Roleplay / Disney Ronpa

"Don't you know that in the House of Mouse, love and beauty always win?"

-Maybeck

Tropes from the first gimmick round of Dangan Roleplay.

This round provides examples of:

• All Your Base Are Belong to Us: The castle was originally Mickey's and was taken over before the story, with Mickey himself locked in a dungeon hidden in the basement.
• Altar the Speed: Ariel and Naveen barely consider a more normal courtship length before deciding to get married four days after he proposes. They could die at any time, after all.
• Arc Symbol: Destroyed or defaced images of characters. Because of this, the characters invoke Smash the Symbol by repairing the symbol.
• Ascended Meme: In a flashback in the epilogue, Monobear announces a murder with "It's Die-day!"
• Banister Slide: Ariel and Anna do it for fun on a regular basis.
• Bedsheet Ladder: Naveen and Maybeck decide to use this to climb on top of the chandelier. Hey, it's investigating!
  • Much later, Pooh imagines that they could all escape the castle with a bedsheet ladder if they tricked Monobear into uncovering the bolted-over windows claiming they were going to try and throw someone out. He figures it would be too hard to trick the bear, though.
• Brick Joke: Throughout the round, Sora was the butt of jokes, mostly OOCly, for being assigned a last name like "Flyin". When he's killed and the trial for who did it begins, he is described as "flyin with the angels" and the whole setup has an exaggerated sky motif. One thinks that's the end, but in the final log, Sora actually does get to fly.
• Call-Back: In Round 2, Lysandre didn't get a reference to The Lion King and, when he asked about it, got an explanation that left out that it was just a movie. In this one, Howl gets the same confusion about The Hunger Games.
  • Similarly, Ariel builds a fort of books in the library, just like Adachi.
  • Anna starts folding paper hearts. At one point, mod narration mentions that "in an alternate universe", she might have been making cranes instead.
  • 2-4 had a case where an arrow was planted as a fake murder weapon. Dis-2 had a case where an arrow was the murder weapon, but was disposed of, with an ornamental sword planted in its place. Note that Disney Ronpa had half as many characters as Round 2, making Case 2 an analogue of Case 4 as it was...
    • Similarly, 2-8 and Dis-4 had blunt force trauma as the murder method, the murder took place in somebody's room, and the Team Dad was involved, breaking the heart of his perky yet troubled assistant.
  • Anna tried to help {...} make pancakes in Round 2; the pancake she tried to flip got stuck to the ceiling, decomposing for weeks, and only fell down when one of them died. In this round, she and Elsa try making pancakes and their attempt is even worse, being a congealed mess of batter that wouldn't even make pancakes because they have no idea what they're doing. It breaks the spatula and gets stuck to the wall. It only falls down when both of them are dead.
  • 2-4 and Dis-3 both had "fix your biggest regret" as a motive.
  • Round 1 gets some, too! The first trial has some players reference its famous double murder, and later on, Donald wishes they were all on an island instead because "there's no way anything this terrible could happen".
  • For the third round in a row, the players get a good or better ending by not leaving a lovable talking rabbit for dead after their disappearance didn't look hopeful.
• Central Theme: Can you understand and forgive when you no longer have the childlike innocence you either came in with or lost long ago? Is hope lost with innocence?
• Chaos Architecture: A very mild version. The castle reacts to the students doing things without Monobear manipulating it. Exaggerated in the second motive, where the castle twists around and constantly randomizes which rooms lead where.
• Creepy Changing Painting: The victims' and culprits' portraits in the foyer are tampered with to symbolize how they died.
• Disney Death: Fittingly, for the Preventable Murder case leading up to the finale, Naveen falls unconscious for a moment, keeping the players on edge and wondering if they'd failed.
  • Again in the Final Investigation: "Mickey Mouse is definitely not dead".
• Disney Villain Death: Monobear suggests that any would-be murderers strapped for ideas try this method out. The reason should be obvious.
• Easter Egg: Hidden in plain sight. After the Final Trial, the student profile page (and thus the Electronic Student Handbooks) have Monobear's profile replaced with one for King Mickey.
• Everything's Better with Sparkles: Monobear has pranked students mid-escape-attempt at least twice now by dumping pink glitter on them. The castle is now covered in it.
• Evil Is Deathly Cold: The second trial takes place in a frozen-over courtroom. While it's meant to symbolize Elsa's grief at losing Anna, this is also the only trial where the culprit was truly evil rather than desperate, regretful, or not even intending to kill anyone.
• Evil Tower of Ominousness: This round is set in a castle.
• Fantastic Fireworks: In the ending, they appear to restore the castle to what it looked like before.
• Fate Worse than Death: Being forgotten. You get sicker and weaker until you suddenly disappear, then wake up all alone in a stagnant copy of where you were, unable to access anything you couldn't remember.
• Fire/Water Juxtaposition: Sorcerer Monobear wields fire and water in the finale. Too bad for him that Jack is immune to one and Ariel very used to the other.
• Food Porn: Bill describing his completely over-the-top ideal ice cream sundae to Anna.
• Foreshadowing: At the first motive announcement, Jack mentions that he can set his skeleton body on fire without hurting himself. Much later in the game, he sets his head ablaze with a lit fire log to scare the final would-be culprit.
• Fourth-Date Marriage: In true Disney fashion, Naveen proposes to Ariel in the aftermath of the fourth trial. At least it took them longer than three days this time? (On the other hand, they plan to get married four days after the engagement.)
• Genius Loci: The castle changes according to its ruler and can do things even when Monobear isn't making it. The place itself seems to have a will to help the students in the final investigation, creating a pathway to the underground chambers when they finally defy a motive and prevent a murder.
• Genre Shift: The final trial is not a courtroom trial but an outright physical and magical battle in the courtroom.
• Ham-to-Ham Combat: Gaston and Naveen immediately get into a blustering bragging contest as soon as they meet.
• Iconic Item: Naveen muses that everyone seems to have one, naming Perry with his Fedora of Asskicking, Pooh with a jar of honey, and Maybeck with a pen.
• Innocence Lost: A major theme this round.
  She'll never get the chance to be okay again. It was taken from her. By... She doesn't know.
• Invisible Writing: When secretly writing letters and hoping they'll reach the living, Iridessa suggests invisible ink, which could get past Monobear and be exposed by light.
• It Never Gets Any Easier: Which itself becomes a source of hope.
  Ariel: (in response to Naveen saying it hasn't improved) Getting used to this place means you've given up on getting out, and we can't let that happen.
• Jump Scare: Maleficent plants the Creepy Dolls around the castle to laugh at her classmates' reactions.
• Lights Off, Somebody Dies: At the second week's masquerade ball, the culprit shuts off the lights and drops the body in the centre of the dance floor. Helps that she was portable.
• Magic Music: Some of the passageways and secrets of the castle only open with song.
• Masquerade Ball: The students hold one in week two. It goes... poorly.
• Mistaken for Murderer: Maybeck every single trial and Pooh and Gaston for most of them, too. All three are innocent every time and survive the round.
• Monument of Humiliation and Defeat: The true purpose of the paintings in the art room, which were once family portraits from a happier time.
• Nasty Party: The first body was found in the middle of a masquerade ball.
• Never the Selves Shall Meet: It's mentioned that it's probably a bad idea for someone to meet their "multiverse self," a version of them who experiences all their alternates' lives.
• No Periods, Period: Averted when Maleficent has to explain to grown men what a tampon is.
• Not-So-Fake Prop Weapon: Subverted in Case 2, where the prop sword really was too dull and weak to kill anybody and had been placed there as a decoy.
• Our Fairies Are Different: Look at Iridessa. Then look at Maleficent.
• Please Wake Up: Directed at both Naveen and Pooh during the coma motive.
• Plethora of Mistakes: In a panic, the first murderer does such a poor job covering his tracks that everybody actually assumes he's been framed.
• Plot Tailored to the Party: Inverted with the first motive, which took away characters' greatest strengths. For example, Jack's skeleton body and Iridessa's pixie dust had proven useful in investigations and Anna and Elsa's relationship as sisters had kept them stable. Played straight, however, in the final investigation, where the characters were given tasks that only certain ones of them could accomplish: only Gaston can lift the trap door, only Maybeck has the fourth-wall knowledge to sing the Healing Incantation, only Pooh and Donald can go down a rotting ladder or through a mouse-sized passage safely, only Jack can survive being set on fire, only Ariel can swim with endurance when the courtroom flooded, and Naveen... well, he's The Hero, he'll be fine.
• Possession Implies Mastery: We know that the Sorcerer's Hat isn't entirely this, but it does give a great deal of power and apparently the skill to use it. Monobear, at least, only ever intentionally flooded anything.
• Rescue Introduction: Mickey, to the all-but-two survivors who don't already know him.
• Sigil Spam: Hidden Mickeys. Even the castle is one.
• Theme Naming: Both fairies have raven-related surnames assigned to them in the game.
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Naveen throws a sword at Monobear, along with everyone else chucking everything in sight at him, in the Final Trial.
• Token Minority: Discussed: "There was a surprising amount of white people, wasn't there?" On the other hand, this round was the first for anyone darker than a paper bag to make it to the survivor pool, and one of them's even the protagonist!
• Wham Episode: When Jack and Naveen found the props and costumes, all of them referencing movies not represented in the game, indicating that maybe other groups of applicable characters had been killed off there. Another one followed a few weeks later, when images of the Fab Five (Mickey replaced by Daisy) appeared. Including Donald, who's already in the game. Then the Final Investigation brought them in by the bucket, especially finding the dungeon and its prisoner. Sure, the mastermind having a grudge against Mickey had been heavily foreshadowed, but it's still a shock to see.
• When the Clock Strikes Twelve: The time limit for the curse motive. Unless a murder occurs by then, the students will all lose their greatest strengths forever.
• Whole Costume Reference: Pick anything in the wardrobe room and you'll find a Disney reference.