Pop Culture Urban Legends / Danganronpa

All spoilers will be unmarked ahead. You Have Been Warned!

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Main installments:

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc

• While the descriptions of executions for characters who weren't killers in the final game are real (except Makoto), no artwork was made for them. Despite this, some fans may show off artwork of these believing them to be official, when they actually come from a doujinshi, as stated in this Reddit post. The only execution with official art is Hifumi's, which was depicted in a promotional manga based on the demo.

Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair

• Unlike the first game, no official source lists alternate executions for characters who weren't culprits. Despite this, some fans will claim that there are some; usually citing art from a doujinshi named Execution Fever while remaining unaware of its fanmade status.
  • This doujinshi became Hilarious in Hindsight in V3, where the concept for Kazuichi's execution became the inspiration for that of Kaito's.
• There was a rumor that Makoto, The Hero of the previous game, was going to have been the Big Bad of this game, but Word of God felt Junko would have been a Tough Act to Follow as a villain. So, Junko's AI was created instead and Makoto's redesign was re-purposed into Nagito, which was also why they had the same voice actors. However, this was never officially confirmed.
• It's often claimed that the reason Hiyoko's death in Chapter 3 was largely Out of Focus was due to them rewriting her as a victim over Fuyuhiko. However, considering this change happened much earlier in the writing phase rather than somewhere later in development, it's unlikely any of this actually negatively affected the writing surrounding her death and indeed, most likely comes from this video.
  • Furthermore, Hiyoko is said to have replaced Fuyuhiko as a Chapter 3 victim. However, the artbook and an interview with Kodaka revealed that Fuyuhiko was meant to become the robot and die in Chapter 4 while Nekomaru was meant to die in Chapter 3, meaning Hiyoko replaced Nekomaru who replaced Fuyuhiko.
• Speaking of Hiyoko, late in 2020 a rumor circulated that she was originally intended to die by being murdered by Teruteru, who would then dispose of the body by cooking her remains and serving them to the others at the party. This rumor originated from a joke post on Amino Apps about supposed cut/changed content which the author made up.

Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony

• Rantaro being alive, having secretly worked with Kaede to perform a Thanatos Gambit that would allow him to investigate behind the scenes and put the mastermind down for falsely executing Kaede. This one was the most popular and most well-liked of the fan theories.
• There was also a fake spoiler about how this game taking place in an Alternate Universe where Mukuro was the Big Bad of the HPA Saga instead of Junko and because of that, there were different results in those killing games. The survivors of the killing school life were Makoto, Mondo, Hifumi, Chihiro, Kyoko, Junko, Sayaka, and Toko while the survivors of the killing school trip were Hajime, Teruteru, Chiaki, Ibuki, Mahiru, Sonia, Akane, and Hiyoko. Rantaro participated in both of games making him the Ultimate Survivor. However, in actuality, this game takes place in an Alternate Universe where the original arc is nothing but a series of video games.
  • In addition, the game was thought to be taking place in another virtual reality, and Artificial Intelligence versions of the survivors would have shown up.
• Similarly, the V3 was thought to stand for Rantaro's third victory.
• Also, Team Danganronpa was thought to be the name of Mukuro's version of the Ultimate Despair.
• Kaede and Miu were thought to be sisters and Kaede was thought to be Ki-bo's creator.
• All of the motives that the killers except for the first killer had were thought to be different:
  • The second killer was thought to have had her mafia master killed by Ryoma and either falsely taken the blame for her mafia master's killer or have a huge burden put on her life by taking her mafia master's role thus seeking revenge at Ryoma.
  • The third killer was thought to kill Angie and Tenko because of his hatred towards religion. However, his real reason has to deal with other things.
  • The fourth killer was thought to commit an Accidental Murder by having their VR avatar glitched out.
  • The fifth killer was thought to kill Kokichi because he thought Kokichi was the mastermind. While it was more or less the reason why Maki attempted to kill Kokichi, Kaito killed Kokichi because he didn't want Maki to be executed for killing Kokichi.
• Korekiyo Shinguji was initially thought to actually be his sister impersonating him, instead of him utilizing her as a Tulpa. This was so convincing that for a brief time Korekiyo's character folder was listed with the female students instead of the male students.
• Miu Iruma was thought to only want to put Kokichi into a coma instead of attempting to kill him and escape.
• Several personalities of pre-memory rewrite characters ended up being false. For example, Gonta was thought to be a Jerkass who eventually develops into a Nice Guy like Kaito, Kokichi was thought to be the aforementioned case in the other way around, and Tenko was thought to be somebody who wanted a romance with a man who was turned into a man-hater.
  • Furthermore, the audition tapes shown by Tsumugi in the finale showed pre-game Kaede, Kaito and Shuichi having basically polar opposite personalities to their current ones, which started the common belief that everyone's pre-game personalities were the opposites of who they ended up becoming. However, not only did the characters in the Prologue not act in such antagonistic way but the artbook hints at the students' pre-game personalities being more or less the same, including K1-B0 already being a robot. The common belief also ignored several canon hints from the Prologue to audition tapes being faked by Unreliable Narrator such as: including a scene which didn't happen, characters willingly auditioning to participate even though Kaede recalled being kidnapped in Prologue, characters' names being censored even though Kaede, Shuichi, and Rantaro already revealed their unchanged names in Prologue; and characters being made out to come off as obsessive fans of Danganronpa even though they didn't even recognize a previous survivor Rantaro in Prologue.

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