Trivia / Persona 4

• Acting for Two:
  • Johnny Yong Bosch voices the Protagonist/Yu Narukami and Tohru Adachi.
  • The cast also play their character's respective Shadows.
  • Romi Park voices both Naoto Shirogane and Izanami in Japanese.
  • Karen Strassman plays both Nanako Dojima and Izanami.
  • Wendee Lee plays both Chihiro Fushimi and Sayoko Uehara.
  • Mary Elizabeth McGlynn plays both Noriko Kashiwagi and Hisano Kuroda.
  • Sam Riegel plays both Shu Nakajima and Teddie in the Golden re-release.
• Adored by the Network: Even moreso than Persona 3, it's quite obvious that Atlus adores 4, with the two games receiving a plethora of spinoff media.
• Breakthrough Hit: For the Persona series, up to (and including) 4, the western releases all carried the Shin Megami Tensei name. The success of Persona 4 prompted ATLUS USA to drop the SMT branding with Golden & Arena, with the next main installment simply called Persona 5.
• Colbert Bump: Golden getting released on Steam and debuting at number 1 on the Steam sale charts has, much like when a beloved series arrives on Netflix, provided a way for people curious to play the game without having to shill out for two long outdated consoles (one of which suffered low sales and is therefore difficult to find used).
• Content Leak: The 64-bit update for Golden was leaked early months before its release date. It covers only graphical and performance fixes as well as changes to file structure, however, and does not contain the new features such as the Album.
• Defictionalization: There is a fanmade recipe for the Aiya Rainy Day Special Mega Beef Bowl. Comes with a vegetarian option.
• Development Gag:
  • When mentioning that the police are looking for witnesses to the serial murders, Yosuke jokes about the killer wearing 'bright yellow clothes' at the crime scene. One of the original designs for the killer, as shown in concept artwork, had them wearing a bright yellow raincoat.
  • Without hacking, it is hard to see the details of Adachi's police badge, but it uses the portrait of his concept art design.
• Dummied Out:
  • The entire Persona 3 battle archive is left in the PS2 version in order to pad out its size on-disc, thus making loading faster on the console. This also includes that game's intro movie and entire soundtrack.
    • Almost similarly, traces of Persona 3 Portable are also left in Persona 4 Golden, which further supports that the latter was built from the former.
  • Files suggest that the part time job the gas station attendant offers in the game's opening, which a nameless male student in the shopping district later says was filled, was meant to actually be a job the player could take.
  • A paragraph kindly asking players not to spoil the game's story has been found in the game's files. It would have played right before starting a new game.
  • Unused text strings suggest that there would have been consequences for dating multiple girls, and that all of the girls' Social Links could break or reverse, possibly as a result of this. In Golden, the girls will passive-aggressively call the protagonist out on cheating on Valentine's Day if he has been, but nothing ever comes of it.
  • Dungeon Dialogue also implied that all of the Social Links, not just Naoto's and Ai's, were susceptible to reversing and even breaking, just like in Persona 3.
  • Some unused dialogue that can be dug out of the game's files heavily suggest Yosuke was originally intended as a Gay Option romance. Some of this still lingers in the game itself - besides the Ho Yay between him and Yu at times, Yosuke is the only male Social Link in the game that can have minor route changes depending on choices (most notably giving him a Cooldown Hug at one point if the right dialogue options were taken earlier in the Link), while all of the girls that can be romanced have this as standard.
  • In Golden, files in the Social Link folder contain a portrait of Izanami, in her gas station disguise.
  • Every dungeon has dialogue for if you talk to your party members in front of it while you've already finished the current rescue or other mission. This dialogue for the last two dungeons goes unused, as it's impossible to actually access either of them under that condition.
  • The hero has his own dungeon navigation icon for when something needs to be addressed in the dungeon (like finding a chest or stairs). Since the hero never speaks outside dialogue options and Voice Grunting, this is obviously not used.
  • Specific to Golden, voicelines from party members upon finding stairs are missing in English, made obvious by the BGM fading out temporarily similar to other dungeon discovery comments and the Japanese version actually having them. Supposedly, the localization did not manage to record voicelines for this scenario.
  • Magatsu-Izanagi has data suggesting him as an obtainable Fool Arcana Persona in the vanilla version, however it is unfinished. It took until Golden for this to no longer be the case, albeit under a different Arcana.
  • Aside from the above, there are also several blank dummy Personas with placeholder data. If hacked in, they are usable in fusion as Fool cards.
  • All the Maya-type Shadows (absent in this game) are this, though they are all set to level 1 with no affinity resistance and weakness. Other Dummied Out Shadows include four additional Basalts and one test Shadow meant to be for testing rare encounters. All of these (not counting the test one) even have their own material drops, but will not unlock any new equipment if sold (and all the Maya materials have no sale value).
  • There are also several Dummied Out accessories. Some have effects that affect Hit or Evasion rates and some raise damage of a particular element. The "weapon" Bare Hands would make a comeback in this game, supposedly exclusive to Teddie.
  • Golden actually has six time of day phases, but one called "Forenoon" is never used.
  • Golden has a somewhat functional code that allows the player to boot into Persona 3. It immediately places the player in the Velvet Room and the only Persona he has is a level 1 Orpheus.
  • Golden has an unused Junes job which would be a night time kind, unused beach and ski resort events, and the unused ability to watch DVDs rented from Okina City. The latter idea would be brought over to Persona 5, but unlike in that game where it was used to raise social stats, this ability was used to obtain skill cards, which is now instead done through Chagall Cafe at the same city.
  • Though the voice actor interviews are No Export for You outside Japan, the models remain in the files for Golden regardless of region.
  • The multiplatform port/update for Golden has a dummied entry for Quick Save on the Controller configuration, which can be made visible through Game Mod, though still non-functional without further tweaking. This implies that there were plans to allow the player to Quick Save with a single button press instead of having to open and go through the menus.
• Executive Meddling: As mentioned here, the localization team had a total of six months tops to translate the entire game for the west, with Teddie suffering the most due to the long list of mandates attached to him.
• Killer App: Golden became this, significantly boosting sales of the lagging Vita. It got to the point that many considered it the only reason to own one until Golden was released on Steam in 2020.
• Life Imitates Art: This report about a man who was found dead, with no signs of trauma, hanging upside down from a telephone pole.
• Market-Based Title: Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 outside of Japan, for the initial release (See Breakthrough Hit above).
• New Work, Recycled Graphics: Along with using the same engine as the previous title, Dojima noticeably shares the same model as Akihiko, particularly with both characters holding their coats over their shoulders. This comes to a head with the protagonists outright going to Tatsumi Port Island as part of a school trip, with many familiar locations revisited briefly.
• No Budget: Atlus was going through severe financial trouble during development and this shows quite a bit if one digs through the data, as the game was essentially built on top of Persona 3 in a way that is more or less akin to a fanmade hack, with much of the data assets remaining buried in the code in a way that was most likely not test data. This is a testament that, despite the lack of money, the game was still financially and critically successful, which likely influenced Sega keeping Atlus as a subsidiary instead of liquidating Atlus' assets after buying them out after they declared bankruptcy a few months post-release.
• The Original Darrin:
  • Troy Baker was replaced by Matthew Mercer in the second half of The Animation, due to Troy Baker getting married and taking a temporary leave for a honeymoon. Baker did return however for Golden.
  • Similarly, Anna Graves was replaced by Mary Elizabeth McGlynn in The Animation, but Graves returned for Golden as well.
  • Zack Hanks was Taro Namatame in the games, but Matthew Mercer took over in the anime version.
• Orphaned Reference: In the early scene where Yosuke, Chie and the player are discussing their first trip to the Midnight Channel at school, Yosuke mentions a line by Teddie which was actually cut for brevity from the final game.
  Teddie (Cut): You have to go home before the fog clears, or else the Shadows will run wild.
  Yosuke (Used): Plus, remember what that bear thing said? How that place was dangerous, and we should leave before the fog clears...?
• The Other Darrin: In Golden, Chie is voiced by Erin Fitzgerald in place of Tracy Rooney, and Teddie is voiced by Sam Riegel instead of Dave Wittenberg, reflecting the change made in the anime adaptation.
• The Other Marty: In Golden, Margaret has voice lines that are provided by her original actor, Michelle Ann Dunphy, that are also mixed in with re-recorded ones that are widely assumed to be done by Karen Strassman.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Johnny Yong Bosch, used to playing the role of The Hero (which he does in this game, seeing as how he's pulling double duty), playing the lovably incompetent detective, Tohru Adachi. Later, it turns out he's playing even further against type when it's revealed that Adachi is actually an Ax-Crazy Serial Killer, complete with an Evil Laugh when summoning his Persona.
  • Rie Kugimiya in the Japanese voice track is well-known for playing Tsunderes like Shana and her various clones. Here she plays Rise, who has both pigtails and Zettai Ryouiki but isn't tsundere in the least.
• Real-Life Relative: In Golden, Sam Riegel and Eden Riegel, who voice Teddie and Marie respectively, are brother and sister in real life.
• Referenced by...: One of the splash texts that can show up on the title screen of Minecraft is "switches and ores", a reference to the "bitches and whores" meme. The meme itself came from an edit of an adult parody comic.
• Star-Making Role:
  • Kanji is more or less the role that put Troy Baker on the road to voice-work super-stardom and roles like Joel in The Last of Us. While he did return for the role at first (being in love with it), he eventually had to bow out due to becoming very high in demand and busy with motion capture work and music to the point where he cannot find time to continue many of his roles in anime and JRPGs.
  • Similarly, while Erin Fitzgerald wasn't unknown before becoming the second Chie, it was her take on Chie in Golden and the animations that put her solidly on the radar of English voice-over fans.
• Swan Song: Is generally considered to be the last big PS2 game, being released a little less than two years after the PS3.
• Uncredited Role: The entire cast of the English dub are uncredited. As a result of this, Naoto's original English voice actress was unknown for almost a decade after the game's release. Eventually in 2018, Anna Graves confirmed on Twitter that she was her voice actress.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Rise's original design had her being a playable party member like the others and her being a chain-wielding ice queen sukeban. Since Kanji already filled the delinquent void, the concept was scrapped, and her original design instead ended up going to NPC Ai Eibihara when Rise was redesigned as an Idol Singer loosely inspired by her voice actress. Rise's original concepts would eventually be partially reused for Persona 5's Ann.
  • Kanji was originally going to be a middle-aged man with a pompadour or long curls instead of having his hair short and dyed blonde. Naoto would've been straight-up male instead of a female cross-dresser. Also, a colored sketch of her female version showed her in a white shirt, but without her coat. Early Chie designs alternated between variations of Lisa Silverman from Persona 2 and Chihiro Fushimi from Persona 3, complete with long straight hair down her shoulders. Conversely, Yukiko would've been the one with short hair, akin to Aigis from Persona 3. Alternatively, she would have kept her final look, but her red cardigan would have been a pullover sweater with a more complex design. One early version of Teddie had him in a much creepier bear costume that was a patchwork of colors based on the classic television SMPTE color bar test pattern. All of these original designs can be found in the Visual Data art book.
  • Margaret didn't exist initially, Elizabeth from Persona 3 was intended to return as the Velvet Room assistant. They decided to make a new assistant so as not to de-value Persona 3's stand-alone storyline.
  • Other candidates for the killer were either Yukiko or Yosuke, but their motivations (for the sake of self-pleasure) were considered too weak and cliche. Not only that, but had they gone with that, it would have created a huge plot hole during their respective Shadow encounters since you'd figure committing murder would be a much bigger skeleton in the closet than personal insecurity or the desire to be free from family tradition, not to mention that only Persona users can enter the TV or push people inside (if you try to select either one as the culprit, the narrator will inform you that they didn't awaken to their Personas until after the first two murders). However, Atlus would revisit this idea in Persona 5 with Akechi being the traitor to the Phantom Thieves and one of the game's main villains. The final one in mind was Dojima himself, with there even being extra dialogue tying him to evidence gathered in the investigation near the end of the game, but the writers felt it would be too dark to have Dojima being the killer, and decided against it.
  • Golden was originally planned to be a PSP title, which would've led to features needing to be cut. Thankfully the Vita came along.
  • The Killer originally wore a yellow raincoat. This would be Refitted for Sequel in Persona 4: Arena Ultimax.
  • Originally, Teddie's human form was supposed to be a girl, with his gender changing depending on whether he was in or out of the TV world. However, when the decision was made to make Naoto a girl (originally, she was supposed to be an effeminate boy), the team decided that two gender-based surprises in one story was a bit too much, and scrapped the idea. This was likely referenced in the final game where Teddie landslides a crossdressing pageant as he was the only entrant who could reasonably pass as a girl.
• Word of God:
  • In the second episode of the Persona Stalker Club, Atlus confirms that Yosuke enjoys listening to Western and Japanese music, including those from soundtrack albums.
  • The fifth episode, basically an Adachi special, confirms that although Adachi carries a lighter on his person for whenever Dojima needs it, Adachi himself doesn't smoke.
  • The twenty-third episode mentions that Adachi is very familiar with the Moonlight Bridge since he used to drive there when he was working in the city prior to his transfer to Yasoinaba.
• Word of Saint Paul:
  • Troy Baker stated during a convention that after asking the English Voice Director for motivation, that he voiced Kanji as if he was indeed gay. Baker has gone on record that he does believe Kanji is gay.
  • Erin Fitzgerald later admitted to doing the same thing with Chie in Golden, portraying her as 'madly in love' with Yukiko after reading the script. While Chie can be one of Yu's love interests, her relationship with Yukiko does make her Ambiguously Bi.
• You Sound Familiar: Due to having a similar voice cast as the previous game that draws upon the same pool of actors, this game shares a lot of its cast with Persona 3
  • Yosuke Hanamura is voiced by Yuri Lowenthal, who voiced the protagonist, Pharos, and Ryoji in 3.
  • Nanako Dojima and Izanami are voiced by Karen Strassman, who previously voiced Aigis and Natsuki Moriyama in 3.
  • Hermit Social Link, Naoki Konishi, is voiced by Derek Stephen Prince, who previously portrayed Takaya Sakaki and Takeharu Kirijo in 3.
  • Valerie Arem voices the Temperance Social Link character, Eri Minami, and was previously the voice of Isako Toriumi.

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