female protagonist's Social Links, in the cases of one choice immediately appearing after another.
• Didn't See That Coming: Shuji Ikutsuki's plans to bring about The End of the World as We Know It are derailed because he forgot to crucify the dog.
• Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?:
  • While Elizabeth isn't evil, she is still one of the most deadly foes in the game and the motivations of her and Igor are left highly ambiguous. However in the Updated Re-release, the protagonist has the delightful option of escorting the princess of darkness around town on several innocent dates where Elizabeth's lack of knowledge on human social behaviour causes all manner of hijinks with her unfamiliarity to the world. For bonus points, you even get to sleep with her, and unlike the other romance options, there is no doubt whatsoever what happened during the Fade to Black.
  • Her brother Theodore from the PSP version is just as dangerous in combat, and possibly even more of a Fish out of Water when it comes to dealing with human society.
  • And an interesting variation: when the Appriser of Death realizes who he really is and what he will cause, and shares this information with his friends —friends with whom he had eaten ramen with, peeped on girls with, attended classes with, and enjoyed hot baths with at an onsen during a school trip. It hits them all pretty hard with the implications of all the time they've spent together. And even then, although he can willingly change back and forth into his true form, he will still sit quietly and converse with his friends about the ultimate outcome.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: The heroes are hoping to accomplish this by game's end. They partly succeed.
• Did You Just Romance Cthulhu?:
  • In Portable on the Female Main Character's route, you're given the chance to initiate a romantic S.Link with Ryoji Mochizuki, the human form of Nyx Avatar. That is, you can make the personification of Death itself fall in love with you.
  • While it's not an official social link, a male main character is asked to show Elizabeth what sex is like during their last outing. The female main character can similarly win the affection of, and have an Optional Sexual Encounter with, Elizabeth or her younger brother Theodore. It's not clear exactly what Elizabeth and Theodore are, but whatever they are, it's not human, and as the game's Superbosses they are just as if not more powerful than the above mentioned character.
• Die or Fly: This is the idea behind the Evokers—even though they're not real guns and don't actually fire anything, the act of putting something nearly identical to a gun to one's head and pulling the trigger is visceral enough to trigger the fight-or-flight survival instinct that causes a Persona to manifest. In a specific example of this trope, at the beginning of the game, the main character awakens his Persona abilities after being attacked by the first Full Moon Shadow. It helps that someone nearby is giving him a nudge toward pulling the trigger.
• Digital Destruction: Common complaints of the HD remaster of Portable are that the backgrounds were poorly upscaled to 4K by the A.I. they used and the sound is muffled for no reason, even more than the original release of it on the PSP.
• Disappears into Light: What happens to the character involved with the Sun social link.
• Disc-One Final Boss: The Hanged Man, the final of the Full Moon Shadows.
• Disc-One Final Dungeon: The game attempts this trope with the fourth block of Tartarus; assuming you complete the block before the full moon in November, you reach the top of the block only to find that it's also the top of the massive tower. Only after three Disc One Final Bosses, two of which are fought simultaneously, and a Wham Episode, do the final two blocks emerge for you to plow through.
• Disc-One Nuke:
  • A "Quad elemental" Lilim can easily be fused by level 8, able to last for many times what its strength suggests. A similar combination for a quad elemental Pale Rider also exists and is obtainable by the time Lilim is outdated. A similar recipe exists to create a 4-element Yomotsu Shikome a level 9 Hermit persona. It's slightly better than Lilim because Shikome has no weakness and is resistant to Darkness/Mudo.
  • Completing Elizabeth/Theodore's requests promptly in Portable will reward you with weapons and armor that far outstrip anything you're going to get anytime soon outside of rare chest rewards.
  • Getsu-Ei is a medium-strength Slash attack that hits harder on a full moon. You can access it around June to July, and it serves as a very good source of damage for the Full Moon Shadows until you start finding heavy-duty skills.
• Discount Card: Officer Kurosawa will sometimes offer weapons and accessories at a cheaper price on specific days.
• Discount Lesbians: Persona 3 Portable allows the Female Protagonist to choose Elizabeth as their Attendant, and does not change any of the dialogue from her date requests - allowing the Female Protagonist to hook up with Elizabeth. However, this trope applies as Elizabeth is effectively a spirit in human form.
• Disney Death: Chidori, as of FES. Following her hospitalisation by SEES, the player has the opportunity to speak to Junpei at the Dorms on four separate days and encourage him to not give up on his relationship with Chidori. Doing so triggers a cutscene during December, where Mitsuru speaks to an unknown party over the phone, and is informed that Chidori's corpse has been transmogrifying into a coffin during the Dark Hour; Chidori finally ressucitates in mid-January, albeit without her memories of the Dark Hour.
• Dissonant Serenity: The last boss, after having went through 13 forms without his creepy, emotionless, echoing voice changing in any way, finally starts to sound upset about halfway through his final form — at which point he starts using his really annoying special attack, Night Queen:
  Let us finish this! It is the path of your choosing!!
• Ditching the Dub Names: The localized versions of the remastered port of Portable keep the Japanese names on the shops. Since Game Panic (called Game Parade in the original) does not use Japanese characters on its sign, it is referred to as Game Parade regardless of language.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • Several of the Persona designs have this in play, but it's difficult to see the Tower Arcana Persona called Mara as anything but a penis on wheels. If you have this Persona as your main when you visit the Velvet Room, Elizabeth even seems to comment on how masculine it seems... Theodore, on the other hand, does not approve, protesting that it isn't ladylike.
  • The method of summoning Personas is more than a little troubling. They explain the Evoker by saying that the act of putting a gun to your head and pulling the trigger evokes a visceral mental trauma that causes your Persona to manifest itself. Of course, there's some Applied Phlebotinum crammed in there too.
  • Persona users rarely ever smile, especially when summoning for the first time considering how painful or awkward it is. The Protagonist is a special case in many ways, especially when you consider that the creepy-as-hell expression on his face looks very similar to that of the Nyx Avatar, who is, of course, a form of Ryoji, who is Death, who manifests as Thanatos in that cutscene.
  • The final social link event for Aigis in FES doesn't even try to be subtle about what touching her Papillon Heart is supposed to stand in for. For bonus points, the fact that she disables her arms and legs beforehand adds an additional, probably unintentionally creepy dimension to the encounter.
    Aigis: Since you'll be coming in direct contact with my heart, I... I apologize in advance if I say something odd, or make unusual noises...
  • The special function given to Aigis and her 'sisters' makes them move twice as fast, do more damage, and leaves them overheated and immobile afterwards, and is called Orgia Mode. (That might seem like a bit of a stretch, but with a guy like Ikutsuki on the team, you can never be too sure.)
    • The Orgia Mode can cause unintentional surprised looks on Spanish player's faces. (The game was never translated to Spanish, it was released as is).
  • The command console recording of Fuuka and her vibrating waist slimmer. Mitsuru comes by her room, wanting to have a word with her, but changes her mind after hearing the vibrations and Fuuka's high-pitched voice from the other side of the door.
    Yes! I'm, I'm, cooooming now!
• Don't Celebrate Just Yet: Upon defeating all the Shadows that they think are causing the Dark Hour, S.E.E.S. celebrate their believed success. That is, until they notice Ikutski's missing and the Dark Hour hasn't stopped. When they find him, they discover that the Dark Hour was never going to end and he's actually been a Straw Nihilist manipulating S.E.E.S. in his goal to rule the Earth after The Fall, a plan of which would've been pointless from the start as The Fall would kill all of humanity indiscriminately, Ikutski included. Rightfully, the agency calls him out on his insanity.
• Downer Ending: The bad ending. See Multiple Endings below.
• Dramatic Irony: During January, the Second Years have meetings with their home room teachers where they discuss their plans for post-graduation, whilst the Third Years take their college entrance exams, all with the knowledge of that world could end at the end of the month. If the player speaks to Mitsuru beforehand or Akihiko afterwards, they both note the absurdity of the situation and Akihiko likens it to sticking a middle finger up at Nyx.
• Driven to Suicide: The method of summoning Personas by firing a remarkably-realistic gun replica at one's own head is not at all subtle in its symbolism of teen suicide. Judging by the way the user's head jerks back when they fire the Evoker, along with Yukari breaking down and being unable to pull the trigger in the opening, it's obvious the Evokers a bit more than just toy guns. It's implied that the party are all at least just a bit suicidal (at least, before Character Development helps them over some of their issues), and in the case of poor Ken, it's all but explicitly stated. By the end of the game, the only actual suicide that occurs is an injured Jin blowing himself up when Shadows begin attacking him.
• Dysfunction Junction: All members of the main cast, and most of the Social Links. The protagonist encounters: a terminally ill teenager, a cultist who uses bulimia to deal with survivor's guilt, an alcoholic monk, and a girl afraid of men.