Persona 3 / Tropes E to N

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

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Persona 3 provides examples of the following tropes:

Tropes E & F

• Early-Bird Boss: The Rampage Drive on the 14th floor is tough because at the earliest point you can face it, your battle options are limited. You've got only three party members and a limited selection of Personas and Fusion options, while the Rampage Drive is the first boss with no weakness, has resistances to neuter Junpei's offensive capability, and carries a party-wide lightning attack that hits the weakness of Yukari, your party's main healer. Once you've gotten more levels and a wider variety of skills at your fingertips, though, it's significantly easier.
• Early-Bird Cameo:
  • Upon first arriving at Gekkoukan High, several of the future Social Links can be seen going about their day as the Protagonist first heads to the Faculty Office before class, whilst several more (Along with future party members Akihiko and Ken) are seen as the Protagonist is shown walking through the various locations of the game on the first days before the player gets free reign to decide how to spend their time after-school. This number is reduced in Portable, due to the format of the game meaning that those first after-school segments are cut, whilst on the Female Protagonist route, the characters shown don't change from those that are exclusive to the Male Protagonist route.
  • Ken can be found talking with Yukari and Junpei by the temple several months before he gains any plot importance.
  • Thanatos, the ultimate Persona of the Death arcana, can't be obtained by the Protagonist until fairly late in the game. However, when Orpheus first appears, Thanatos suddenly bursts out of his body and sticks around just long enough to violently curb-stomp the Magician and reveal the Protagonist's Wild Card ability.
  • Several were added in Persona 3 Portable.
    • A seemingly nondescript "Man Drinking Alone" starts appearing at Club Escapade as the story progresses, and goes on about various problems he has in his love life. When you speak to him the final time, he suddenly has a portrait and eventually states that his situation will probably have "nothing to do with your problems" in the bright red text reserved for critical information that the player needs to take note of. This is Vincent, star of the Atlus game Catherine, which was in production at the time of P3P's release, and the things he complains about are all references to the plot of his game.
    • In the Male Protagonist route, Noriko Kashiwagi appears during "Operation Babe Hunt". She is one of the teachers at Yasogami High, the school featured in Persona 4.
    • In the Female Protagonist route, Yukiko Amagi from Persona 4 appears over a year and a half before the events of her game begin.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: It might be a little odd to call it early, but this was the first "modern" Persona title after a soft reboot. Needless to say, as the very first game with the new design paradigm, there were a number of areas where what would become P-Studio was still sussing out what game designs worked the best, and there's some comparatively oddball mechanics as a result:
  • The most infamous is the original's inability to control other party members, and their resulting Artificial Stupidity which could go so far as to render some members borderline useless even with some AI nursing (poor Mitsuru). As a result, you leaned far harder on the protagonist, who was more fighting alone with some support characters than with a proper team. This was especially weird given that other SMT and Persona games prior let you control your team; Persona 4 restored direct control while still leaving AI control an option, and the design has remained since, even getting backported into P3P and Persona 3 Reload.
  • On the subject of combat, the ability to split the party up to explore a floor. Your teammates didn't appear on the map just for decoration, you can split the team up to explore the dungeon faster, but this means they'll have to fight alone if they encounter a Shadow. In practice this is rarely worth it (partially because, thanks to PS2 memory limits, dungeon floors never get that big) and by and large people just explored as a team. Later games kept teammates on the field but dropped the split-up function.
  • Another combat subject is the three physical melee elements. SMT splitting physical damage types isn't totally new, but having three separate schools and resistances for physicals was unique and made physical resistance quite a bit more complicated. Later Personas, and even later SMT titles, rolled it into a single "melee" school (with "pierce" returning as Gun-type attacks for SMT 4 and P5), making physical immunity easier to manage.
  • The plot-driven Full Moon Boss battles are fixed events that happen on specific dates, independent of your exploration of Tartarus, while Tartarus itself has its own set of boss battles tied to progressing it. Later games streamlined their boss battles by removing the distinction between plot-driven and dungeon-based bosses, with both Persona 4 and Persona 5 both tying their story bosses directly to dungeon exploration, which was itself revamped to more closely reflect the story progression, as well as providing you with a timeline within which to accomplish your objective rather than requiring you to prepare with specific dates in mind. While Persona 5 does have its own Tartarus equivalent in the form of Mementos, in that both dungeons are procedurally generated and are not directly impacted by the plot, any bosses fought there are the result of taking up sidequests, and not tied to dungeon progression.
  • There are only three social stats - Academics, Charm, and Courage - with a total of six ranks in each. Persona 4 would add an additional two social stats, but reduce the total ranks in each to five.
  • Unlike later games, party members have lives outside of SEES and aren't always available to go dungeon-crawling with you. Later games have the other party members always available unless a major story event mandates otherwise.
  • The last combat related subject of note is the protagonist's ability to equip every melee weapon. In the original Persona 3 and Persona 3 FES, this was done because of the party members being uncontrollable, so you needed a way to hit every physical element that didn't cost HP. It also allowed every melee weapon type to be available after Shinjiro died, as otherwise they'd be useless inclusions. Ever since Persona 4 removed physical melee elements and allowed for direct party member control, future protagonists (as well as the protagonists of Persona 3 Portable and Persona 3 Reload) have been restricted to one type of melee weapon.
  • The ability to reverse and even break Social Links. If you decline a link's invitations too many times (or if you spend too much time with other girls, for the ladies) you can give them the idea you no longer want to be friends, putting the link into a reverse state. Hitting certain dialogue landmines in rank up scenes can also trigger this or even put the link into a break state (Yukari being particularly infamous for this). Reverse means you need to dedicate some time periods to the link before you'll gain points again, while a broken link won't even give an EXP bonus anymore. While it was a somewhat more realistic depiction of friendship (especially with teens), in practice it made juggling the time aspect that much more difficult and game-y, and tended to hurt immersion. Persona 4 mostly did away with the feature^note declining invites no longer has a penalty and there's no more jealousy mechanic; a few reversal landmines remain in dialogue, but this time you need to be pretty willfully dense and not paying attention to the message of the link to hit them, and Persona 5 removes it entirely.
  • Romantic Social Links worked a bit differently. In 3, a link with a romance-able girl will turn romantic at around two-thirds of the way in - usually around level 6 or 7. This not only feeds into the jealousy mechanic noted above, but also means the links tend to be focused a bit more on romance (compared to links in later games, which are more their own stories about the quandary a character faces). Weirder still, however, is that there is no option to just be friends - if you hit the romance point in a link, you're romantically involved with that person. This means that you have no choice but to be a philanderer if you want to see all the content and get EXP boosts for all Persona Arcana. Needless to say, this was a common complaint and 4 addressed it almost immediately. Like combat, this got revised in the female route of P3P, though the male route retains the mechanics. The male protagonist's social links would eventually be revised in Persona 3 Reload.
  • Social Links would phone the Protagonist up during the week to make plans for Sunday, and it would be up to the player to keep track of if they had already made plans with someone else - with repeatedly declining invites or cancelling plans having a negative effect on the Social Link. From Persona 4 onwards, Social Links would only contact the Protagonist to make plans for that day, and there was no penalty for declining as the game would progress to the event upon the player agreeing to meet with someone rather than present every option available at that time; this method was backported to Persona 3 Portable and Persona 3 Reload.
  • Party member Social Links are only able to be progressed during school time, despite the entire party living in the same dorm, and neither Aigis or any of the male party members were given links of their own; the intention seems to have been that the SEES link covered all the party members as friends, with the character specific links for the girls serving to show how intimate their relationship with the Protagonist became, but the result is that Aigis and the male party members feel comparatively under-developed as a result. Subsequent games made sure to give every party member their own Social Link, whilst Aigis would receive one in FES and the remaining party members were amongst the new Social Links given to the Female Protagonist route in Portable.
  • 3 has a much more science-fiction feel compared to 4 and 5. 3 includes a lot technology specifically designed for dealing with personas and shadows, such as the evokers, as well as other sci-fi technology such as Ridiculously Human Robots. 4 and 5, by contrast, are more pure Urban Fantasy where the use of technology is limited to Post-Modern Magik involving realistic tech, such as televisions and smartphones.
  • Unlike the later two games, the party members don’t get their Ultimate Personas by completing their Social Links but automatically through story events.
  • Neither FES or Portable provide the cast with a third tier Persona evolution, as this would not become a staple of the Updated Rereleases until Persona 4 Golden.
  • Upon completing every Social Link in a single playthrough in one of the Updated Rereleases, the player is given the ability to fuse a higher level version of Orpheus; this practice would not carry forward into later games.
  • Whilst Persona 3 is unabashedly set in Japan, it still American-ises some of the terminology used instead of using the Japanese equivalent - namely referring to classes as Junior and Senior years. Subsequent games would instead use the Japanese terminology, and refer to the high school classes as First, Second, and Third Years. Additionally, all characters refer to each other on a First-Name Basis and without honorifics, whereas later games' dubs would preserve these elements from the original.
  • Armor is split between two slots, Armor for Defense and Footwear for Evasion; subsequent games would streamline this and place both stats on the Armor and remove Footwear as an equipment category. Additionally, certain armor pieces would change the cosmetic appearance of the characters, rather than have a separate slot for costumes, as would be the case in subsequent games.
  • Upon starting a New Game Plus, you retain the Persona compendium, money and equipment that you finished the game with, in addition to retaining the Protagonist's level and starting the game with the full shop inventory already available; however, you have to progress through the story again to unlock access to the compendium and advanced fusion. Subsequent games changed this, only allowing the Persona compendium, any unused Skill Cards, money and shop inventory to carry forward, but not restricting access to the compendium and advanced fusion.
  • Messiah, the Protagonist's ultimate Persona, can be fused upon completion of the Judgment Social Link but doesn't appear in the final battle unless fused from Orpheus and Thanatos beforehand. In subsequent games, the ultimate Persona of the Protagonist first appears at the climax of the True Final Boss, and subsequently cannot be fused until New Game Plus and with a much higher fusion cost.
  • The main narrative runs through to December 31st, at which point the following month (and climax of the story) is unlocked dependent on a decision made by the player. Subsequent games would reach these points a month earlier in the narrative, with the climax of the story coming in the run-up to Christmas before skipping ahead to the end of the school year, and the inclusion of content set in the third semester would be a selling point for the Updated Re-release of those games.
• Easier Than Easy: Beginner in Portable. Whereas Easy tweaks calculations in favor of the player party and gives you 10 items that allow you to revive from defeat, Beginner on top of that gives you an additional 20 of those items.
• Easter Egg:
  • The Mitsuru and Aigis variation of the Summer Festival scene, which is by far the most obscure to get. You have to refuse all the girls' offers, then go to Naganaki Shrine at night (normally you're locked out of everywhere but Paulownia Mall at nighttime, this one specific day is one of the few times you're not) to see the scene. Without knowing about this, you'd assume their trip to the festival was just a Noodle Incident. Related, there's an episode title of Featherman R that you'll only see if you don't go to the festival, and it's by far one of the weirdest in the game.
  • Barring the protagonist, make a team entirely of girls, entirely of guys (either Akihiko, Junpei, and Ken, or Akihiko, Shinjiro and Ken - other combinations don't work), entirely of 2nd year students (Junpei, Yukari and Aigis), or of the original SEES members (Mitsuru, Akihiko, and Shinjiro) and talk to one of them in Tartarus — the team members will comment on the current party composition.
  • Put Akihiko and Ken together in a party with a female protagonist who's become lovers with both of them. The atmosphere will be incredibly awkward, compounded further if the fourth party member is Junpei.
  • Tartarus conversation also changes depending on the date and the player's latest S. Link activity. Most of it is the expected ones tied to story progression, but if the player had done a S. Link event with a party member earlier that day, he/she will comment on how he/she had just talked to the main character. A romanced party member will express his/her embarrassment if talked to. However, if the Tartarus exploration takes place on 12/25, the party member the player picked for the Christmas Eve event earlier will comment on the irony.
  • Equip Mara as your Persona and enter the Velvet Room and Elizabeth or Theodore will make an... interesting comment.
    Elizabeth: Oh, my... Tee-hee... It's very manly, that much is certain.
    Theodore: ... Wh-why do you have that... thing... equipped? It's very... unladylike.
• Easy Level Trick: The Strength and Fortune boss fight is complicated by Fortune's roulette wheel which can benefit either side depending on the result. If you can manipulate it to inflict Fear on the enemy side, you can instantly kill them with a use of Ghastly Wail. You're unlikely to have a Persona that can do that on a fresh playthrough, but it can dramatically shorten the Vision Quest rematch in Portable.
• Easy-Mode Mockery: In the PSP rerelease, the descriptions of the difficulty levels have subtle shades of this. Easy mode is passive-aggressively described as being for people who don't have time for tactical combat, as if the game is offended that you aren't playing it seriously. And the description for Normal difficulty implies if you aren't playing on at least that level, you aren't enjoying the game at all.
• Education Mama:
  • Maiko's mother. Her father is aware that Maiko's skipping piano lessons but doesn't seem to mind.
  • Part of the reason Fuuka joined SEES is to escape her parents. They put academic pressure on her thanks to being mechanics in a family full of doctors. Note, this is the most mundane of the SEES backstories.
• Eldritch Abomination: Nyx in Persona 3, and Erebus in Persona 3: FES.
• Eldritch Location: Tartarus and the Abyss of Time.
• Elemental Powers: Each Persona-user tends to specialize with one element, but it's not as pervasive as the the previous or the next games.
  • Playing with Fire: Junpei and Koromaru; Junpei's is more for exploiting enemy weaknesses and knocking them down, as his innate strength is more geared towards his physical attacks, and Koromaru also specializes in Casting a Shadow. The protagonist's initial Persona, Orpheus, also learns the Agi spell.
  • Blow You Away: Yukari.
  • An Ice Person: Mitsuru.
  • Shock and Awe: Akihiko, and Ken to a lesser extent.
  • Light 'em Up: Ken specializes in this more.
• Elemental Tiers:
  • Bufu and Zio spells have higher MP cost than Agi and Garu spells. They actually have the same power, but Bufu and Zio can inflict Freeze and Shock ailments, respectively, while the other two only deal damage. Persona 4 removed the higher cost for Bufu and Zio, along with the said ailment status effects.
  • Non-Elemental / Physical Specialists: Aigis and Shinjiro strictly use physical attacks, with the latter having the highest physical attack in the party. Aigis mixes hers with stat boosts and a single-target healing spell, whereas the only other spells Shinjiro can learn is one Status Infliction Attack spell, Evil Smile, which is still to assist his physical attacking.
• Elite Mooks: The enemies represented as "purple slimes" of one block are actually normal mooks encountered on the next block. Considering the level ranges being significant when exploring blocks, these kinds of enemies prove to be a challenge compared to the other enemies encountered on the current block.
• Elite Tweak:
  • With a bit of effort, Lilim can be fused with all four basic elemental spells, making her pretty much the only Persona you'll need to fight with until level 20 or so. Having no elemental weaknesses and a reasonably high magic stat is the icing on the cake.
  • Helel can be this as it is possible to fuse him in such a way that he can cast multi-target elemental spells for no mana, or be completely immune to all types of damage (except Almighty as its unblockable). The methods for doing this however can politely be described as "time consuming and prone to randomness" and impolitely described as "completely insane".
• Embarrassing but Empowering Outfit: The female-only Chainmail Bikini style "High Cut Armor", renamed to "Battle Panties" in Persona 3: Portable. It significantly raises a party members' attack and defense, can be gotten early on in the game and isn't usurped as the best armor for a while. However, it's also very skimpy and one the few costumes that the girls will comment on specifically if you equip it (usually you get a generic "thanks!" message, but with the HCA you get a "...really? I have to wear this?" one instead). In Persona 3: FES and Portable, it also changes the character model, and the Female Protagonist can also wear it with pride too.
• Enemy Scan: One of Mitsuru, then Fuuka's major abilities. Unlike future games to come, their scanning takes two to three turns before fully revealing the target's elemental affinities (and moveset, in Fuuka's case). The scan will not show the bosses' moveset, and Tartarus Guardians completely obscure their scan results.
• Even the Girls Want Her: Mitsuru. She has a very obsessive fangirl outside the main character's classroom. In Portable, one of Akihiko's fangirls will mention that any girl seen with Akihiko is fair game for an attack except Mitsuru, as she has special powers.
• Event-Driven Clock: During the first full moon, you get about nine minutes to get to the front of a train and destroy the Shadow controlling it. The clock only stops when you're on the menus. Oh, and the boss is a Mook Maker. Good luck.
• Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting: Everyone in the party is capable of fighting with dangerous weapons, which is justified by scenes either showing S.E.E.S. training or making them involved in a school club related to their weapons.
• Evil All Along: Ikutsuki
• Evil Counterpart: Strega, a group of Persona-users opposing the heroes' own group SEES, sees themselves as this. Since both groups report to the same guy and Strega never manages to do much to stop SEES, their "Evil Counterpart" status is Takaya's wishful thinking.
• Evil Laugh: Takaya delivers a particularly maniacal one in his final fight against SEES.
• Expansion Pack: Persona 3: FES (Notably allows the player to carry over painfully limited amounts of data from a game of the original).
• Extended Gameplay: You've just defeated the True Final Boss, and the next thing that you do is to... go to school, just like what you usually did on the normal gameplay. Except that this is the last school day for both the protagonist and the gang.
• Extremity Extremist: The humanoid members of S.E.E.S. (with the exception of Mitsuru's kicks and Shinjiro's headbutts in their Critical Hit animations) and Strega will only use their arms in combat.
• Eyed Screen: A cut-in of just the character's eyes will appear when you perform powerful Persona attacks that hit the enemy's weak spot.
  • Fuuka gets one, just before she knows what the Evoker is used for an reveals that she has a Persona.
  • When fighting Strega or your fellow party members they do this on the first turn as they summon their Persona.
  • The Superboss does this before the fight, indicating how much trouble you're in.
• Face of a Thug: Takeharu Kirijo is a grim looking guy with an eyepatch and clearly makes some people like Junpei uneasy, but he's actually a pretty good guy. The first thing we see him talk about is lecturing Mitsuru on not being forthcoming with the other members of SEES regarding Tartarus, telling her that nothing about the situation is her fault and urging her to be more open and friendly with the group in general. The next thing he does is give them a lot of exposition himself with special attention paid to Yukari since her father was a researcher for the company.
• Fanservice: In FES, the player can dress the female characters in a variety of interesting outfits, such as Meido or a swimsuit. The males (including the MC) can wear swimsuits as well.
  • In the PSP version of the game you can dress yourself in these outfits when playing as the female lead, and the male NPCs react accordingly. The female lead's path in the PSP version also alters the love motel sequence, so that instead of Yukari, it's Akihiko. In a towel. Or Junpei, if you prefer. His reaction is hilarious.
  • Also, in P3P, you can dress the guys up in butler outfits, even Koromaru and there are new Sexy Santa Dresses for Aigis, Mitsuru and Yukari.
• "Fantastic Voyage" Plot: Mentioned in a preview for Show Within a Show Phoenix Ranger Featherman R, referencing ep. 43 of Choujin Sentai Jetman.
• Fantasy Gun Control: The hero asks why they have to be armed with things like bows and swords. The weapons supplier points out they already carry something that looks like a gun, and it would be a very bad idea to get the two confused.
• Fast-Forward Mechanic: There are time periods (i.e Evening, Afternoon) that can be skipped to, if you choose to immediately return to the dorm.
• Fate Worse than Death:
  • When speaking to Mitsuru after rescuing Fuuka from Tartarus, she refuses to divulge exactly what Mr. Ekoda's punishment for covering up instances of bullying at school, but just warns that it wasn't pleasant.
  • Mitsuru's "Execution" is described as such by Akihiko.
• Festival Episode: Has two: The Summer Festival in August and the New Year's Festival on January 1st.
• Fetch Quest: Most of Elizabeth's requests fall under this category. She will either request a specific item that you will need to ask someone in the dorm for on a specific date, a specific item that will be obtainable somewhere in the world, or X number of an item dropped by specific enemies found within Tartarus - and they won't drop the item unless the quest is active.
• Fiction 500: The Kirijo Group.
• The Final Temptation: Ryoji's request for you to kill him.
• First Father Wins: A variation is invoked with Mutatsu the elderly monk's Social Link; he and his wife are long divorced, but she never remarried. The conflict of his S-Link involves convincing him to reconcile with her and his adult son.
• First Girl Wins: Played with when obtaining a Love Interest for the male protagonist; it's seemingly Yukari, as he meets her first at the dorm, but as it turns out, he met Aigis ten years ago when Death was sealed into him - she was responsible for that..
• Fish out of Water: Elizabeth, Theo and Mitsuru during your dates.
• Flunky Boss: Some of the Full Moon Shadows will summon lesser Shadows to assist them in the battle. One boss in The Answer (the Rebellious Cyclops) will also do this. The Hanged Man shadow repeatedly summons minions that take him out of your attack range, making for a very long fight (if you aren't over-leveled).
• Food Porn:
  • The Female Protagonist can join the cooking club for making food items that can be shared with a character for boosts to their Social Link status. Share it during a date and not only do you get the boost, they sometimes blush.
  • Happens to S.E.E.S. in Shinjiro's Social Link route where he takes the advice of the protagonist and cooks a party for everyone.
• For Doom the Bell Tolls: After destroying the Arcana Hanged Man Shadow, SEES thought that the Dark Hour is over. Except it isn't, and they begin hearing a bell ringing from Tartarus, signifying the Fall.
• Foreshadowing:
  • When Junpei asks why the school suddenly turned into Tartarus upon seeing it for the first time and if Mitsuru knows the reason behind it, Mitsuru answers with a nervous "No..." During this scene and the conversations that follow, Mitsuru is seen looking away from the group, as if she were hiding something. Her family was involved in the accidental creation of Tartarus.
  • The opening has a shot of the main dorm the Protagonist is staying in overlayed with shots of Pharos, Ryoji, and the Protagonist himself, heavily implying all three are linked.
  • Akihiko looks suspiciously surprised when Ken is introduced as a dormmate on July 18 and as an official S.E.E.S. member on August 28, implying that he is hiding something from the kid. Akihiko knows about Shinjiro's involvement in the death of Ken's mother.
  • Shinjiro's Persona Castor, is depicted as having been impaled in the chest, and it subtly foreshadows how he dies. During the day of his death, Ken readies his spear towards and attempts to impale him but is unable to do so. Shinjiro then takes a bullet to the chest in protecting Ken from Takaya.
  • The coming of Nyx is referred to as The Fall. Not for any philosophical reasons, but simply because it involves the moon literally falling out of the sky and crashing into the planet.
  • Combined with Spoiler Cover, according to Japanese superstitions, if three people take a picture side by side, the person at the center will die first. Guess where the protagonist is standing on the picture above?
• Foul Medicine: If you visit Mr. Edogawa while Tired or Sick, he'll offer a strange concoction to help the protagonist get better. The protagonist is repulsed by it, and gets a Courage boost if they go ahead and drink it.
• Four Is Death:
  • October 4th is not a good day. Shinjiro accidentally killed Ken's mother on October 4th of 2007. On October 4th of 2009, Ken plans to kill Shinjiro in revenge, only for Shinjiro to take a bullet for him instead.
  • On November 4th, Ikutsuki reveals his intention to end the world, and kills Mitsuru's father, only to die himself.
  • Additionally, the Full Moon Shadows begin to appear starting in April, the fourth month of the year.
  • The Reaper has exactly 4444 HP.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: The female leads fit this: Yukari is sanguine, Mitsuru is choleric, Fuuka is phlegmatic, and Aigis is melancholy.
• Franchise Codifier: The previous Persona games were fairly standard dungeon crawling JRPGs. This is the game that established the franchise's identity as a combination of JRPG and social sim that still holds strong today.
• From Bad to Worse: Cases of Apathy Syndrome continue to worsen throughout the storyline even with S.E.E.S giving the spread of the disease a temporary reprieve by vanquishing each Full Moon Shadow. Eventually, even that stops working, because Ikutski had been manipulating them all into targeting the Shadows to begin with. All S.E.E.S has been doing until now is unknowingly setting the stage for Nyx's summoning, and Apathy Syndrome cases skyrocket after the last Full Moon Shadow is defeated, which consequently dooms everyone to Nyx's arrival.
• Functional Magic: The school nurse, while acting as a substitute teacher, actually teaches classes on magic throughout history, including defining the meanings of the tarot cards which correspond to the social links. The lessons are actually startlingly accurate.
• Fun with Acronyms: Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad.
• Fun with Homophones: In the 2023 remastered version of Portable, rescuing a missing person awards you the "S.E.E.S. the Day" achievement which is a wordplay on the phrase "seize the day".
• Fusion Dance: In addition to the usual Persona Fusion mechanics, Junpei's Persona Hermes evolves into Trismegistus by fusing with Chidori's Medea, and inherits her Spring of Life passive.

Tropes G & H

• Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • Despite the effectiveness of Healing Hands Dia spells, there are clear limits on the availability of the stronger healing spells, both in gameplay and in story. In the first month of the game Mitsuru doesn't ask Yukari to heal Akihiko's injuries which confine him to a hospital for some time, which makes sense as Yukari only has access to starter healing skills at that point.
  • The original Persona shows that standard healing spells are much less effective on people who have yet to awaken their Persona. Unfortunately, this seems to extend to people who can't or don't intend to use their Persona, as Shinjiro can attest to.
  • When Akihiko returns from the hospital, he is in Great condition, like how the protagonist will be in Great condition if they sleep at night instead of study.
  • Since Aigis is a machine, she can't be poisoned.
  • Over the course of the first few months of the game, Junpei becomes increasingly jealous and hostile towards the Protagonist. On the Female Protagonist route, this results in the player being locked out of progressing Junpei's Social Link between the July Full Moon operation and the summer exams, when Junpei apologises.
  • Chidori has a notable Healing Factor, to the point she heals from injuries (mostly self-inflicted) at an abnormal rate. Her self-recovery is represented in game as her Spring of Life passive, which heals 8% of her max HP per turn.
  • During the Post-Final Boss fight against Nyx, the protagonist gains the Great Seal ability to seal Nyx away, which costs 100% of the player's HP to use. Sure enough, the fight ends with the protagonist doing a Heroic Sacrifice.
  • Usually, romanced S. Links' involvement is limited to special events/holidays like in all other Persona games since then. Any other nod to this is shown from interacting with them in Tartarus (this type of dungeon conversation also applies to Persona 4). In the female route, probably because of the smaller romance pool involving S.E.E.S. party members, having certain characters romanced will alter various dialogue from dorm conversation on certain dates (remarks about Ryoji, post-Kyoto trip^note In the Kyoto trip itself, this also applies while talking to Akihiko at the inn, where he has a different dialogue if romanced. The male route's equivalent, Yuko, also has altered dialogue if her S. Link has progressed far enough to be considered romantic., etc.) to conversation with a different S. Link character (like Yukari's extra remark as mentioned on Developer's Foresight) to the climactic scene between post-Nyx Avatar fight and the final confrontation against Nyx, where Akihiko/Ken, alongside Aigis as in the original, will yell the player character's name.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • Social Links aren't directly tied to the main plot. For example, even if someone in your party has been reversed, they'll still talk to you normally at the dorm.
  • When SEES learn of the coming of Nyx, Ryoji repeatedly states that only the Protagonist can hurt him. Come the final battle, and the entire party are able to cause damage to Nyx Avatar, despite the game making it abundantly clear that Nyx Avatar is the former Ryoji. That being said, the protagonist ''is'' the only one who manages to actually defeat Nyx, as even winning against Nyx Avatar doesn't stop the Fall until the protagonist sacrifices themselves to become the Great Seal.
  • In Portable, both Orpheus variants are treated as separate Personas, which is normal considering how later games featuring both of them treat them like this as well. However, it is possible to have both in the Compendium by playing both routes (as in clearing one and then start New Game Plus on the other) regardless of the current main character being played as, which also has a consequence of duplicating Susano-o's recipe on the Special Fusion screen^note One for male, one for female. The result is still the exact same Persona regardless., the only time this oddity happens.
• Genius Bruiser:
  • Mitsuru's grades are the top of Gekkoukan's third year class whilst Akihiko is among the higher scoring students, and are both combat ready party members.
  • Once your Academics reach level 6, the Protagonist officially becomes a "Genius". They're probably also the one dishing out the most damage in Tartarus.
• Genki Girl: The female protagonist will generally tend toward this in her dialogue options.
• Genre-Busting: It's an RPG Urban Fantasy about saving the world and the true self and romance and horror and psychology and resolutions and with dating sim mechanics.
• Giant Mook: The Tower Boss Shadows are essentially "upgraded" versions of the normal enemy Shadows.
• Glass Cannon: The Magical Magus boss, who is defeatable at reasonable levels only by rushing it with its weakness for repeated All-Out Attacks.
• Global Currency Exception: Shinshoudo Antiques. Like Rag's Shop in other games, she only accepts jewels for unique items.
• Go Wait Outside: The game follows a strict calendar time outside the dungeons, where each day is divided into time periods that some actions will advance. For instance, antique shop owner always requires a day (or two, for everyone's ultimate weapons) to produce requested weapons.
• Going Commando: Discussed. Ken asks the girls if they're wearing underwear under their kimonos during the New Year's festival (note that in several regions of Japan, kimonos really aren't worn with anything underneath), mentioning overhearing it from Junpei. The girls aren't very amused. When Ken later asks if Junpei was telling the truth, the protagonist can either confirm or deny or simply dodge the question.
• Going Through the Motions: Blatantly so. Other than the rare anime-styled scenes, the game's dialogue sequences consist of characters using the same pool of animations throughout the entire game, and only a few scenes receive special animations. Perhaps the most obvious example of this trope comes when the group goes to Yakushima - when Akihiko's wearing a swimsuit, he trades his Coat Over the Shoulder for a towel he carries around in the exact same manner. It's a bit better than most games that do this, though, as each character at least has their own animation pool - characters all have different walk cycles and sit down in different positions, for example.
• Gonk:
  • The Moon Social Link of the male protagonist is the only obese character in the game.
  • And of course, Igor. The recurring epitome of the Persona series.
• Gotta Kill 'Em All: The initial goal of SEES is to defeat the twelve Full Moon Shadows that have been popping up ever since the protagonist first joined the party. Unfortunately, in doing so, they release the herald of Nyx, the Anthropomorphic Personification of death, who had been split in twelve by Aigis and sealed inside the protagonist ten years ago.
• Graduate from the Story: Features this in both the good and bad ending, even though the hero and the majority of the team are not graduating that year.
• Gratuitous English:
  • Yukari will sometimes say "OK" when initiating an All Out Attack.
  • In the Japanese version, Mitsuru will sometimes speak in this manner, reflecting her cultured status.
  • The soundtrack is full of these, thanks to the vocalists, especially Lotus Juice.
• Gratuitous Foreign Language:
  • Almost the entire soundtrack is in English, despite being sung entirely by Japanese people. Lotus Juice's rapping doesn't sound too bad because he was raised in America, but Yumi Kawamura's vocals can be very, very difficult to make out. The only Japanese vocal songs in the game are the credits themes of both the Journey and the Answer.
  • Mitsuru occasionally speaks English in the Japanese version. This is changed to French in the English release. In Portable, Akihiko joins in during the third Full Moon event with "Oui."
  • Bebe, the foreign exchange student who mixes Japanese in with what seems to be (Bebe doesn't have any voice acting, all of his dialogue coming in text boxes) a French accent. In the Japanese version, his speech uses a lot of katakana implying odd stressing as well as using odd, archaic pronouns (referring to himself as "sessha" and tagging "-dono" when referring to the protagonist).
  • The song "Changing Seasons" contains French proverbs in the breakdown section, and the street names in the town map are also written in French.
  • Even Spanish shows up occasionally in the English version. After finishing a battle, Shinjiro may quip "Adios, asshole," and late in the game Aigis may yell "Hasta la vista!" when attacking an enemy. Bebe will also start using "Hasta la vista" if the protagonist tells him that phrase when he asks how to say "goodbye" in Japanese.
• Green-Eyed Monster:
  • Junpei quickly becomes jealous of the Protagonist after joining SEES, largely due to their being named field leader over himself and his own insecurities over the Protagonist being a more skilled fighter than him.
  • Downplayed at the start of the Male Protagonist's route, as rumors quickly spread about him and Yukari dating because they arrived at school together on the first day. The Male Protagonist is never subject to anything more than his classmates recognising him because of the rumor, whilst a Drama CD reveals that many of the male second year students formed a broken hearts club over the rumors.
  • At numerous points in the Female Protagonist's Social Link with Akihiko, it is made abundantly clear that Akihiko's harem of fangirls are seething with jealousy that he's paying attention to the FeMC over them - you can't even start the Social Link if your Charm isn't high enough for you to ignore the dirty looks you receive just for talking to him.
  • Upon Ryoji's arrival at Gekkoukan High, he quickly develops a similar following to Akihiko. During his Social Link with the Female Protagonist, the third rank kicks off with Ryoji choosing to spend time with her over any of his admirers, many of whom watch on in envy as the two leave together.
• Grief Song: The credits theme, "Memories of You".
• The Grim Reaper:
  • An incredibly strong Optional Boss called Death stalks Tartarus and will chase you down if you remain on a floor for too long. He forgoes the Sinister Scythe in exchange for dual revolvers. Said revolvers also have 3 foot long barrels.
  • All Personas with the Death Arcana are gods/incarnations of death from varying religions, including "Western" Death (Pale Rider), Samael, Alice (Devil Survivor 2, anyone?) and the ultimate Death Persona, Thanatos.
  • Nyx Avatar is the Anthropomorphic Personification of death.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: In the opening of The Answer, midnight occurs and the date is still March 31st, and it remains that way for the rest of the adventure. Interacting with the TV after each dungeon will show the same news report.
• Group Picture Ending: The remaining members of S.E.E.S. did this after defeating the 12th Shadow. Subverted however, since they quickly found out that their task was not over.
• Guest-Star Party Member: Shinjiro Aragaki is this in a roundabout way, as he's only available for one in-game month before his Plotline Death. This is covered up by the fact that his Persona, Castor, can learn a full list of skills up to Level 70, whereas your other party members will learn their last skill in the mid 40's or 50’s, and cannot learn more until they obtain their Ultimate Personas, but chances are he won't learn them unless you deliberately go and level grind him. Portable allows the player to experience some of his late-game skills without grinding, but only in one of the Vision Quest battles where the gimmick revolves around finding the opportunity to knock down using his (or the main character's) Strike skills.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • Maxing out all Social Links in one go for Orpheus Telos requires a lot of micromanagement, especially when you're starting from scratch and need time to raise your social stats. Made slightly easier and slightly harder for the Female Protagonist's route as more social links are available at night but she has two links (Shinjiro and Ryoji) which have a set time frame (one month for both) to max out.
  • The Female Protagonist's few romantic social links can be difficult to turn in that direction, especially in comparison to the male protagonist's automatic romances. Though Shinjiro's is often cited because one would not usually spend time with a Social Link after raising it to maximum, Akihiko deserves a mention because he requires multiple flags, and a single mistake will keep them friends only. For even more fun, it's possible to completely break that Link altogether. In addition to the flags for Akihiko, if the player reaches rank 7 of his Link before the October Full Moon event, then it freezes until after the event ends, coinciding with Shinjiro's death. This can trip up many first-timers doing a blind run.
  • As for Ryoji's Link: Anyone who played the original P3 or FES would realize that he only shows up for a month and thus would want to take the opportunity to spend time with him whenever possible, but woe unto someone who thinks that, oh, they have plenty of time. It is very easy to make their Link impossible to finish if the player doesn't take, and accept, every chance to hang out with him.
  • The optional battle with Elizabeth/Theodore is impossible to win without exactly the right set-up of Personas and equipment, with absolutely nothing to indicate the restrictions on Personas. If one of the unsaid rules is broken, the Protagonist will immediately be hit with a Megidolaon that does 9999 damage — and their health caps at 999. There is a pattern to the attacks, if one even makes it far enough to pick it out, but that doesn't make things much easier.
  • Each stage of Vision Quest in Portable qualifies for various reasons.
    • The Full Moon boss rematches in yield an additional reward if you fulfil an unspecified objective during the battle. Not even the Official Perfect Guide divulges what they are, and the community has conflicting observations about them.
    • The attribute doors (Power, Magic, Endurance, Speed, and Luck) are varying degrees of frustrating, with each battle designed to be won in a very specific manner. Endurance and Speed are considered the worst offenders, as you need to follow a very specific set of actions in order to complete them without getting yourself killed.
    • Margaret doesn't have as many unspoken rules as her siblings do, and permits you to bring a full party and even nullify her attacks. Bad news is that she has her own unspoken rules (mainly about dealing enough damage by a certain number of turns) before she drops a 9999-damage Megidoalon on you.
• Guilt-Based Gaming: Social Links are largely this, as it fits standard Dating Sim mechanics, including choosing the best response to advance the link and avoid hurting feelings, as well as choosing whom to spend time with wisely to avoid jealousy and other unfortunate episodes. The game also guilts trip you for refusing a Social Link's offer to spend time with them, especially if the player refuses to spend Christmas Eve with another character.
• Guns Are Worthless: Aigis and Takaya use firearms as their primary weapons, but they aren't especially powerful. Though in cutscenes, Shinjiro, Mitsuru's father, Ikutsuki, and Junpei (who manages to get better) are all killed by wounds inflicted by gunfire.
• Gun Twirling: The Protagonist and Mitsuru do this when they use their Evokers; seeing as how they're not guns either way, gun safety isn't that much an issue.
• Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: With the exception of the Protagonist in the PS2 versions of the game, Yukari and Aigis are the only party members who use ranged weapons. The trope is further enforced by Akihiko's boxing, and by Junpei's Persona and Shinjiro's entire fighting style being based around causing as much damage as possible.
• Hair Memento: Aigis can't give the Protagonist organic hair, as she is a robot. However, she wants to fulfil the emotional meaning of this trope, so she gives them one of the damaged screws that had to be replaced after she was heavily damaged trying to fight Death on her own.
• Happy Ending Override: At the end of the main storyline, Aigis, while obviously a bit saddened by the Protagonist's death, seems to have been expecting it and accepts it. By the time of The Answer, which was only added as part of the Updated Re-release, Aigis has completely lost herself with him dead, and our hero's death was completely unexpected by both her and the rest of SEES.
• Harder Than Hard: Portable added "Maniac" mode, in which enemies do double damage, enemy advantage rates are boosted even further compared to Hard and any benefits from New Game+ are lost as the player starts over from scratch. This is to offset the plethora of Anti-Frustration Features that are added to the same game.
• Hard Work Hardly Works: This is averted when it comes to increasing the hero's non-combat statistics. Before exams, he'll need to have studied quite regularly to get the most out of it, and one of the characters even tells him that studying a bit each day rather than just cramming will go further.
• Headphones Equal Isolation: At least at first. The protagonist is shown listening to a remix of "Burn My Dread" in the first scene, but his headphones become an accessory after that.
• Healing Winds: Cool Breeze is a passive effect that recovers a small amount of HP and SP after every battle.
• Hellhound: Although Cerberus appears in nearly every game in the MegaTen family, this is one of the few games where he actually looks like his mythological namesake: a three-headed hound. Naturally, his elemental affinities are Dark and Fire.
• Hell Is That Noise: While you're exploring Tartarus, if you spend too much time on any given floor, Death (an Optional Boss that's powerful enough to be a Hopeless Boss Fight for the vast majority of the game) will spawn. And start chasing you. When Death spawns — and for as long as it's following you — it makes the very distinctive noise of rattling chains. When you hear that noise, it's time to run.
• The Hero Dies: Implied in the good ending, where the Protagonist uses a move that requires all of his HP to seal Nyx away. When the game picks up again a month later, he keeps thinking to himself how very tired he is and the game ends with him closing his eyes and finally "falling asleep" in Aigis's lap as the light shines on him and the screen fades to white. Outright confirmed in The Answer, where the Protagonist's death is the main source of conflict.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • Downplayed after Shinjiro's death - whilst SEES are hit hard by the event, they will head into Tartarus if the player so chooses once Ken returns to the dorm after two days, but as their midterm exams start a week after the event, none of the SEES Social Links can be progressed as they're all busy studying. Once exams are out of the way, SEES' availability returns to normal.
  • Mitsuru suffers one after watching Shuji Ikutsuki murder her father before her very eyes, lasting until the school trip to Kyoto. Her Social Link becomes available after this point.
  • Junpei suffers one after Chidori gives her life to save his. Even when he finally regains his resolve, he asks for one more day before returning to fighting alongside the rest of SEES.
  • The entirety of SEES undergoes one after they learn of the Fall, and Aigis is heavily damaged trying to fight Ryoji on her own. It's especially pronounced in the first week following the event, as everyone refuses to head to Tartarus and all of their Social Links are locked. It's only when the group realise that moping around isn't helping do they return to their normal lives, and gradually everyone discovers a reason to keep fighting.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • 10 years before the events of the game, Yukari's father died as a result of the explosion caused by his attempt to stop the experiment that led to the creation of the Dark Hour.
  • Played straight and defied with the events of October 4th - Takaya interrupts Shinjiro and Ken's confrontation over the former accidentally killing the latter's mother, and shoots Shinjiro non-fatally before demanding the name of SEES' support member. Ken lies and claims that it's him to protect Fuuka, and Shinjiro dives infront of Ken as Takaya fires at him, taking the bullet and dying.
  • After Ikutsuki attempts to sacrifice SEES to bring about the Fall, Mitsuru's father shoots him to protect his daughter and the rest of the team, but is fatally shot by Ikutsuki in the process on November 4th.
  • The Great Seal amounts to this in the good ending, with the Protagonist giving their life to seal Nyx and save everyone else.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: Shinjiro Aragaki. Residential badass foul-mouthed punk in imposing clothes, enjoys and fosters an extremely intimidating image (and would rather be seen that way, even by SEES,) with a soft spot for dogs and cooking. If you spend time with him, he tells the protagonist to take care of their health and enjoy their life after recovering from a cold. It's rather ironic, seeing as they both make a Heroic Sacrifice. The Moon S.Link clarifies that the jerkassery is more or less a facade (with good reason). He drops the act completely when he spends time with the heroine, and even has a fairly attractive smile.
• The Hidden Hour: The Dark Hour. It's even called as such by Ikutsuki in a cutscene very early in the game.
  Ikutsuki: "The Dark Hour occurs every day at twelve midnight: you could say its the 'hidden' hour."
• High School:
  • Gekkoukan High, the game's main setting. Most of the Protagonist's time is spent there, be it as a high school student or as a member of SEES, after it turns into Tartarus during the Dark Hour.
  • On the Female Protagonist route in Portable, a mandatory event early in Summer takes the Female Protagonist to Yasogami High, the setting of Persona 4.
• Hoax Hogan: Gigas-type Shadows from this game and onwards are giant wrestlers sporting Hogan's signature hairstyle and moustache wearing a poorly-sized Shadow mask that still leaves their mouth and moustache visible. Their skill animation is Giving Someone the Pointer Finger and their attack animation has them performing the Axe Bomber.
• Honorifics: Retained from the original Japanese, albeit inconsistently, particularly between Senpai-Kohai, and Junpei's "Yukaricchi" is changed to "Yuka-tan" in the English version.
• Hot Springs Episode: The Kyoto school trip segment has a "minigame" where you have to avoid the girls when you "accidentally" stay in after it changes over from men-only to women-only.
• A House Divided: The cause of conflict in the climax of The Answer, as SEES is conflicted over what they need to do when offered the chance to revisit the dead protagonist in the past.
• How We Got Here: The FES epilogue The Answer begins with an unexplained but fierce battle between Akihiko and Aigis, while Metis and Ken are seen fighting in the background. Much of the subsequent game is Aigis recounting the events that led up to what she obliquely calls "the incident".
• Hurricane of Puns: One of Ikutsuki's hobbies is apparently coming up with bad puns to use in future conversations.
• Hyperactive Metabolism: A lot of the healing items in the game are edible. Everyone, including Aigis, can eat them.
• Hypercompetent Sidekick:
  • The Protagonist is effectively one, as whilst they become the Field Leader of SEES, both Mitsuru and Akihiko have seniority and SEES won't enter Tartarus if neither of them are present, with Mitsuru very much being shown as the overall leader of the team.
  • On more than one occasion, Jin is the sole reason Takaya doesn't get himself killed fighting with SEES, as Jin keeps having to remind him of the greater scope of their goals and to show restraint.

Tropes I-L

• I Am Spartacus: Ken claims himself to be the Mission Control, and he would have been shot by Takaya if not for Shinjiro's sacrifice.
• I Call Him "Mister Happy": Female variant. The B and J on the Priestess boss' breasts stand for Boaz and Jachin, two pillars in the biblical temple of Solomon. However, the two are reversed. Boaz is supposed to be on the left and Jachin on the right.
• Idle Animation:
  • The male protagonist in the PS2 versions will perform several idle animations when standing still for a given period of time, such as stretching his arms to his shoes, will put his hands in his pockets, and then look around, yawn, and stretch.
  • In all versions of the game during battle sequences, the characters will also have idle animations while waiting for their turns, such as Aigis doing her iconic robotic pose.
• Ignorance Is Bliss: Lampshaded by Ken in the dorm during December where the "normal people" don't even have to worry about the coming of Nyx and The Fall. Ryoji also makes this case to the protagonist shortly before Nyx's arrival, and the ending you get is determined by whether or not you agree with him.
• Immunity Disability: One of the reasons why fighting the Optional Boss is hard and tedious. You can at most resist her attacks. If you happen to null, absorb or reflect the element she's going to use, you get a 9999 damage Megidolaon to your face instead. This is an exception however, as other times being immune will greatly help you throughout the game.
• Implausible Hair Color: Everyone (but Aigis and Bebe) is Japanese, thus logically should have dark brown or black hair, but...
  • The female MC has a fairly light auburn.
  • Mitsuru's hair color is a fairly dark red.
  • Chidori's is a very bright red, though given her style, it's likely dyed.
  • Yukari's hair is a light brown.
  • Akihiko has naturally gray/silver hair.
• Improbable Weapon User: For every weapon type, there are one or two gag weapons, all of them silly, yet most of them are rather powerful. The highlights include a toy bow with suction cup arrows, a baseball bat with nails (used as a two-handed sword), a bus stop sign (used as a hammer), umbrellas (used like Mitsuru's rapiers), a steel pipe (used as a one-handed sword), some kitchen knives, a broom (used as a spear), a bone (for Koromaru), a Rocket Punch (for Aigis), Jack Frost plush toys (used as boxing gloves, of all things), and in the PSP version, there are lacrosse sticks and hockey sticks for the female protagonist. The bus stop sign, which only Shinjiro can use (at least in the PSP version) is the most famous one; it reappears in Persona 4 and makes some funny cameos in a CD drama and a light novel, where Shinjiro actually wields it.
• Infallible Babble:
  • In the beginning of the game, while you're being told things like "Time never waits, it delivers all to the same end," you're also told that the main character has one year. Even if you did read it in the beginning, the meaning you get from it would be painfully different from what actually happens.
  • You will occasionally hear students talking about rumors in the entrance of the campus. Most of which reflect the current state of the city, or plot, while some would give a hint about newly-introduced characters, clubs, or stores - a clue about a potential Social Link that you might unlock from that day onwards.
• Informal Eulogy:
  • Fuuka Mission Control begging the player character to get up, or denying that he could possibly be defeated, in various fashions when We Cannot Go On Without You is invoked.
  • And once the screen fades to black, Igor waxes poetic on the Main Character's death, as stated by the introductory quote of this page.
• Instant Death Bullet:
  • Junpei gets shot by Takaya once and dies immediately. He gets better, though. Doubly dubious in that he had no trouble with Chidori stabbing him with axes just five minutes earlier thanks to Gameplay and Story Segregation.
  • Averted by Shinji. It takes two, and even then he still has enough energy to get up and walk a few steps away.
• Instant Runes: Light ("Hama") and Darkness ("Mudo") skills utilize this.
• Interface Spoiler: Played straight at times and averted at others.
  • There's a First-Episode Twist in that the full moon counter is visible in the corner of the screen from the very beginning, even before the full moon has any significance whatsoever.
  • It's also easy to get suspicious of the game being almost over on two counts when you beat the last full moon Shadow. First, you still don't have a maxed Fool link (at Rank 6 before the fight), which is independent of your actions, and second, the aftermath of Shinjiro's death has each member of SEES beginning to find their resolve and gain their Ultimate Personas. When you face the November full moon Shadow, only Akihiko, Ken, and Fuuka have them; in fact, if you talk to Aigis one night after Fuuka's transforms, she'll even mention that more transformations are on the way. This can also be spoiled even earlier if the player is the type to clear every request as soon as it is available, as unlocking request #47 directly spoils that there is more to Tartarus despite the game trying to trick players that Tziah, the highest block at the time, has a definitive end.
  • On the other hand, the game goes out of its way to avert this by adding useless information to the interface in order to make it consistent. Fuuka and her Persona have a full set of battle stats even though she never enters battle. Similarly, Shinjiro's Persona has a full set of skills he can learn as he levels, even though he'll die before learning most of them unless the player goes out of their way to level-grind him during the month of September.
  • Another aversion comes in hiding the true length of the game by the amount of learned skills. For cast members, you might underestimate how far they'll meaningfully progress but you later unlock the second form of the characters' personas, which opens spells further than they would otherwise have learned.
  • A Double Subversion comes in when the game attempts to hide how long the game is playable. Normally, a player would expect the game to go through every day up until the end of the game, but this is not the case. It has really random and useless crap in the calendar that barely has any kind of significance used in the game other than as special holidays, taking exams, and doing special stuff with friends/social links/what have you. Additionally, the month of January is the last month fully playable if on the Good End. However, the game skips to March 3 in both endings and plays until March 5 (March 4 is only playable in the Good End), which is significant since this is before the Graduation Reception, a diverging point in both the Bad End and Good End.
• In the End, You Are on Your Own: Subverted. Even though the protagonist faces Nyx by himself, his social links and fellow S.E.E.S. members voice their support for him, which gives him the power to seal Nyx away.
• In-Universe Game Clock:
  • Mostly due to your protagonist's regular schedule of Wake Up, Go to School & Save the World. The game announces when the "clock" progresses to the next time of day (or the next day).
  • Feel free to take the monorail back and forth across the city as many times as you want while doing Fetch Quests; it takes no time. But leave your dorm on Sunday, realize right outside the door that you forgot to do something, and try to go back in? The act of walking through the door will take all day, and it'll be evening by the time you make it inside.
• Irony:
  • The bad ending is basically your (former) party members discussing the future, eventually deciding to celebrate it with a karaoke session. They're all about to die, along with the rest of the world, and no one knows this. At all. And it's all your fault.
  • Knowing that the Messiah Persona is based from Jesus Christ, it can be ironic to look at the Persona's skills and know that it is immune to Pierce attacks.
• Irrelevant Sidequest: Justified by having either Elizabeth or Theodore wishing to test your resourcefulness and power (or just indulge their curiosity about the outside world, such as ordering you to obtain a takoyaki).
• Item Crafting: FES allows you to forge weapons at the Antique Shop by fusing your Personas with 'Nihil' weapons dropped by a Metal Slime. Most of the time the result is a fairly generic weapon with a special effect dependant on the Arcana of the Persona used, but certain combinations will yield mythological weapons which are easily the best in the game.
• It Makes Sense in Context: "The Fall" is not a term that's mentioned a lot, but it is very significant. It means "The End of the World as We Know It" as done by Nyx.
• It's All Upstairs From Here: Tartarus is the first, last, and pretty much only dungeon in the game.
• It's A Small Net After All: According to Fuuka it turns out Strega's Jin uses the screen name... "Jin".
• Kidnapped for Experimentation: In their efforts to harness the power of Shadows, the Kirijo Group took to taking children, both offered up and forcibly taken, in order to forcibly give them Personas. Of the experiment, all but four of the children ended up dying, with the survivors being Mitsuru, Jin, Chidori, and Takaya, the latter three going on to form Strega while Mitsuru became a founding member of S.E.E.S..
• Lampshade Hanging: Following the first day of school in January, Junpei asks to speak to the Protagonist in private; on the Male Protagonist route, Junpei jokes about the fact that it's taken until January for the two to actually have a meaningful one-on-one conversation.
• Last Chance Hit Point: In Portable, if your Social Link with SEES is high enough, your party members can "withstand the attack" that would otherwise kill them. However, this only works once per battle.
• Last Disc Magic:
  • Messiah, the ultimate form of the Judgement Arcana, and one of the last Personae you can obtain due to its incredibly high base level. It's about as strong as you'd expect.
  • Orpheus Telos, a Persona added to FES and Portable, is only able to be fused once you have completed every Social Link on a single playthrough.
  • The "severe damage" forms of the elemental spells, only available from high-level personae that mostly require you to finish a social link to unlock. All except the fire spell are single-target only, but by that point you should have the SP to spend quite comfortably.
• Last Disrespects: During Shinji's service, you overhear two upperclassmen complaining about how they don't want to waste time sitting through it, and that he was probably 'just some punk'. One then asks your hero if he happened to know the guy, then dismisses the possibility, as you're just a junior.
• Last Episode Theme Reprise: Twice on the final day - battle against Nyx Avatar is set to "Battle for Everyone's Souls", rockin' remix of the Velvet Room theme, and Nyx herself is fought to the sound of "Burn My Dread -Last Battle-", remix of the opening.
• Lawful Stupid: Mr. Ekoda, the classic literature teacher with seniority in Gekkoukan High. He does what he believes is in the best interest of the school and his students, which includes covering up the disappearance of Fuuka caused by bullies to save the bullies' reputation, and suspending Saori because of a gossip magazine's false story about her being promiscuous, and nearly suspending the main character, just for being her (only) friend. Mitsuru's punishment for him of the former act, and Miss Ounishi and Toriumi, his two kohai, brushing him off to support Saori wholeheartedly were definitely well deserved.
• Lawyer-Friendly Cameo
  • One available Persona is Ghost Rider... Er, we mean Hell Biker. Bonus points for its original Japanese name being Hell's Angel.
  • The Gigas Shadows are blatantly patterned after Hulk Hogan.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • When Igor greets the protagonist when they arrive in the Velvet Room for the first time, he mentions how it's been a long time since the Velvet Room had a guest, in reference of the seven year gap between Innocent Sin (when Tatsuya, Maya, and his friends first became guests of the Velvet Room), released in 1999 and this game, which released in 2006.
  • Fusing Satan, the second highest Persona in FES, will cause him to have a unique line that has him taunt the player.
  • When it appears to Junpei and Akihiko that the main character has "picked up" Aigis, Akihiko complains that the protagonist didn't even say anything.
  • If you try to add Ken to your party in The Answer, he will sometimes mention that he needs to be stronger because his level is low.
• Leeroy Jenkins: Junpei gets suckered into doing this during the monorail incident. Naturally you end up having to catch up with him and help him out, but he isn't too happy about it.
• Left the Background Music On: The opening theme, "Burn My Dread," is actually the piece that the Main Character is constantly listening to in his "Atlus Audio" MP3 player, as evidenced during his arrival at Tatsumi Port Island and during the Final Battle.
• Leitmotif: The main melody of the ending song, Memories of You is part of the song that plays during Social Link scenes, Joy. Bittersweet and borderline depressing when you consider that these scenes are the memories the Protagonist is leaving with his/her lovers and friends.
• Let Them Die Happy: Essentially the motivation behind Ryoji's request to kill him — doing so would erase everyone's memories of the Dark Hour and their knowledge of their own doom.
• The Lethal Connotation of Guns and Others: Takaya's magnum revolver. Despite the protagonists being shocked, stabbed, burned, frozen, and pierced, one shot from his gun kills both Shinjiro and Junpei, only one of whom gets better, though the former can be saved by a Pocket Protector in Persona 3 Portable if his Social Link is maxed out. Granted, it is a high-powered magnum, but still. Gameplay and Story Segregation is at play here, too. When you fight him, his magnum doesn't do remarkable numbers.
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again:
  • When Yukari first meets the protagonist when the Dark Hour was active, she mistook him for an enemy shadow and nearly attacked him, only stopping when Mitsuru intervened and cleared things between them. The next day after school, she tells the protagonist to never speak about what happened the night before to anyone else. Junpei, having overheard without being aware of the context, quickly assumes something else happened between them.
  • During the Shirakawa Boulevard incident, both Yukari and the protagonist get enthralled by the Lovers shadow, resulting in both of them getting trapped in a compromising position with Yukari wearing nothing but a Modesty Towel. After snapping out of it, Yukari warns the protagonist to never speak of the incident to anyone. The incident remains a sore spot for her even into November, where she stomps on Ryoji's foot after he offers to take her out on a date at Shirakawa Boulevard.
• Level Grinding: The whole point of Tartarus, lampshaded frequently. Unless you level grind, the Full Moon Shadows (and quite a few Guardians) will kill you. A somewhat justifiable point of contention with this game is that the game pretty much has the Dating Sim phase and the Level Grinding phase.
• Level-Up at Intimacy 5: the Social Links. You can also screw up your links and reverse the related arcana, meaning it can't be leveled up until you fix it. Screwing up then means you Break it, which is not good.
• Life-Affirming Aesop: Death is the game's Central Theme and a Major Arcana. While related to doom and prognostication, the tarot interpretation of Death is more about metamorphosis, profound change, regeneration, and cycles. Tarot cards mainly depict the journey of the Fool (the same Arcana as the main protagonist), where each Arcana acts as a phase while interpreting life that a person could experience.
• Limited Social Circle: Fuuka appears to be the only person in SEES to be shown with friends outside the group. Yukari occasionally mentions having friends outside the group, but is never shown with them.
• Living with the Villain: Major plot twist. Twice. The entire SEES with Ikutsuki, and the Protagonist with Pharos/Ryoji.
• Locomotive Level: The first boss of the game, Priestess, hijacks a train you're investigating.
• Logo Joke: The logos for Persona 3 and Persona 3 FES use a custom 7x7 pixel typeface. With the logo for Persona 3 Portable, it switches to the same typeface used in the PlayStation Portable branding for the Portable portion of the logo.
• Lonely Piano Piece:
  • "Living with Determination", which plays during sad scenes both in the main story and in Social Links. It receives a Triumphant Reprise as the dorm theme for the final month of the game.
  • "Memories of the City" and "Memories of the School", which are sad, simple piano melodies that replace the previously-upbeat city and school themes, respectively, in the game's final month.
• Loophole Abuse: In vanilla and FES, teammates will leave Tartarus if they return to the first floor with the main character while having the Tired/Sick condition. However, there is a way of preserving teammate availability the whole night once they get Tired/Sick should the player need to save, heal, swap out teammates, or use the Velvet Room, as long as there are Pre Existing Encounters close to the stairs, close enough to pull this off. The player has to set the teammates to go after enemies (or let them get caught), then once they all engage in battle on-map (but do not let them finish or leave them knocked out), go up the stairs and confirm to leave them behind. Once the player is all alone on the next floor, he may warp back to the first floor and find everyone ready to rejoin. This abuses the fact that all teammates left behind (but not knocked out) will remain available on the first floor (having them knocked out will force them to leave) and the game thinks the player is exploring solo after that^note When determining whether a teammate leaves or not upon returning to the first floor, the game checks the Condition of the active party only and not anyone on standby, assuming that Tired/Sick party members would not go to Tartarus in the first place according to Mitsuru or Fuuka. The game forgets the possibility of Tired/Sick teammates that were warped back safely to the first floor because of the player confirming to go up stairs while they were still busy battling enemies on-map. Since the player is left exploring alone after that, the game does not have any teammate to check the Condition for., so there are no teammates to comment their need to leave for the night.
• Losing the Team Spirit: Following the Protagonist's death, the group broke up into factions and started fighting each other, setting up the story for the Answer.
• Lost in Translation:
  • Mitsuru's Gratuitous English is obviously impossible to retain in, well, the English localization. So it was changed to French quips, to non-English speakers' chagrin.
  • Junpei's "oteakezamurai" gag early in the game is one of the Running Gags in the franchise. Cultural barriers and availability make this confusing to players without prior knowledge. English speakers know this better as the "Ace Detective" joke, but this became an issue down to the road like in Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth where the gag is brought up more frequently complete with animated gestures (Junpei raising both arms high as a literal interpretation of the joke).
  • A shop named Shinshoudo Antiques is supposed to foreshadow the relation between the shopkeeper and Tartarus, and not just in terms of weapon fusion and Old Document relevance. In Japanese, Monad Depths is Shinshou Monado, which is of course lost in translation.
  • The Answer has a mistranslation that caused confusion for years. At one point, Junpei mentioned that he hesitated about going back in time to when Chidori died, regardless of whether the player saved her or not in The Journey. In the Japanese version, Junpei does not namedrop them at all and uses aitsu which is a vague way to address "that person." Since the context is that everyone is talking about the MC from The Journey using the similar way of addressing, he is in fact talking about him. It makes sense that he became enthusiastic in Persona 4: Arena Ultimax. In hindsight, the localization made the namedrop stick out like a sore thumb for not connecting to the conversation at all.
• Lovecraft Lite: Mankind accidentally summons an Eldritch Location from the sea of humanity's collective unconscious that slowly starts consuming the minds of everyone around it and turning them into The Heartless. While the game can be at times depressing, and death is a major theme of it, ultimately the game is optimistic enough that it falls under this rather than an outright Cosmic Horror Story. While it does come at a cost, the bad guy is able to be defeated, no apocalypse comes, and peace is restored to the world.
• Love Hotels: One Boss Battle takes place inside one. Ironically enough, it takes place on July 7th, the date of the Tanabata festival. Non-ironically, it involves the battle against the Lovers arcana.
• Love Hurts: As demonstrated by The Answer, where Aigis and Yukari are both plagued by painful memories of the protagonist.
• Love Makes You Crazy: Yukari's attempt to win the key and go back in time to see the Main Character again even if it might undo their victory over Nyx and doom the world.
• Lyrical Dissonance:
  • "When the Moon Reaches for the Stars", the standard Port Island theme, is a happy-sounding J-pop with lyrics about a person who Cannot Spit It Out to a crush and feels incredibly depressed about it. It doesn't help that Yumi Kawamura's extremely thick accent makes the English lyrics hard to make out.
  • "Changing Seasons", the second semester music theme, is probably even more cheery than "When the Moon" and has a breakdown consisting of French proverbs. Said proverbs are about grief and loneliness.
  • "Kimi no Kioku", the credits theme. It's an upbeat and cheery tune... with the lyrics about the loss of a loved one i.e. our hero, ladies and gentlemen.

Tropes M & N

• MacGuffin Melee: The Answer has one point where all of the main party members are fighting each other over their individual pieces of the Key of Time.
• Magikarp Power:
  • Odin is pretty unremarkable at first (well, by the standards of a level 63 persona, anyway...) but a bit of grinding gets him Thunder Reign, an "extreme" tier Lightning spell. If that doesn't kill the enemy outright, it's also guaranteed to put them in Shocked status, meaning any subsequent physical attacks against them will critical. Level Odin a little more, and he gets Spell Mastery, which cuts his SP costs in half.
  • Daisoujou hardly seems worth the effort to fuse... until you realize it's the only way to get Samsara, the strongest light spell in the game, which has a high chance of delivering an instant KO to all enemies.
  • Junpei starts off as a decent tank, but quickly falls out of favor when nearly every boss uses his weakness element. Keep him leveled up, though, and he becomes a force to be reckoned with come endgame.
• The Magnificent: The most powerful Persona of each Arcana is named with an appropriately badass-sounding epithet when the player unlocks them by completing the appropriate Social Link.
• Manipulative Editing: Played for drama when it turns out Yukari's dead father told the future NOT to kill the full moon shadows, but the not was edited out.
• Manual Leader, A.I. Party: You can choose your allies' style of moves (general, offensive, healing, etc.) but not control their actions directly. Portable added direct control option to them, although in Portable it defaults to "Act Freely" A.I. control and has to be changed manually.
• Marathon Boss: The final boss, which consists of 13 "forms" (or, more accurately, 13 distinct attack patterns pertaining to a particular Arcanum, each with its own HP bar) with no breaks. 14, if you count the very first (Fool), but it doesn't attack you while in that one.
• Market-Based Title: Persona 3, FES, and Portable all had the Shin Megami Tensei branding appended to it outside of Japan, behind the actual titles of the game. This would be dropped for games post-Persona 4 Arena, as the franchise had become a much bigger and more popular phenomenon by then, outstripping its parent series. This is reflected in related media like Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight and the remake, Persona 3 Reload.
• Meaningful Name: The tower is called Tartarus. There are Shadows coming from it, which are formed from the darkness of a person's heart, and they all center around Tartarus. The Persona that the MC starts with is called Orpheus. The main cast finds a humanoid robot called Aegis^note which is Greek for shield somewhere in the middle of the game, and then meets Metis^note Greek for prudence and wisdom in the epilogue. Have you heard of this before?
• Mega Dungeon: Tartarus a 264-floor tower divided into six blocks with an optional 10-floor underground dungeon.
• Meido:
  • Yukari is infuriated when she has to dress up in a maid outfit for the Archery Club's Maid Cafe as part of Gekkoukan's culture festival, whilst various male students are overjoyed at the prospect of seeing her in the outfit - luckily for Yukari, the culture festival is cancelled when a tsunami hits. Later, a video recording (Pointedly dated after the festival was cancelled) can be found of Yukari happily wearing the outfit whilst in her room, suggesting that her protests were more because All Men Are Perverts than an actual dislike of the outfit.
  • Each of the female characters has a maid outfit, given out as rewards by solving a few of the quests Elisabeth offers. All 3 girls also give appropriate responses to being offered a maid outfit - Yukari doesn't like it but will wear it regardless, and Mitsuru seems to contemplate if that makes her an actual servant. Aigis simply states "This is the outfit I've worn at the lab before." Playing the Female Protagonist in Persona 3: Portable makes it possible to dress her up as a Meido as well. In other words, if you do it right you can lead an entire team of maids against The Legions of Hell.
• Mental Shutdown: People victimized by Shadows during the Dark Hour develop what's called Apathy Syndrome, which in more severe cases manifests as a loss of mental capacity albeit with biological functions intact.
• Messianic Archetype: The Protagonist. Just to hammer the point home, their ultimate Persona is actually called "Messiah".
• Metal Slime: The "Wealth Hand," the "Treasure Hand," and various other gold-plated "Hand" Shadows, show up in Tartarus as gold shadows that flee the moment they notice you and are notoriously hard to catch. In-battle, they hardly lift a finger but are difficult to kill, and drop valuable items when defeated. Occasionally you can find a floor made of nothing but these, though the Reaper's arrival is cut to a quarter on those floors.
• Mini-Game: After certain battles, there's a 3-card Monte (involving two to five cards instead) style card game called "Shuffle Time" where you can "win" a new Persona, a new weapon, gold, extra experience, a free healing (either for yourself or the entire party), and/or a visit from Death.
• Mistaken for Masturbating: The video recording of Fuuka, where she's wearing a vibrating stomach trimmer, in her bedroom, in order to get in shape for the Summer Trip. Unfortunately, the settings got stuck on high, leaving her disabled and in an uncontrollable laughing fit. Mitsuru knocks on her bedroom door and Fuuka yells "I'm coming", with the vibrating stomach-trimmer humming in the background. Cue a very awkward Mitsuru who quickly apologizes for bothering her and runs off again post-haste.
• Mocking the Mourner: During Shinjiro's memorial service at Gekkoukan after he sacrifices himself to save Ken, two students in front of the protagonist and Junpei call him "just some punk", which leads to Junpei (and optionally the protagonist) angrily telling them to shut up.
• Moment Killer: Happens to the Male Protagonist and Yukari at Yakushima Island (courtesy of Junpei, of course...).
• Mon Tech: The Evoker is a fairly dark example of this. The device heavily resembles a gun, and SEES use it to summon their Personas, since an acceptance of death is key to summoning a Persona in the real world, and the Evoker summons them specifically by having the user put the barrel to their head and pulling the trigger, effectively miming suicide.
• Monster of the Week: Or "Boss of the Month" as the Arcana Shadows are fought during Full Moons, which occur monthly. Also, Pharos will often remind the player if there is only one week left before the Full Moon, invoking this trope.
• Mood Whiplash: A few of the social links plots (Hierophant, most school activated ones) are fairly light.
• More Friends, More Benefits: The social link system, of course. The romantic part of it also applies since you have to date all the girls to clear them. They can get jealous and reverse if you're not careful about how you do it.
• Mr. Exposition: Metis in The Answer, played perfectly straight.
• Multiple Demographic Appeal: A major reason for the game's breakout success. The strategic battle system, stat management and extensive customization features appealed to the usual Atlus audience of hardcore RPG enthusiasts, the art style and setting appealed to anime fans, and the social sim element appealed to female players (so much so that the PSP Updated Re-release introduced a new female main character and respective campaign).
• Multiple Endings: Two, depending on a choice made near the end of the game.
  • Bad Ending: The protagonist, despite everyone else's insistence on fighting to the end, kills Ryoji, wiping everyone's memories of the past school year and allowing the party to live without fear of the coming apocalypse. While this renders the entire month of January unplayable, it does count as a proper ending, rolling credits and allowing the creation of a New Game Plus.
  • Good Ending: The protagonist lets Ryoji live, and the party must use the last month of the game to reach the top of Tartarus to battle Nyx on January 31st and avert the end of the world. They succeed, the protagonist having to use his soul to seal Nyx away. The game then cuts ahead about a month, giving a few more days of play time in the form of an epilogue before the protagonist dies with a smile on Aigis' lap on graduation day.
• Mundane Utility: In the Audio Plays, the Kirijo Group conducts sensitive meetings — such as the reading of Takeharu's will after his passing — during the Dark Hour because no normal person nor recording device can spy on them that way.
• My Sister Is Off-Limits: Played with during the ending in March. If Kenji's link is maxed out in FES, he'll mention his sister will be attending Gekkoukan during the next year, and initially has no issue with the idea of the protagonist dating her (in fact, he says it'll keep her too busy to bother him). As soon as he realizes he'd potentially be the MC's brother-in-law, however, he takes the offer back.
• Mythology Gag:
  • In the English localization, Innocent Sin Online (and the accompanying player names Maya and Tatsuya) is one big reference to the characters of Persona 2 and the locations in Persona (and was originally a reference to Megami Tensei, the game that started it all). Also, several fusions (particularly the ones that Elizabeth requests) are those of key characters from other MegaTen games; Alice and Lilith, for example, were important characters in Shin Megami Tensei.
  • Early in the game, Junpei comments that rumors can't become real, which was a major plot point in Persona 2.
  • At one point, meeting with a counselor to decide your future is a big plot point. (Noted that The End of the World as We Know It is also supposed to happen makes this meaningful in another way.)
  • The Reaper bears a particularly strong resemblance to JOKER aka Tatsuya Sudou from Eternal Punishment. Both wear a very similar (although the Reaper's is significantly more bloody) trench coat/overcoat. Like how JOKER wore a paper bag on his head, the Reaper wears a sack on his head. Most notable of all, the Reaper appears to be missing the same eye that Tatsuya lost moments before his death.
  • The TV set in the lounge is sometimes tuned into "Trish's Who's Who!" which apparently interviews notable people in the area. Though their names are never given, judging from the descriptions, these include several characters from Persona and Persona 2, serving as something of an epilogue to those characters. Trish herself is a reference to a fairy in all three games, though is obviously not the same character.
  • The One-Woman Wail appearing in "Aria of Soul" and "The Battle for Everyone's Soul" is inherited from Persona and Persona 2, where the aria was sung by Igor's assistant Belladonna, and is likely being used in this game as a reference to Nyx's usual MegaTen appearance—an opera diva.
    • Also: "The Battle for Everyone's Soul" is a rock remix of the first half of the first Persona's version of theme. While it uses rock instruments, the rhythm is mostly the same (compare this to this).
  • In the Portable Updated Re-release, there's a few references to Persona 4. One that won't be apparent to many is the fact that Ken's favorite food is the exact same one as his fellow Justice Arcana, Nanako.
  • Hypnos, Nemesis and Thanatos were boss fights of the Snow Queen quest in the original Persona. Now they are Personas of Takaya, Ken and the Protagonist respectively.
    • Also, Takaya's design is similar to that of Hypnos' boss form.
  • Yukari's heart-shaped choker is pretty much a Palette Swap of the same accessory present in the Demon/Persona Succubus' design since Nocturne and on. They even wear it the same way, with the heart symbol to the front and the left side of the neck.
  • A bow found in Monad Block is called Mary's Resolve in the original game but changed to Maki's Resolve in Portable. This is a reference to Maki Sonomura from the first Persona who is renamed Mary in Revelations'' but kept her Japanese name in the Portable rerelease.
  • The Sugar Key is required to fuse King Frost. In Digital Devil Saga, the Sugar Key is required to open a chest in a sidequest that leads to the boss King Frost.
  • There is a drink called "Cielo Mist" which is made in Jamaica. That is a reference to Cielo, a party member in Digital Devil Saga.
  • The Agni, Varuna, Indra, and Vayu Bracers offer a large boost to Fire, Ice, Elec, and Wind damage respectively. These are named after Atma Avatars in Digital Devil Saga of the corresponding element specialization.
  • The Best Friends fusion spell requires Decarabia and Forneus, two demons who are friends in Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne. Elizabeth comments that Decarabia waited for Forneus forever, not knowing that the Demi-Fiend killed him.
  • A security tape from FES shows Mitsuru and Officer Kurosawa going into Junpei's room because Mitsuru thinks that someone broke in... but it's really just messy. In Eternal Punishment, Katsuya the cop has a similar assessment of Ulala and Maya's messy apartment.
  • Bebe enjoys Kyoto more than Destiny World. Destiny Land is a location in Shin Megami Tensei I, Digital Devil Saga, and Persona 5 appearing each time as a Bland-Name Product of Disneyland.
  • The save screen in the 2023 version of Portable is modeled after the interface of the PSP's save menus.
  • In Persona 3 Reload, when the Protagonist sits down to listen to his music player at the start of the intro, the first song he cues up is "Burn My Dread", the original opening song, followed by '"Want To Be Close", the protagonist's school-time leitmotif, before he cues up the new opening song.
• Naginatas Are Feminine: While the male protagonist in Portable uses a single-handed sword, his female counterpart only uses naginatas (which are a separate class from Ken's Spear weapon class).
• Necessary Fail: On the Male Protagonist's route, regardless of your choice, at rank nine the Moon will inevitably reverse. This is rectified shortly thereafter on the same night, though.
• Nerf:
  • Several skills were changed this way between vanilla P3 and FES. Some are minor like upping the SP cost for Samsara and Die for Me! from 35 in vanilla to 40 in FES, but some are more notable:
    • Many physical skills are made weaker to accomodate the reduced cost in the latter version, as the vanilla version is notorious for the absurdly high HP cost for something that ends up inferior to magic skills.
    • The Regenerate passive skills restore less HP per turn in FES, possibly in response to the lowered HP cost for physical skills as noted above.
    • One very notable change, however, is making element Break skills cost far more SP in FES (from 15 in vanilla to 40 in FES), which in this version can easily drain teammate SP if poor matchup or Artificial Stupidity sets in.
  • Personas:
    • Byakko was nerfed hard between vanilla and FES. In vanilla, Byakko was the Ultimate Persona of the Temperance Arcana and was a contender as one of the best Personas in the game. It was Phys-based with a very solid set of skills in Deathbound^note High BP Slash skill, targets all enemies, 25% crit chance., High Counter^note Passive, 20% chance to counter Phys attacks., Endure^note Survive with 1 HP upon taking a fatal hit., and Fist Master^note Boosts damage inflicted with glove-type weapons.. Byakko's magic side was not bad either, being Ice-based (drains Ice as well) and having the all-target Mabufudyne as an innate skill, which can be boosted further with Ice Amp which Byakko can also learn. In FES, Byakko's position is usurped by Yurlungur and changed to be Elec-based, but this change brought down Byakko's skill set to be less powerful. FES Byakko keeps Deathbound and Endure, but loses out High Counter and Fist Master. The Zio family dominates the magic side, but FES Byakko only learns Elec Boost by level up, requiring inheritance to get Amp. And though the change from draining Ice to Elec is obvious and the addition of Slash resistance is nice, FES Byakko gains an additional weakness to Fire (totaling 2 weaknesses counting Dark).
    • The Ultimate Persona of Star Arcana, Lucifer in vanilla has impressive resistances, nullifying all 3 physical attack types and Dark, on top of high end stats, unique moves, and being one of the Personas needed to unlock Armaggedon. Notably, in FES and Portable, Lucifer of Star Arcana is renamed into Lucifel (in Japanese) or Helel (in English), and only resists all physical attacks rather than being immune. Likewise, Lucifer of Judgment Arcana also only resists physical.
  • Starting from FES, using the offertory (raises Academics) or the fortune box takes up a time slot, though this is more to do with how the free time locations have been overhauled compared to vanilla (there, the fortune box could not be used to increase Social Link points).
  • To match Persona 4 (and to go with the revamped condition system), returning to the first floor of Tartarus no longer fully heals the party in Portable. The player has to pay a fee at the clock to heal there.
  • Probably due to following the QoL updates from Persona 4, checking turn order in Portable is only limited to who will act next in line, instead of displaying numbers representing turn order on all battlers.
  • The Down status gets this in Portable as downed battlers no longer waste a turn before getting back up (on the bright side, no more risk of easily stunlocked party). Instead, it requires a Dizzy status to achieve the same effect, same as in Persona 4.
  • In Portable, certain skills can no longer be passed down through fusion, turning them into Secret Art. No more Thanatos with Die for Me! here.
  • Portable makes Fusion Spells usable items that must be stocked by trading rare items at the Antiques Store, rather than accessible as long as you have the prerequisite Personas in stock. They no longer cost HP or SP to use, but they're a lot less spammable (so you can't mash Armageddon to kill everything now) and take more effort to stock up.
  • The Reaper is nerfed in a way in Portable where it can now use single-target skills instead of just spamming skills on the entire party every turn.
• New Game Plus: You can carry over some things into a new run after completing the game, such as your level, yen, and Persona Compendium. In Portable, this is averted with the new Maniac difficulty, which does not allow you to carry over anything from a previous playthrough.
• New Kid Stigma: A downplayed example. While not outright ostracized, the protagonist is viewed with a certain amount of envy and jealousy due to having just arrived and yet getting to stay in the same dorm as some of the most popular students in school (in truth, this to make their Wake Up, Go to School & Save the World activities easier). In addition, his aloof, detached air also makes him difficult to approach, something brought up by some of the Social Link characters. In fact, it's even brought up that bad rumours follow him around because he doesn't socialise and has been seen wandering around seedier parts of town.
• New Transfer Student: Happens three times, with the first being the main character himself, followed by Aigis, and lastly Ryoji The homeroom teacher even lampshades this on the third occurrence.
• Next Sunday A.D.: Takes place in 2009-2010, a few years after the game's release. As the game uses the real world lunar calendar, this was likely done to make sure the final Full Moon boss takes place on a significant date: January 31st.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Yeah... funny story, turns out the Full Moon Shadows you've been killing the whole game were actually the only thing keeping the personification of Death itself from descending upon the world and obliterating all life. Whoops?
• Nietzsche Wannabe: Two notable examples:
  • First, Shuji Ikutsuki, who betrays the team later in the game. It turns out that his role in guiding SEES was really just his means of orchestrating his devious plot to bring about The End of the World as We Know It. He nearly succeeds, too.
  • Strega is another group that fits this trope. Although initially they're only out to stop the main character from eliminating the Dark Hour, as the true nature of the Shadow threat is revealed, they embrace the Fall, even going so far as to set up their own Cult to help bring it about.
• Nintendo Hard: Hard Mode, which augments the enemies, gives them a random chance to go first when they shouldn't, and makes it near impossible to run. With the vastly increased damage and elemental weakness system, it's entirely possible for a higher level party to die before they can move if they are ambushed. Doubly so for Persona 3: FES: The Answer, which buffs various enemies and locks you out of the Persona Compendium, which means you cannot re-summon older Persona on demand to match enemies you are fighting. That being said, in The Answer, Personas level up faster than in The Journey.
• Nobody Here but Us Birds: During the trip to Kyoto, the guys stay in the hotsprings when they change over to the girls' turn. In Portable, at one point the male protagonist can attempt to distract Yukari by imitating a cat. When she questions if it was a fox, he can insist it was a cat.
• No Fair Cheating:
  • In the vanilla version only, if you try to use an Action Replay to hack in party members that are not supposed to be accessible at a particular point in the game, get inaccessible Personas, or get the Universe Persona earlier than the final battle, whoever is your Mission Control will express anger or shock — complete with English translation and voice acting!
    Fuuka: Cheaters never win!
    Mitsuru: ...You're cheating. I'll have to punish you.
  • Not caring about breaking Optional Boss rules and just let Plumes of Dusk or infinite restarts be your lifeline? Nope, all the boss will do at this point is always the 9999-damage attack, and the boss will always move first after the player's revival to ensure that the message came across.
• No Fourth Wall: Your characters speak a dialogue line every time they level up in the PS2 versions, but Junpei takes the cake by invoking this trope:
  Junpei: Tat-ta-da-dah! Junpei has leveled-up!
• No Indoor Voice: Some of the Personas upon being fused have a case of this, with their dialogue being written entirely in capital letters.
• Non-Action Protagonist: Fuuka Yamagishi, the Mission Control of Persona 3, is one of these. Physically speaking, while the other members of S.E.E.S. are physically adept at combating Shadows, Fuuka is a shy, grungy nerdy girl who is introduced by being a bullying victim of a girl posse. Then she ends up in Tartarus by accident, and shortly after summoning her Persona for the first time while surviving ten hours in the vitality-sapping dungeon, she allows you to see the strengths and weaknesses of the Boss Shadows that just wiped the floor with two of your allies. Even though her Persona is not capable of combat, she's still a critical ally to S.E.E.S.'s efforts in Tartarus and a valuable member of the team.
• Nonstandard Game Over: Several in The Answer. First off, when you die, instead of Igor's original speech to the main character about how death comes for everyone, eventually, you get a lecture about how the main character gave his life so you could live yours, but now that you've died, it was all a waste. Then, in the arena battles, if you die to the other PCs, instead of immediately dying, the other PCs give you a lecture about their decision on what to do with the time machine and then the narrator laments you not being able to find out a different path than the obvious two.
• Noodle Incident: Mr. Ekoda's punishment for lying about Fuuka's whereabouts to protect his career. If you ask Mitsuru afterwards, she'll tell you that you don't want to know what it was.
• Nothing Is Scarier:
  • The real horror about the Bad Ending is the fact that Aigis is the only one who remembers the events. Not only does this mean that the Fall will happen, but all of the progress and Character Development made throughout the game was made for nothing.
  • Gameplay-wise, if the floor has no enemies the moment you enter it, something worse is going to happen. Fuuka even lampshades that "something is not right". It is during these times when The Reaper will spawn faster than usual.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Shinjiro pretty much tells this to Ken when Ken tells Shinjiro that he's going to kill him to avenge his mother, who died when Shinjiro accidentally lost control of his persona. Shinjiro tells Ken that if he goes through with killing him, he'll become what Shinji was to him and regret it later on in life.
• Not Too Dead to Save the Day:
  • Shinjiro's voice is heard once again in the final boss battle.
    Shinjiro: Alright, let's do this!
  • If you completed his Social Link, Akinari adds his own encouragement in the 11th-Hour Superpower scene immediately preceding said battle.