Red Herring / Visual Novels

• Ace Attorney has a lot of these, with several deliberately playing on the expectations gained from earlier cases.
  • In Justice for All Adrian Andrews seems like the killer due to both motive and placement, but it turns out that she merely framed your client Matt Engarde with the already-dead corpse. The real killer? Matt himself, by proxy of an assassin.
  • Investigations:
    • The second case gives us Zinc Leblanc II, an annoying and obstructive Funny Foreigner art collector who disrupts the investigation with his timeliness obsession, apparently not caring about the murder that just happened. Not only did he not do anything, he's actually helpful, as he's the only person aside from the culprit who can read Borginian.
    • The final case has Ambassador Colias Palaeno, a sweet and integrating fellow with an exaggerated smile, a connection to the crime, and a nervous disposition. Turns out, his secretary was the one committing crimes without his knowledge, and his affable-but-stressed manner is the natural result of being a diplomat in a very tricky political situation; if he can make things work he might be able to peacefully reunite his country, but if he and Edgeworth can't catch the guy who murdered two people at the embassy, he's looking at an international incident at best and a renewed civil war at worst.
  • From the same game, we get the intro to case I-5. It's probably unintentional, but due to the way Edgeworth's dialogue is worded, you'd think Kay commited arson and got away with it. While she does get in a few troubles at the beginning, she's not guilty of anything and the plot point regarding her arrest is dropped in about 10 minutes.
  • Investigations 2:
    • Case 1 has Edgeworth solve what appears to be an assassination attempt on the president of Zheng Fa, and Shelly de Killer (the Professional Killer that Engarde hired) is present on the scene, making him an obvious suspect. Edgeworth even finds a red raincoat that has De Killer's blood on it, due to him having an injured arm at the time, which matches up with photos of a person in a red coat pointing a laser at the president. However, not only is it revealed that De Killer's not directly involved outside of a previous encounter, but that the raincoat in the photos is actually a reversible parka belonging to Nicole Swift, the reporter in this case, which leads to her being a suspect when one of the president's bodyguards is killed in the president's place. It then turns out that no one actually fired at the president; the entire thing was one big publicity stunt to boost the president's declining approval ratings, and the murder was committed right afterward by the other bodyguard.
    • Case 2 has Sirhan Dogen, another assassin who even Edgeworth is wary of, whose Right-Hand Attack Dog Anubis is seen with blood in his mouth from biting into the victim's neck in the opening. There's also security footage of an animal with a similar color scheme attacking what is thought to be the victim. As it turns out, Anubis only dragged the already dead body as part of the real culprit's Frame-Up attempt, and what the footage caught was a polar bear cub, who was covered in mud at the time, playfully glomping his designated owner while he was trying to escape. The real culprit was the prison warden.
  • Apollo Justice's first case has Olga Orly, who at first seems like the new Frank Sahwit or Richard Wellington, being the only witness to the crime aside from the defendant. She puts on an almost saccharinely innocent face much like Dahlia, and she even gets a breakdown where she's revealed to be much more of a jerk than she first appeared. But unlike the other first case witnesses, she's no murderer, just a con-woman, and she had actually been knocked unconscious by the victim and didn't see anything (she lied about what she saw because she was afraid the crime would be pinned on her if she didn't scapegoat someone else). The real trial only starts after Olga's testimony has been dismissed and she has left the stand, and the real killer wasn't present as a witness. It's Apollo's co-counsel, Kristoph Gavin.
  • Dual Destinies:
    • Herman Crab, from the DLC case "Turnabout Reclaimed". He behaves suspiciously throughout the case and treats Phoenix Wright with distaste. On top of this, he's the only character in the case who didn't testify during the first day of court - a big red flag for the savvy player, as they are usually the culprit. It turns out he is hiding something (a secret with 5 Psyche-locks, which typically are given to plot-critical secrets), but he's not the one who killed Jack Shipley. The things he's hiding are actually both positive; first, that Ora (twin sister to Orla, the orca you defend) wasn't put down for killing her trainer (she didn't; the trainer had a heart condition and that killed her), being instead moved to another aquarium, and secondly, that he uses the TORPEDO system to monitor the aquarium's animals, which hasn't yet been legalized in Japan/the States due to red tape.
    • During the third case, an incriminating piece of evidence against the defendant, Juniper Woods, is a recording of a woman shouting "You're a goner!", presumably to the victim. At one point, Athena notices that due to the poor quality of the recording, the voice could actually be saying "Hugh O'Conner", the name of a character in the case. Turns out the tape actually was saying "You're a goner!"
    • The beginning of the second case makes it so painfully obvious that the victim, Rex Kyubi^note Whose name literally means "Nine Tails,", was secretly the masked wrestler the Amazing Nine-Tails (who, like Kyubi himself, was fighting against the merger) that you'll probably get frustrated waiting for someone to put two-and-two together already. Eventually, the connection is made... and turns out to be completely wrong.
  • Spirit of Justice has two of the most effective red herrings in the series:
    • Inga Karkhuul Khura'in looks like the main antagonist at first given he is the queen's husband and is shown to be a cruel individual who is in charge of Khura'in's twisted justice system. He even turns out to be behind Case 5's first trial; then he shows up as the victim of the second half of the case.
    • Amara Sigatar Khura'in is even better. All throughout her cross examination, she starts to display everything associated with an Ace Attorney Big Bad: having a major transformation sequence, her sprite when you start to break her argument is borderline terrifying, implying she is a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing, she is in a position of power, was beneath suspicion and she has an unsettling theme. You even prove she could have committed the crime and it looks like she is the only person who could have done it... but she has no motive and she's a Sheep in Sheep's Clothing.
    • In the DLC case, there's Sorin Sprocket, the fiancé of the defendant, Ellen Wyatt. He has a plausible motive for wanting to kill the victim, Dumas Gloomsbury, whether to protect Ellen from Gloomsbury's attempt on her life, or to take revenge for Gloomsbury being responsible for the accident in which Sorin's sister Selena was killed (although Sorin later admits that he himself was responsible). Due to Sorin's anterograde amnesia, he has no memory of the incident, but his diary (in which he logs everything that happens to him) contains an admission to killing Gloomsbury, so Phoenix goes into the second day thinking Sorin might have done it, only to find out that this wasn't the case; instead, the real culprit tampered with the diary.
  • In-universe example: From the police's point of view, the defendants are always Red Herrings, with something making them seem suspicious enough to arrest. Whether it be because they were found at the crime scene, were framed by the real killer, had confessed, or otherwise had "decisive" evidence implicating them.
• Plenty of evidence in Aviary Attorney doesn't wind up very important. Most notable is the literal red herring, labelled "This is a red herring" in the inventory.
  Falcon: Yes. I wish to closely examine and question the piece of evidence that is overtly labeled as a red herring.
• Danganronpa, being a murder mystery series, naturally has quite a lot of these:
  • Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc:
    • The Justice Hammers. More specifically, the numbering of the Justice Hammers, from smallest to biggest. Everyone thinks that they were used from one to four, with each hammer inflicting increasingly deadly injuries, but it's eventually discovered that the culprit used them out of order to throw everyone off. The second victim, who had been thought to have been killed with Hammer #3, ahead of the other victim, who was killed with Hammer #4, was in fact killed with an ordinary hammer after faking their death.
    • After Kyoko says Makoto is the least likely among the group to be the mastermind and he agrees, the screen flashes back to his mysterious daydream where he tells himself that his goal is to stay in the academy. Given that Makoto is the player character, this turns out to have been a red herring.
    • To assist with murders, the boys are all given a toolkit while the girls receive a sewing kit. While the toolkit is relevant in the first trial, the only relevance the sewing kits ever have is not being the toolkit. When Leon needed to use a screwdriver to break into Makoto's bathroom, he thought he was in Sayaka's room, which would have had a sewing kit instead of a toolkit, so he instead went back to his room to use his own screwdriver.
  • Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair:
    • The truth about "Twogami", the version of Byakuya who's gained both weight and several levels in kindness. He dies early on and the issue is put on the back burner until chapter 5, where Hajime gets a booklet with the student profiles that reveals that 'Twogami' was merely the Ultimate Impostor, a nameless person who impersonates others in lieu of having an identity of their own, and who just happened to be disguised as Byakuya at the time. Monokuma explicitly states that the mystery didn't turn out to be important. Additionally, "Twogami" was briefly considered a suspect for the traitor, around the same time that the cast learned about Byakuya surviving the killing game, but it turned out that "Twogami" was not the traitor.
    • Nagito Komaeda — though perhaps unintentionally. He looks like and has the same voice actor as Makoto, and his name is (accidentally) a Significant Anagram which suggests that Nagito is Makoto. It's all just a coincidence.
    • The countdown timer. It counts down from 21 days and expires around the time the surviving students enter Hope's Peak Academy for the final chapter. Junko admits it was just there to provide atmosphere and to be a Self-Imposed Challenge on herself.
    • In Chapter 1, before the murder even happens, Peko is left to guard the circuit breaker so that nobody can cause a blackout and commit a murder in the dark. A blackout indeed happens (with a subsequent murder), and it's later revealed that Peko left her post to go to the bathroom. It's implied that the killer had slipped her laxatives and/or tampered with the circuit breaker in the room. Both of these are false trails; Peko's stomach problems were just a coincidence, and the killer never touched the circuit breaker (although the circuit breaker was involved, but not in the way the characters believe.)
    • In Chapter 2, a significant chunk of the Daily Life is dedicated to talking about the mysterious serial killer Sparkling Justice and then Sparkling Justice's calling card is found at the murder scene, clearly trying to invoke the Genocide Jack reveal from the first game. This turns out to be a classic fakeout; none of the students have any connection to Sparkling Justice, and after Chapter 2 Sparkling Justice is never mentioned in this game again and has no relevance to the plot whatsoever. Although, at the end of the second trial the killer (Peko) briefly pretends to be Sparkling Justice to throw the other students off the trail, claiming that she was carrying out "justice," and killed Mahiru for destroying evidence to protect her friend. In actuality, Peko killed Mahiru on her master Fuyuhiko's behalf, since Fuyuhiko was contemplating killing Mahiru in order to avenge his sister(since the friend Mahiru wanted to protect killed Fuyuhiko's sister), and so that Fuyuhiko could graduate.
    • This can happen to overly paranoid players in Case 3. Fuyuhiko shares some very similar proportions with Ibuki, Akane explicitly states that the hospital gowns are unisex when she brings up the idea of taking Nagito's and you're unable to personally account for where he was when the murders supposedly took place. If accused, he'll threaten to cut his stomach open again to prove his innocence, and later on in the case he himself brings up the body proportions argument, which turns out to be perfectly meaningless and yet causes a slip of the tongue that leads to the real killer.
    • Also in Case 3, Monokuma's movie, despite Hajime seeing it during the investigation and suspecting the murderer was imitating it, turns out to have had nothing to do with the murder. The movie has Monokuma hang his first victim, shoot his second full of arrows and dismantle the third, but while the killer's primary victim was hanged, the unplanned victim, who had to be killed before the planned target, ended up being taped to a pillar rather than pinned there.
    • In chapter 4 there's mention of how some of the murders have been very similar to the events of the previous game, there's a statue of Sakura in the building and the person who died, Nekomaru, was, like Peko, the Big Guy of the group who cared about the others. From this and some of the oddities of his death the player can easily be led to think that his death was a mirror of Sakura's, where he killed himself to help the group. Though helping the group was part of the motivation behind it, it wasn't a suicide at all.
    • The Sonia/Kazuichi/Gundham relationship appears to be setting up to some kind of conflict, perhaps by creating conflict when one of the three is murdered. Instead, Gundham murders someone else.
  • Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony:
    • When exploring the cold sleep room, it's revealed that Kaede has a younger twin sister, suggesting that maybe she could be the mastermind and the two are trying to emulate Junko and Mukuro. Coincidentally, Kaede, like Mukuro, is the second person to die in the killing game, albeit as the (supposed)first culprit, rather than someone Monokuma summarily executed for breaking the rules. This turns out not to have a bearing on anything, and said sister may not even be real, especially since it was Tsumugi who suggested it.
    • In the first case, it's suggested that the victim could be killed with a shot put ball thrown from a room directly opposite, and Gonta (who was in that room at that time) is implied as a possible culprit since he had the strength to kill with a thrown ball. In the end, this turns out to be irrelevant, since it is impossible to hit the victim.
    • In Chapter 4 the characters enter a virtual-reality world, using high-tech VR headsets. Miu speculates that if someone connected their VR headset wrong, they might "body swap with someone". After a murder happens in the virtual world, this throwaway line seems to hint that body-swap shenanigans are in play, e.g. the murderer body-swapping with the victim or something like that. Nothing like this happens, however (although the solution does involve one of the characters connecting the VR headset wrong and having their mind messed up as a result, if in a way that did not cause the murder).
• The Devil on G-String does this with the main character himself. Throughout the game, Azai Kyosuke suffers from recurring headaches, which transition over to scenes featuring the scheming Big Bad known as Maou. Maou's and Kyosuke's interests align frequently, Kyosuke's stepfather suspects him of being Maou right out of the gate, and the easiest way to stop Maou from escalating his plans is to get Kyosuke an early happy ending with one of his love interests. However, playing all the way to the true ending reveals that Maou is not Kyosuke, but his presumed-to-be-dead older brother, who's existence was hinted at in an easy-to-miss family photograph early on in the story.
• Ever17:
  • The Kid having amnesia and having strange glimpses of future events and knowing things about people that he can't possibly have known. Sounds a lot like Tsugumi's amnesiac friend from the research lab who could see the future, right? Even the ages seem to match up. But it's not him, obviously.
  • Furthermore, Coco and Sara seeming to have some obvious plot-related connection due to playing similar character roles in their respective routes and knowing the same lullaby. The Kid even has a flashback/vision on Sara's path about a man scolding a crying little girl about her having everything she's wanted thanks to the loss of another girl's life, which seems to strongly imply that the reason Coco only shows up as an apparent ghost on the routes where Sara is part of the cast has something to do with Sara's past and powers. But it turns out that they're one of the few pairs of characters in this game that don't have any meaningful relation with each other.
• Fleuret Blanc has an in-universe example that led a certain character astray: Kant assumed the judges were gunning for him because he hacked their computer, when in actuality they never figured this out. In an inversion, they were actually motivated by his theft of the placards, something he thought was irrelevant.
• Ghost Trick gleefully has the characters and the player misinterpret almost everything that happens in the plot. Pretty much nothing is as it seems. For example the main character is shown to be killed by a major side character. Then it turns out there's someone who can control human bodies... then it turns out the main character wasn't even the guy who the side character killed... and then it turns out the guy who was killed didn't stay dead. Sometimes this leads to an odd case of Right for the Wrong Reasons; it turns out the main character was killed by the side character in an accident.
• Gnosia: From her introduction, the player is led to believe that Yuriko is the mastermind of the Gnosia invasion and the "Groundhog Day" Loop, between her constant Leaning on the Fourth Wall, it being extremely difficult to catch her in lies or turn people against her, and being very knowledgeable about things such as what really happens when you get cyberized and how it relates to Gnos. In the end, it's not her but Manan via Kukrushka and SQ who is responsible for everything.
• Jisei:
  • In this Murder Mystery Visual Novel, one of the suspects realizes that the best way to draw attention from themselves is to accuse someone else of the murder.
  • There's also a "meta-example": in one of the bad endings the player can get, Chance poisons the protagonist to death. So if the player got this ending before getting the good ending, then the player might naturally assume that this means Chance is the killer. She's not; the killer is someone else. Chance did poison the player in a bad ending because he was getting too close to the truth, but the truth in Chance's case is not that Chance is the killer, but that Chance was hatching her own, completely unrelated plan to steal the valuable data that sparked the murder plot, and the murder actually screwed that plan up.
• In Nameless, there's a Secret Character that's hinted in certain scenes on other characters' routes to be a doll the female protagonist forgot about from her childhood. Given these hints, you might come to the conclusion that Zion, a waiter at the cafe Banjul, is that secret romanceable character due to the protagonist commenting on how doll-like his features are when she first meets him. But nope; the secret character turns out to be someone whose face is never seen in any other character's route.
• Nasuverse:
  • A common trope in the franchise. Often, an explanation for an unusual event is given, but later proven false and the true cause is revealed, allowing the player to piece by piece set together with the whole picture of what happened in the past or is happening now during the multiple routes.
  • In Tsukihime, the identity of the real vampire serial killer is masked in all routes and is not the first major antagonist that Tohno Shiki is forced to confront. In the Near Side routes, Nrvnqsr Chaos serves as the Red Herring. In the Far Side routes, a turned Yumizuka Satsuki serves as one. In Kohaku's route, the plot contrives an extra layer of Red Herring.
• Physical Exorcism Series
  • Extra Case: My Girlfriend's Secrets: Due to the supernatural elements in previous entries, Marty initially assumes "Seira" is an evil spirit possessing Sally. Sally herself also showed a negative reaction to the Nazar Amulet, which is supposed to hurt evil spirits. However, when he tries to use the amulet on "Seira," she is completely unaffected. It turns out she's actually a Split Personality, which means she's not something that can be exorcised.
  • Case 03: True Cannibal Boy: Hans appears to be the main antagonist because of the developer's screenshots as well as Case 00: The Cannibal Boy hinting that he may be a potential Cannibal Boy. In the full release, it turns out the Cannibal Boy is actually a conglomerate of souls of abandoned children and Hans is unrelated to them, but they take Hans's form in order to make Brucie hesitate to attack them.
• The Zero Escape series tries to convince the player that multiple innocent characters are Zero, the mastermind of the Nonary Game.
  • In Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors:
    • The initially most suspicious one is Seven. He is an apparent amnesiac, who could easily be lying, and comes off as brash and violent, picking fights with almost every other character. It turns out he is genuinely an amnesiac and is actually a kind and selfless detective who rescued the children of the first nonary game.
    • Midgame, the suspicion is cast on Snake. He disappears abruptly, and the characters bring up the idea that Zero must be one of them. The narration suggests that Snake could be watching over the other players after a staged disappearance. The suspicion subsides after the characters find his 'dead body', and by the time it's found he is still alive, there's a new suspect...
    • Santa. He becomes the most suspicious in the Safe and True paths (especially if the player achieves the Coffin end, an unfinished True end). In the last part of the Safe end, Snake, Ace, Clover, and Akane are all dead, Lotus and Seven are mourning and Junpei is with Akane, leaving Santa the only character unaccounted for. So it becomes clear who is speaking when Zero directly responds to Junpei over the loudspeaker. In the true end, Santa abruptly holds a gun to Akane's head and takes her hostage. If you accidentally get the Coffin end, you'll never learn that this is a ruse and Santa is just an assistant to Akane, the true Zero.
    • Santa also becomes suspicious along with Seven after Snake's apparent death, as Clover deduces that they were the only ones that could've opened the number 3 door to kill Snake (if not convinced that Snake is still alive, she'll even lead them away and kill them along with June in the Axe Ending.) In reality, Ace was the sole murderer, as he'd stolen the Ninth Man's bracelet.
    • The game's characters also bring up the legend of a preserved Egyptian mummy called "All-Ice" on the Titanic enough times that you'll probably come to think that she must be important to the plot somehow. The fact that you need to learn about her and Ice-9 to access the True Ending adds further credence to this. A-nope; The Stinger does show a mysterious woman in Egyptian garb greeting the characters, but she has no importance to or impact on the main plot. This red herring even spreads into the sequel, where she turns out to not be All-Ice at all.
  • Virtue's Last Reward:
    • When Sigma is cut on the hand and bleeds white blood, the player is led into believing he's a robot. He was also present in the GAULEM room when a robot began to talk about how a robot could probably pass for a human... He's not, he just has cybernetic arms. Luna is, though, and this is foreshadowed by her also being present in the GAULEM room.
    • Phi's superhuman-seeming jumping abilities make her seem non-human, which brings suspicion on her as the robot as well. Again, she's not. Her jumping abilities are explained eventually and have nothing to do with Phi herself.
    • Dio is presented as so blatantly evil that the player either decides he's the mastermind at first or concludes it's ridiculous to think that he's anything more than a red herring. Both of these expectations are wrong- Dio is indeed villainous, but he is not Zero nor does he have any idea how vast Brother's plans are.
    • Throughout the game Quark, a little kid, is constantly passed off by Sigma as being a ridiculous candidate for any of the murders or bombings, or the real identity of Zero Sr. Dio also accuses him multiple times of being a Wolf in Sheep's Clothing who made the choice of betraying various characters, which is always seen by other characters as Dio making excuses. Turns out Quark really is just an innocent little kid, and did absolutely nothing wrong throughout the entire game.
    • In Luna's route, you deduce that, contrary to what was first thought, Luna killed the old woman because her AB Room and K's AB room (where the woman's body was found) had been swapped, so the room where the body was found in was actually hers. However, this turns out to not be true. She only hid the dead body in her room.
    • Also in Luna's route, you deduce that Clover was probably Luna's killer. This deduction was built on a false premise; Luna didn't even die.
• In Shinrai: Broken Beyond Despair, there are a few suspects that seem like the culprit.
  • Hiro. He had an argument with Momoko shortly before her death, something that was apparently an all-too-common occurrence in their relationship. He was also the one who borrowed the keys from Rie to go to the bathroom, enabling him to open up the guest room where Momoko died. The latter piece of evidence means that he's the right choice of the four suspects (him, Runa, Kamen and Mika) Raiko comes up with after the questioning period... but then he winds up dead himself. While it's possible to accuse him of Momoko's murder, Raiko will conclude that if that happened, Kamen would have killed him for revenge, leading to a bad ending.
  • Runa. She had once been in love with Hiro, and occasionally clashed with Momoko because of the latter's Clingy Jealous Girl personality. Like Hiro, she also had an opportunity to kill Momoko. However, she had no reason to kill/try to kill Kotoba, so while she can be accused of the murder, and leads to you being required to answer several questions and present evidence to prove her "guilt," doing so leads to a bad ending.
  • Kamen. While she's best friends with Momoko, she can't stand Hiro. She is supposedly seen stabbing Hiro with a knife, as well as being missing for much of the night, so Taiko becomes convinced she's the culprit, and almost everyone else agrees with him. Like with the other two, it's possible to agree with Taiko, in which case Kamen is arrested for a murder she didn't commit. It turns out that she was part of what she was convinced was a prank, along with Momoko, Kotoba and Hiro, not realizing that Momoko planned on killing Hiro, Kotoba and herself in order to frame Kamen.
• Spirit Hunter series:
  • Spirit Hunter: Death Mark strongly hinted since Chapter 3 that the cause of the protagonist's mark is the grudge of the Buddha statues that were stolen from the H Shrine, only for Chapter 5 to reveal it's false and Mary is the actual cause of everyone's misfortune.
  • Spirit Hunter: NG:
    • Each chapter gives the player multiple items that can potentially be used in the confrontation with the chapter boss. Some of them have no effect at all and will lead to a Game Over if Akira tries to use them.
    • Kaoru gives Akira a talisman bracelet to protect himself against the Urashima Woman. However, if he actually tries using it, then it has no effect and the Urashima Woman will kill him anyway.
    • At the beginning of the Kubitarou case, it's explained that the spirit is likely the ghost of a notorious Serial Killer. However, it's eventually revealed that the rumour was mistaken, and the actual Kubitarou is a young woman who's not acting out malevolence (though she is still responsible for the decapitation of various innocent animals and people).
    • In the Kubitarou case, all routes but one ^note destroying Kubitarou with Seiji as a companion will lead to Akira being in possession of Seiji's modified handgun, which he stows away in his apartment. It never becomes important again, even though his apartment is investigated by forensic police, and at the end of the game he passes it back to Seiji without any fanfare.
• When They Cry:
  • Higurashi: When They Cry has two of them: 1. The Sonozakis' Yakuza connections. More specifically Oryou being the mastermind of all the murders. 2. Oyashiro's Curse. Both of these are actually quite obvious to those familiar with Knox's Decalogue. Since Oryou was not introduced into the overall story until the fourth arc (of eight), Knox's 1st rules her out from being guilty in the chain of murders. Knox's second rules out Oyashiro/Hanyuu. Either way, VERY nastily deconstructed since the pursuit of these red herrings is half of the cause of the cycles of madness and death.
  • Umineko: When They Cry:
    • The epitaph is a riddle that initially seems as though it describes a grisly ceremony that will revive Beatrice the Golden Witch if no one solves it, but it really has nothing to do with any kind of ceremony at all and it's not actually why the murders are happening. The killer deliberately arranged the murders to resemble the epitaph in order to mislead and terrorize their victims.
    • Kinzo Ushiromiya, the person who supposedly started said ceremony, turns out to have been dead for almost two years and only an Unreliable Narrator was making it seem as though he was still alive.
    • Everything about Kanon and Shannon as presented in the earlier games is a herring so strong that it almost caused a Broken Base. Specifically, their specific mysteries were important to the overall murder mystery; but, the fervor in the fan community around those personal mysteries created a sinkhole into which all analysis of the murder sank.
    • Episode 5 has the scene where a number of people are gathered in the dining hall, and there's nobody outside in the hallway. Yet suddenly, a knock on the door is heard, and when the door is opened there's a letter outside. Earlier, the narration talked at length about one of the people present fiddling with a tape player, so it's natural to suspect shenanigans involving playing back a knock from a tape. Erika (the detective) assumes exactly that. However, it turns out to be false.

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